Embracing the Aging Process as a Spiritual Journey
I have some good news for you! Aging is happening every minute, right here, right now, all of us are getting older, and we have been since our birth. That is good news because it means we are still here with the extraordinary gift of being alive. However, because time seems to speed up as we age, you will be old before you know it. It is part of the cycle of life, and though modern medicine is finding some ways to improve longevity, we are in spite of everything, still aging. Many people start exploring spirituality in their mid-thirties. And by age 50 most of us become aware of how quickly our life is passing by. I have found that rather than resisting the aging process, it is a blessing to embrace it as a spiritual journey. At 50 many people feel like they are “over the hill” and all will be going downhill from there. I know I did. It is true that there are probably less years ahead after 50 than there were before, but life is far from over and there many opportunities to connect more deeply with Life.
My mother was very active and always looked younger than she was She never liked people to know how old she was. When she turned 80, I wanted have a party for her, but she refused. She didn’t want any celebration at all, so we honored her wishes. When she turned 85, my brother and I planned a surprise party for her. Fortunately, we knew that she loved surprises (some people don’t), and we wanted to celebrate her many years of life experience. We invited her family and friends and exactly 85 showed up. We had a wonderful celebration which she loved, and finally everyone knew her age.
I. on the over hand, am proud of my age, my 76 years of life experience, though it seems strange to think about how many years I have lived. I want to try a little experiment now. I am going to ask you to close your eyes for just a moment and I am going to ask you a question. Don’t really think too much about it, just accept whatever first pops into your mind. Are you ready? Close your eyes. Now, regardless of what your real age is, the question to answer is how old do you feel inside? As soon as you have it, just raise your hand.
How many of you got an age younger than what you are? Most people do. Most of us find our changing bodies and faces and energy levels a challenge. Especially since in this culture we are supposed to stay young and beautiful - according to the magazines, even AARP! Sometimes I look in the mirror and see my mother or I wonder how anyone who hasn’t seen me in 20 years recognizes me. I remember well the day that it became clear to me that others saw me older than I felt. I was buying something at a store and the clerk said that will be $10.35 with the discount. I said “Discount?” He said Yes, you are a senior aren’t you!” I felt both glad to have the discount and a bit chagrined that it was so obvious. And of course I am grateful for every discount now!
About that time I was looking in the bookstore and found a book called From Ageing to Sageing by Rabbi Zalmon Schaeter-Shalomi , most often referred to as Reb Zalman.
The cover said it contained a profound new vision of growing older, and I thought that is what I needed. So I read it and then invited two friends to study it and do the exercises in it with me. We met almost weekly for a year to work with the material. It made such a difference in my attitude toward aging that I then went to one of his workshops, and subsequently to three of the training workshops on leading the material. It has really changed my attitude about aging, so I am happy to be here this a.m. to share some of that with you.
Reb Zalmon was turning 60 when he too was confronted with his fears of aging, and wondering how he could live his aging years so they would be a blessing instead of a curse. He started by spending 40 days in the desert on a vision quest. He spent that time coming to know himself in a very deep way, and out of that experience, he developed his program which is known as Spiritual Eldering which speaks of people becoming elders instead of becoming old. Let’s look at some of the differences. Help me - what words come to mind when you think “old”? Sick, Slow, Uninteresting? What words come to mind when you think “elder”? Wise, Sage, Respect? To become a sage, we must get in touch with ourselves, we have to do the inner work, the spiritual work. And by spiritual work, I mean dealing with the big questions.
We begin to think about them naturally, What is the meaning of life?, What is my purpose here? What do I regret? What can I celebrate in my life? What legacy will I leave in this world? What legacy will I leave for the children and grandchildren?
Our planet desperately needs elders, so we need to do the inner spiritual work to be one. Obstacles to doing that come up when we focus on the past and on the future. We look back on our lives and we see the failures, the missed opportunities, the people we were not right with, the family difficulties, our regrets. If we just do that, we may feel like we were failures. So we turn from the past and when we look to the future we see diminishment and feel and see death. The future is scary and we don’t want to deal with it, so then we are stuck in a box. The good news is that there is a way out. We can go back and reframe our memories, we can work with forgiveness for ourselves and others, we can really appreciate and feel gratitude for the present moment, we can harvest and appreciate our life, and in doing all these things we will leave a legacy to future generations. We can begin to accept life as it is, just as it is, wrinkles, aches and pains, health issues, thinning hair, bunions or whatever. I think the real secret of life anyway, is accepting whatever is. The Buddhists say that what causes suffering is resistance to life as it is. Part of the wisdom of aging is recognizing that and instead just embracing what is. I like the quote from Winston churchill who said “the young sow their oats, the old grow sage. That is our life’s work as we age.
