are you an old soul? or young at heart?

[Rod Sprague]

My step mom had us all go through past life regressions that had us go back in time to points before we developed different kinds of spiritual neuroses. The idea what to get us to be like we were before each kind of neurosis developed and let us return to the state we were in before we had the neurosis. I am a somewhat of a skeptic on the subject of the existence of past lives and whether you can remember them. I went along with the councilor’s guided meditations. I went back through time to before there was life on Earth. I knew things were getting odd when I stated pulling back from the solar system. I went back to a planet where life had evolved quickly to its equivalent of the Cambrian explosion. Then life on that world promptly perished when the blue hot sun went nova. Then I regressed back to the beginning of this cosmos.

I passed through the quantum foam to a previous cosmos that had evolved parallel to this one and regressed back as far as the appearance of blue-green algae on that alternate Earth. I was a large carnivore of human level intelligence on that Earth that organized my species so we could get rid of the humans before they overpopulated our ecosystem. When I found out what was supposed to have happened to humans, I ran away from that cosmos in profound guilt only to get entangled in the formation of this one.

I estimate my spiritual age to be 18 billion years, if all that stuff had really happened. I really don’t have a mental age I would put myself at. I do feel part of growing up is knowing when not to act in an “adult” manner.

[Innocent Bystander]

18 billion years!


Youngster!

[I.D.10-t]

35 years old in 1857, most likely in the US north, working as a blacksmith.

Not quite my self image, but have been told more than once that I belong there.

[missy]

I've been told to "act my age".

I've been told I don't "look my age".

I honestly have no idea how "old" I am (biologically, I'm 49).

(and Flydood - hope you are feeling better)

[BigDavy]

About 4.

[djm]

Being unborn, I am ageless. I do, however, tend to float a bit.

djm

[izzarina]

I've been told I don't "look my age".

I always get "You don't look old enough to have 11 kids!" I'm not sure if I should be flattered or not, because I'm not sure how old they think someone who has 11 kids should look

[missy]

I've been told I don't "look my age".

I always get "You don't look old enough to have 11 kids!" I'm not sure if I should be flattered or not, because I'm not sure how old they think someone who has 11 kids should look

izz - if I had 11 kids - I'd look dead!!!!

[chas]

I've been told I don't "look my age".

I was carded on my 41st birthday. I think that was the last time, although it happened probably once or twice a year for at least a decade before that. I don't know whether going grey or having an increasingly apparent beer belly is more responsible for hot having been carded in 5 years.

[Nanohedron]

I do feel part of growing up is knowing when not to act in an “adult” manner.

Well said. The "knowing when" part, especially.

I have no idea what my inner age is. It seems change often enough.

[pixyy]

When I turned 30 people thought I was 25 - I'm 33 now...
I've always looked young and felt old.

Inside I've been going through a midlife crisis since age 9...

Guess my permanent age is 45, but I'll have to see when I get there.

[jbarter]

How old I feel depends on whether or not there's a mirror in my line of sight. I intend to die young no matter how old I get.

[The Weekenders]

My internal age refuses to be permanent. It usually goes in cycles. I call them lifetimes. Each lifetime can take between 0 and 12 years. There's eddies in it as well - sublifetimes that are occupied with achieving some kind of understanding.

I know when a lifetime or a sublifetime has ended because I get a "resolution day". I love resolution day.

On resolution day, something has resolved. These "somethings" can be anything from a subconscious task the mind has been secretly putzing over for years, or a very conscious completion of a hard-worked-for objective. Sometimes it's when the final piece of masonary comes to rest after my most recent tower-of-Babel life's-work touches the finger of God and falls to ruin.

On resolution day I feel new. A big gust of energy lifts my spirits and makes me high. On resolution day I have no need to consider the next lifetime and can bask in life's radiance against my senses.

At the end of resolution day (it could be mid-day or even 2 days later) the realisation intrudes - all this new energy wants to do something, the blissful waters break and I am born again into purpose. At these rebirth times I get great fear - specially if the energy has been big. I ask myself "Woof - what TF could it be that's going to need all this!!??"

It's all the process of letting go. For anything to be complete it must sail into the great oceanic past on the wind of time, some stately and grand with a joyous wake, some like a putrescent oil slick flattening the waves.

What age am I in all this? The narrator seems old enough to be litterate, but the best stories were always told by the rustle of wind and the warmth on skin playing in time to the beat of walking each new joyous step.

Zero would be a good answer.

What a fascinating post.

[dwinterfield]

A friend once said that moving along in life is all about making choices and eliminating options.

When we're young, say 20, we face lots of choices and endless options. Who do we sleep with? Who do we marry? Do we stay married? Do we have kids? Do we want a "career" or a job? Do we follow our hearts or do we follow our wallets? Do we live here or move there?

As time moves along we answer some of these questions. Every time we answer a question, we eliminate a bunch of options. I think we're "grown up" we we stop having questions. Or maybe that's when we're dead.

As for me, I've answered a lot of questions, but now I seee a bunch of new ones coming. I still think like I'm in my 30s, tempered by being in my 50s.

[djm]

I was carded on my 41st birthday.

What's "carded", precious. That's what we wants to know.

djm