INTRO The thing about this more ‘radiant aging’ life is that there is so much fun. Lots of laughter, loving, quiet special moments etc. I know this doesn’t sound all that special. It’s just that there’s a quality of this depth of intimacy that is really precious. I’m not in my friends and acquaintances’ daily lives that much, and yet I can see how they relate, and for the most part, there’s a lack of spontaneous humor and joy. The lightness of being that I see in a few couples is distinctly different. These people stand out in how they literally glow and have smiles that can melt you. This is what I would like to see more of; what we’d all like to see more of. I do see it more often in millennials and Gen Zers. The glow, the ease with which they more through their lives as they mature. These ones clearly had healthier upbringings physically, emotionally and mentally. A number of them have recognized and come to appreciate my hard-won wisdom, as I appreciate their sparkling youth. Intergenerational sharing is good for all involved.
March 2025.
A product plug: The LASTAR light therapy lamp. Some years ago, I had a partner with SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). After a week of cloudy days, her mood and energy declined. For a couple of years, I offered to get her a therapy lamp, and she said ‘no’. Finally, I got her one anyway, and it worked as advertised. Her life improved. Then a year or so ago, I watched this Andrew Huberman YT video on Using Light for Health. It was one of his typical ridiculously over-lengthy videos where he repeats the same data over and over again. It was alright. I was on a long drive. It reinforced what I already knew. I had gotten two smaller cheaper sun lamps already that broke within a year, so I went for the big boy this time, and I’m glad I did. It was like go from a junkycopact car to a power ride. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF0nqolsNZc&t=25s
A useful reframe: Reframing issues is often a useful way of improving one’s life. Here was. a simple one. I had mentioned to my partner how I felt comforted in going through my morning routine, starting in the bathroom, brushing my teeth, taking some vitamins, etc. Then, I move to the kitchen to put away last night’s dried dishes, make my hot drink (LMNT’s chocolate caramel electrolyte mix with an oz of butter), start a fire if necessary, do some squats and pushups, and prepare my opartner’s coffee. The point of this is not about me. When she heard this, she was surprised, as she’d in all her decades never thought about her morning routine as anything but a chore. She took this in and actually made the change for herself. A sweeter way to begin one’s day.
With my sweetheart and life-enhancing substances, I keep feeling ever more into how the benefits serve both the depth of our intimate moments and overall course of our lives. Just with some cannabis, the loving can take on a quality of deeper, fuller, more exquisite space with a kind of presence that has a sort of mysterious texture that spans all realms of court experience in those precious moments. I’ve noticed how the deeper the pleasure the longer the afterglow lasts. We’re sort of riding these. so to speak, from one into the next. And when there’s agap that’s sweet to because the coming home has its own noivelty.
February 2025
Recently, I was with my lover, touching, talking, laughing, kissing in a mélange of beauty, goodness, and truth. It was so incredibly good and fun, as it often is with us. I suddenly recognized, appreciated, and felt gratitude that there was no resistance in me as to how good it could be at that moment. I saw how in the past I had unconscious inhibitions that dampened down my sensuality. Some because of the old wounds that created shame and guilt. Some related to the dissatisfactions in my earlier relationships. Plus, there is the addition of increased sensitivity.
A radiant relationship naturally creates multiple episodes of fun—all kinds of fun: touch, banter, and creativity throughout our daily lives.
My lover is an abundance of creative, sacred, sometimes sexy, and fun female true archetypes of depth, skill, and wisdom. She could say the same about me. This provides a wide aperture into realms where we can play and create with pleasurable novelty.
With the use of sensitivity-enhancing substances, people may have extremely exquisite touch play without a sexual component. This allows a large range of experiences where sexual energy is not present.
In a radiant state, there is so much room for fun, not in a generic sense, but moment by moment in a complex of feeling tones, across simultaneous moving panoramas.
When two people can free fly without negatively driven inhibitions across the range of their daily activities, it creates a stable undercurrent which strengthens with time. There’s no irrational fear of the system crashing when some m challenges came passing through.
