Stay Young

The Stay Young Book

Table of contents

Introduction to Stay Young
Chapter 1.       Undoing a mistake
Chapter 2.       Enough time
Chapter 3.       How does it work?
Chapter 4.       The pitchfork
Chapter 5.       The net
Chapter 6.       Following the steps

You will be able to read the following chapters when you purchase the Stay Young Book

Chapter 7.       Handling pitchfork moments
Chapter 8.        Handling net moments
Chapter 9.        Stages of the Staying Young Process
Chapter 10.      Don’t give up!
Chapter 11.      Let Go…
Chapter 12.      The importance of play
Chapter 13.      Some helpful changes
Chapter 14.      Making it a lifestyle
Appendix 1.      Too many words
Appendix 2.      Exercises for the more advanced explorer
Appendix 3.      Looking deeper – long term healing
Appendix 4.      Frequently Asked Questions
Additional reading

Introduction to Stay Young

I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.  -  John Cage

Many years ago, when I was young and had a lot less experience with the world, I took a trip to Costa Rica. I spent three months living with a small family in an even smaller cinder block home in a barrio well outside of San Jose. On one memorable day I saw some boys playing soccer in the street. I stopped and showed them a few things. We spent the next three hours playing ball and we all had a lot of fun. They loved it. They asked me to come back and play every day.

When I went “home” that night I got a surprise. I spent the next couple of hours getting a lecture! It was a rather long and painful lecture. Apparently adult men did not play sports with children. It was simply not done. I had shamed my host family in front of their neighbors. “¡Que verguenza! ¿Como puedes hacerlo a nosotros?!” They were angry and frustrated and wanted to know how I could do that to them?

I was surprised and a bit confused. Their idea was so clear to them but it did not make sense to me. I did not understand what was wrong with playing sports with the kids? For me it was normal and healthy behavior. For them, it was clearly wrong. But why!? I didn’t get it.

I was an engineer a year from my college degree. I was trained to ask questions, to take things apart and study them. I tried to understand this one. I spent the next week questioning them about it, trying to “get it.” Eventually they grew frustrated with me and refused to talk about it any more. They would only repeat, “It is simply not done.”, “It’s just wrong”, and “Everybody knows that.”

There were a few experiences that summer that I didn’t “get.” I talked to lots of people about them. I spent most of my days there hanging out with the “host mother” or her sister and their women friends. I spent my evenings in the bar where the “host father” worked, talking to the local men. I asked a lot of questions and did a lot of listening. Some of those things I never did figure out. However, from those experiences I discovered a surprising truth.

The things that made the least sense to me were usually things no one could explain. They would lose patience at all my questions and the discussion would eventually end with “That’s just the way it is. Everybody knows that!” It confused me, so much so that it started a life-long habit of questioning the “obvious.”

I went back to the states and started asking questions there. I questioned everything. It drove my friends nuts. Sometimes I would find a reason for a strange idea or attitude. Sometimes there seemed to be no reason at all. I kept asking questions.

I discovered something, there in the Midwest of the U.S., something that changed my life forever.

To anyone who has traveled or simply had an interesting life this truth may not be a surprise. It was to me, however. It rocked my world. It was this. There were things I believed in—things I “knew” for certain—that were wrong. Some of them were not even reasonable. To an engineer that was a tough lesson.

It did not stop me however. If anything, it encouraged me. I kept asking questions. Whenever people grew frustrated, or got angry at my questions, I knew I was on to something. I would push harder. Anger and frustration almost always hid one of these secret places. Nearly every time, those same words came up. “That’s just the way it is. Everybody knows that!”

I kept asking questions, and the answers made me even more curious. I went on to get a Master’s degree in Psychology and Language, still trying to understand. I traveled over most of the U.S., much of Western Europe, parts of the Middle East, and Central and South America. I lived many different lifestyles. I was a monk in Egypt, in the oldest Christian monastery in the world. I lived with the Buddhists in Paris. I spent some time at a Taoist center in the south of France. I talked with people in Spain, Italy, Norway, and throughout Greece. I walked the streets of ancient Jerusalem. I buried myself in various eastern and western philosophies. I questioned Huna practitioners in Hawaii. I spent many hours with the Bedouin in the Middle East. I discussed religion, belief, theology, and passion with the most devout Muslims I could find. I studied with Native American shamans, doctors, priests, monks, alternative healers, vodun practitioners, wiccans, fortune tellers, atheists, and fundamentalists. I talked to the homeless and to travelers, to crazy people and to the most sane and stable ones I could find. I interviewed musicians, poets, philosophers, scientists, drug addicts, psychics, mystics, seers, and every other truth seeker I could find. I studied hundreds of texts in many languages. When I returned to the states, I went back for a Doctorate in religious studies. Through it all I kept asking questions.

Over those many years, I have spent innumerable hours in deep prayer and meditation. I have been led to and through some truly unbelievable experiences. Some of them, I feel fortunate to have survived at all. There are a few of them I will not talk about, even today. So much has happened in the past two decades since Costa Rica. All of it is thanks to a well-meaning but misguided lecture, given those many years ago in a tiny home outside of San Jose, Costa Rica1.

Through it all I have continued to ask questions. I have tried to be open to the answers no matter how strange or foreign they seemed to me. I have continued to ask and I have listened for those key words. “That’s just the way it is. Everybody knows that!”

The years of travel, the intense study, the passion, the pain, and the joy of it all have shown me some very important and beautiful pieces of truth. The purpose of this book is to share with you what may be the most important of all of them. It is this:

Some of the things you “know” for sure are wrong…

One of those things is that you have to grow old…

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