My father once told me, “When you're old, you don't feel old.” I can appreciate what he meant when he said that, as I ponder the fact that the essential being I am inside myself is the same in my 50s as when I was only 15. So who am I really? Am I the woman who has changed with age, or am I the changeless self within? Am I the woman who is encased in time or the being who dwells apart from it?

Sometimes when referring to things that happened long ago, we say things like “I remember it like it was yesterday.” And that's because in a way it was. If time, as Einstein declared, is merely an illusion of consciousness, then linear time itself is a metaphysical fiction; everything that has happened, is happening, or will happen, is happening now. There, in that realm of the eternal now, is the true “I am.”

The eternal self dwells in eternity, and eternity intersects linear time at only one point: the present. Who you are in this moment, therefore, is who you truly are. And from that essential point of perfect being—created anew by God in every instant—miracles flow naturally. Thoughts of love interrupt the past and open the future to new probabilities. No matter who you are, no matter how old you are, in the present, all things are possible.

The physical self ages, of course, but the spiritual self does not. As we identify more with the spiritual dimension of our lives, then our experience begins to shift from the changeable to the changeless … from limitation to limitlessness … from fear to love. As our journey through linear time gets shorter, our consciousness can in fact expand. And as it does, time itself is affected. The deeper we go into the love of God, the more we actualize our earthly potential.

The understanding of that which does not change is the key to our power within a world that does. In aligning ourselves with the eternal self, we age not in a straight line leading from luscious youth to decrepit age, but rather like the flowering lotus opening more and more to the light of the sun.

Physically, we get older and then we die. Yet spiritually, whether we go backward or forward is a matter not simply of the body but of consciousness. When we think about age differently, then our experience of age becomes different. We can be physically older but emotionally and psychologically younger. Some of us were in a state of decay in our 20s and are in a state of rebirth in our 60s or 70s. …We can be older than we used to be yet feel much younger than we are.

As we become more spiritually intelligent, more aware of the forces that underlie and cause all earthly reality, then issues of age begin to transform. Spiritual growth increases our sense of what's possible. And as we sense new possibility, we can step into that possibility. With every word, every thought, every action, we choose what we wish to call forth in life. Old thoughts create old scenarios, and you can choose to let them go.

We achieve so little because our minds are undisciplined. We're too easily lured into self-deprecating thoughts, limited beliefs, and negative self-perception. No one forces us to think, My best years are behind me, or No one will want me anymore, or I missed my chance. But whatever it is we choose to think, our subconscious minds take very seriously and our experience will reflect our thinking.

Our very cells respond to the thoughts we think—with every word, silent or spoken, we participate in the body's functioning. We participate in the functioning of the universe itself. If our consciousness grows lighter, so does everything within and around us.

This means, of course, that with every thought, you can start to re-create your life.

… Midlife is our second chance. If you want to spend the years you have left simply reenacting the dramas of your past, you can. The same script will indeed be coming around again for your review. But if you choose, you can take that script and give it an awesome rewrite, totally get on top of your material, and take a bow at the end that blows everyone away.

Marianne Williamson is an internationally acclaimed lecturer and best-selling author. She has done extensive charitable organizing in service to people with life-challenging illnesses and is the founder of The Peace Alliance.

This article is an excerpt from The Age of Miracles: Embracing the New Midlife by Marianne Williamson. Copyright © 2008 by Marianne Williamson. Published by Hay House, Inc.

This excerpted article was featured in the March/April 2008 issue of Unity Magazine. To learn more about Unity Magazine, click here.