Retirement or Re-living?
by Christine Duvall, RScP
Upon the occasion of my retirement from my 20-year second career, I contemplate Emma Curtis Hopkins’ twelfth chapter of High Mysticism, where on page 324she states: “How afraid people are of old age, covering all its symptoms with powder and paints and dyes to show how they hate it as undesirable! Who has told the aged that the secret of a forgotten science hides under faltering brain and stiffening limbs? Who has told them to cease from noticing the faltering and the stiffening and regard with new regarding the science of sparkling re-living hiding under these, ready to break forth with power of youth such as no youth has ever known. It is for us … to wake again the slumbering science of re-living so that something diviner than youth may fling its celestial signals forth from behind the falterings of ages-old human processes.”
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Spiritual Mind Treatment:
I look to the Divine One as Perfect Mind, Body, and Soul. In the perfection of Mind is clear, sharp memory and ease of communication. In the perfection of Body is vibrant energy and ease of physical movement. In the perfection of soul is disciplined one-pointedness that stands by and for the Self. When centered and sane, it senses its inseparability and sees itself rippling out concentrically into infinity – fluidly, boundaryless, inclusive of all. There is nothing that can contain it, but of its own accord, it chooses to be powerfully present and connected.
It is this Self that I honor and obey, regardless of appearances. In the matter of aging and retirement in this realm, I release fears, self-judgment and mistaken beliefs about the matter which houses my being. I submit myself as clay to the Divine Potter. Remake me. Breathe in me new life, new memory, new connections, new strength, new suppleness, new purposes with new attentiveness to task. I arise into unity with Thee and claim Thy re-creation.
I also accept the power and promise of forgetfulness. Just as by God’s grace I’ve forgotten the mistakes of the past and embraced and re-built my life on that Self in me which does not make mistakes, I now reconsider the merits of forgetfulness as I humbly take my place in the line of family cooks who either substituted or omitted a key ingredient in their time-consuming and meticulously-prepared company recipes. My step-mom buried the sweet cream poppyseed filling for her heavenly poppyseed roll because she substituted salt for the sugar. My older sister left the sugar out of her perfect apricot pie. I carefully layered the lasagna’s 3-hour sauce and 3 types of cheeses as the noodle package sat un-opened on the counter. I baked it (sans noodles) for an hour and served it to my guests!
I’m grateful for the laughter and for my commitment to re-living based upon the Self in me which does not age. I’m grateful for my new life and my presence of mind. I am grateful in advance that I am so absorbed in the remembrance of Thee and so connected and committed to fellowship here and now that I give no regard to symptoms of aging. I only regard the science of sparkling reliving so that with Hopkins (p. 325), I can courageously say, “I will proceed to do a marvelous work among this people … I will do a new thing: now it shall spring forth.” With thanks for this manifestation and my joyful life, I release this word into Spiritual Law. And, so it is.