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Extended Longevity is an Opportunity for Spiritual Growth
- Connie Zweig
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Welcome to Healing From Within with your host Sheryl Glick, Reiki Master Energy Teacher (RMT), medium, and author of the newest book in a trilogy, A New Life Awaits: Spirit Guided Messages to Support Global Awakening, which shares stories to show our challenges are not merely economic political or societal but a disconnect form our inner soul wisdom and universal source. Sheryl is delighted today to welcome Connie Zweig, a retired psychotherapist and former executive editor at Jeremy P. Tarcher Publishing, and author of her new book The Inner Work of Age:Shifting from Role to Soul, which suggests that with extended longevity comes the opportunity to become an Elder, to leave behind past roles, shift from work in the outer world to inner work with the soul and become authentically who you are.
As listeners of Healing From Within are aware Sheryl and her intuitive creative guests offer intimate views into the dual nature of life as both our physical and divine aspects offer a view of “all that is.” Some may be seen, more may be felt or remembered by inner soul instincts, but, life is definitely much more than it appears to be, and when we discover who we truly are, the opportunities to live lives of distinction and extraordinary joy becomes available to us. So in other words we must look beyond the belief systems and societal training of our youth conquer ego based fears and illusion to a sense of truth of eternal dimension and fact and grow more aware and reach higher levels of consciousness.
In today’s episode of Healing From Within, Connie Zweig author of The Inner Work of Age will offer a radical reimaging of age for all generations, showing us how to use inner work to uncover and explore the unconscious denial and resistance that erupts around the key thresholds of later life, helping to attune one’s soul longing and offering a transition to being a wise Elder, if you’re lucky enough to pass through being a senior, and have the opportunity to repair the past, to be fully present, reclaim creativity and allow morality to be a teacher, and often to therefore become a force for change in the lives of others. Connie gives listeners a way to understand opportunities for our aging population and seniors, to appreciate the gift of longevity and the benefits as well as challenges that this chapter of life offers as well as prepare for it.
Connie when asked to think back to her earlier days in childhood and to remember a person place event or common theme in her life that may have shown her or others around her the work lifestyle and interests she might pursue tells us she was always longing for more and though not from a religious family felt a need to connect to a greater force of life and to help others know this great awareness or sense of Universal Source. Sheryl tells of feeling much the same way and simply wanting to make people and herself happy no matter what was happening around or within her as she was growing a sense of the challenges of life.
Connie tells us about her successful career teaching and writing about the Shadow, or that part of us that lies in the subconscious, often creating confusion or chaos, and hindering us from being truly present and conscious of our most wonderous attributes and divine ability to heal and improve all aspects of ourselves and our world. Aging, or the concept of growing older, is often perceived as a consequence of life and not a blessing, so many people try to remain in one phase of their life, not realizing every chapter of life offers exceptional opportunities to expand your view of self and the true nature of a spiritual and physical life.
Connie tells us that “For most of us, aging in an anti-aging culture are not in alignment to reality: we want to look away and forget for a while, pushing the messenger back into the darkness of shadow of the unconscious, until it shows up again in some inexplicable symptom or repeating forgetfulness or sudden loss of vitality. In all of our denials, we miss out on the greatest opportunity of this time: to reinvent ourselves from the inside out and become who we were meant to be. In any case the encounter with age continues to occur in small ways, happening often, sometimes as a gentle nudge, sometimes as an all-out assault. When we feel ashamed by our loss of ambition or sex drive and ask, ‘Who am I without that? When we are not resilient enough to recover from an injury and ask, “When will I get back to normal? With each of these encounters, we may feel shame or even betrayed by our bodies. Our surprise reveals a lack of awareness that aging is occurring. A tension emerges between our denial, or our belief that we can control aging, and our reality as we are living it.”
For those who explored consciousness in our earlier days as Connie and Sheryl did, late life is a call to return. Our emotional and spiritual development does not stop here: it continues in every moment, in every day. And our aging can be a vehicle for slowing down reorienting to the inner world, watching the breath, being fully present, and learning to witness the internal obstacles as they arise. Aging is our grist for the mill, as spiritual teacher Ram Dass put it.
