Fifty years ago, when I was in my early twenties, I remember going for a hike in the hills above U.C. Berkeley. The trails up into those hills are very steep, so I was surprised when I met an old man on the trail (he was about the age I am now). He had a sense of sheer aliveness that I wasn’t used to seeing in people his age. We got to talking, and I still remember the conversation.
He told me he was from Australia. He would have been born in the late 1890s, and he described what he remembered about being a boy in the outback. He said that cars (which he, of course, referred to as automobiles) were so new, and so rare, that when he and his friends would hear one coming, they would run to the road so they could smell the exotic fragrance of gasoline fumes.
Because he was so different from what I expected of people his age, I paid close attention. I’m glad I did, because the thing I most remember him saying was, “I feel younger today than I ever have.” I didn’t fully grasp what he meant at the time, but it was clear to me he was completely sincere, and it stuck with me over the years. It took me most of those fifty years to understand what he meant.
I understand it now because I have the same feeling he described. I think that’s the case because I can see life so much more clearly now; not just my life, but all of life. That clarity has enabled me to see that you and I share the same being, and we share it with everyone, and everything. In other words, the sense of isolation that felt to me like it was always there, and always would be there, turned out to be an illusion I’m now able to see through.
I’m not an isolated individual; I’m part of something much bigger.
I’m simply a piece of the aliveness that animates everyone, and everything. This isn’t an intellectual construct that I like the idea of and want to believe, it’s a felt sensation that emanates from the deepest part of me, which incidentally, is the deepest part of you. You are the same aliveness that I am. Not similar; the same. In other words, your aliveness is my aliveness. It’s all one aliveness. I finally understand what “it’s all one” means. That’s why the sense of aliveness I feel is as young as it was when I was in my twenties.
Here’s how seeing that has changed my experience of life. The sense of people feeling “other than” me has lessened, rather like finally seeing what you thought was a wall was really a window. I experience a sense of peace and well-being as my normal experience, and I always feel like I’m in the place I’m supposed to be at any given moment. I don’t get in my own way much anymore, something I like, most of us, was very good at.
I can still fall for the illusion that each of us is on our own, but that happens less often, and when it does, I know all it means is that I’ve temporarily lost sight of my true nature. The lovely thing about having really seen and felt that oneness is, I know that once I come back to myself, it will be apparent to me again. And it always is, no matter how many times I’ve temporarily lost sight of it.
That’s what lets me say with the same conviction as the old man I met, “I feel younger today than I ever have.” Here’s the best part: the sheer aliveness that lets me say that, is exactly the same aliveness that animates you. If you look within for it, you can’t help but find it.
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