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Hello darkness, my old friend
by Phil Spickler
30 July 99

Greetings from the Old Folks Home!
    It seems to someone that the last four outpourings, which is to say
Aging, Illness, Death and Dying, bear a resemblance to a short course in
Buddhism.  It is alleged that when Prince Siddhartha came into contact with
such conditions, he decided to seek the answers as to just what these things
were all about, and in doing so concluded that Desire was the basic, the root
cause, of all suffering, that which determined whether folks would be free
from the Wheel of Life with endless rebirth and endless suffering, all
brought about by desire, craving, and attachment to existence, and that
freedom from desire would bring someone to freedom from life and thus freedom
from suffering.

     And just to make it "easy" to bring an end to suffering, our Buddha is
alleged to have conceived of the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path,
whose practice and gradients could and would culminate in something called
Enlightenment, or perhaps total freedom, or something that would make it
possible to bring an end, once and for all, to suffering -- perhaps Nirvana.

      Well, although the last four essays have been concerned with items that
bear a resemblance to Buddhist lore or legend, allow me to say that the
intention in discussing such things is not to end up with a bunch of
practising Buddhists, but was only meant as a prelude to possible
applications of Scientology, Dianetics, and other subjects to folks who are
aging and aged and might at some point desire to make these stages of
existence have a more optimum balance between pleasure and pain, between
lightheartedness and heavy-heartedness, joy and despair, solidity and
non-solidity, etc. etc. etc. etc.

       And so, on to some possibilities.  For those who might find themselves
in the position of working with someone who is aged or getting that way, it's
probably a good idea to develop a  good case history for the person at hand,
and even if you're planning to do something in the solo sense, I still think
it's a pretty good idea to get a case history, something that, like the old
Scientology White Form, gives a clear picture  of what has been and is now in
a given person's life.  And, in getting a case history for someone, I'd say
it's fairly important to find out what drugs they may be using, prescription
or otherwise, to what degree they are self-medicating their bodies, and to
find out if they are abusing any particular substances, such as alcohol or
even food.  This information isn't being gained to use against the person, or
even necessarily to tell them what they must or must not do, but just to give
whoever is assuming the position of auditor a good sense of what lies ahead.
The older person might be using certain prescribed drugs that are vitally
necessary to their current physical survival, so don't get into the stupid
position of telling the person they must cease using all drugs and
medications in order for you to be willing to  work with them.  That would be
a giant tactical error, in some cases sufficient to kill off your pc or
client.  More to follow on alcohol and food.

       I'd also say that no matter what state a person might be in in present
time, it's still very much essential to find out just what the person might
like to accomplish and work very much in the direction of helping to bring
that about, and not to get into the idea that you or anyone else knows best
what would be good for that particular person, even though they might be
presenting some pretty terrible conditions that might cause you to think
that's what you'd better work on.

     It almost goes without saying that if your older person is suffering
from one or more physical illnesses, either acute or chronic, it may be
necessary and desirable if you're going to get anywhere at all, depending of
course upon the wishes of said person, to do whatever is possible in the
direction of helping the person to heal their physical problems, but at the
very least assist them in being able to assume new considerations and
feelings about these conditions that restore a sense of causativeness rather
than being at the extreme effect of what may be going on with their bodies.

       It's not uncommon to find people with physical conditions of the sort
that are labeled "undesirable" to be locked into a game with the condition,
in which they are attempting desperately and chronically to destroy,
overcome, beat, get rid of, unmock, resist, etc. etc. the condition.  In
other words, they're doing everything they can possibly think of, with the
exception of HAVING the condition.  Instead of trying to get rid of it, they
need to be trying to Have it in the fullest possible sense of that word --
they need to regain the ability to have high ARC with the condition, they
need to be able to create and maintain admiration and appreciation for the
condition, they need to seek to find the authors or the source or sources of
the condition and let such as they find know how wonderful and amazing the
job they're doing is of creating and maintaining said condition.

        This is definitely a time when you're working with someone where it
can be extremely advantageous as an experimental presentation in which you
get the person comfortable with the idea, not as a fact but just for
experimental purposes, that there may be other sources, entities, valences,
causepoints, that just might be playing a part in the creation and
maintenance of a body condition that someone might consider to be extremely
undesirable, who need to be discovered and acknowledged and handled with the
basic tools of auditing in order to gain the co-operation and assistance
necessary to bring about a cessation of the creation of the unwanted
condition, fully recognizing that these causepoints may not think that the
condition is anything but beautiful.

        So yes, the practice of Not-isness or attempting to overcome an
isness through force usually turns whatever it is into becoming pretty solid
and persistent.  It is practically a truism when working with older folks
(let's just say older OT's), that you will find, through the lessons that
Life teaches us over the years, that the freshness, simplicity, and powerful
naivete of the younger viewpoint has been supplanted with quite a few fixed
ideas and opinions and solutions of the sort that come about when someone
considers they've been roughed up by life.  Getting ahold of these fixed
areas and finding out exactly who or what is hanging onto such stuff and
restoring flows of ARC and freedoms to re-think or re-posit can and will do
wonders for anyone in the direction of the eternally young viewpoint.

        There's quite a bit, I can see, that can be said about application,
and I'm not going to endeavor to go much further with such possibilities in
this piece; but would like to mention from my own grab-bag of experiences the
awesome power contained in repetitive Touch Assists, as well as one of the
most life-giving procedures that I know of, which is to run the person on
recalling and re-experiencing pleasure moments -- something that might be the
most unlimited procedure ever to be thought of.

       Rehab technology and the numerous ways that one can angle at this is
extremely profitable, to the old or anyone, since many of the person's
greatest wins are to be found "lost" and obscured in the illusion of time.

      In my next offering on this subject, I hope to be able to come up with
further beneficial possibilities, including the mention of things one might
do when and if working with someone who is seriously physically ill, as in
dying, and what might be called the "Lazarus effect," or, how to get the
apparently dead or soon-to-be-dead to come back to life with a bang, if for
some reason or another such a result would be desirable, and I ain't
necessarily saying it is.

        As ever, Methuselah, AKA Phil

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