This is the Turning point – the Breakthrough at which one realizes he truly is an Elder. It is a time to enjoy the vibrancy of life, to stop worrying, and come to each day with joy at the gift of another day. Renewing and sharing our spirits and truth is the path to fulfillment. So the Elder at this stage should be given an opportunity to do his sharing in a more public way, with ceremony and praise. It is a time of coming out and acknowledgement of the “Community Elder.”
I have some passion around empowering myself and other Elders to “Grow up”. By this I mean mature into our full adult masculinity. I see a way that I believe this can happen. It involves a process of going back and “re-visiting” - as an adult - what happened in my lifetime and then doing two things out of that visit:
So, I envision that the Elder Journey must include a process of re-visiting and re-framing my “story” of what happened in my lifetime. My intention is that, in that process, I will find the courage and insight to use the wisdom harvested from my lifetime to more powerfully deal with my wounds as a mature adult.
Certainly, this is not the kind of shift that can take place over a single weekend or even a few months. Nevertheless, the spiritual and personal growth that I see will take place from this process is accelerated as the individual begins to take on and accept his “Elder Energy”.
A significant task of maturity is to acquire a sense of proportion – a realistic appraisal of who we are and of our relationship with the world. The gift of maturity is that it reconciles earlier dreams with current day reality.
How often have you felt the wish to be different than you are, feeling that need to be less noisy, less boisterous, less demanding, less trouble, less fat, less selfish, less wounded…., less [whatever]? Or have you struggled to be more perfect, more spiritual, more giving, more tolerant, more beautiful, more [whatever]? The truth is, your only need from inside yourself is to be you.
In those moments of critical self-judgment it is useful to be with the questions: "What is True?" "What do I feel?" "What do I Need?" "What brings me Peace?"
Allowing these questions to guide my day can bring a level of transformation I can barely fathom! Out of the practice of deep acceptance emerges a magnificent quality of life... a life in which union with all living beings is a reality in every moment. All possibilities are available for us to partake in, but it is necessary to gather our personal energy to the point that we can directly experience the choice available to us. In every moment there is the experience of separation and of union standing before us - both are true, both are absolutely real... It is a choice whether we focus our awareness on one or the other.
Our life is full of such paradoxes. The ability to have that choice comes through the process of surrendering to deeper and deeper levels of acceptance. For that choice, and for all the blessed people who have come into my life at the right time to nudge me, my heart is grateful beyond words.