06_16_2018

Spiritual Practice Plays a Vital Part in Aging Well

                One of the things I’m noticing as I’m engaging with how to age well is that I have an increasing interest in the role that an active spiritual practice plays in the process of aging well.  An interest in a spiritual practice isn’t new to me, but it seems to be calling for a more prominent role in my thinking.

Let me begin by clarifying that I use the term “spiritual” in its broadest, most inclusive sense.  I associate the term “spiritual” with the concept of “soul.”  Soul, according to Thomas Moore in his book, Care of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life, refers to “soul” in the following way:  “‘Soul’ is not a thing, but a quality or dimension of experiencing life and ourselves.  It has to do with depth, value, relatedness, heart, and personal substance.”  I very much like this definition because as it is stated, it is free from the constraints of any particular religious beliefs.  The term spiritual connotes something very different from religion for me.  Some people may indeed find that their religious faith or practices constitute their spiritual life and practices, but for me, my spiritual practices come from other sources.

I’m a big fan of Erik H. Erikson’s philosophy of the developmental stages that occur in our lives.  In essence his eight stages of development represent the major themes and tensions that we move through as we age and grow in life.  Beginning with birth, the stages include:

• Trust and Mistrust: Hope
• Autonomy and Shame/Doubt: Will
• Initiative and Guilt: Purpose
• Industry and Inferiority: Competence
• Identity and Identify Confusion: Fidelity
• Intimacy and Isolation: Love
• Generativity and Stagnation: Care
• Integrity and Despair: Hope

I discovered Erikson’s work in my early college years, and I found his thinking so much more positive and hopeful when compared to Freud’s work which in my understanding basically posits that our identities and fate are sealed at the point of conception if not earlier.

One of the most hopeful elements of Erikson’s approach to the human development process is that each time we move to a new phase of our development we are provided with opportunities to work through issues that were unresolved or unsatisfactorily formed in earlier stages of our lives. For example, if a child experiences a household where the adult models themselves are not emotionally healthy, the impact of this experience may make it difficult for that child as an adult to form relationships based on trust.  However, with some insights and interventions like therapy and the experience of positive relationships, the adult can rework his or her perceptions of relationships and form meaningful connections with others.   In short, Erikson’s model provides a pathway for healing and learning throughout one’s life.

Why are the learning and healing processes vitally important as we age?  Perhaps the most obvious and central answer has to do with our need as we age to deepen our understanding and acceptance of our lives in a manner that allows us to be grateful for the experience of life.  Erikson offers one explanation of a retroactive review of our lives as one that “reflects a lifelong process of reintegration and recasting, whereby events and circumstances that were once experienced as painful have, over the years, taken on new meanings as part of the whole life cycle.”  “Over the years traumatic events have been put in perspective.”

I think most adults if willing to have a conversation about looking back over one’s life will acknowledge that it isn’t always an easy process.  I find myself approaching my older years as an opportunity to not only continue to develop but also to compose my life’s narrative.   I can easily imagine that some readers might thing of the phrase “composing my life’s narrative” as synonymous with creating a fictional, sanitized version of one’s life.  That is not what I’m talking about.

Instead, I’m talking about spending time reflecting on different parts of my life in such a way that I gain a better understanding of how I became the person I am today, including looking at how my missteps and mistakes have helped me grow, become a more fully developed person, and live a more peaceful and rewarding life today.  Having a strong spiritual practice to accompany one on this journey is essential to stay on the path of gaining insights and understanding without falling into despair, blame, or a refusal to see where more growth and development is possible.

Meditation, particularly the practice of developing greater awareness, is serving as an essential tool for me on this journey.  I include other aspects of leading a balanced life as part of my spiritual practice.  Why take on this work is an appropriate question to ask oneself?  First, I say engage in the work because it provides insight, hope, and positive motivations to engage the more fully developed self in living the journey of life.  Our life journeys have provided us with infinite numbers of opportunities to learn and grow, and as we live in ways in which our lives reflect these hard-won insights and understandings, our examples may be beneficial for those who follow us. There are reasons why some cultures revere their elders – they accept that it is possible to learn and benefit from those who have lived longer than we have.

If you are looking for a more practical, down-to-earth reason for engaging in the work, let me offer you one explanation that is hard to ignore.  Whether you want to engage in the work or not, my guess is that we don’t control what our memories present us with or the feelings that accompany those memories.  Memories are like dandelions; they grow like weeds in our gardens, and they are remarkably resistant to efforts to eradicate them.  In other words, I think once we begin to accept that we have a finite number of years left in life, we can expect that we’ll encounter the prompts – like the death of a family member or friend – to revisit earlier life experiences.

No doubt I will continue to write about the importance of developing and enriching a companion spiritual practice as we engage on the journey of evolving and engaging in our later years.