I was interested sometime ago when I heard a TV interview with Paul Newman the movie star who was considered sexy well into his 80’s. He was being interviewed about his newest film. When asked what was next for him, he said he wanted to spend time with spiritual issues. The interviewer asked him what he meant? He responded something like I don’t mean religious things, I mean things that have to do with the spirit and spirituality. He said that was the life’s work he needed to complete.
Our world urges us to be active, productive, always on the go. However, as we age and we move into the October of our lives, it is important to slow down, to take time to rest, take time to quiet ourselves and get in touch with our inner wisdom.
Depak Chopra says that we have 60,000 thoughts a day and 95% of them are the same thoughts we had the day before. Think how busy that keeps us - and maybe how boring. If we want to change that and gain some new insights and develop our inner wisdom we must spend time in quiet and listening. That involves setting time aside for solitude.
I think it means quieting down so we can wake up. Most of the time we go around half conscious. You may all have had the experience of driving someplace, and suddenly you are there, but you don’t remember any of the drive there? You suddenly wake up and wonder if you might even have gone through a stop light. Well, quieting down is like waking up. We become more conscious. (I wish I had been more conscious in my earlier life!). There are many ways to meditate and the most important thing to know about it is that is is always a practice. It’s not like we learn how and that is it. People say to me, I’ve tried and I just can’t sit still. Neither could I when I started. I could feel my skin jumping and nerves firing off if I just sat still for 5 minutes. It just takes daily practice and then one can sit for a very long time in a quiet space just watching the mind. When we quiet our minds, that is when we will get an intuitive thought, an answer to a problem, some information we have wanted.
Rebecca Latimer in her very fascinating book YOU’RE NOT OLD UNTIL YOU’RE NINETY… BEST TO BE PREPARED, HOWEVER, urges us all to prepare for our elder years by developing our spiritual life. She didn’t “wake up” as she says until she was 60, at which time she found herself with some solitude and began to question what life is all about. She found some very helpful self-help books and began to engage in meditation, imaging, seeking an inner guide, reading, etc. and it set her life on a completely different path. She wrote her book when she was 91.
There are so many birthday cards on the market that speak negatively of aging, and some of them are so fun. Yet, what we need to do is live a new model of aging and embrace the process, revel in having more time to engage with ourselves and to serve others. Nature has seasons and so do we. If we resist the October or November of our lives we suffer.
If we try always to look young, we miss the rich rewards of going deeper and gaining the wisdom of an elder. I could have a face lift to look younger, but then I’d still need a leg lift, a tummy tuck, and a even more. And in a few years I’d need it done again, and my internal organs would just go on aging anyway. I think instead that we can honor the wrinkles and know that they represent the ups and downs of our life. As the clip ahead of time said, some things like wine and cheese and old violins and trees improve with age. There is a patina of beauty in older people that comes if we will just look for it.
Growing older is a natural part of the life process. If you get to experience it, you are lucky. Just think of the alternative. There are many examples now of people who stay active and young at heart well into their 90’s, and that is wonderful. However, not everyone can be like that, but everyone can see their years as a spiritual journey and therefore make a deeper connection to Life, to themselves, and to something outside themselves. We can then really appreciate the rewards and blessings of a long life.
The work of the spiritual eldering is to reframe and heal your past memories, develop contemplative skills, leave a legacy, practice forgiveness of yourself and others, make a living will, write your obituary and make decisions about how you’d like things to be when you die. Death is something we don’t like to talk about but this process can make death your advisor instead of an adversary. It can enrich the appreciation and experience of life.
I’d like to close with some of the things that I have learned over my 76 years are:
Life is REALLY short. Treasure each day. It may be your last.
Remember we always do the best we can with the
resources we have, so have no regrets.
Don’t wait to connect with someone or tell them you love them. They might not be alive tomorrow.
Appreciate, listen to, and take care of your body.
Tell the truth - always. Lies only mess things up.
Forgiveness of ourselves and others is essential.
Love is the most important thing in the world - love of yourself and others and of the universe.
So, I say embrace Life, all of Life and as you age, make it a spiritual journey.