Sheryl adds “Aging is a way to learn to turn experience into insight. It is a gift to live a new chapter of life as each experience and part of life is but the story unfolding as spirit has helped each soul to create for themselves, and they can in memory, go back to any part of their life to review and appreciate, but the greatest pleasure is to be present, for in that moment, you are creating something new.”
Connie realized that beyond the stereotypes of what it means to be old drivers who shouldn’t be behind the wheel: people suffering from dementia and left in nursing homes, shuffling shoppers pushing their walkers in the grocery store, there are other exceptions like in 2016 a ninety-five year old Finnish women completed a 500 foot bungee jump, William Shatner the famous Captain Kirk from Star Trek long ago, at 90 years old just was on a flight into space and in 2019, an 103 year old was sworn in as a junior ranger at the Grand Canyon.
Aging like everything in life is personal, individual and unique as is each living being. As Connie writes, “Our quality of late life is lived individually, not as a group. It can be more than accommodation of change. It can mean overcoming fears, developing fresh aptitudes, cleaning up toxic relationships, living more in the present moment, and transcending the ego, allowing it to take a backseat so that life opens to an intuitive flow. It can be a time to mine the gold from the dark side, reclaiming unfulfilled dreams and expressing unrealized talents.”
Sheryl has to agree that she never really thinks about age too much just about possibilities for new awareness and chances to make different choices and experience life with new perceptions. When Sheryl went through menopause she never anticipated having emotional or physical pain or an upset, as her mother had never shown or spoken of being unhappy at that time of her life and of course, Sheryl had no difficulty either, for she accepted that reality as part of life, and was grateful she had had children, health, and was moving into a new chapter of life. Sheryl never felt the empty nest syndrome either when children leave for college or marry and leave their parents home. Embracing all experiences and seeing the potential to grow as a result, rather than expecting fear to emerge or bad things to happen, as Sheryl knows that thinking can lead to self-fulfilling prophecies. The mind is very powerful in manifesting the quality of our life, whether we are young or in late life.
In reference to these thoughts in her book, A New Life Awaits: Spriit Guided Insights to Support Global Awakening, Sheryl writes, “The Universe, it appears, is asking us to pay attention, wake up, and go beyond all differences and limited thinking to observe, make corrections, and reevaluate priorities and values. Let’s help the coming generations to have multiple and plentiful opportunities to live and discover the beauty and awe-inspiring hopes of past ancestors who were able to forgo uncontrolled impulses for material gains alone, finding genuine or authentic human qualities. I grew up in a time when there were peace movements along with world concerns for idealistic approaches to living well and where personal fulfillment was a valued commodity.” In the chapter on aging, remembering all that has come before in our earlier days, and our ancestors who are now in spirit, helps us appreciate the value of a long life and a life lived with courage, reliance, passion, positivity, and a desire to serve through being grateful for all that has been, and all that is.
Connie decided to write a book about the Shadow in late life as a way to show its immense value. Connie writes, “When I first began to research for this book, I offered workshops to hundreds of people over the age of fifty and they all expressed feelings of disorientation as to what lie ahead without direction so groping in the dark for the next step of their human journey. Others spoke of the loss of purpose that came with the loss of work, roles, careers or family roles. Many could not let go of the past to be fully present now. Some spoke of their fear of illness or death. But they also told Connie that they sensed intuitively that there was something more to life, something hidden that had been missing a mystery, that remained unexamined……….People entering late life suffer another identity crisis, a return of the questions Who am I? What are my values? What do I believe? What matters most to me? How can I give back to the common good? We typically ask these questions during a midlife crisis too. But at this stage of life the response tends to be a change in roles, a change in career or spouse or geographical location. However, in late life, a change in role is not significant. There is no romantic or geographic solution to our longing. The idea that late life is a call to another rite of passage—and to teach practices to enhance that as they learn to center themselves and find a new orientation in space and time. For many of us this stage of life can be challenging. Our lifelong ideals and high expectations crash up against limits of all kinds—the limits of an aging brain/mind/body, the limits of a fraying financial safety net, the limits of discrimination against aging race and gender, even the limits of love. Certainly, the limits of time.
