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I’m not sure why this is, but I hear more interesting conversations while standing in line at my local post office. This is a small western mountain town, and almost everyone seems to know almost everyone else.

John Cali

One day at the post office last week, I overheard a conversation between two men who obviously knew each other. The first guy asked the other how he was doing. The second replied, "Well, if I wasn’t falling apart, I’d be doing fine."

Their conversation reminded me of a friendly chat I had years ago with an energetic young fellow half my age. He was excited about his upcoming marriage, sharing with me the plans and dreams he and his bride-to-be had.

He described the house they were building, a home they planned to live in the rest of their lives. He said it would be a single-story house because, "When we get older, we won’t be able to go up and down the stairs."

Clearly this robust, vigorous young man expected his body to fall apart as it aged. The two guys in the post office were about my age. I’m not falling apart, and never expected to -- I’m in better physical shape now than ever in this lifetime.

Here we see life, as many expect it to be, coming full circle -- the young guy expecting to deteriorate as the years pass, and the older guy obviously seeing the results of his earlier expectations.

Is it inevitable that most people will deteriorate as they move through the years?

Here’s Chief Joseph.

Chief Joseph

Friends, your physical bodies are such magnificent mechanisms. Most of you neither understand nor appreciate your bodies. You do not see them as we do, as your higher selves do.

Your bodies are there with you to serve. Obviously, you need them to experience and move through physical life. But do you really appreciate and love them as they deserve to be appreciated and loved?

Most of you do not.

We don’t know exactly where or when along your physical paths you lost the clear, loving vision you had once for your bodies. But you have lost it.

Even many of your scientists tell you the bodies you have are capable of living far longer than what you consider a "normal" lifespan. Few of you ever realize that capability.

Instead, you have somehow been convinced, "brainwashed" into believing your bodies must inevitably deteriorate with the years. And most of you believe you have to die of "something."

If you don’t get yourselves killed by an "accident," or an "act of God," then you just know you will die of some so-called "age-related dis-ease."

Friends, none of that is inevitable -- the accidents, acts of God, dis-ease. You create it all. If you expect your bodies to fall apart with the years, they will, they must. Because you are all powerful creators, because you create what you focus mostly on.

Yet it is entirely within your power to move through the years -- you cannot avoid that -- but without deteriorating. It is entirely within your power to die in a state of perfect health. A state of feeling good, feeling joyful, at the peak of perfection.

You, as your higher selves, know how to do this. You, as your human selves, have forgotten.

We are here today to tell you this:
You can live a joyful, abundant life of many years. Then, when you decide you’ve done it all, seen it all, you can choose to move on without pain, sorrow, or sickness.

It can be that easy.

It is not inevitable that you struggle through the years, enduring dis-ease and despair, only to die a sad and joyless death.

None of that is inevitable, even though many of you do indeed live and die like that.

But even if you do live a painful life and die a painful death, you’ve done nothing wrong. You cannot get it wrong -- ever.

Your physical death, no matter how you have lived your physical life, is a re-birth into light and love. Always.

All is well.

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If you want to listen to Grant Connolly’s February 28 teleconference with Chief Joseph, you’ll find it here. It will be available only until March 28, 2008.

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