BEYOND MINDFULNESS AND SOULFULNESS IS PEACEFULNESS
LOVE’S CONNECTIVITY
Look for beauty in all things
Expect love at all times
Share from the heart
Be grateful for life itself
And SMILE
My wife, Jean, and I wrote the above mantra 12 years ago when we first moved from our small but cozy, bungalow of 46 years to an assisted living community. We realised that we were going through a major transitional stage in our lives and that we would be needing the mutual supprt of Loves’ connectivity. We didn’t call it “love’s connectivity” back then. But its’s one of those stages in life when everyone faces multiple SELF to WORLD adjustments that they don’t really expect. It happens to us all at about age 65 plus.
We were fortunate enough to recognize that given the medical and other conditions of change that were affecting us, we were going to have to make some major adjustments and needed to rethink our lives personally and even even mutually. Simply put, we were GROWING OLDER. No, Call it AGING.
At the time, we both were both retired. Mindfulness was not so much a concern as Soulfulness. Jean immediately became active the community and eventually was elected president of the resident’s committee. I was too busy with the writing of a book to sum up my 25 years of private practice as a social worker to recognize that the mantra we were composing might also be of value to others as well as to Jean and myself. In short, we were adjusting but we needed to gather our thoughts and to be more aware of how our thoughts based on our experiences could also be useful to others. We were drawing on the power of love’s connectivity but we also need t0 participate and contribute to humanity at large.
I had noticed that basic to my private practice were four questions that people used as a sort of checklist, a series of progressive questions:
Who am I?
What’s it all about?
Where do I fit in?
What are were here?
We decided to use it as a basis for the development of our mantra. At the time, we didn’t realize the possibility use of by others to develop a personal mantra relative to their management of SELF to WORLD. Also, the WORLD was not in such turmoil back the. Still I continue to use it.
In fact, today, the WORLD is in even deeper trouble than it was then. Added to the list of woes we not have several ongoing global wars and the global warming to add to our list of problems. We need today to get beyond the present dualism of MINDFULNESS and SOULFULNESS - Physical, and Intellectual and the one side of our brains and Emotional and Spiritual on the other. Otherwise, we will continue to be stressed out personally and be at odds with one another politically. Worse, we will disrupt the flow of knowledge that converts into wisdom and passes on one generation to the next.
, a universe as a whole. In short, it opens us up to Cosmic Awareness.
Even my generation’s more recent attempts at three-dimension learning and personal and political dialogue will not be enough to repair the damage. The fact of the matter is that we are beginning to live in a global community of our own design and it is proving to be woefully lacking in terms of the total wisdom of our humanity as a whole.
Fortunately, mantras like the one that Jean and I cIntroduction: In this book, I use my twenty five years in private practice plus the ongoing advances in learning in psychology and theology combined together to explore the future of a SELF and WORLD in transition.
PART I: The Purpose and Meaning Of AGING
There is an overall lack of leadership today and we as individuals will need to inform ourselves more personally rather than politically. To do this, we will need to move beyond our present state of Mindfulness to that of Soulfulness and Beyond to a state of Peacefulness.
This redefines AGING based on shifting of the our growth and development transitions and as result, on the expanded demand for universal love personally and politically. . Particularly as we are confronted by the pressures and conditions of a fast-moving forming global lifestyle
This is based on new information about the brain and a revised theory called “ego autonomy” emerging from Freud vs Jung resolutions. omposed for ourselves are four dimensional in outlook and help us to recall the ONENESS of life will help us to align ourselves SELF to WORLD daily in today’s highly competitive, computer driven WORLD.
To make that transition from SELF to SOUL we need an even higher sense of inner alignment. I have singled out three of my most recent writings as examples. They are clearly one person’s explorations BEYOND MINFULNESS and SOULFULNESS in search of PEACEFULNESS. . We need a formula reflecting the Ages and stages of our humanity itself!
