09_30_2022

The Bone Gate: Claiming Our Authenticity, Character, and Wisdom

Continuing our journey of working our way through Angeles Arrien’s book, The Second Half of Life: Opening the Eight Gates of Wisdom, leads us to reflecting on the pearls of wisdom Arrien gifts us with in the Sixth Gate of Wisdom.  If, like me, you are a seeker exploring how to develop the most positive view of aging, I highly recommend reading this book.

I am in the process of launching a course on The Spiritual Dimensions of Aging within my local community, and I find myself continuing to include insights I gained from working my way through this book.

The Bone Gate reminds us that this is the time for us to acknowledge and own “the bones of who we are” — a metaphor for our authentic self.  Arrien writes that this Gate requires congruence among all aspects of our true self.  To achieve this goal, we need to assess if we are able to integrate the faces that we have uncovered in previous Gates: child, youth, adult, elder, and essence. 

I have referenced Erik Erikson’s Stages of Human Development in previous Blogs.  He identifies the  primary task at this later stage of life is one of forming an Integrated understanding of our lives.  The process of coming up with an integrated view of our lives requires that we have been able to see our lives through a lens of compassion.  When we spend time reflecting on the level of open-minded guidance and mentoring we experienced as children, we often come to recognize that we received many gifts as children.  At the same time, we are likely to gain clearer insights about areas that we’re never touched upon within our family units.

If we grew up in families in which feelings were never discussed, we may have experienced a deep learning curve as we sought to form meaningful relationships in our adult lives.  I believe that every relationship we have requires new learning since each individual is unique and brings his/her own needs to relationships. 

Likewise, if we missed the experience of being asked to voice our own opinions, we may have had to spend time coming to terms with our own likes and dislikes.  Once these preferences become clearer to us, we then have to learn appropriate ways to express our feelings.

My own experience of doing the work of Composing My Own Narrative — a deliberative process of examining a defined set of building blocks that leads to stating the themes in our lives — resulted in my having a much greater understanding of my life’s journey.  I was for the first time able to view my life as a whole.  More importantly, I felt comfortable in claiming all parts of my life.  Once we can name several central themes in our life, it is easier to view our lives as forming a pattern or tapestry.

This cumulative process of describing who we are lends itself to uncovering a vision of our true selves. With this understanding in place, we are in a better position to ponder the primary tasks at this Gate:

• How and why do we avoid being who we truly are?
• What gets in the way of trusting ourselves completely?
• Under what circumstances do we deceive ourselves?

I realized as I was contemplating the above questions why they are included in this book addressing the  areas of wisdom we need to acquire if we want to enjoy the later stages of our lives.

As we become more aware of our aging, the more we slowly start to comprehend that we have limited time left in our lives.  Coming to that realization leads me to not want to waste time being something I’m not.  “We know we are presenting our true selves when we can consistently “say what we mean, do what we say, and say what’s so when it’s so.”  This way of measuring how true to ourselves we’re being is aided by the three previous questions we can explore to find what gets in our way of being who we truly are.

In a recent discussion I had with others who are working our way through this book, we came up with the following responses to the three guiding questions:

• We don’t know how to respond to statements on the spot without hurting another person
• We don’t want to risk alienating others
• We don’t want to jeopardize our relationships with others
• We don’t fill equipped at a given moment to compose a suitable reply.

I think it is important to recognize that an important first step into answering the questions honestly occurs when we recognize what our honest answer is, but we stop short of sharing it because we can’t think of a gracious but honest way of replying.  For example, if I hear someone proposing a plan to do something that I think is not well thought out, and I haven’t been invited to provide input, I find myself remaining silent.  And  my reaction is heavily informed by my impression of the speaker’s usual way of going about things. 

If the speaker typically demonstrates sound thinking, I am more likely to say something like “I think you have some good points in your plan, but I’d like more time to come up with what is causing me concerns about what you’ve shared.”  If the speaker is someone who has demonstrated a pattern of doing things in a halfhearted way, I will most likely just stay silent.

I find it helpful to state my need for additional time to think about my response.

Another reason for us to practice being true to ourselves is informed by a quote from Brene Brown that I read recently.  “Because True belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.”

As we age, we may find that some of our closest friends or family members move away or die before us, and we are faced with the need to form new relationships.  If we want to feel like we “belong,” we need to follow Brown’s wisdom that we need to be comfortable with who we are so that we can share our true selves with others.