Spiritual Eldering

Aging is mandatory.  Becoming an elder is a calling.  It is a way of making the last phase of your life the most fascinating one you have ever lived, and a blessing to all your relations.

One way to launch yourself on this journey is to examine your own beliefs about aging.  Of particular interest is noticing how many of those belief excite you and how many depress you. Adjust your image of old to something that is attractive to you, and begin heading toward that image.  You have passed through the first threshold.

After my 60th birthday, I began referring to myself as old.  The energy with which my listeners denied this was amazing.  Universally the response was, "You're not old."  It became obvious to me that old was mostly undesirable to my listeners.  I wondered if that was true for me, as well.
I began to make a list of things that contradicted that belief.  My experience with old age to date includes:

• More free time
• Less concern about what others think
• More life experience to draw on
• Social security (still looking forward to Medicare)
• Greater ease with stillness and silence
• Becoming more childlike, less inhibited
• Trusting intuition more
• Less energy wasted dodging unwanted sexual advances

 I would be remiss if I stopped there.  In the spectrum of ‘old’, I’m still a youngster.  When I look toward the future, I notice I am concerned about losing mental and physical abilities.  I wonder what will happen if I become unable to care for myself.  I worry about the legacy I leave behind for the generations who will follow.  I worry that I will lose interest in and enthusiasm for life before I die, as so many older folks in my acquaintance seem to have. 

Regardless of whether I imagine this final life phase as enticing or repulsive, it is where I’m headed.  I can choose to pretend I'm going somewhere else, to deny my aging, or I can look straight into her face and decide how to approach her.  This is what I'm choosing.

Future posts will include both left brain observations and musing about aging and more importantly about becoming a spiritual elder, like this one.  Other posts will come primarily from the right brain, the unconscious, dreams, synchronicities other ways of knowing, like ‘great granddaughter.’  Hopefully, what emerges is a pattern for moving forward that demonstrates the wisdom and practicality of living from the knowledge that ~ Everything’s Connected – No Exceptions.