Category: blog

By Al Rider

“Know thyself” was one of the three great wisdom inscriptions on the Temple of Apollo in ancient Delphi – along with “Nothing to excess” and “Certainty causes insanity.” In Sage-ing, we pursue self-knowledge under the rubric of “Life Review” – one of the core values taught by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. Usually, we think of “Life Review” as a searching examination of our own personal experience; but my guess is that even Reb Zalman would agree that to really know ourselves, we would be wise to move beyond just our own life-spans.

Psychology and spirituality both suggest that there is more to “me” than just my life experience. The roots of personality go deeper than that. We do not create our own egos: We are formed not only by our life experiences, choices, and relationships but also from DNA passed down through the generations and the cultures we grew up in.

“Life review” is incomplete if it stops with just personal self-assessment. To acquire in-depth self-knowledge, I also need to know my ancestors: Who they were, how they lived, their unique stories of triumph and woundedness, and acknowledging the something of “them” that still lives on in “me” and in my family network.

Sadly, most of us remember only the one or two generations before our own – sometimes less than that. Many of us never got well-acquainted with our grandparents; and even if we did, only a few of us know the particulars of their life stories.

Some families do manage to sustain vague “origin myths” across the generations – Where they immigrated from, perhaps, or some challenge that their forebears faced. But often the details of ancestral stories are never told. Achievements and “war wounds” of the past (both literal and metaphorical) often stay hidden. Though deep psychic and spiritual “woundedness” actually gets passed from generation to generation; the underlying causes for most family disorder often stays buried in our collective unconscious minds.

If only we could reach back into forgotten corners of ancestral history to trace the origins of our families’ strengths and weaknesses, might we be able to better cope with issues, and draw on our latent inner resources?

Family Recollection as a Goal

Fortunately, our digital age gives us a whole new source to tap: Genealogy is now within the grasp of everyone. Formerly the domain of a few wonky experts, the study of ancestral lineage is now within reach. Those who know how to do that research – what the tools are, where to find them, and how to use them for story-telling – can now come to know their ancestors, and thus better know themselves.

And more: We can bless our upcoming generations by reciting their ancestral stories. A family tradition is a priceless bequest. Knowing the family’s heritage can give young people pride in their forebears, and courage and inspiration to move out to live brave adventures of their own.

I have recent experience of this. When the COVID epidemic first locked us all in, it gave me time to take on a long-delayed project. As a college history major I learned research skills and vowed to someday uncover my own family’s story. But I’d never done it. Then thanks to the virus, I suddenly had both time and a new sense of urgency: It’s now or never! What an amazing result I’ve had: During a year’s online investigation, I discovered 3,000+ named ancestors, back to Medieval days… Peasants and royalty, saints and sinners, artists and soldiers and entrepreneurs and builders and teachers and sages and criminals(!)… A rich family lore, along with deep connection to famous historic places and events we’d never imagined being linked to.

It’s been transformational for my family and led me to launch the new “Ancestors Circle” currently forming in Sage-ing International: A small group who will tap into available resources, support one another in the search, write our family story-books, and leave a legacy to our children.

Tools and Outcomes

Online resources are plentiful. It’s like “…drinking from a fire hose…” Hard to know where to start on one’s own. Our little group will be choosing archival technology, then tapping into a wealth of online data, history, photos, family papers, obituaries, and census reports, all available for the taking.

I can report two tangible outcomes already: (1) My wife and I offered a “Grandparents’ Camp” this summer where our granddaughters put together a chart of the grandparents, immigration ships, castles and royalty from whom they descended. They’re now conscious of being “princesses” and proud of it! (2) We’ve also gathered our grandmothers’ kitchen notes into a Family Cookbook that celebrates them with pictures and stories, and contains cherished recipes that enriched our childhoods. Our holidays have become more fun and tasty and memory-laden because of it.

Personally, I have a more profound sense of Place as I travel now. I feel more connected when I read world history and culture. And knowing how the “heroic” and the “tragic” both weave throughout my family story, gives meaning to the “heroic” and “tragic” that have occurred within my own lifespan.

Spiritual Growth

I was trained as a counselor/spiritual director, and so discovered how family trauma carries across generations. “Embrace the woundedness” is a motto for moving on toward psychological and spiritual maturity, and it relates also to ancestral work: By attending to the sources of our family pathologies and distresses, we get clues about how to move on toward healing and wholeness. Victimhood, abuse, PTSD, addiction, racism, history of enslavement, social injustice, war experience, prejudice, and selective forgetfulness will all appear as we unpack ancestral systems. But it can be freeing to articulate these “shadows” from my past, and then to opt for forgiveness rather than bitterness or depression. In my own family, for example, “healing of memories” became real as we reframed one grandmother’s tragic story, transforming her vague sense of victimhood into a badge of triumph over adversity.

