Growing Old: The Inner Work

Fifteen years ago I was 55 and I was drawn to begin some of the inner work of aging. I didn't think of myself as old then. In fact the idea of being old scared me terribly. I knew I was unprepared for it. It occurred to me that I should begin some kind of investigation that might increase my self understanding. So I started an archeological excavation into the beliefs, patterns, conflicts, aspirations and dreams that have formed my memories and my ideas of myself.

I didn't know it then, but I had begun one of the tasks of aging--life review, part of which is seeking the meaning of one's life. The artifacts I've unearthed in my digging have borne quite a bit of scrutiny and reflection over the years. I've traveled through a lot of difficult territories. I'm sure you have your own versions of these places in your heart and soul and you know as well as I do that some rivers can be rather difficult to ford, some shadows hard to face and befriend. I've found that this work has been full of healing; it's led to the softening of long-tied knots, with the help of the waters of empathy, forgiveness and compassion. Life review is a practice that continues to be full of blessings, insight and surrender. I'm a believer.

According to Carl Jung there are 7 tasks of aging:

1. Facing the reality of aging and dying
2. Life review
3. Defining life realistically
4. Letting go of the ego
5. Finding new rooting in the Self
6. Determining the meaning of one’s life
7. Rebirth – dying with life

As you can see, these are serious pieces of earthly business. Letting go of the ego, for instance. Not exactly a Bingo level activity, though I'm sure it could happen playing Bingo, especially if you'd done some prep work.

Defining life realistically--what does this mean to you? I read it as the task of adjusting to the current situation of one's body and mind, which may be different from what it was at 25 or 45. Facing the reality of aging and dying, now that is something much denied in our society where so many people continue to try to pass for young into old age and live in denial that they will ever die.

To me finding new rooting in the Self means going deeper, spending more time in contemplation and reflection. I have to confess that I've never really understood the phrase "dying with life" described in the 7th task. Maybe I am just not old enough yet.

I had a visit with a good friend last summer. She is a keenly intelligent, very spiritual woman who now resides in an assisted living residence because of neurological difficulties. She describes aging as "an exercise in letting go and accepting."


"It's moving into a different state of being," she tells me, "shifting the focus from the outer world, releasing the worldly cuccoon, just unzipping and stepping out. It's very liberating, coming to some level of essence and finding contentment with what is."

My conversations with her remind me that the tasks of later life are quite spiritual in nature. Even if a person continues to be active and engaged in the world, there's a natural turning within as one ages. Unless of course, one remains infatuated with activity as an end in itself which seems to be such an obsession in the modern world. Then one can miss out on the harvest opportunity that the later years provide.

In his book Nature and the Human Soul, Bill Plotkin comments "True adulthood, or psychological maturity, has become an uncommon achievement in Western or Westernized societies, and genuine elderhood nearly nonexistent." Plotkin describes our society as pathologically adolescent, divorced from nature and soul. To Plotkin, real maturity is not based on chronological age; he defines maturity as living in a profound, ecologically aware interconnectedness with nature.

Living a long time is a blessing, and those who live a long life and also enrich the world with their wisdom, patience and balance bring an even deeper blessing. Maturation takes inner work. Inner work requires spending time in reflection, contemplation, healing, meditation and prayer. Quiet time. Slow time. Time in Nature. Which our society, so obsessed with production and materialism, both longs for and disdains.

In her book Slow is Beautiful Cecile Andrews describes how slowing down and living simply encourages community and individual happiness. That sounds and feels just about right to me.

I like to imagine/visualize/feel a society filled with elders who are slow and deep as beautiful old rivers, slow and rooted as beautiful old forests, elders who are deep, loving, firm, wise and fierce when need be. Sending blessings on your head and heart. May your inner and outer works flourish.

