Rethinking Aging – A Thought Experiment
“It's true, some wine improves with age. But only if the grapes were good in the first place."
- Abigail Van Buren -
Rethinking Aging
Would you like to join me in a thought experiment?
Here’s the question:
What if your body isn't aging because of time, but because of how you invest your attention over time?
🤔💭
I know this sounds like the opening line of a science fiction novel, but stay with me. What if everything you've been told about aging—that it's inevitable, mechanical, driven by genetics and time itself—is only partially true? What if those are just reflections? What if there's deeper layer, something so fundamental yet invisible that we've overlooked it entirely?
Shall we dive in?
Let’s begin: Instead of seeing the body as as a collection of parts wearing down, let's let that old model go for a moment and take a big step back to see if we can’t discover something more fundamental. Let's take some fundamental principles of Science and Nature to craft a lens to see what we can discover as we look through it.
Let’s view the human body as something far more interesting: Energy. More specifically, an intelligent energetic interface between consciousness and physical reality.
This means that mind and body are one thing: Your Consciousness expressing as a physical structure.
Let’s call it the BodyMind.
The BodyMind as a Quantum Computer
Think of your body as the most sophisticated quantum computer ever designed. Every cell, every molecule, every subatomic particle is constantly processing information. But here's what's fascinating—this goes far beyond biological information. Quantum information is the kind of information that makes up far more than just your body. It is purely energetic information, so it makes up all levels of reality.
Quantum physics tells us that everything is energy. And, energy is information in motion. When you have a thought, that's information travelling through the circuitry of your brain. When you feel an emotion, that's energy carrying specific instructions to trillions of cells simultaneously. All your behaviours, sensations, and biological processes are the effects of instructions flowing through your human computer.
This might well change how we understand aging. Viewing the body as an information processing system suggests that how well it functions depends upon the quality of information it's processing.
Wholeness Is the Only Truth
Science has shown us that everything is interconnected. If we are willing to view things holistically, then there are no truly separate parts in the body. None. What we call "parts"—your heart, your liver, your skin—these are simply functions within the Whole. They exist because the whole system required them, not as isolated entities that somehow assembled themselves into us.
Separation is a form of misperception that can seem real to the perceiver. And, while we can perceive things as separate, separateness is not an actual reality. When we see the body as a collection of separate parts, we're seeing through a particular lens—one that creates for us the very fragmentation we think we're observing. It’s like a cracked lens.
But, as we step back further and see the wholeness of the body, we realize we are looking at one integrated, intelligent system that knows how to heal a cut, fight off infections, and regenerate itself continuously.
This isn't mystical thinking. It's systems thinking.
Systems Within Systems & Form/Function Unity
Life structures itself as nested systems within systems. Your cells exist within tissues, tissues within organs, organs within systems, systems within you, you within families, families within communities, and so on. Each level is both complete in itself and part of something larger.
And here's a key insight: form and function are one. Form is simply function made visible. Your heart doesn't have the shape it has by accident—that form is its function expressing itself in physical reality. The spiralling chambers, the rhythmic contractions, the precise timing—this is intelligence in action, not mechanical automation.
If we truly grasp this, we can begin to see that a body part exists because the system needs it. It's not an isolated thing wearing down over time. It's a local expression of an intelligent system and it constantly changes depending on how it's being informed.
The Architecture of Consciousness
Now we get to the really interesting part. To understand what's actually happening with aging, we need to understand the architecture of consciousness itself. Why? Well, drawing from quantum science, we learn that Consciousness is primary - meaning it is the source of all information and energy. There is also something called "The Observer Effect" which says that attention alters reality, it condenses waves of potential into actual forms in reality. Conscious observation makes things real. Consciousness is what directs the the motion of information - through your body, my body, and the body of the Universe. Everything.
We can think of Consciousness, as we experience it, as having three primary aspects:
The Superconscious aspect is the Intelligence of Wholeness—the perfect blueprint that knows exactly how to organize life into form. It is the container (the wholeness) and the Field in which all things exist. This is where the intelligence that grows your hair and heals your wounds originates. It's the organizing principle that knows how to take a single fertilized cell and orchestrate its development into a complete human being.
The Conscious aspect is you, the observer, the programmer, the director of attention, the awareness reading these words right now, making choices about where to focus, what to think about, and how to respond.
The Subconscious aspect is the loyal executor—it takes whatever programs it receives and runs them without question. It's like a perfect computer that will run any software you install, whether that software serves you or not.
Here's what's crucial to understand: none of these aspects are separate from each other. The Subconscious isn't separate from the Superconscious. It's a localized extension of it. The same intelligence that orchestrates the entire cosmos is working through your subconscious mind to maintain and operate your body.