In my Christian tradition, there’s a lovely scriptural metaphor celebrating the “Great Cloud of Witnesses” who lived before us and whose spiritual reality still enlivens us in many ways. To my delight, the archival family-tree software I use provides a “fan chart” to bring that metaphor alive. (see picture) Every time I call this chart up on my screen, it turns my laptop into a little altar, connecting me to my rich ancestral heritage. That same technology also provides a modern-day “Calendar of Saints,” displaying all my family’s births, marriages, and deaths in a 12-month graphic. It gives each week in my year new spiritual meaning.

In the same way, by crossing our family’s dates and geography with the history book, we’ve found synchronous links to events like the Battle of Hastings (1066), the Great Fire of London (1666), the Salem Witch Trials, most every major battle in most every war of the past two centuries, brushes with historic figures like Washington and Lincoln, and achievements in science, art, religion and business. A sense that “We were also there” in the past, in a very biological/ symbolic way, now gives my family a sense of mythos that transcends the dreariness of everyday routine. Which is the essence of humanistic spirituality.

Al Rider (CSL) lives with his wife Karen and a very unusual poodle in the midst of all their kids and grandkids in SW Columbus Ohio (USA). Retired from a career as a progressive pastor, career/vocational counselor/trainer, and chaplaincy coordinator on the US East Coast, West Coast, and in Central Europe, he’s now based in the Midwest as an interfaith spiritual director, tech guru of sorts, and is coordinating the new online Ancestors Creative Expression Circle for Sage-ing International. His email is a.rider@sage-ing.org.

by Jerry O’Neill

My rite of passage from midlife to elderhood was actually ten years in the making. There came the sudden death of my first wife Denise in 2010, then a move from Minneapolis to Whidbey Island, Washington, followed by a series of failed attempts to retire from work as a parish pastor. In 2018 I attended a Sage-ing International conference and completed a workbook based on Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi’s sage-ing principles. In spring 2019 I began to learn and play a new stringed instrument, turning to music and poetry to find my voice and the soul of my vocation for later life.

Preparing to go public with a collection of songs, short poems, and intentions, I found myself struggling to let go of my role as a pastor. Just as my book was about to be released I was asked again to consider serving a parish near our home in Oregon. How would I ever find the freedom and energy needed to use and further develop gifts I’d been excited about since childhood if I continued to feel roped into a job I no longer needed or found especially life-giving?

Then I read Ron Pevny’s book Conscious Living, Conscious Aging and I realized the missing piece. I needed a wide open sacred space for a public rite of passage led by a skilled facilitator in the wise company of other loving older adults. So, I signed up for a Choosing Conscious Elderhood retreat , led by Ron and Dennis Stamper, at Ghost Ranch, New Mexico. Postponed a couple of times due to Covid, the week-long event was finally held May 1-7, 2022. In hindsight, it couldn’t have been a better time!

On my journey to Ghost Ranch the green forests of the Pacific Northwest gave way to the wide- open high desert of northcentral New Mexico. The stunning beauty of sandstone cliffs and vast canyons provided a sacred portal to peer into the depths of deposition and seismic change that had occurred over the past seven decades on the inner landscape of my life. Surprisingly, very often as the wind blew, I heard nature’s song in my soul and felt right at home.

On a late Sunday afternoon the wind blew me like a tumbleweed into the retreat center, eager to help me plant new seed for the next chapter in my life. Circling with others in this strange arid land we faced uncertainty with blind assurance, quickly coming alive amidst the mystery of new beginnings from the Ancient of Days.

Gathered in the Agape Center we availed ourselves to Love’s way. Each of us placed on a table, which we made our altar, one or more symbols in our lives that have and continue to embody the sacred. Mine was a small tapestry with two figures of Kokopelli—one representing the stir of song and wild innocence in my youth and the other of a new and surprising playfulness of the muse now in my later life. I took off my gold and amber gemstone ring and set it between them trusting that it with, amidst the other signs of the sacred placed by the others, would encourage me to find a fulfilling balance of being and doing in my elderhood.

Intent to make a later life shift from role to soul, I danced with my shadows throughout the week, risking a bold look at my true self and the courage to step out onto a new ground of being. I corraled and tamed a nightmare with the wind of Spirit and found grace to face my fears. Time and again I experienced relief from ego stressers and found a wholesome oneness with what my soul desires.

One morning, while it was my day to hold close to my heart the Cord of Intentions representing the intentions of every elder in our group, I prayerfully walked them into the presence of the sacred deep within the Ghost Ranch labyrinth. As back out I walked, like an onion I peeled all externals away saying on everyone’s behalf, “I am now and to every end forever—Loving Awareness.”

As we entered the life review and repair leg of our journey we shared painful memories, hurts and fears giving those opportunity to be deeply heard. We encouraged each other to trust and bear fruit the truth of soul generates. At a letting go ceremony early one evening I buried a rope I had worn with clergy garb for years as a parish pastor. As I cast it into the “grave”, putting the role of pastor behind me, I heard our co-facilitator and colleague Dennis Stamper cry out, “Well done, good and faithful servant!” And as though from on high his words helped turn my tears of grief into laughter and great joy!

The following day we left the security of our circle in order for each of us to experience a twenty-four hour solo in the wilderness. Nature mirrored on my inner landscape the vast canyons caused by my first wife’s death and now the letting go of my career. As I communed with colorful sandstone cliffs the wind blew again and again enlivening me with grace and assurance.

