Is It Too Late?

If you discover or return to the spiritual search later in life amidst career and family responsibilities, you may run headlong into Mr. Rose’s maxim: “Results are proportional to energy applied.” Dismayed by the many directions draining your energy, you may feel any exploration for the truth is futile. What are you to do? Take leave of the life you created? Even if you did, you no longer have the energy of youth to apply to the task of self-discovery. If you are lucky, you may recognize your life as one of Rose’s “Tales of Love.” Your ego is diminished by responsibilities larger than its desires, but your life pattern/habit is hardened. You realize you were used by life, but are strapped solidly into the passenger seat of a vehicle headed for death. Your ego is worn down, but very hard, as opposed to the huge, but soft, ego of a younger person. Therefore, it may be easier to admit to the mechanicalness of your life and self. You see the imagined potential of your youth eaten by the pattern of life. You are like a humble prisoner sentenced to hard labor. Humility alone will not allow you to escape the prison. In face, you may take a certain sweet sorrow at your situation as your ego uses even humility to maintain its significance. Hope is found today, not in dreams of a deathbed realization. Possibility is found in the moments that you carve out to observe/listen within, to be honest about the feeling of your self’s existence, and to let desire arise. A little time and honesty late in life may equal the intensely felt labors of youth.