#20 - Why Not Live For 156 Years?
Updated: Jan 11
by KC Johnson
What a crazy thought, right?
Maybe not! Since my 20s I’ve been aware of my longevity genes and the desire to live to my maximum potential. What evolved out of that constant standard I set for myself was a realization that in every aspect of our lives we receive artificially limiting life expectancy messaging.
As a result of this distorted and erroneous messaging, we adopt these pronouncements as the truth and our bodies fulfill our expectations for ourselves. These longevity standards come from insurance actuarial tables, our parents and friends, the media and literature, all telling us about our expected pending demise. We design our lives around believing these tales and our bodies fulfill these fallacies and our beliefs about ourselves.
The contrarian that I am I didn’t accept this propaganda, at least not for myself. So how long did I expect to live? The more I contemplated my length of life the more often a number of years kept popping up in the recesses of my imagination. 156! Why that number, I don’t really know. It just seemed right.
“What we believe, we conceive into reality” -- Zig Zigler, sales motivator
But my concentration on longevity led me to believe that what we think is not just a mental exercise. Our thoughts translate into physical responses that our bodies use to make changes in our posture, our neural pathways, the hormones and chemicals our bodies release to fulfill those expectations we hold for ourselves.
My longevity beliefs were definitely controversial back in the ‘70s and ‘80s, and the reaction I got from my friends included rolling of the eyes, and nodding in disbelief saying, “nice thought, but...”, or just shaking their heads thinking I’m too far out there once again. I wore their reactions as a badge of honor that I really was different.
I have listened to my internal voice affirm my question, “Will I see the year 2100?”, and so I have laid out in my mind the ways I want to continue contributing to our future world.
But my belief wasn’t really unique, everyone has the ability to extend their life. The quest for the ‘fountain of youth’ has been a hidden desire for centuries. Now there is research confirming that we have considerable influence over our bodies with our thoughts.
These are not New Age ideas only recently realized. These thoughts are ancient and have been available to any and all who tap into their own deeper conscious voices.
Co-founder of the Church of God in South Texas Arthur Mendez thinks the rate of decline in longevity from pre-flood times as recorded in ancient texts to today matches the rate of decay observed in organisms when they are exposed to radiation or toxins.
My sense is that it may be due to us believing less in ourselves and relying more on others like medical science practitioners that discount the power of our inner thoughts. If it isn't empirically proven it doesn't exist or deserve credibility. Narrow minded in the extreme.
Many Cultures, Including Chinese and Persian Have Longevity Stories
In ancient China, super-centenarians were also commonplace, according to many texts. Joseph P. Hou, Ph.D., acupuncturist, wrote in his book “Healthy Longevity Techniques”: “According to Chinese medical records, a doctor named Cuie Wenze of the Qin dynasty lived to be 300 years old. Gee Yule of the later Han dynasty lived to be 280 years old. A high ranking Taoist master monk, Hui Zhao, lived to be 290 years old and Lo Zichange lived to be 180 years old. As recorded in the The Chinese Encyclopedia of Materia Medica, He Nengci of the Tang dynasty lived to be 168 years old. A Taoist master, Li Qingyuan, lived to be 250 years old. In modern times, a traditional Chinese medicine doctor, Lo Mingshan of Sichuan province, lived to be 124 years old.”
Dr. Hou said the Eastern key to longevity is “nourishing life,” including not only physical nourishment, but also mental and spiritual nourishment.
The Shahnameh or Shahnama (“The Book of Kings”) is a Persian epic poem written by Ferdowsi around the end of the 10th century A.D. It tells of kings reigning 1,000 years, several hundred years, down to 150 years, and so on.
Old age is part of the cultural construct, like childhood or sexuality. Life expectancy in ancient times was different from what it is today. There were many ancient Greeks who remained energetic and productive in old age. The list is quite impressive and many of them achieved greatness in their later years. The fact that these individuals lived long lives gives an insight about old age in Greece—there was nothing to be ashamed of in being old.
Dave Asprey’s book Super Human was the first I read in 2017 describing the possibility of greatly extending our lives, mostly through using nutrients and exposing our bodies to cell life-extending treatments. But he did not consider how the impact of intentional thought affects the longevity of our cells.
The concept that we can extend our lives significantly through thought has a ways to go, but progress is being made as more and more studies and literature make their way into the public consciousness. We still believe in the magic pill or exotic treatment for extending life, eschewing the power of self-belief, but at least the concept of living much longer is not as fanciful.
According to Barbara Ann Brennan in her 1988 book Hands of Light our physical bodies exist within a larger body, a human energy field or aura, which is the vehicle through which we create our reality experience, health, and illness. This energy field is our power to heal ourselves. Our energy body - only recently verified by scientists, but long known to healers and mystics - is the starting point of all illness.
My first thoughts about the effect on our bodies by our held-thoughts came from Louise Hay in the mid-1980s when my partner was struggling with HIV and began researching New Age healing methods. Hay listed the kind of bodily reactions we can expect when holding specific thought-patterns that opened my mind to the power of thought.
Recently, reading Healing Ourselves by Jain Shamini Ph.D. continued crystalize the self-healing ideas I had stored in the back of my brain where my most powerful intentional thoughts take place.
Now the research has progressed to the point of reversing the aging process in mice. David Sinclair at the Harvard Medical School in the Blavatnik Instituteand codirector of the Paul F. Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research and his team have discovered that all animals, including humans, have the ability to turn off and on a regenerative process that totally reverses aging.
“While DNA can be viewed as the body’s hardware, the epigenome is the software. Epigenes are proteins and chemicals that sit like freckles on each gene, waiting to tell the gene ‘what to do, where to do it, and when to do it,’” according to the National Human Genome Research Institute.
My intention is to see the next millennium, and as a benefit of these expectations, I’ve developed dozens of ideas for making that time better than where we are now. My expectation is to have a hand in a distant future’s design for sustainability and greater sanity, and that has given me a huge boost in energy, optimism, and creative ideas. I don’t imagine my impending doom.
I suppose the bottom-line message is, ‘don’t limit your horizons.’ We are dynamic, creative beings channeling universal energies through our bodies so we might as well take full advantage of our potentials and powers. Why not live for 156 years? Actuarial tables be damned! - kc