Upon return to the circle we all pondered how we’d continue to be conscious elders back home.
I began and have since further refined ten intentions for the next seven years covering practically every known aspect of my later life. Shown a myriad of ways to grow more conscious, I am now applying what I’ve learned and experienced at Ghost Ranch. As stated in my first intention, I will practice being present in every circumstance to observe all thoughts, feelings, and relationships first and foremost in the light of my soul.

Perhaps the biggest surprise upon my return has been discovering my need for inner work to help develop a healthy and life-giving relationship between my inner elder and child. So, I am happy to announce, given the conscious elder I’ve become, that I will now take up writing songs and poems with my inner child for a book we might simply call “Child Alive!”

By Chuck Lee

Death comes to all of us.  We It can take the death of someone dear to us to help us fully grasp this reality. This realization can teach us much about living. And, when we are confronted with the fact that our own death is given a timeline, as I have been, we are then faced with an emotional reaction that requires thought and an inner strength that comes and goes until we reach a point of acceptance and understanding that Life is about Living –fully “Living.”

For the past nine years I have participated in eight retreats on Conscious Eldering, focused on “Aging with Intensity and Passion” under the leadership of Ron Pevny.  What has come from that is a list of ten Intentions and Resolutions that reflect my vision for my elder years.

For me it has been critically important to my well being that I live my elderhood with these intentions as my guideposts.  And I have been fortunate to have the support of another person who shares this desire to be on a journey of growth throughout her elder years.

For nearly five years I have met monthly with one of the other participants in a weekend conscious eldering retreat held at Mission San Luis Rey near San Diego. We have lunch and discuss how our lives, with our joys and struggles, has been unfolding. During the COVID pandemic we talked on the phone. Our primary focus is how we are doing with our intentions in our day-to-day living and how our intentions have given us purposeful lives.  My concentration on this goal, supported by my “Intention Partner”,  has given me the basis for being able to face this point in my life, with my health challenges, with a plan for Living.   

For me my list of intentions has been reviewed and revised many times.  The following is what I call my blueprint for life.

ON THIS JOURNEY THROUGH LIFE I INTEND TO:

• Be positive in my thoughts and actions
• Be generous in giving to those in need
• Listen to those who need to be heard
• Practice kindness on a daily basis (doing a good deed each day)
• Focus on protection of the environment
• Continue on my spiritual path with meditation
• Improve my connection with family and friends
• Enjoy the humor of life by laughing a lot
• Find joy in the life I lead
• Talk with strangers

These are daily efforts in thoughts and actions.  When I focus on these I have found satisfaction and pleasure.  I look for the joy in events and interactions.  I find humor in much of life.  I choose for my attitude to be positive.  When I hit a bad patch, I recognize it is time to meditate and move myself back to calmness and positive energy.

I acknowledge that I am not always successful in following this blueprint, but it is my chosen path and it is working for me. I do not focus on my impending death but on how I am Living today!

By Wendy Dudley

“I Am Mountain. I Am Ocean. I Am Sky. I am Sun. I am Moon. I am Pachamama, Mother Earth.” Standing at the Highwood Pass in the northern stretch of the Rocky Mountain Cordillera in Alberta, Canada, I spread my wings, declaring who I Am, and also who I am Becoming. This is a grounding exercise, a way to root my soul in the soil. Having recently suffered a family loss, I am vulnerable, and so seek the stability of the mountain.

This Misty Mountain range keeps me centered, the position of an Elder.

We stand in our space, hold our ground, and let world events swirl around us, for we have weathered many storms. Let the winds of change blow, let the wild rivers flow. We have lived through many challenges, we have witnessed many losses, we are aware of the bigger picture of where humanity fits into the history of the planet. There is so much more than just Us. Let such wisdom not fade from civic culture.

I believe it is from this position that we listen, support and guide those who are having difficulty navigating testy waters. Humanity is in transition, and we all know someone who is struggling to find her or his way, while trying to dodge the dark rabbit holes.

As Elders, our life experiences and compassion have given us the wisdom to stay centered, to not drift into divisive polarities. As a retired newspaper reporter, I know there are more than two sides to a story; often there are dozens. So many opinions, so many perspectives. No one position is absolute.

Coming from a place of compassion, we take the time to understand the stories behind multiple points of view. We model acceptance, equanimity and calmness. Wisdom is not intelligence, expertise or moral superiority. Elders know better than to focus on being Right, at the sacrifice of building Relationship.

And we, perhaps more so than many generations, should be grateful. Today, I am full of Gratitude, for having survived this long. For being able to say I have fewer years ahead of me than behind me. I am grateful for these wild mountains and rivers, for family, for friends, for my purpose. But I am especially grateful for the time in which I have lived.

Our generation slipped in between the Second World War and the ongoing pandemic that has no end in sight.

I think of our parents who toughed out the Depression era, who experienced the despair of a World War that lasted six years, who endured food rationing, and who in later years found themselves confused by a fast-paced generation that spoke in technological terms they could barely understand.

