AGING AND MATURITY

There is great difference between 'maturity and aging'.., a vast difference, and people always remain confused about it. People think that to age is to become mature.., but remember!.. 'Aging' belong to the 'body'.

Everybody is aging, everybody will become old, but not necessarily mature... 'Maturity is inner growth'.
Aging is nothing that you do, aging is something that happens physically. Every child born, when time passes, becomes old. Maturity is something that you bring to your life.., it comes out of awareness:

"When a person ages with full awareness, he becomes mature. Aging plus awareness, experiencing plus awareness.., is maturity."

You can experience a thing in two ways. You can simply experience it as if you are hypnotized, unaware, not attentive to what is happening.., the thing happened but you were not there. It didn't happen in your presence, you were absent. You just passed by, it never struck any note in you. It never left any mark on you, you never learned anything from it. It may have become part of your memory, because in a way you were present, but it never became your wisdom. You never grew through it... Then you are aging... Please remember!

But if you bring the quality of awareness to an experience, the same experience becomes maturity. There are 'two' ways to live:
"One, to live in a deep sleep.., then your age, every moment you become old, every moment you go on dying that's all. Your whole life consists of a long, slow death".

But if you bring awareness to your experience.., whatsoever you do or happens to you... You are alert, watchful, mindful, you are savoring the experience from all the corners, you are trying to understand the meaning of it, you are trying to penetrate the very depth of it, what has happened to you, you are trying to live it intensely and totally... Then it is not just a surface phenomenon. Deep down within you something is changing with it. You are becoming more alert. If this is a mistake, this experience, you will not commit it again.

A mature person never commits the same mistake again. But a person who is just old goes on committing the same mistakes again and again... He lives in a circle, he never learns anything. You will be angry to day, you were angry yesterday and tomorrow, you are going to be angry and the day after tomorrow also. Again and again you get angry, again and again you repent, again and again you make a deep decision that you are not going to do it again.

But the decision makes no change... Whenever you are disturbed the rage takes over, you are possessed, the same mistake is committed... You are aging!
Maturity is most fundamental. It is a rhythm between opposites. You cannot be happy forever, otherwise happiness will lose all meanings. You cannot be in harmony forever, otherwise you will become unaware of the harmony. Harmony has to be followed by discord again and again and happiness has to be followed by unhappiness. Every pleasures has its own pain, and every pain has its own pleasure. Remember!..

"Unless one understands this opposites
of existence, one remains in unnecessary misery".

Accept the total, with all its agonies and all its ecstasies. Don't hanker for the impossible, don't desire that there should be only ecstasy and no agony. Ecstasy cannot exist alone, it needs a contrast... Remember!

Agony becomes the blackboard, then ecstasy becomes very clear and loud, just as in darkness of night, the star are so bright. The darker is the night, the brighter are the stars. In the day, they don't appear and don't disappear.., they simply become invisible. You cannot see them because there is no contrast.

'Death defines life... Aging defines maturity'. Gives it a kind of intensity, because life is fleeting. Each moments become precious.., next moment there is death, you have to plunge into the present moment.

You have to go to its ultimate depth because who knows? The next moment may come, may not come. Seeing this rhythm one is at ease, at ease with both.
When unhappiness comes one welcomes it, when happiness comes one welcomes it, knowing that they,
"are partners in the same game".

This is something that has to be continuously remembered. If it becomes a fundamental remembrance in you.., you becomes matured, your life will have a totally new flavor... You remain still, silent, accepting.
Matured person, is capable of being still, silent, accepting, pain, frustration and misery, transforms the very quality of misery itself. To him, misery also becomes a treasure.., to him even pain gives a sharpness. To him, even darkness has its own beauty, depth. To him, even death is not the end but only a beginning of something unknown.

Mature person are very strange, because maturity gives a sense as if he has experienced, as if he is aged old.... Physically he may be old, but spiritually, he is an innocent gained through life. To me, maturity is another name for realization. You have come to the fulfillment of your potential, it has become actual. The seed has come on a long journey and has blossomed.

Maturity has a fragrance. It gives a tremendous beauty to the individual. It gives intelligence, the sharpest possible intelligence:

"It makes him nothing but love. His action
is love. His death is love. He is just 'flower of 'LOVE'".


From Empty Hands,
A. Rahman Bin Mahadi
Labis Johore
016-6020321

15 NOVEMBER 2009

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2. "Let All The Noble Human Qualities Shine
Within You"