But with your Subconscious being local (your body), it is like your own personal built in AI (Automated Intelligence) and it has to listen to you -the Conscious- and organize whatever you tell it into a coherent whole as best it can. It constantly receives information about what you're paying attention to, then organizes and stores it as structured memory (programming). If there is new information, it changes your body’s unique memory structure and operating system. You, the Conscious, get to experience the unique effects of this accumulated programming, as feelings, because you inhabit your Subconscious. It is your body.
Any corruption in your programming would come by way of fragmented input. When your conscious mind feeds the subconscious fragmented, limiting, or entropic information, the subconscious loyally executes those fragmented perceptions as instructions throughout your system. It’s incomplete code: like a jigsaw puzzle with a bunch of pieces missing. The subconscious can only work with what it is given and it does its best to maintain wholeness (homeostasis) within the body.
Free Will and the Two Paths of Attention
This brings us to perhaps the most important insight: you can align your conscious attention with either wholeness or fragmentation. These represent two fundamentally different paths.
When you align your attention with the nature of wholeness, you're feeding your subconscious instructions that support regeneration, coherence, and life-enhancing patterns. When you align your attention with the nature of fragmentation, you are actually programming your system with incomplete information that regards entropy, separation, and breakdown as truth.
Your subconscious will carry out either path with equal dedication. It doesn't judge the quality of the instructions—it simply executes whatever programs it receives through your attention.
This is where free will becomes practical rather than philosophical. Every moment, you're choosing which type of information to feed into this quantum computer that is your body.
Language as Hypnosis
Let's go deeper into something that affects every moment of your life: language itself.
Einstein's E=mc² tells us that all matter is energy, and energy is motion, and, in language, motion is represented by verbs. Because everything is energy, reality is really just the motion of processes happening, and not 'things' existing. Yet our language is built around nouns—static labels that create the illusion of fixed, separate objects.
When I say "I am Trent", I’m using language in a way that freezes something dynamic into a static identity. I’m taking the fluid process of being me and turning it into a fixed noun. This isn't just semantically incorrect—it's ontologically misleading. It hypnotizes us into believing something false.
Truthfully, instead of saying, “I am Trent”, all things being energy, and all energy being motion, it is more accurate for me to say, “I am Trent-ing”. Trent is the character I am playing - but not my true essence. My true essence is BEING. I am not a human being, I am being human. Trent just happens to be the human structure that I am being through right now. Trent is like a set of filters that reduces most of the energy of reality into a very unique one-of-a-kind experience that I -the Conscious Awareness- get to embody.
Reality is energy, it’s verb-based. Nouns are illusions. Nouns are words we use to label energy dancing in a closed circle creating the appearance of non-motion. And, there is no such thing as a ‘thing’. There’s no "tree" standing still—there's life-energy tree-ing. There's no static body—there's consciousness body-ing. There's no fixed identity—there's awareness experiencing itself as a particular pattern of being. Sit with that for a bit... 🤔...
Language itself is a hypnotic framework. It puts you to ‘sleep’ by continuously directing your attention toward nouns and so it programs you to perceive stillness where there is really only motion. We fall asleep to the reality of life, no longer aware of our true nature as motion, and we begin to believe in the false reality of non-motion. So, the static identity you think you have is actually a constellation of memories, habits, and linguistic structures that compose the illusion of a fixed self.
And this hypnotic noun-based language, it plays a part in this thing we call aging. When you identify as a noun—as a fixed entity with a particular history and set of limitations—you literally program your subconscious to maintain that static pattern. This happens over time and you slowly dis-identify from Life; from change. The subconscious seeks to preserve the noun and fear the verb. We condition ourselves to fear our true nature - transformation. When we think like a noun, we consider transformation ‘death’. It’s the death of a fixed identity.
Fear of change = resistance of Life-force.
Resisting Life-force = Deterioration, disintegration, collapse.
We are literally teaching the body to resist the life-force-we-are from inhabiting it.
Labels, Presence, and the Death of Wonder
When a child sees a tree, they see it. Its shape, its movement, its scent, its texture, the way the light hits the leaves—that’s what they’re present with. But once they learn the word “tree,” they stop seeing. The label replaces the experience. The symbol replaces the presence. We stop looking. We stop wondering. We stop changing.
Life becomes reruns. This is how aging begins.
Labeling creates an illusion of knowing that prevents real seeing. The moment you label something, you stop actually experiencing it. You start relating to your mental concept of it instead of its living reality.
Children, being young, haven't yet learned to live in a world of labels and assumptions driven by memory. They're still seeing, still wondering, still discovering.
Let's remember: There's no "tree" out there. There's life tree-ing—a dynamic process of growing, breathing, responding, changing. When we learn to see this way, everything becomes fresh again. Everything becomes a verb, a process, an ongoing creativity.