And so today, I stand in the mountains, giving gratitude that the greater portion of my life has been without life-threatening hardship. Most of us had it pretty good, when it comes to avoiding global crises. We’ve had a good kick at the can.

I think of the young ones, looking ahead, whose beginning years are now rooted in Fear, something we know will affect them for years to come, and take years to heal.

Unlike us, they have most of their lifetime ahead of them.

Will the Peace that we marched for in the ‘60s ever be found, in a world that presently seems to be more divided than ever, a world racked with cruelty, angst, anger, frustration and fatal overdoses? I offer this sentiment by the late theologist and physician, Albert Schweitzer: “Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes the ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate.”

This is not to say that we too do not feel the intensity of these current times, from political turmoil to concern about the state of the planet. We may not always remain calm, but we do know emotional balance. We make the journey from Head to Heart, where we find inner peace, contentment, and compassion. We act wisely, because we do no good if we too fall off the rails. To take on anger and hate is to give power to those emotions. Humanity desperately needs healing. If we do not mend our divides, we will dwell forever in tribalism. And healing cannot take place when each side is trying to out-shout the other. Why feed divisiveness, when we can still be activists or pacifists without being pulled off-center.

If we succumb to the push-and-pull dynamics between polarities, we risk our mental, physical and spiritual health. And how well can we serve if we are not well? Is our purpose not to show compassion and a will to help others? So we ask: “How best can I serve, and in turn, what serves me well?”

To cite the Serenity Prayer: Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”

Find what works for you, as only you know what makes you feel good, what helps you feel centered, and who makes you smile. Work and play within your circle to maintain your social health and sense of community and belonging. As elders, we know there are no problems, only solutions. Walk and talk with Presence.

We all know wise ones who say little, but whose chosen words say so much.
Their confidence is palpable, their posture one of confidence. They know who they are. They know why they came here. They know life. They stand as Mountains.

Wendy Dudley is an eco-spiritist, visual artist and writer, shamanic practitioner and spiritual healer. Her website is www.wendydudleyart.com. She can be reached at dudleyart1@gmail.com

By Kinde Nebeker

Growing older brings many surprises. We might look in the mirror in the
morning and wonder whose face that is looking back at us. We may notice the worries
and upsets that used to send us through the roof don’t bother us anymore. We may see
that having lived so much life has given us a perspective that can offer clarity, guidance
and hope to others.

Elder years also bring loss. So much of who we have known ourselves to be begins
to leaves us. The strength, beauty, and capacities of our physical bodies are lost. The
identity we enjoyed through our work evaporates. Our energy and ability (or motivation)
to ‘produce’ wanes. More and more friends die. The world can seem like it’s moving on
without us. All this loss causes grief. It is an intrinsic part of being a human who makes
it to old age.

It is not easy because grief does hurt like hell. And in our modern American
culture, we are not taught what to do with it. We think of grief as that awful thing we
hope to avoid at all costs; that nasty situation that interrupts our ever-forward-moving
life trajectory. Most of us had no understanding or modeling in our families or
communities about how to welcome and be with grief. When we first encountered it as
children, we most likely went through it alone and unsupported. If the emotions were
overwhelming to us, we buried it as deep inside of us as we could, so we would never
have to feel pain, confusion and aloneness ever again.

Today our culture is coming to understand the price of locked-away grief. Grief
buried becomes a weight in the body and a rigidity in the heart. It narrows our vision
and our ability to be creative and to love.

A major task for initiation into true elderhood is to do the work of grieving.
Initiated elders connect with grief as an ally and intimate friend. They treasure the gifts
that grief holds for them, and for their communities. Conscious elders are able call grief
forward to flow and cleanse.

The disconnection from grief is a relatively new phenomenon in human culture.
Before the rise of science and rationality, of materialism as the primary epistemology,
we knew how to call the Name of Grief. We could recognize and welcome it because we
were in somatic and cultural contact with subtle energies. We understood that grief,
when honored for its healing power, became Grief — a sacred force that the community
held all together. We knew how to communicate with and participate in Grief with each
other through ritual, movement, and sound. We respected its cleansing and
transformational potential.

But that world is not available to most of us now. So, as we come to times in our
lives where grief comes, or where grief needs to be unlocked in us in order to get
unstuck, what do we do? How exactly, does one grieve in a good way? How can we come
into relationship with grief and transform it into Grief?

Here are a few thoughts to help get you started to begin transforming grief
into sacred Grief.

Acknowledge the Enormity of the Task & Love Yourself Up for What You Are Doing.

If befriending Grief were easy, more people would do it. It is very challenging at
first. You must appreciate what an amazing warrior, what a strong sorceress, what a
beloved soul you are, to be undertaking such a thing. Take a moment to actually feel the
warmth of love in your heart for yourself, and practice feeling it regularly.
Maybe you need help? Call a friend to help you get into the mood of loving yourself.
Who is your greatest fan? Ask them to help you out, and receive the love they give.
Loving yourself is one of the greatest ballasts you can have in the storm of Grief.