Connie goes on to discuss the inner “ageist” and how it affects our health. People who have explored their own psychologies and come to understand themselves deeply may have a different experience than those who identify with the outside world, judgment of them according to false standards, or accepted behaviors. They may know what triggers their anxiety, what they need if depression arises, and how to ask for support. They may be better able to tolerate loss and uncertainty, and their emotional resilience may give them more flexibility to adapt to the changes that occur with aging. Extroverts and introverts will age differently too. Extroverts will tend to move toward more interaction through service, community work and family and social relationships. They gain energy in group and feel more purposeful in stable marriage and family intimacy. Introverts will tend to move toward more quiet settings where solitary time and inner work can be done. This helps them conserve energy and tap into internal resources. Our religious and spiritual beliefs and experiences also define and confine aging. So less inner ageist or fear and working on ridding oneself of the effects of childhood trauma help our health, our spiritual awakening and how we age.
In alignment to Connie showing us the way to go from senior to elder in a process that people who are given the gift of a long life have there is the opportunity to explore now, allowing them to evolve beyond the business of earlier life filled with obligation and survival needs.
Sheryl observes the nature of life at the present time and in her new book A New Life Awaits she shares this feeling and writes, “As I observe this continuous chain of friction among people, nations, and our major institutions, within families, and observe increasing numbers of natural disasters; war; genocide; terrorists; people waging war with themselves and succumbing to addiction, alcoholism, drugs, and other self-defeating illnesses; and people who simply feel disempowered, overwhelmed, and unable to participate in living their daily lives with vitality, I like to remember that these seemingly disheartening events are simply the means to begin to know the many layers and dimensions of self, life, and change and are efforts to move us from pain to pleasure and eventually our spiritual afterlife.” Changing attitudes and perceptions to embrace a higher awareness of eternal nature allows us to shift to working cooperatively for the good of all, improving life now and later. Sheryl feels Elders through spiritual practice and reflection are able to observe society and its needs and leave a legacy of wisdom for those who follow to also find a path to higher consciousness.
Connie writes, “Other main Shadows we might meet with the dizzying speed of change as travelers in late life, might make one feel left behind. In looking at some of the changes that have happened rapidly over the last few years of course exacerbated by the Covid plague, our democracy once taken for granted has been hacked. Bookstores are almost extinct. Customer service jobs have been replaced by robots. Phones are attached to our hand or never far away Digital platforms consume the children and as we watch massive scientific and technological breakthroughs unfold, we also watch widespread social and cultural breakdown. We are living in a time of simultaneous, interconnected crisis: a rapidly warming climate that’s creating extreme weather events, the risk of future pandemics, a backlash against globalization and liberal democracy, an ever-expanding concentration of power in multinational corporations and social media platforms and a growing awareness of racial inequality in every domain in life. And that story is not merely about increasing longevity, but about the changing form and meaning of human life, and its course of development in families and communities. Age is a lens through which we can view other crisis. This lens enables us to see the intersectionality of issues that appear to be separate, but also exposes the strengths, weaknesses, and inherent responsibilities of society for young and old alike.”
There is the difference between becoming a Senior and becoming an Elder. For instance, we transcend midlife letting go of the roles and responsibilities of this time and enter a neutral zone in which we are not young/not old. We are between clear -cut roles and identities, still active and engaged, but not quite sure who we are anymore. Eventually with inner work, we move past midlife or being a senior emerging as an Elder. “Elders” release past identities but carry all that we’ve learned, all that we love, always within us. In meaning to cross over or go beyond. A transition is a passage to a next stage of life, both internal and external, such as from child to adolescence, from single to married, from senior to Elder. Traditionally, such transitions were marked by sacred rites. On the other hand, transcendence is an internal shift to another level of awareness or a change in stage-not age.
If we continue to transcend past roles and identities eventually, transcending ego and awakening into higher stages of awareness we can become Spiritual Elders. That is our ego development includes inner work leading to adult maturity.(Ken Wilber calls this Growing Up.)
