Whose life is this anyway?

I am still in the transition from ego to Self. It has not been easy. I am so used to believing that I, my ego, is responsible for my success in life, and that ego has values like productivity is essential, and so on. Because of my experiences since I was diagnosed with cancer, I now believe that the Self is in charge of my life: not me. How to yield to Self as the director of my life is the question that challenges me moment to moment. The most telling evidence available to me regarding this shift is my energy which ebbs and flows under the power of a source which is not mine. A couple of nights ago I had a dream in which I was harnessing energy from retired horses who were delighted that I would want to involve them in such a fashion. I have had other dreams about energy conservation that point to relying on something other than pressure from my ego.

I have spent my life acting from pressure: it brought me success, no doubt about that. However it is time to let that go, and focus on "listening, dreaming, understanding the meaning, and preparing for death." Not an easy task. I find I have many resistances to letting go into a deeper place of living.

Second half of life

In the second half of life, we are to begin to prepare for death.  With the possibilities of living longer than we ever have before, I wonder.  As I am now a permanent member of the second half of life, I do not think about death.  However, I do feel a certain peace of mind and heart because I feel held by a hand perhaps.  Like the Rumi poem of how the leaves fall into the hand of god.  I feel now that I have always been led by a force or energy greater than my own.  Even when things were horrifying, I know now that a particular crisis was happening because I needed to change the direction of my life.  That doesn't mean I didn't live in the horror, devastation, disorientation, lost, and all of that.  It means that each experience led me to something I had not known before and could not have chosen it on my own.  As Jung discovered in his "confrontation with the unconscious", psyche has lessons for each of us to learn in our own individual ways.  All of these awarenesses are more conscious now, and that alone gives my life more meaning.  I imagine that this peace I speak of is a preparation for death.