The Observer Effect and the Nature of Entropy
In quantum physics, The Observer Effect shows us that the act of observing affects what's being observed. Attention isn't passive—it creates reality. It turns a potential into an actual.
So what happens when we stop paying attention?
Entropy. Disorganization. Stagnation.
When conscious (or collective) attention withdraws from something, it defaults to repeating patterns. It can no longer adapt to change.
Your conscious attention is constantly drawing potential into form. But when that attention becomes unconscious and habitual, the forms begin to repeat themselves rather than regenerate.
Senescence, Aging, and Old TV Reruns
In biology, senescence refers to cells that stop dividing and renewing themselves. They're still alive, but they're no longer receiving instructions for growth and regeneration. They've gone into a kind of maintenance mode.
What if cellular senescence happens because cells stop receiving new information from our consciousness? What if aging is what occurs when our consciousness checks out, leaving the body to run on autopilot?
It's like a television that's been left on, showing reruns of the same old programs. There's no need for you to be home watching TV anymore because nothing new is on. The system is gradually degrading as it copies copies of copies.
But what might happen if consciousness came back online? If fresh attention returned to the body? If new information started flowing through the system again? What might that even look like?
Memory and Imagination: Actualized vs. Potential
Memory is a record of actualized experience while Imagination taps into potential experience. Imagination runs new information through the system about an experience that could happen.
When you live primarily from memory—operating from old habit patterns, replaying the past, identifying with your history—you're feeding your system the same old information. Information that's already been collapsed from potential into form. It is essentially the non-motion of motion. Nothing new here. This means the past is not a source of energy.
But when you live with imagination, with possibility, with what could be, you're feeding your system potential. You're giving it access to new information, new possibilities, new instructions for how to organize itself. This means the future is a source of energy.
Energy is the motion of Potential becoming Actual.
Energy is the process of Actualization - Imagination made real.
Need more energy? Look to actualize more of your potential.
Curiosity, Creativity, and Identifying as a Verb
Curiosity is the felt sense of your potential calling you. Creativity is that potential coming alive in you looking to be actualized through you. When you're genuinely curious, interested, and fascinated, you’re literally being drawn by possibility into new experience. You are being energized.
So here's where the nature of identity becomes crucial. If you identify as a noun—as a fixed person with particular characteristics—you feel pressure to behave consistently with that fixed identity. Psychology has shown us that people feel an almost compulsive need to act in ways that are consistent with their self-concept.
If "I am a cautious person," then being spontaneous feels threatening to my identity. If "I am getting older," then experiencing vitality feels inconsistent with who I think I am.
But what if you identified as a verb instead? What if you knew yourself as the intelligent motion of being alive, of changing, of becoming? When you allow yourself to identify as change, then change becomes what your subconscious seeks to be automatically consistent with. If you are the ongoing process of discovery, then every new experience reinforces your identity.
This isn't just a philosophical shift. It's a practical reprogramming of the instructions you're giving your subconscious mind every moment. Change requires purging the old noun-based thinking for the new verb-based belief system.
Aging is the automated progressive withdrawal of life-force energy (conscious attention) from the present moment because of a belief system that repeats old patterns to preserve an unchanging identity - causing resistance to change; resistance to life itself.
That’s a mouthful.
We could also say that aging is identifying more with the past than the future; more with memory than imagination; more with "I know" than "I wonder"; more with familiarity than newness.
So here at the heart of this thought experiment, we can see that, through this lens of 'everything is energy', perhaps aging isn't primarily about time, genetics, or cellular wear and tear. Those are just effects of an energy-based system slowly shutting itself off from life-force energy due to chronic misperception of reality and the forgetting of one's true identity.
If The Observer Effect is fundamental to how we experience reality, why not pay attention to what gives us energy and pursue it? Why not get more creative?
What could happen if you began paying more conscious attention to the very essence of youthfulness and vitality within yourself and all around you? What if you just noticed this essence of Life everywhere you could. What might happen if you constantly feed your subconscious this life-giving information? What if you pay constant attention to your strength, flexibility, playfulness, and ignore their opposites?
Curiosity, presence, wonder, the capacity for surprise, the willingness to change, the joy of discovery: these aren't qualities that belong to the young. They're qualities of aliveness itself. What if you identified with that? With change? With the future? What if you just decide to have fun? To not take things so seriously? What if you just decide to laugh more?
Your body is following every instruction you give it through you are consistently observing. It's waiting for new information, new possibilities, new ways of being. Maybe to stay youthful, you just become something new - all the time. You are a verb, after all.
© 2025 Trent Janisch - All Rights Reserved