Carl Jung pointed out that the root of his patients post-midlife… problems was lack of a spiritual outlook. Connie believes this instinct for life completion is the manifestation of spiritual yearning or holy longing that appears in late life. It’s the evolutionary force within us that seeks the shirft from role to soul.
Carol Orsborn in her book Older, Wiser, Fiercer writes, “By the time we are old, we have lived long enough to know that we and the world are capable of: the heights to which we can rise, and the depts to which we can sink. Perhaps evolution has given us old age because it takes so long to get beyond denying defending and storytelling to live life in its intended intensity….Few of us become willing to take on the potential for the pain of awakening, before we have tried every apparent shortcut—and there are so many. Carole advises “ Don’t wait to start your spiritual practice until it’s too late. We need that clear quiet awareness to center us in the midst of the hits that keep coming with age.” “Furthermore, if we identify with ego, self-image, success or other midlife values in late life we miss the opportunities to connect with shadow and soul.
If we identify with doing and deny our need to slow down and reflect, we keep doing what we’ve always done rather than experiencing aging as a spiritual practice.
If we identify with a healthy body/mind and ignore physical cognitive symptoms we miss the possibilities for self-care and may not realize illness as part of spiritual growth.
If we identify with a narrow band of time within a 360 -degree view of past present and future journey we remain stuck in denial of the fast and in fear of the future.
If we identify with regret about the past or feel like a victim of our history, we miss the opportunity to let go of the past, give and receive forgiveness and live and die in peace.
If we identify with past religious or spiritual beliefs and don’t reexamine them so they are congruent with who we are now, we won’t repair our relationship to Spirit or to our place in the greater universe.
If we deny and resist the inner work of age because the ego cannot let go of control, we lose the chance to become an Elder.
If we identify with a narrow separate sense of self, we lose the opportunity to cultivate our connection to something larger than ourselves and move into higher states of awareness.
We can define a Sage or Elder. For members of organized religions church and synagogue communities can be a source of social support an a venue to serve others but usually provide no rituals to celebrate seniors becoming elders. And, of course, the esoteric or public forms of these traditions offer no spiritual practices to gain access to mystic states or higher stages of developing. For those of us who have taken a more individual path as unaffiliated seekers our practices become essential.
Sheryl says that as a Reiki Master Energy Teacher RMT her practice of meditation, being more silent in times allotted to be away from work family and normal day activity. has helped her reach and share higher information through channeling messages from Spirit for clients and family. Mediation is a refuge, and a buffer against the losses and disorientation of age. When following your life plan, destiny unfolds without as much anguish or stress, and aging is definitely easier.
While our cultures also define and confine aging, there are ways for positive aging or successful aging, leading to the status of elder, one who is comfortable with themselves and not easily overwhelmed by external stimuli, as they are able to balance and harmonize with all of life For example the movement for positive aging or successful aging emerged a decade ago to counter the consequences of long-term negative views of aging. Proponents urged people over fifty to maintain productivity, engagement, contribution, physical and mental health, sexuality and autonomy. It works.
An elder may not want to be measured against the cultural expectations, but align with change, and deepen self-acceptance to create life to reflect who we are now. In summary, to encapsulate the meaning of “old” in a three- letter word reduces it. In the Latin root of the word, Old, alere, means nourish. Somehow in the postmodern youth- oriented society, the precious ancient meaning of old whether it’s nourished or nourishing has vanished. However, Elders would be both!
There are developmental tasks to become an elder. Late life is defined and confined by many forces. Certainly, there are genetic predispositions and variations that affect aging. So our bodies—our health, illness and resilence—define and confine our experience of aging. Acute and chronic physical health issues may take our time and attention, leaving little energy for inner work unless it’s already a habit.
Those of us who have financial resoruces and a felt sense of affluence, also will have “time affluence” which allows us the space to devote to inner work. For those who struggle with survival needs, however, evolutionary needs seem like a luxury. So class differences inform their experience in late life and racial differences do too. In addition, the support we get from our families and social networks and our beliefs about meaning and purpose, all contribute to our capacity to do the inner work of age.
