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I am not talking here about the Ageless Wisdom, the Wisdom of the Ages, or even the Age of Wisdom, but rather just the wisdom that comes with age, with growing older. And it's not what you might think.

Realization is everything. Intellectualization, what we 'think' and what Shakespeare called the "pale cast of thought" is often but a sad second-hand reflection of the reality, as I will try to point out here. And I had help, so perhaps I will start there.

I have mentioned many times here my meeting an old man who looked so much like the author George Bernard Shaw at first, but who of course was so much just himself. He was 82 years old when he died and I saw to his burial. This was the Rosicrucian initiator Andrew Gunn McIver, an emanation without a shadow that blessed for a time the University of Michigan campus with his presence. I was not the only one who came to know him.

But I was someone who could listen, someone into whom he poured his knowledge, knowing full well that it could ripen in me and live again to reach readers like you. Of course, this is what lineage is all about.

One of the things that Andrew initiated me into were the mysteries of Saturn (form) and the rites of passage that every one of us undergoes around the age of thirty. In my case, I was instructed before I turned thirty and I sailed through that passage with open eyes, which is not so very common. And it was all thanks to Andrew's teachings, of which I will share here just one part.

Andrew divided life into three 30-year orbital rounds of Saturn to its natal position. In the first thirty years we each create our own physical vehicle, which like a space capsule is launched into inner space around the age of thirty. It is like a death. In the second thirty years we repair the damage we made coming out and gradually become aware that we have died right in the Prime of Life, but are still living, and in the third thirty years (from the age of 60 onward), so he would say, we actually become a part of the creator itself. We are able to personally assist in the creation of the world. It is this third and final segment that I will comment on here, the creative force of which we become a part.

Through folklore, fables, and tales of yore, we come to think of the wisdom of old age as some kind of storehouse. Wise old women and men have accumulated a lifetime of skills and experience which is then doled out to those who can listen. Of course, like most of us, I bought into that concept, that wisdom is something we accumulate, and I am sure this is true to some degree, it that is the least of it.

I have pondered for many years what Andrew poured into me about that third life-stage, the one where we activity participate in creation itself. I can't say that I even understood it intellectually all that well, and this because it did not quite make sense to me. It was beyond even my imagination, and I have a good imagination.

This becoming one with the creation of life is, at long last, an experience each of us must have for ourselves, the realization of that experience which also is possible. There is no harm in hearing "about" it, just as I did so many years ago. Pointing it out may even guide some of you to the experience itself.

Anyway, at a certain age… I can't say exactly when, and I am sure it varies from individual to individual, this alternate and more active participation in creativity is available or kicks in. Certainly it is over the age of 60 years (3rd Saturn cycle), at least it was for me.

And of course I have accumulated some knowledge just from experience, some savvy and tricks-of-the-trade kind of thing, which is more what "wisdom" is generally celebrated as. However, that is a cheap substitute and hollow sound compared to what I point out here. It is relatively unimportant.

The real creative participation probably is to some degree dependent on our sensitivity, and forgive me for the pitch, may require that we actively clean our glasses by removing some of the low-hanging (sorry for that expression) obscurations. I can't say for sure, but for me that was certainly the case.

After attaining some clarity, the process is pretty much automatic and instinctual. At we reach a certain age, we are so blown out (in a good way) that we are in natural and complete response to whatever presents itself to us, events or other persons. And it is here that the creation itself takes place that I refer to, but it is hard to point out.

The only image that spontaneously comes to mind to describe this creation is that of knitting, as odd as that seems to me. It is that we seamlessly knit together the emerging change in the present moment with an appropriate response on our part. Or another image might be that of a zipper closing, bringing together what already "IS" a fact with that which is now changing around us to create a compromise:

Something old,
Something new,
Something borrowed,
Something blue.

And we are fully participatory. It is 'We' who are doing this.

Of course, as I am older now, I can reflect better than I used to, and in that reflection or mirror others can perhaps see themselves more clearly. That is standard old-age stuff, but what I am pointing at here is way beyond that.

It is almost like I am already gone or to put it another way and taking a page from the profound Heart Sutra mantra and the phrase:

OM. GATE GATE PARAGATE PARASAMGATE BODHI SWAHA

Which translates to something like:

"Gone. Gone. Gone beyond. Gone beyond going."

Without intentionally being blasphemous, this is the kind of state that real age brings upon us, if we will open ourselves to it. You have all seen the image of the embryo curled in upon itself and the old person bent over backward – inward turned outward.

In other words, there is no storehouse of wisdom compiled or accumulated anywhere that is that important. Wisdom is not an object that we present. Real wisdom is a verb, and not just a noun. It is an activity that we are "one with," part of, and is not either an object or a subject, but just a way of being or, in this case, no longer being – an openness held awake by the smelling salts of the present moment

Of course it is beyond words to describe, but as you know by now, that never stops me. I do my best to push the envelope in that regard and express at least a feeling for these things.

To summarize…

Real wisdom is effortless creative engagement, creative in that by our innate ability to respond we actively create or shape the mind itself and/or what comes forth from the mind. We become a midwife to the present. Everything we touch or encounter in that state is authentic and freshly arisen or made. We appear and come to life only in those moments of engagement with the living edge of the present moment. Like a sculptor, we participate in the shaping of things to come. And this is conscious.

There is the sense of being at the moment of creation itself, you know, like the Bible says "In the beginning…," all the way back to then. Or, the beginning is restored and once again lives now, is present, with nothing whatsoever behind or beyond that -- the blast of nature living that we call silence.

In other words:

This is it!

That's the best I can do for now. But to prove this point, you may have questions that prompt more from me than I know have in mind.

[Photo by me.]