Each age has its own vantage point.

I read recently that Robert Frost, at 63, reflected that young people have flashes of insight, but “it is later in the dark of life that you see forms, patterns, constellation. And it is the constellations that are philosophy.” That is what I, at 65, want to share here on my blog — constellations, patterns I have noted on my personal journey. I have experienced both the dark and the light of life, and, as a psychotherapist, that has made all the difference in my ability to sit with those who have lost sight of the “long story” or larger view of how and why we are here on this earth.

At 65, I feel like an eagle born in a local canyon that has circled out in ever wider circles and have now experienced things only a full bodied life can teach. In my youth, I dreamed of how high I could fly, what all I would see — out there — far away from the canyon of my birth. I wanted to know what lay on the other side, where the veil becomes more transparent and permeable. I’ve circled now, enough, flown the distance of the horizon made available to me, had adventures I carry in my heart, quiet memories only I digest. My wings, less restless now, feel more my own than ever.

Things I want to talk about, share my own experience of, cover multitudes: how everything in life contains its opposite, how loss comes with its own gladness, how connectedness or an awareness of our oneness banishes aloneness, the importance of solitude in our busy lifestyle, discovering someone or something to hold us. So many things to explore together — learnings from the road taken.

Plato said that when we are conceived, we know everything we need to know to make it through life, to have a full life, but that, as we come through the birth canal, we forget everything we know. We have to learn it all over again, through the particular circumstances of our life, while we are living our life. I believe this is true. We each have an intuitive, inner knowing that guides us through good times and bad.

This allows us to discern what is the more right or more healthy choice to make in the challenges we face in daily life. “I am not helpless in this situation. I have within me, or I can access/get the resource I need to help me through this.” It is all there within me, but sometimes I need the help of someone else to remind me of what I already know (but have forgotten). Or I need their expertise to show me how to deal with a situation I have not faced before. This knowing we can get whatever we need in any situation, whether from within or from without, gives us a feeling of competence.

Age also opens up this knowing within, contributes to our feeling of competence. It’s like that old saying, “If I knew then what I know now. . . .” If I could have been as “alive” in my twenties or thirties as I am today in my sixties, I would have lived a more vital, creative life. “I know who I am and no one can take that away from me.” But, alas, what is all this living for if not to teach us when the time or circumstance is ready.

Everything is a teaching, everything — something that allows us to re-member, to reconnect, to reestablish the connection we have to that divine inner knowing placed in us at our conception (but that we forgot as we were introduced to this world). Whatever it is I am faced with at this moment is something the other end of which is “in my Father’s hands” in a religious sense, or “something from which I can learn a deeper truth, grow” in a spiritual sense. This reinforces in us the belief that “I can get through this and learn what it is I have been brought to this place in my life to learn.” Getting to this point in our life, this conscious place of awareness, brings a peace and a confidence that would be revered by kings.

I believe this re-membering, this reconnecting with the sacred within, happens at what I call our “center,” an archetypal image I use to describe what happens at the core of us when the sacred or divine energy of us intersects with the human or spiritual energy of us. Joseph Campbell, the great mythologist, once said we are acting from our center when what we are doing flows freely and generously from the best in us. We call this being centered, and we all know it when it happens in us.

These core beliefs, these insights, some I have known intuitively and some I have learned from the circumstances and experiences of my life, sustain me. I wish to write about these, and more, and invite you to come along.