Why do you feel like you are aging?

Over the years, the body changes and the world transforms, yet something within us remains unchanged. The feeling of aging does not come only from the passage of time, but from identifying with what changes: the body, thoughts, the images we form of ourselves.

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Why do you feel like you are aging?

What in you does not change

Summary: Over the years, the body changes and the world transforms, yet something within us remains unchanged. The feeling of aging does not come only from the passage of time, but from identifying with what changes: the body, thoughts, the images we form of ourselves. By returning to a simple and steady attention, it becomes possible to recognize within oneself a presence that does not age. This recognition does not eliminate time, but deeply transforms the way it is experienced.

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“Life without awareness of life is not life.”
(Bhaktimārga, 86)

The inner center

I often speak to you about the center, the Hridaya, the spiritual heart—not as an idea, but as a lived place. It is not elsewhere, it is not something to be built; it is that inner point where one stops dispersing and gathers back into oneself.

A strange paradox: we know ourselves to be limited, and yet, at the deepest level, something within us knows no limit. This is not a place in the ordinary sense, but a state of consciousness, a presence that does not depend on the movement of things.

Crossing the threshold

The body is a doorway to this space. But standing before a door does not mean having passed through it. It can happen that one remains in the vestibule, convinced of having entered; it can also happen that one is already inside without recognizing it. Like someone swimming in the ocean without grasping its immensity, we perceive of this space only what our capacities allow.

This is why a practice is necessary. On The Path, it takes the form of sadhana, this set of practices and recommendations that directs the citta—the field of consciousness—toward what remains, instead of letting it follow the fluctuations of the mind.

The taste of the present

This center is still. Everything turns around it, yet it does not move. As one draws closer, something settles and becomes clear, as if a silent force of attraction were at work. Conversely, when attention moves away from it, everything becomes unstable, scattered. The center is never lost; it simply may no longer be recognized.

At the center, there is no past or future as we usually conceive them. There is the present moment—not a moment that passes, but a present that remains. The more one abides there, the less this moment appears fleeting: it deepens, it holds.

Then the past itself appears differently. It unfolds like a wall of screens: images, scenes, but they no longer carry you away. They are traces, not a present reality. And what is striking is the taste of this present, its simple, immediately recognizable quality—the same as in childhood. Not the memories, but the very flavor of the present itself. Everything changes around it; this does not.

What ages, and what does not

What we call aging takes place in the body, and in the image that the mind constructs of it. Thoughts, emotions—the vrittis—comparisons, narratives: all of this forms a story in which time accumulates. But what perceives these movements is not affected in the same way. The soul, the jivatman, does not wear out; it is the witness of change, not what changes.

When attention fixes on transformations, the feeling of aging appears. When it returns to what perceives, this feeling changes. The body follows its course; nothing obliges you to feel that you are aging.

Recovering without going backward

Returning to this presence is not regression, nor “becoming a child again.” It is recovering what, in the child, had not yet been covered over. With the years, layers and identifications accumulate, giving the impression of distance. Yet what is essential has not changed. It has never aged.

This recognition does not come from thought; it is cultivated. Through meditation, through service, through an attention brought back again and again to what is stable, the citta becomes clearer. Then what was veiled appears—not as something new, but as something recognized.

Another way of living time

Forms pass. The body evolves. Situations follow one another. And yet, something remains. To be established there does not remove anything from the world; it changes its flavor. Time continues, but it no longer weighs in the same way.

You can let the body follow its course without identifying with it, let thoughts pass without attaching to them. Gradually, what seemed to define you loses its hold.

Another stability reveals itself—not that of forms, but of what passes through them without changing. Then the question of aging shifts, and with it, the entire way of living.

If you have any questions, please write here:

madhyama.marga@gmail.com

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