We can develop mantras that are four dimensional for ourselves and use them daily to keep ourselves on track with our lives and we can use them to guide our participation and contribution to the world around us. SELF to WORLD. That’s called contributing to our “collectivity” as a family, as a community, and as a society by professional. And we can use them to feel a part of humanity as a whole on generation to the next. That’s called GENERATIVITY. In either case the process of called AGING. It’s that way we’re equipped. With two hemisphere, we have the capacity for four-dimensional learning!
We mantras to lo remind us daily that we are part and parcel of a humanity and to extend our personal and political development, we work closer to capacity. But we can also use mantras as formulas like:
MINDFULNESS plus SOULFULNESS equals PEACEFULNESS
By using formulas, we open ourselves up up more totally to the AGING process itself and move from knowledge to wisdom. We realize that we are members of something much larger then ourselves - of a humanity and beyond that
By using four-dimensional mantras to look at life, we no longer see our SELVES in terms of our personal and political differences but also our sameness - our togetherness. We no longer see the other people living in the various WORLDS that interface with ours as their power versus ours. Instead, we see ourselves working together as a common humanity. We move from SELF to SOUL, Apparently, Mantras are a way of maintaining the momentum of this awaeness day to day!
Recent neurological studies suggest that the AGING is a learning process begins at birth - as a SELF that evolves into a SOUL. It is a gradual awareness confirmed by our ongoing experiences. SELF-awareness is governed by the left hemisphere of of our brains and is responsible for our leaning about the physical and intellectual dimensions of our lives.
SOUL-awareness is governed ty the right and is responsible for our learning about the emotional and spiritual dimensions of our lives. The two hemispheres of our brain - right and left - are designed to work together as one.
As a result of our having two versions of the world around us running either side of our brains, there is a constant balancing and re-balancing process going on between the two hemispheres of our brains going on - a shifting back and forth from the SELF-awareness of MINDFULNESS to the SOUL-awareness of SOULFULNESS as we are inundated by information about the world around us and integrate the new with the old nanosecond by nanosecond. It’s the amazing work of a corpus callosum joining the two hemispheres of our brains, consciously or unconsciously.
This is a natural evolutionary process that takes place as we go through four transitional stages of growth and development. The more we are aware of this process, the more we are able to be assure ourselves that we are being be fulfilled as individuals and to able to participate and contribute to humanity as a whole. We are at peace within ourselves. It’s the ongoing learning that has taken us person by person and generation by generation toward an unknown future - a common human destiny that we contribute to and benefit from. Properly aligned with the cosmic forces of life, it is has enormous potential for what I like to call our SELF-healing and WORLD-peace making. It’s a matter of bringing these two processes to together as one. It’s a matter of realising the connectivity of our Universal Love.
BOOK I - THE POWER OF LOVE’s CONNECTIVITY: A Case Study of Medical Assistance.
I wrote this at the suggestion of members of my family, compiled this book in 2018 from the writings that Jean left behind, particularly from her self-composed obituary which she wrote in the first person and her interviews with trained volunteers from Dying with Dignity. To Jean, her dying was a matter of her valuing life so highly and of expressing her gratitude for living.
jean was very open about herself and life. Similarly about death. When we were in palliative care, she managed somehow to meet individually with all of our family members and with her most intimate friends. and she wrote her own obituary and participated in the planning of her celebration of life. She was truly at peace. She wanted people to know about the possibility of dying with dignity. It is about dying with dignity. But first and foremost, it is a love story co-authored by both of us.
ABOUT Book II - AGING MINDFULLY, SOULFULLY and PEACEFULLY in the NEW POST-PANDEMIC ERA
This book offers a new way of looking at AGING based on recent discoveries about the brain and how it functions. The intent is to develop AGING as a more meaningfully as a lifelong process and as a source of possible solutions for those times and places when we are impacted negatively. It argues that if we are to use the full extent of our brain power in the new post-pandemic era, we will have to be more aware of it and manage it more holistically, that is four dimensionally by merging our learning of the physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual in to one. Four working principles from the profession of social work are identified:
The dignity and worth of the individual person
2. The development and growth of individuals
3. The plasticity four dimensionally for change
4. The ongoing homeostasis for integration and balance
It argues that the WORLD-view that we have accepted for our SELVES is not working as fully as needed. Thus, we are the WORLD that we are building. It is disturbing to feel that we are not on the right track but also it is comforting to know that we are going through a critical time in life together, personally and politically, to the extent that regardless of age or other obvious differences, we can have common goals based on our humanity as a whole and it’s eventual outcome.