Take Care of Yourself

Grief can be a massive and powerful energy. Take this process seriously and
commit to taking care of yourself, first and foremost. Loving yourself includes caring
for your body (healthy diet, daily movement, quality rest) so it can be strong enough to
carry the potential intensity. It also includes caring for your heart and spirit. Grief
comes primarily through the heart, so fortify that heart of yours with doing, thinking
and enjoying things you love. Grieving does not preclude activities that bring you joy.
Make a list of what lifts you up — inspirational reading, hiking a certain trail, listening to
music you love, making art, spending time with friends or family (especially
grandchildren!) — and do one thing every day that is not habitual.

Release Expectations

First we have to be clear that Grief does not pay any attention to our schedule. If
we are dealing with a present grief, Grief will appear whenever It sees fit. If we are
working with a past grief, we have more say about when we might open to the energy,
but still we are not in control. Opening to Grief is an exercise in abandoning any
agenda, utterly letting go of hope, completely relinquishing control. Grief will ask this
of you, and your consent allows Grief to do Its work on you.

Call In Support

Remember that Grief is not meant to be engaged alone, ever. You do have
support, so call it in.
~ Are there people in your life who can support you in the right way; support the strong
one in you rather that try to ameliorate the suffering through soothing or activating the
victim part of you? Let them know what you are going through, and ask them for what
you need.
~ Who are your ancestors? Are there particular ancestors that you feel kinship with?
Call them in through your active imagination and ask them to stand at your back, or
whatever you sense would be helpful. Sense them and listen to anything they might
want to tell you.
~ Do you have other-than-human allies and guides that have shown up in your life?
Actively call them in to be with you, during intentional meetings with Grief, or whenever
you need help.

Feeling is Healing

Grief becomes present to you through your body. It you can’t or won’t feel your
body, you will not be able to receive what Grief is giving you. Emotions create bodily
sensations. Feel deeply, with full attention and presence. What are the textures,
movements, locations in the body of your emotional responses to Grief? Be curious and
notice. Does this Grief burn? Is it jumpy, sharp, dull, heavy? Grief will change and
respond to your open attention. What do you notice about the movement of this Grief?
Is it slow, or fast, jittery or is it still and unmoving? It is the very act of being willing to
feel that contains the medicine of healing.

Ritual and Ceremony

Grief contacts you through the body. And, like all archetypal energies, Grief
understands the language of ritual. Learn to speak this language. What rituals can you
create, as an inherently creative human, to be in authentic relationship with Grief? Your
creativity delights It, and It will respond in kind.

Respond and Engage

Sacred Grief is not something that happens to you. It visits you, inviting you to
come into relationship with It. When Grief arrives as sensation in your body, you are
invited to respond to what you feel there. Movement, breath and sound are some ways
you can go beyond the story of your grief and have a conversation through the body
with Grief. Scream, cry, throw things, whirl around, crumble up on the floor. Do
whatever your body wants to do, and do what you need to do to not feel self-conscious.
Don’t listen to the ego, which wants to keep you safe and looking good in the eyes of the
world. The ego will be obliterated by Grief, so It will do everything in its power to stop
you from engaging fully with It.

Surrender

If you notice closely, you will find that what causes the most pain is your
resistance. So give in. Allow yourself ‘die’ of Grief. Let it burn, come in waves, crush your
heart. Don’t turn away. Allowing Grief is allowing the situation to be. You can’t change
it, so wishing it were otherwise only clogs up a cleansing and wise process.
We may resist falling down into the well of Grief because we sense it will drown
us forever. Perhaps you’ve known someone who suffers a loss that drops them so low
that they never feel happy again. But notice — after the alive energy of Grief has
subsided, is that person holding on to the story of that grief? If we allow the energy of
Grief to MOVE — that is, we don’t capture and contain it in a story — it is free to do its
work, and move on. The inner core of our Self is untouched.

Integration

Loss always changes us. After loss, we are not the same as we were before. If grief
is left to accrete in our psyches and bodies, we get smaller, more afraid, rigid, withdrawn
or angry. Our health and our relationships are compromised. However, inviting Grief to
come dance with us, letting It move through and with us, we become bigger, more
compassionate and wise, and more spacious inside. Instead of cordoning off the loss we
suffer and burying it in a safe space in the basement, we can integrate the loss
consciously into who we are now. We can choose to make new meaning of our loss and
grief, to re-frame it in a positive way that creates more love, more gratitude and more
depth in our lives.

In this way, Grief is sacred. It takes us out of our small selves and drops us into a
larger space. It reams us out, stretches us beyond where we would ever choose to go, and
so shows us a deeper dimension of human experience. When we approach Grief as a
sacred act, we find that we are more than/greater that we thought/ever realized.
As you experience losses, may you allow Grief to bless your life.

