We need to learn how to adapt our lives relative the rhythms of time, which are always changing with natural and human cycles, and the ebbs of life, gain, and loss, advance and retreat, coming and going. Much of our unhappiness in life arises from the inability to adjust to changes in time, which extends to the aging process.
Time affects us through the rhythms of the day, month, seasons of the year and our own aging process. Disease manifests if our inner biological clock is not functioning properly. This begins with the wrong use of our time through the day, not sleeping at proper hours as the main factor or irregular eating habits. It extends to wrong seasonal factors, not preparing our bodies for the change of season, such as not undergoing detoxification in the spring season or strengthening ourselves for the winter. It culminates with a refusal or inability to age gracefully.
Wisdom allows us to age with grace. When we refuse to age with grace, we create many psychological and physical imbalances for ourselves, starting with depression. Aging should bring us wisdom or we have not matured in our life-experience.
Time is also a prime factor of Vedic astrology to consider. Each individual is born with certain karmas reflected in the birth chart, which unfold in life according to the dashas or planetary periods that are unique for each person. Each year in addition has a special yearly chart reflecting trends occurring within it. Astrological attunement is an important part of how we adjust to the movement of our life and karma.
Stages of Life:
We have four main stages of life that are well understood in Vedic thought. As the seasons of our lives, we can recognize both the benefits and limitations of our age.
1. Youth or Brahmacharya phase, for learning and preserving innocence, generally staying at home or at a school.
2. Maturity, Grihasta or Householder phase, for sustaining a career, a family and providing for our livelihood and that of those connected to us. Having our own home and being independent.
3. Elder or Guidance phase, implying withdrawal from personal goals and looking after family or social concerns, providing for others.
4. Phase of renunciation or slowly preparing to leave the world. Being willing to let go of our past and move beyond all human concerns.
The actual years for these phases vary by culture and individual. Today people are growing up, getting jobs, getting married and having children at a later age. They are also retiring later, if at youth.
Our society is dominated by youthful, juvenile or desire and enjoyment based activities. Many people find it difficult to transition into the mature adult phase and have trouble growing up. Today more children are staying at home even after graduating from college. Many of them are no longer getting married, or if getting married, either not having children or having them very late in life. Sometimes they cannot find good jobs and find rents to be expensive and so continue to live at home, particularly in the case of young women. Until we have our own home, job and relationships we tend remain immature and both physically and psychologically dependent. We speak of people having trouble growing up as part of an ability to move into the mature phase of life, whether owing to external or internal circumstances.
The transition of around the age of fifty is well known as a “midlife crisis”. For women, the midlife change involves menopause and can occur in a dramatic manner with sudden but fluctuating hormonal changes. For men, it also involves a reduction in the pursuit of enjoyment but can bring an assumption of greater power and responsibility, and so is not always difficult. The matriarchal instinct can come out in women and the patriarchal instinct in men after this age, giving them more stature. Yet our society tends to look only at the negative side of the midlife change, not to its greater power, particularly in the case of women.
The transition into retirement that occurs after 70 also has its difficulties and increasing health concerns. Men often suffer from lack of energy and loss of work. Yet many people who have been successful find that they have even more power even though the body begins to decline. We find powerful business people, politicians, intellectuals and spiritual leaders of this type. Yet such individuals are usually in the minority.
Many people after the age of 70 still do not want to renounce, let go, be charitable or look to spiritual practices, letting go of the outer world. This creates a spiritual crisis because we fail to reap the possible spiritual gains of our sojourn in physical reality. Our society as a whole does not encourage withdrawal from the world and sees it as a weakness. Yet it is only natural for us to turn within and look beyond the outer world as we reach our golden years.