To use the full potential of our brain power, we will have to seek new ways to be a part of the rebuilding of the social and economic structures that have been governing our lives. We will have to find new ways of expressing for the sense of balance within us, physical and intellectual versus emotional and spiritual. Left hemisphere versus right hemisphere.
To satisfy the full potential of our brain power, we need to be constantly seek a new alignments, SELF to WORLD, individually and collectively, personally and politically, which are more inclusive of our humanity as a whole with its immense breadth of diversity as well as its unfathomable depth of unity. We will have to move beyond our present state of MINDFULNESS versus SOULFULENSS to the more inclusive PEACEFULNESS where we can feel and learn to value being At-One with the Universe.
a, we will be more aware of ourselves as aging and we will seek new ways to be a part of the rebuilding of the social and economic structures that have been governing our lives. We will seek to find expression for the new sense of balance within us, physical and intellectual versus emotional and spiritual. We will seek a new alignment, SELF to WORLD, which is more inclusive of our humanity with its immense breadth of diversity as well as its unfathomable depth of unity.”
Clearly, the two streams of learning - MINDFULNESS (physical, mental) and SOULFULNESS (emotional, spiritual) when merged together four-dimensionally as one open the way to our experiencing more fully the kind of PEACEFULNESS that has been hidden beneath the surface our consciences. There is a new potential for learning.
We need more positive ways of thinking about life beyond COVID-19. In particular, global warfare, global warming and a myriad of global issues that seem to be beyond our humanity as a whole.
ABOUT BOOK iii
TOWARD A MORE LOVING AND CARING WORLD
Although I did not occur to me to self-publish this book until 2014, I wrote it bit by bit over the period of 23 years from 1972 to 1995 that I was in private practice as a family and child therapist and community development consultant. We tend not to think ourselves that way, that is, as having accumulated years of experience in whatever field of work with the result of developing a level of expertise that is valuable one generation to the next. We participate busily - often taking leadership roles what shape the future of our professions and, indeed of our local and global communities - but we don’t value it, it seems. But in fact, there is our connectivity to another on the one hand and also our generativity - our generation to the next. These two processes are intertwined into AGING.
When we retire, we think that our learning retires with us. This has not been the case for me. In continuing self-publishing, I have been very clear about my wanting to passing my learning on. As a result, I have intentionally filled TOWARD A MORE LOVING AND CARING WORLD with quotations from my favorite authors as well as my ongoing learning.
Self-publication has been a means of making this happen. Jean was a great hlelp to me in the years that it took for me to write TOWARD A MORE LOVING AND CARING WORLD in particular. Truly, a partner.
Start each day by asking life four most basic questions: 1) who am I ? 2) what’s it all about? 3) where do i fit in ?4) why are we here? There are no answers. Only more questions.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Jean Ayre wrote her own obituary and planned her own Celebration of Life with the intent of helping others enjoy and be grateful for life in the face of death by becoming more familiar with the notion of dying with dignity. Her words are central to this book. More about Jean →
Don Ayre has put Jean’s words into the context of the new and revolutionary practices that are challenging today’s medical professionals…and us. In the very real sense that these two books are based on their mutual experience and love, they are co-authored. More about Don →
Jean assisted in the writing of Toward a More Loving and Caring World previously featured on this site. The hash marks in the upper right corner of this page lead to additional information and a CONTACT form for visitors to comment or share ideas or resources that they are have. Both books are available for purchase later on this page along with the more recent the self-publication by DON AYRE…