Kinde is a certified Integral Coach and wilderness rites of passage guide. She
offers community grief-tending rituals biannually in her community, and is
available for coaching — in developmental work and in ritual for grief and other
aspects of personal transformation.
Learn more at www.newmoonritesofpassage.com
Email her at kinde@newmoonritesofpassage.com

By Rick Moody

How long do we have to wait to become old? How long to see things as they really are? When Guatama Siddhartha, who was to become the Buddha, left the protection of his parents’ castle, he found himself on the road. On his journey he discovered three sights that shocked him: a sickened person, someone who was old, and a corpse. Sickness, aging and death were the shocks that impelled the Buddha to seek “something more.” He found it and people have followed that path ever since.

But if old age is a shock, then how can we speak of “positive aging?” I see more and more that the refusal to acknowledge the inevitable losses and diminishments leads to disappointment and eventually denial, even if unrecognized. Ageism is in all of us, and so is denial which fuels it. A prime example of such denial is so-called anti-aging medicine, which promises false hope for avoiding the shock that Buddha and all of us must encounter. A story about positive aging that does not prepare us to face inevitable losses easily becomes a “the power of positive thinking,” which is a recurrent American temptation.

But is there true hope, founded on reality? Viktor Frankl thought so, and he discovered it, not on the road but in a Nazi concentration camp. Frankl learned that, faced with devastating reality, denial and false hope were not an option. But it was, and it is, possible to say “yes” even in circumstances the limit our lives, as we all must discover in later life. He wrote about this in his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, a gift across the generations. He describes those who managed to say “yes” to life:

“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. I have seen a sweatshirt that has the message: I thought growing old would take longer. As this sweatshirt says, growing old can come as a surprise—even to gerontologists. Have you noticed that doctors get sick, funeral directors die, and gerontologists grow old? Surprise is always the partner of denial, and none of us is exempt from the temptation for denial as well as from the reality of age.

Many have read Rowe and Kahn’s great book, Successful Aging. But, whether they admire it or reject it, they often miss the definition of “successful aging” given concisely in that book: “decrement with compensation.” Just three words. That’s all. Did you get the message? Decrement will come to virtually all of us. But how hard it is to find the compensation without denying the losses. That is the work of Positive or Conscious Aging.

Lars Tornstam, who I met but did not know well, described this path as gero-transcendence. A mouthful of a word, but what it means is stated well by Carol Orsborn in her new book, The Making of an Old Soul. It is both the hunger for, and the encounter with, “something more” than our roles and our egos—that something more which Orsborn discovered in what she calls “the great reveal.” And what is it that will be revealed? We will all have different names for it, because each of us follows a different path. And the path of human development becomes more and more individual in later life, which means that it becomes harder to speak of these things and generally impossible to give advice.

Connie Zweig, a long-experienced Jungian therapist, writes about this task in her new book The Inner Work of Age, where she defines it as a “shift from role to soul.” I’ve called Connie “The Queen of Shadow” because she is willing to look where few others have wanted to look, into the Shadow. Why look where there’s no light? Because for our society, aging itself remains forever in the Shadow, just as it was in Buddha’s time. If we don’t look, we won’t see.

So let us celebrate positive aging. Let us care for our health, let us help others around us, for as the Sufis say: “Those who God wishes to bless, God puts in their hands the means of helping others.” But even as we summon our strength and help those around us, let us also recognize that strength does not endure and that helping is often beyond our power. Seeing is believing, and I have seen a few of those who followed the path of conscious aging. They have inspired me. I saw Viktor Frankl only once, at a conference, where he stood up on stage before a crowd, a frail little old man. But when he rose up to speak, the world was lit up.

Can we, too, light up the world?

Harry (Rick) Moody teaches in the Creative Longevity and Wisdom Program
of Fielding Graduate University. He edits the “Human Values in Aging” newsletter.
For a sample or free subscription, send a request to hrmoody@yahoo.com

By Anne Wennhold

When I retired at 70 years of age, I was invited to work with a group of elders in recovery from alcohol. For years I had been teaching people of varied ages, but never those who were considered seniors: it was a new ball park for me. I asked a social worker what to expect from the elder population. Her succinct description made me laugh. “There are three stages of aging,” she said. “The Go-Goes, the Slow-Goes and the No-Goes.”

I am now in my 80s, a vantage point for understanding what she meant. The 70s were actually the Go-Go years of my lifetime. It was a decade, not only of integrating all the challenging aspects of my life but of sharing the results with others. Beginning with a Choosing Conscious Elderhood retreat and its suggestions for aging successfully, I became a teacher, a leader and a facilitator for others on a path of self-discovery and aging.

In addition to co-leading the Choosing Conscious Elderhood Retreats at Ghost Ranch, I ran weekly discussion groups on aging for our local county day centers: gave lectures, presentations and workshops teaching the skills of aging to church groups and at libraries. I also held one-day retreats for small groups in several eastern states.

Other interests came to the fore during those 10 years: my love of art and the growing understanding of Native American and Shamanic spirituality and ritual. I held workshops at a variety of venues for those vested with a similar desire to learn more about these belief systems and practices. I held drum making, mandala drawing and dream decoding classes when requested.