Landscapes of the Inner Life

Music pours out, as if I was born to it, or it was born of me through dimensions, layers, lifetimes. I am searching through dreams, thoughts and memories for the words and soundlines to bring this story through. Long ago, before any maps were made, there were people who found their way across vast oceans, sensing and imagining their way over distances where none of their known ancestors had ever gone before. Of course, the ancient people used their ordinary senses, looking out across the endless water, feeling its currents, the movement of winds and the play of weather, day after day, month after month. Physically traversing those distances, with all the rigors of the body and the elements, they also believed themselves into the space, bringing the other shore to them magnetically. Way-Finding they called it.



We each have our own Way Finding. My own predilections always draw me back to the white marble room, an immense lustrous chamber with high vaulted ceilings and tall arched windows. It is a dear, familiar place, a refuge from the rush of the modern world. I have spent many days and nights there, reading, feeling the sun on my face, looking out at the stars and moon.

Sometimes I wish that I were still living in a time when we could bury ourselves in solitude, when the pursuit of wisdom and knowledge and the work of the soul’s metamorphosis had at least as much collective import as did outer successes. I yearn for that amidst the depredations of the current era. Inwardly, I yearn for leisure, spaciousness, and grace. Outwardly, I yearn for great forests, glens, prairies and all the undiminished richness and variety of Nature to sing out in ecstatic splendor, drowning the sounds of machines, drowning not only their sounds, but their imprint on our lives, our enslavement to them.


In this marble wonderful room there is a globe that stands on a long wooden table. Aside from the table and two chairs, the room is very empty. But it has a sense of space, light, and depth that never fails to refresh and renew me. Texts with gem-like illustrations, their pages edged with gold, fill one wall of the room. The instruments and substances of alchemy are also set out on the wooden table. In that room, I am the woman whose forehead shines with light. I am my own beacon.

My house has many other rooms. From the beautiful white marble room, a heavy wooden door opens out to a narrow hallway. I must take the lantern with me. The hallway winds and turns, its stairs descending deep into the earth. The air here is old and dry. I remember the first time I went down these stairs with this same lantern, arriving at a doorway covered with heavy, deep red brocade cloth. I gently pulled the cloth aside and looked into the room that appeared before me. It was not more than ten feet by twelve feet large, illuminated by votive candles set on a ledge that ran along its walls. Its ceiling was low, its dark walls were hewn from black rock. Three icons hung on the walls-- one of Jesus, one of the Black Madonna, and one of St. Michael. In the candlelight, their golden halos blazed out from the dark backgrounds of the paintings.

I saw all this instantaneously, the way the mind's eye takes things in. At the same time, I saw an ornate, jewel-encrusted coffin in which lay an old King, strong and undecayed. His deep red robe was embroidered with flowers sewn of golden threads. His beautiful golden crown was set with rubies and emeralds. It took me many months to bring back the memory of the Queen who lay beside him like a still flower. She had a perfume, not of death, but of the ineffable.

The sheer wonder of the place drew me in. I was thirsty for the things that showed themselves to me there, though I cannot now put words together to explain what they were, nor would I wish to. I hope you do not want me to explain the subterranean chamber or the marble room. Every definition I fix on them confines their numinous resonance. I do not wish to flatten or inflate them. Let them be just as they are. Let them remain or fade away as they will.

Of course I have a Tower. To my mind, no house is well done without a Tower reaching out to meet the sky. This is a story of my house and my journey. Of course that makes me fall over laughing. Why? Because as Lorca once said in a poem, “My house is not my house, and I am no longer I.” It is not real or solid, none of it. It has no substance. I have no substance. The whole thing is dreamlike, as much a dream as the splendid and transformative marble room to which I return again and again.

As I approach my seventh decade, I return to these landscapes of my inner life and those that comprise my outer story and I reflect on their patterns, meaning and luminous, empty nature. Even when I am washing the dishes in my kitchen part of me lives in these mythically resonant rooms of dream and imagination, in the woods and fields, the white marble room, the Tower. Even when I am deeply immersed in my inner life experience, everyday activities draw me to them, reminding me that they too also have an unpredictable, mysterious depth. In the midst of family and friends, with the appearance of both invited and unexpected guests, the mythic drama of the present moment spills forth. Decade after decade, treasure accumulates.