Welcome to 5 Minutes of Peace, a time for you to reflect, recharge, and renew. 5 Minutes to Awaken Something Within Yourself, created by ThePeaceRoom. Love. Here is today's message for you.

Today's book passage is from The Heart Aroused, Poetry and Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America, by David White. Whatever graceful tension we have achieved between innocence and experience, Midlife seems to come upon us unawares. The subtle changes engendered in the body, suddenly by the mirror's light, seem to be anything but subtle.

Our mind and our heart also change radically. The world appears differently to us than it did, even perhaps a few short years before. No matter our surroundings, no matter our product, profit, or place in the company, Even as we reach the height of our powers, the whole weight of our existence shifts on its axis.

The business and busyness of the world continue around us, but fade into a whispering background. The presenter continues his silent and slow motion choreographies at the front of the room, following the red sail's line with his pointer like a medieval magician, trying to capture the immense sea with a single spell.

But we, looking as if from afar, stare straight ahead and discover, with a little shock, that we have nothing of the old enthusiasm for all this, nor can we grant it the same life or death importance. There may also be another deeper emotion coming to light, an almost pleasurable gleam of wickedness. That we have earned some kind of right through our blood and sweat to have less interest.

We look, but do not care to perceive, as if seeing through a glass darkly. Feeling the tide of interest and enthusiasm recede, we are not yet sure what is taking its place. Something, we are sure, is happening. We just cannot seem to articulate it. From the outside, we appear as competent as ever. Each morning, we pull on our shoes one after the other.

We know how to do our work. We greet the others as we swing through the office door. We pull our seat close up to the desk and lay our fingers purposely on the voicemail button. Inside us, other messages are being recorded in a language we are only beginning to comprehend. Things carry on as if nothing has happened.

People at work speak to us as if nothing has changed. Inside, we feel solid ground giving way beneath our feet. Be it for corporation, institution, academy, or army, we apprentice ourselves to something seemingly greater, wealthier, older, and much more knowledgeable than ourselves. Our security gains us time and space until we can ground ourselves more solidly into our own identity.

But, at midlife, a man or woman feels an inner siren call like an old memory. No matter how long and how faithfully we have served, we suddenly remember our former intuitions. For a possible life. For only a moment, we turn our face away from our real desire in life because through our neglect, it has assumed the image of a corpse.

Before we can look back again, we find ourselves in strange cities and strange hotel rooms serving others faithfully, but neglecting the things most precious to our own way forward. Around 50 years old, we twitch the curtains of the airport hotel window and recognize no landscape. We would willingly choose to inhabit.

Finally, the memory becomes too much. We realize we have to do something about this intuition of a better life. Or die ourselves, probably at our desks, slumped over our computer screens, trying to ignore this physical inner pull. We may replicate our pre programmed life by bonding ourselves to the actual machine.

Late at night, in a high corporate tower, we find ourselves crouched over the glowing monitor like some ancient necromancer. Leaning over the misted cauldron of spreadsheet figures, Entranced and imprisoned over long years By numerical spells we have cast and woven ourselves. We might say that the man asked for early retirement.

Many who leave work prematurely after a lifetime of toil Have no idea how to spend their later years. Time stretches before them like a desert. They suffer a form of deep amnesia Compounded by the neglect of their own instincts. They have forgotten what path to take and how to proceed. The retirement money and its investments suddenly becomes their whole universe.

It is instructive, too, that the man wants to return at last to his wife and family. The old, close, and intimate bonds he may have neglected while he served out in the world suddenly reveal themselves to be the most important ties he has. Is it too late? It may indeed be too late. But now it is too important not to find out.

He makes for the door.

Thank you for listening and thank yourself for taking five minutes of peace. We are all connected on the path of love, service, and peace for ourselves and others. We're glad to be together with you on this path. And if you would like to know more about the Peace Room and our Reiki treatments, crystal healings, training sessions, and certification workshops, Go to www.

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