Reading was a mainstay of that time. I wanted to learn as much as I could about what other paths might lead to a sense of my place in the world and a satisfaction that I was fulfilling what my mission and purpose seemed to be. Nature was both central to the work and a partner to my life: trees especially. They shared thoughts about roots, trunks, branches and leaves in support of daily life. My body was strong. It carried me forward with few complaints.

I cannot speak as definitively about my 80s as I can the 70s because I’m still in the middle of them but I can say this. Shortly after my 80th birthday there came what I now call a ‘sea change.’ It was like a soft breeze stealing in from the north, the place of transitions. My body felt it before my mind became aware of it and before my emotional self finally acknowledged that the Slow- Go years had arrived.

My body was no longer silently strong. It began to demand attention. Sorties to the doctors for check ups and tune-ups came first, dietary changes and attendance to exercise began to consume more time on a daily basis. Extensive travel for presentations and workshops was no longer the pleasure it had once been: easy access to nearby bathrooms became an obsession.

Nobody wants to hear this and as an 80 something year old I do not want it to preoccupy me either. I’ve already seen too many elders who bind themselves up in their ills. My body, however, is lagging while I myself, the ‘me’ inside, is still vital, still excited about growing and learning and being a part of the work world. Only now I must learn to compromise with the physical self.

I’ve always loved the work I’ve done with groups. It has been and continues to light my own path as I hope it does for others. However the COVID virus of the past year put a swift stop to all that: the distant, the local and the weekly meetings, all gone in a wink of time. On the other hand as often happens, while COVID took away with one hand, it gifted me with the other. Zoom opened the opportunity to continue meetings online and introduced new ideas: topics like Memoir Writing, Dream Decoding, Shamanic Journeying and Lectio Divina, a meditation practice with literary readings are now programs I offer on Zoom. I’m also toying with the idea of including Mandala drawing sessions there.

What’s not to like about holding meetings in my own home in the comfort of dress down clothing with hot coffee at my elbow and a bathroom steps away? Perhaps this is one answer to the question of compromise throughout the remaining years of the 80s: a way to reduce the amount of travel while maintaining important group connections.

Nature remains a constant support. The trees about my house are an entertainment of light and shadow, of leaves that are green, then gold, and finally a riot of color before the bare black of winter. They continue to dialog with me about life’s cycles and events.

My interests have changed. I seldom look to books and lectures from touted authors or gurus for information about their aging or spiritual experiences mainly because they seem to be one-way conversations. Their ideas can however, work as a basis for connections in depth, a way for ordinary people like myself to converse and share thoughts about what’s happening in our own lives: experiences with Spirit, thoughts of death, dreams and how ventures into personal growth at this stage of life are working. The exchange of information is more important now than the acquiring of it.

And there is a most subtle change to my inner dialog. My life purpose, which is to be of service to others, is being challenged because I am less mobile now. I guess it is part of the refining of spirit as one ages. The question is, ‘What will that service look like when the role of teacher/facilitator is no longer as viable as it once was?’ So far there are a few possible answers. I’ve already mentioned Zoom as one of them, at least for the time being: another is the practice of listening. The gift of listening to others and really hearing them is one of the finest gifts one can give to others. And after that, whispers an inner voice, ‘Listen to Spirit. You have more time to do that now and you have friends who will share and talk about what is growing there.“

In the long run, having answers really doesn’t matter all that much because with the newly heightened vision brought about by the Slow-Go 80s, I see more clearly how, as one moves along the continuum of years, the answers come when the person remains open and ready to receive them. They did so in the Go-Go 70s, they are doing that now in the Slow-Go 80s, and I trust they will continue to do that for whatever might lie ahead in the No-Go years.

In the meantime I remain a Work In Process.

Anne Wennhold has for many years co-guided conscious eldering retreats with Ron Pevny. She also runs support groups for older adults. And Shamanic Drumming groups in New Jersey, and facilitates online Memoir Writing, Drumming and other new courses. Anne can be reached at annewennhold@gmail.com

by Larry Gray

One of my favorite quotes from Henry David Thoreau echoed in my mind as I recently headed out into the Yukon wilderness for a 3-day vision quest:

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

I went to the woods this time to explore what it had to teach me about being a conscious elder. I had a lot of resistance to acknowledging my age because of the tremendous amount of cultural baggage, negative stereotypes and downright ageism that exists in society. I knew in my heart and mind these cultural messages were simply wrong. They certainly didn’t mesh with my own lived experience.

I spent three days and nights on a high ridge with an expansive view of a river below, forested hills and mountains in front of and behind me and the ridgetop leading upwards to a high peak. No sign of any human presence on the landscape.

There, I walked daily – more like meandering as the river was doing. I love Thoreau’s word for it: “sauntering” from his famous essay: Walking. I became acquainted with the many beings who live here – the aspens, spruce and pine, the sage and grasses, the eagles and chickadees, the wind and the rain, the hard earth and the soft composting leaves on the forest floor. Over time, I allowed all this to seep into my consciousness. Messages from Nature come in many ways and forms. But this form of wordless communication takes time, something in short supply for many of us and certainly for the culture at large. In this article, I would like to share two of these communications with you.