I watched my sweetheart find something funny enough to laugh at, and then I laughed as I saw her laughing at her laughing. Is there a term for double laughing?
Recently, I told my lover how much I appreciate her unique bundle of talents and eccentricities.
There’s the phenomenon of feeling really good about something happening and wanting to hang on to that, which takes you away from that very feeling. Catching these sorts of little mental habits is part of my daily life yoga.
January 2025
Touch, along with the usual pressure and heat, feeling of wind and bass sounds, has such an incredible range of emotional nuances. These are more context dependent. A light caress from a partner is received very differently whether one is happy or unhappy with them at that moment. I heard Stephen Gaskin talk about how our physical senses each have more subtle properties, and the older the sense, evolutionary speaking, the more powerful that property. Is that for touch, compassion?
We were stoned and talking about the change in my book title from Ecstatic Aging to The New Era of Radiant Aging, and our conversation went sideways somehow, and when we came back we thought that maybe the book should be called The New Era of Radiant Dementia.
December 2024
In making love there’s a point when one can feel a sense of certainty that an ejaculatory orgasm is coming. This can become a kind of sexual yoga as one tries to surf the edge of that feeling extending it further and further along. It is a most delicate balance to maintain. Too little stimulation and that inevitability is lost for the moment. Too much and the ejaculation erupts. This is a dance that is novel. Each time has its unique quality.
I was thinking about how competence in its broad sense is generally the practice and goal of a successful life. Part of this is being good at certain things. Part of it is also knowing and acting appropriately in those areas where one’s competence is low. You wouldn’t want me for your plumbing repairs, etc.
In a more radiant life there’s less unconscious fear of the Nature of Reality. In the moment itself. The introduction to the Course in Miracles is summed up in: Nothing Real Can Be Threatened. Nothing Unreal Exists. Herein Lies the Peace of God. Right here, right now everything is the best it can be, even in a war zone or other disaster. Reality necessarily has a wide matrix of easy, hard, personal, Kosmic, etc. Nonetheless, in any given moment we’re usually doing fairly well. Mostly, I can feel and accept this inevitability, even when there’s the ugly stuff. We can’t have a Reality with all that entails without some ugly, even horribly ugly stuff. Nature begat life, and life begat competition, and off it’s gone. We don’t have to second guess it beyond the scope of our own life experience. Hopefully we learn by ridding ourselves of old fears and resentments. Feel them, bring them into consciousness in a way that dissolves them. Life-enhancing substances are best for helping with this.
Ever since Trump’s first election. We’ve been increasingly seeing all kinds of strong shadow materials coming up. Sometimes I can almost see as a large dark mass writhing up out of the earth. This is true on the Right and Left. The MAGA Right has its version of what’s wrong and how to create their dream world of fundamental Christian Nationalist fascism. As it exists now it is a pathology of incoherent, self-contradictory, violent insanity. And the Left has it’d own pathology of being so demanding of radical tolerance while being oh so judgmental and intolerant to any little slight to its dogma. Social media has driven this craziness. Of course, there is so much beauty in the world. And hopefully we can each find much of beauty, pleasure, and peace, even with the larger dysfunctions surrounding us.
Recently I was talking to a bright, healthy, philosophically inclined young man as he was coming back into this reality from his first psychedelic experience, which was on a strong dose of LSD. (500 mcg, followed two hours later by 400 mcg, since he wasn’t getting off that strong on the first dose.) very soon after taking the second dose, he really got off on the first one. This is a classic story with psychedelics, hash brownies, etc. He was rifting over and over again about the phenomenon of shifting from having No-Self to a Self and back again. In this situation what, and who was he really? Was there any such distinction as good and bad? I did point out that good and bad do not have to be balanced. Trying not to be disruptive while knowing from much experience what he was going through, I buried my face in my sweater sleeve, laughing and tearing simultaneously. I talked to him the next day and asked him, “So buddy, one question: Who are you really?” That got a laugh. At one level.