We all hold conscious and unconscious attitudes that support or undermine our health and resilience. For example, if our identity is rooted in our image, we may struggle to adjust to the incremental changes that occur in our appearance, losing confidence and motivation. Others, whose identity is rooted in a role at work or in financial status may have more difficulty maintaining self-esteem as these sources or identity change. One man told Connie, “Who am I if I’m not a psychologist, helping others all day? Another said, I built this company from the ground up---and now they want me out. What is the meaning of my life without my company?
An elder learns to think beyond his self-worth, being tied to accomplishments, and a fear of dependency. Slowly we can learn to reverse roles and accept help and a new reality and a mature kind of dependency without fear of losing our youth or self. The whole truth is this: Aging is not one dimensional. It’s full of opposites….
Being and doing
Freedom and dependency
Purpose and disorientation
Vitality and fatigue
Holding on and letting go
Extroversion and Introversion
Pleasure and pain
Gain and losses
Beginnings and endings
As an Elder we need to be mindful of where we put our attention: on growth or decline, gains or losses, holding on or letting go, And we need to remember that neither concept, on its own,tells the full, nuanced truth. Perhaps as Carl Jung suggested, if we hold the tension of opposites and let them simmer for a while rather than choosing one side and banishing the other into denial, a novel third possibility will emerge: the capacity to become a true Elder, who does not think in black or white terms, splitting good or bad, projecting one or the other, but will hold the tension of shadow and light—who is both nourished and nourishing.
In order to do the inner work of age and to remember yourself clearly as a spiritual being of infinite possibilities and eternal energy, it is important to understand the term Personal Shadow. Personal shadow is a term coined by the renowned Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung who served as an Elder to Connie while I was writing this book. The shadow develops in each of us) to form a conscious ego and banish the opposites (rudeness, stinginess, self-centeredness and so on) into the unconscious shadow. These unacceptable feelings images and desires lie dormant in the shadow but may erupt abruptly in hurtful or self-destructive behavior addictions and projections of all kinds. Shadow work is part of inner work that leads to accepting allowing surrendering all this negativity without judgment and regret in yourself and in regards to others.
Aging is our next frontier—a physical, emotional, moral, cognitive and spiritual frontier We can only truly reinvent life later from the inside out. Here we are with decades of life remaining to us after our reproductive years and after retirement more than any other generation before us. But if we don’t learn to age from the inside out, we won’t fulfil the promise or our souls.We find out more about spirituality in late life and how it differs from earliest stages. As the physical vehicle the body declines in late life, what does the soul ask of us? Are we unknowingly living a worn out personal story that we may no longer believe or are we fighting an old fight such as the one against parental values that no longer matter?
Connie tells us the story of Buddha a tale of waking up to the truths of human life. As we know there was a prince Siddhartha who lived in a palace and whose father the king was determined that his son would grow up to succeed him without ever knowing fear suffering or sadness. But Siddhartha was curious and when he was twenty -nine years old ordered his charioteer driver to take him outside the palace gates. Among the crowd, he saw a woman and man both bent and gaunt with cracked skin and teeth chattered, gray hair and hands that shook. What are they Siddhartha asked? Sire, these creatures are like others who live into the twilight of their years. They are old. They were once children who grew to have strength and beauty: they married and raised families, and now are near the end of life. They suffer from the press of time that mars beauty, ruins vigor, kills pleasure, weakens memory and destroys the senses. They are a ruin of what they were. The prince asked “Will this also be my fate?” “My lord, no one who lives can escape this fate.”
Meeting old age, the prince encountered the first divine messenger---and his first glimpse of the truth. So began his journey to become the Buddha. After Siddhartha saw the frail old man and woman, he saw two more messengers, someone ill and someone dead.
But he also saw a wandering monk and imagined in an instant a life beyond suffering, a life of high purpose dedicated to spiritual awakening. His soul awakened and he longed for that life, to go beyond his own suffering and to liberate others.
Of course, most of us live in denial sheltered by loved, and overprotected surrounded with the delight of beauty music and love, and fall under a spell that shields us from the realities of human suffering old age sickness and death. The spell of youth leads us to feel immortal and to live as if life has no limits. Sheryl says that perhaps that is a miraculous gift to move us towards light bright joyful and positive pursuits while we have a state of wellness and curiosity to learn and live unimpeded by fear of almost anything that would quell our desire to experience life in all it’s glorious ways.