Meanders and Oxbows

“When a river reaches a low-lying plain in its final course to the sea or a lake, it meanders widely. Deposition occurs on the convex bank because of the ‘slack water’, or water at low velocity. … When deposition finally seals off the cut-off from the river channel, an oxbow lake is formed.”

The environment surrounding me on that ridgetop afforded an expansive view of the river, its steep sandy banks, the nearby hills, the more distant mountain peaks, the dome of the sky, the movements of birds on their aerial traverses, the forests and alpine meadows and more. It was an eagle’s-eye view, as Ron Pevny has described the vantage point of an elder. Over time, I saw the meandering river before me as representative of my own life’s journey. The current was visible – a relentless onward flow of time and energy.

I was facing south and off to the east below me I could see an oxbow lake. Having taught geology before, I understood how it was formed and I could visualize the process at work over many years that formed the oxbow. One of the main intentions of doing this quest was to make peace with my former “selves” and all the hard experiences that those selves went through. These experiences had been crystallized into my neural pathways in the form of traumatic memories. I began to see the oxbow lake as representative of a traumatic memory. I realized and I could see directly that the oxbow was no longer part of the main current of the river. It had been cut off.

I walked down to the oxbow a couple of times. It was quite different than the river it was once part of. Crescent-shaped in form, it was quite swamp-like with more grasses and sedges than actual open water. I began to see my life’s journey in a new way, from a different and more expansive perspective – an eagle’s eye view. I began to see these traumatic memories that haunted my consciousness as “oxbow lakes”, no longer connected to the main flow of the river of my life. I could visit them, but no need to stay long. The river calls to me to continue my journey – ever onward.

Later in my quest, while I spent an afternoon sitting beside the river, somewhat entranced by the swift current flowing by inches from me, I was gifted with a process to heal my wounded psyche. Whenever I encounter an “oxbow lake memory”, from my elder perspective, I send love, forgiveness and gratitude to the person I was then. It’s a personal ritual or ceremony. And when it’s over, I rejoin the river of my life in the present moment, the here and now. The memory is further integrated into my psyche. For me, that’s what healing is.

Life in Death, Death in Life

When you immerse yourself in wild Nature and drop your defenses of fear, anxiety and perhaps internalized nature-averse cultural stories, strange things can happen. Boundaries become blurred, perceptions shift, perceived alienations become opportunities for deep affiliation. Even the demarcation between life and death becomes indistinct. This happened to me. Spending a prolonged time deeply immersed in and in reciprocal relationship with so many diverse natural beings, my awareness became sharpened, senses attentive and alive, perceptions crisp and clear. Where previously, I always saw life and death as discrete entities, this was not so in the natural world.

I dwelled in a world of eagles soaring on updrafts, light rain falling from grey clouds caressing the sage that embroidered the hillside, orange and rusty brown leaves composting on the forest floor giving rise to an incredible array of wild mushrooms. Aspen leaves trembled in the afternoon breeze, the river’s current visibly moving ever onward, a startled mule deer darting into the forest. Wildflowers – some still blooming – others having transformed into the dry stalks that will provide nutrients for the next generation. And on and on it goes, without beginning or end. One unbroken continuum of life and death, the two phenomena forever yoked to each other in a sublime and eternal dance that is Nature.

All these beings and all these ecological processes – growth, becoming, allowing, nurturing, being, transforming – implanted themselves into my psyche and even into my body. I realized that life and death were all around and it was impossible to distinguish between the two – living and dying are one ongoing concurrent process! Guided by this growing realization – an awakening fostered by my surroundings, I needed to look no further than my own body to deepen this even further. As I sat in the forest or on the hillside or in the meadow or lay under the bewildering maze of stars we call the Milky Way, I felt and knew deeply that life and death are happening to me right here, right now. Millions of cells in my body are dying in each moment while millions of cells are simultaneously being born. It’s all right here. My body is my home – the temple of my spirit. Nature/Earth is also my home – a home that I share with all other beings – the temple of the Great Spirit.

In order for something new to emerge, to be born and to grow, something else has to die. That is the way of Nature. I saw, smelled, tasted, touched and felt this truth directly all around me, unmediated. Amidst the rotting compost of the recent leaf fall, amongst the brown dead grasses on the hillside, mushrooms and new plant growth were emerging. So it is, I realized with myself. For my true and conscious elder self to emerge I had to let go of my attachment to my former selves. They had to become compost and fertilizer, providing the life-giving nutrients for my nascent elder self to grow.

I feel that the Nature-disconnected environments we have created (like cities, where over half of humanity lives) fail to support our most authentic selves – what I sometimes call our “ecological self”. For me, wild Nature is the healing environment that bests supports my journey of growth and expanding awareness. I have now made a personal pledge to undertake a vison quest each year – to nurture and foster my truly authentic self.

Let us all use our remaining decades to become who we truly are and thereby heal ourselves and this beautiful and wondrous Earth.

Larry Gray is a professor in Environmental Studies at Yukon University in northern Canada and a guide with the Center for Conscious Eldering. He can be reached at lgray@yukonu.ca