Loy Young

We all once thought that one far-off day we would die glamorously before old age struck: racing down the track in an F1 Ferrari, heli-skiing in the Alps, sailing single-handedly the Seven Seas, or orbiting the earth in a NASA capsule. Alas, it did not happen, and now we are more than mature. We still doubt our mirrors when we see these old people peering back at us. How did that happen?

And we’re not the only ones, now the vast majority of humanity in the Western world now lives to a ripe old age, eventually dying in bed. How glamorous is that?

Since we are never going to leave Planet Earth alive, we decided to make the best of it and treat aging as an adventure. If we could do just that, then we would be able to live life to its fullest. Thus inspired, we just had to figure out how to go about it.

There is no getting around it, as Bette Davis said – Old age ain’t for no sissies.

It took us some years to find a way to fully come to terms with our waning years. And like many great truths, the answer turned out to be simple.!

To find out the ultimate anti-ager for me, http://www.loyyoung.com/winter.ppt

For sure my life has been one great adventure! I’m having one great time laughing at myself as I put up these power points.

http://www.loyyoung.com/fall.ppt

Imagine, I still think I’m in the long hot summer of my life in my mind, although my body says it’s long gone.

http://www.loyyoung.com/summer.ppt

And while I’m reviewing my writings, I’m also reflecting on my life. Here’s a power point about the Spring of my Life.

And as Spring is all about new beginnings, I’m also in the spring of blogging. As yet, I don’t how to put the power point on this blog, so it’s on a page on my website.

http://www.loyyoung.com/spring.ppt

One Big Puzzle

Although Grandmother’s Sunday dinner was as delicious as usual, I wasn’t hungry and could only push the fried chicken and cornbread around my plate. Today’s sermon was one big puzzle buzzing around inside my head.

What excitement I had felt being in the presence of the Holy Spirit. The questions poured out. “Why did He leave so suddenly, right in the middle of Pastor Johnson’s sermon?” Grand mother would never have let ME do that. “Do they have different manners in heaven?” Read the rest…

Catching the Holy Spirit

To zero in on the Holy Spirit, Pastor Johnson seemed my best bet. He was always claiming to be speaking the word of the Holy Spirit. Besides that, he was the tallest man in town, probably so he could be closer to heaven.

His dark hair was always combed neat and laid down flat, except for a clump in the back that stood straight up, resisting all attempts to grease it down. Every Sunday, he wore the same tired brown suit, pressed with creases in his pants which went down into his brown spit polished cowboy boots. When he really got to talking about the Lord, he’d throw his jacket on the chair dramatically and yank at his tie. He seemed to work up a fever from the passion of the Lord. Read the rest…

Would I Explode?

My earliest spiritual influence came from Grandmother Washburn. One of the original, God-fearing pioneers, she played her part in settling the Oklahoma Territory. Toward the end of the 19th century, she and my grandfather crossed the country in a covered wagon to carve a homestead from previously occupied Comanche Territory.

They settled on the Texas-Oklahoma border, close to the Red River. An early task was to help build the church; and they were the first ones there each time the doors opened.

Life was often difficult for these pioneers. Grandmother needed simple answers on how best to live her life and raise her family. The New Testament scriptures were the ultimate authority on any of life’s issues. Whenever she had a problem, she simply turned to the appropriate scripture, and it told her right from wrong. Read the rest…

Views on the Personality

Freud devoted his entire effort to a formulation of the personality, which he eventually divided into three parts: the id, the ego and the superego. Ideally, these three systems develop to form a unified and harmonious organization as a result of complex series of internal processes.

In Youngs’ Psychology we also divide the personality into three parts: the physical, emotional and mental aspects. Unity and harmony within the personality comes from the integration of these three aspects under the direction of soul which always seeks to serve. Read the rest…

Influence of the New Physics

An equally important influence on Freud was the impact of the new physics. Herman von Helmholtz postulated the principle of the conservation of energy, which states that while energy can be transformed, it cannot be destroyed. This means that when energy disappears from one part of a system, it has to appear somewhere else in the system. This new physics led to the radical view that man is an energy system and subject to the same physical laws as the rest of the universe.

As a medical student, Freud became indoctrinated with the then radical view that living beings were dynamic systems to which the laws of physics and chemistry applied and that living beings could be understood by these laws. It was Freud’s genius to discover that these laws governed man’s personality as well as his body. Freud created a dynamic psychology that studies the transformation and exchanges of energy within the personality.

Developing methods of inquiry, testing and understanding the processes of energy transformation occupied Freud’s entire life. Likewise, understanding and applying principles of energy transformation has also occupied by entire adult life.

Herman Von Helmholtz had a profound influence on me also. While Herman Von Helmholtz addressed man’s physical reality, Freud took it one step further to encompass the personality and I took it one step further to encompass the soul. Read the rest…

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) is considered the creator of the modern Western concept of psychological man. He devoted his entire life to the study of psychology and his genius resulted in the first comprehensive vision of man as a psychological entity.

When I was a student of psychology at the University of Kansas in the late 50’s, only Freud and Behaviorism were taught. As Freud was the first, the pioneer, it seemed important to understand the influences on Freud, the foundation from which his methods of inquiry evolved. Read the rest…

You know immediately from Robert’s mesmerizing voice that’s he is British.

Robert Frederick Young was born into a working class family in war torn London on April 10, 1943 at a time when the social classes were still sharply divided.

Robert’s father had been in the Royal Air Force as crew chief in World War II, seeing the evacuation of Dunkirk and later fighting the Japanese in the jungles of Malaya. But the war had taken his toll. On his return to England he never really recovered, and when Robert was only fifteen, his father died from alcohol abuse.

Although Robert’s mother was supporting her family as nanny for a wealthy upper class family, the young lad and his buddies were often reduced to scraping through garbage bins for food. One day his friend stepped on a land mine that the Germans had dropped during the war and was blown up right before Robert’s eyes. Devastated, Robert vowed to search for means to end the atrocities he saw when he was growing up. Only in rugby did he find a way of releasing his pent up frustrations.

Read the rest…

The Eyes Have It!

But ears and hands is not the entire story. I must enlarge the type so I can read what I am writing. To honor those like myself no matter what age it will remain the final type size.

Many a time now, I am groping around for a magnifying glass. I can’t tell you how thrilled I was one day in a UPS office when I found a magnifying card that slid in my purse right along with my credit cards. I am just grateful that I didn’t need to wear glasses most of my life. And I learned lots of jokes about failing eyesight before it happened to me. Now I tell myself some of these jokes any time I become discouraged. Read the rest…

What did you Say?

For some years now, my ears have been saying, “we are full, we don’t need to hear anything else; we seek silence to integrate what we have heard.” I must say, my ears have a point. After all I have been listening intently to people all throughout my life in search of answers to satisfy my insatiable curiosity.

Nonetheless I argued with my ears. For how will I support this elderly person that I am becoming if I cannot hear anymore and earn my living? “How could you do that to me?” I asked. Read the rest…