We can shift from role to soul. If we have been in denial about anything in our lives, the emergence of these divine messengers old age, illness death,—triggers a profound identity crisis in us. They are gods or archetypal forces that carry the power of shocking us out of the spell that has limited our full view of life death and who we really are beyond beliefs and societal training. They carry the power to awaken in us an awareness of the fragile nature of physical life and the fleeting quality of time and the end to come. Potentially, they awaken in us a profound yearning to shift priorities and turn our attention and energies away from the trivial and toward what is essential in life, away from distractions and toward inner life. The yearning may stir souls with a divine discontent with conventional life and a need for something more which Connie calls the “holy longing.”
Connie might want readers of The Inner Work of Age to take away with them after reading your book that life after 50 can feel like we’re in mid-air between trapezes, unable to let go of the past, or see future possibilities. My approach to late-life identity crisis requires turning within and using tools to break through the denial of internalized ageism, face our unconscious fears, attune to our soul’s longings, and explore meaning beyond doing. If we complete this rite of passage, shifting our identity beyond role we can release the heroic ego strivings and become who we truly are for the first time. With psychological and spiritual practices we can shift from Hero to Elder and role to soul
We thank Connie Zweig author of The Inner Work of Age for the most comprehension and complete way to understand aging and the journey from senior to elder and offering a means for people to see past the way society, or youth, views late life, to a spiritual sense that late life is the perfect time for the soul to finally assimilate the experiences of this life, become free of the fears and anguish of trauma ,depression, or sadness and fill their hearts, beyond right of wrong and the duality of spiritual or energetic life and physical life to the oneness of accepting themselves as both, the soul and physical being they are.
In summarizing today’s episode of Healing From Within we have come to see that the answers to problems that hide in the darkness, beneath the boundary of awareness in the invisible world can brought to the light of awareness in later life . Becoming a sage or elder requires going beyond the confines of childhood societal training, or the ego’s point of view which seeks the ego’s objectives to appear okay, look good, feel in control, and get things done. We have found that this identification with only our physical world, limits our growth beyond appearances, to one of maturity and soul identification. We find the ego’s goals are not the tasks of Late Life which require us to move our attention from the exterior world to the inner one, from the ego’s role in society to the soul’s deeper purpose.
Connie writes, “Every spiritual tradition teaches that the ego is a construct of the mind that serves us well in our midlife heyday but eclipses our deeper identity, whether that is called our Christ nature, Buddha nature, Atman, Self or spirit. I use the word soul to refer to this essence, the aspect of every human being that is not a small, separate entity, like ego, but connects us to the universal spiritual nature of everything…. Our identity or self-sense at any moment can be rooted in ego or rooted in soul. It’s not what we’re doing but how we’re doing –our state of mind—that makes the difference.”
There are three qualities of awareness like the three keys hiding in the dark:
Shadow awareness: portal to depth
Pure awareness: portal to silent vastness
Mortality awareness: portal to presence
As we move through the stages of Late Life we break through denial with shadow work activate the next stage of our soul’s development with a practice of open mindedness meditation and observation and maintain mortality awareness while being present and using our time well.
Connie and I well into our Late Life journey hope to be an elder having already found that life in any stage is a gift, and we are all on a spiritual path whether we know it or not, for we are all spiritual beings having a physical life in order to remember what is hidden deep within our heart and soul essence, that love compassion and hope for learning, loving, and living, is at the forefront to bringing heaven to earth, and enjoying life to the best of our human and soul being rather than merely wadding through the challenges.
Sheryl Glick RMT host of Healing From Within and author of A New Life Awaits Spirit Guided Insights to Support Global Awakening invites you to visit her website www.sherylglick.com to read and listen to leaders in the metaphysical scientific spiritual medical psychological legal educational and arts and music fields share their fascination and dedication to uncovering the mysteries of life in all aspects both phyiscal and spiritual. Shows may also be heard on www.webtalkradio.net and www.dreamvisons7radio.com
