3 Books that Have Influenced My Life (cw)

     I've Decided to Live 120 Years

Vicki, I was so glad you recommended Ilchi Lee’s I’ve Decided to Live 120 Years! It’s a third culture I’ve come across which speaks of 120 years as the normal potential for human life. This is some background on my introduction to that thinking.

      Knowing at a deep level that it was a pilgrimage ~ in a letter written a year later I called it a “sacred journey ~ as you already know, I drove alone, in 1988, down the highway from Alaska in our little motor-home. My children had left home and I realized I’d never lived alone for I’d “gone from mother’s arms to husband’s arms” while my mother’s grieving Dad’s death caused me to realize I needed to find out how to be alone. 

      Could I do it?

Voices of Our Ancestors

    Sometime during that eight-day time of exploration, realizations, doubt and frustrations, joy, fear and testing, I also finished reading a book called Voices of Our Ancestors by a traditional Cherokee woman, Dhyani Ywaho, And, during that journey I consciously decided to seek congruity, the wisdom to become an adult that the Tsalagi (Cherokee) teach. Their teaching is our normal life span is 127 years. At about fifty, after a person has raised their children, one either consciously chooses to become an adult or we begin to die. I decided to choose "Sophia", wise, with the Creator's help, womanhood. I may never achieve wisdom, but it gave me a goal to reach for ~ becoming a wise old crone.

From Age-ing to Sage-ing

      Many years later I stumbled on a book written by a rabbi sharing the Hebrew belief of a complete life being 120 years (From Age-ing to Sage-ing by Zalman Schacter-Shalomi and Ronald S. Miller) The book is about the needed role in our society for wise, mentoring elders sharing their passions to help our societies become more balanced, respecting all of life and our beautiful earth.

        And now, Ilchi Lee’s practical words of advice from the eastern tradition is helping me to again look at how I wish to travel this part of my life, this period of completion.