33 Ways to Age Gracefully
A book review by M. David Bradshaw, Myideafactory.net
The Grace in Aging: Awaken as You Grow Older By Kathleen Dowling Singh WATCH VIDEO
Introduction
Today there’s a transformational movement gaining traction worldwide to reimagine the second half of life. The Grace in Aging challenges readers to embrace the aging process physically, emotionally and spiritually, rather than seeking to forever preserve their fleeting youth and midlife.
By embracing the ripening process we find the joy and peace of being content and present to what life brings each day. Rather than striving to achieve or maintain an illusory V.I.P. status, readers are encouraged to stop and ask: “What is really important to achieve during the rest of my life?”
Now, writes Kathleen, is the time to abandon the lifelong pursuit of ego-building upward mobility and instead begin to embrace ego-dismantling downward mobility, that is, to learn the grace of becoming nobody special.
As over 80 million Americans face this new world of being over sixty, Kathleen encourages us to focus on awakening to the magnificent opportunity this season of life offers to practice the presence of God in preparation for the challenges ahead of growing old and dying.
Speaking of dying, several years ago while my beloved mother was in the final stages of dementia, I read and reviewed Kathleen’s classic book, The Grace in Dying: A Message of Hope, Comfort and Spiritual Transformation.
This extraordinary book reveals Kathleen’s deep understanding of the nearing death experience as only a seasoned, spiritually-driven hospice nurse present for hundreds of life-death transitions could.
Readers are introduced to the largely unknown steps of the nearing death experience in which the ego-self is systematically dismantled on our deathbed — what she refers to as “enlightenment at gunpoint.”
From her perspective, “aging gracefully” is no accident. It requires taking intentional steps, just as becoming a true elder requires more than just getting old. The following are 33 points which helped me awaken after reading The Grace in Aging. I hope they will also speak to you.
1. Discussion of aging and dying too often have been neglected topics. However, mindful and intentional reflection and discussion can free us from the confinement of the self and separation from the sacred.
2. Being old is new for us, due to an extended midlife. It’s a new experience in history and can be difficult to recognize that our youth has ended. Adjusting to aging and our new place in the world takes time.
3. Spiritual practices can accelerate the awakening process now, rather than waiting until we are on our deathbed. She stresses the importance of learning to be present and explains the need to put on the “mind of Christ” and shed what Buddhist’s call the “mind of aversion”.
4. The process of aging allows us to ignore our earthly impermanence, due to its slow moving changes, in a way that active dying does not. The pattern of impermanence is universal. Hope springs eternal, yet as we age our future hope diminishes as we realize we have fewer days ahead of us than behind.
5. As we age, we are called to explore our hidden inner vistas, as well as outer vistas. Lightening our attachment to self now will help us get through the aging and dying process more gracefully.
6. Aging gracefully and mindfully requires our intention. Awakening practices can help some 80 million Americans 60+ to attain peace of mind as well has helping us to mentor our youngers.
7. Aging forces us to look at our shelf-life and our self-life. Who am I beyond the persona I have presented to the world?
8. What really matters at this point in my life? If we have thoughts and desires to ripen into spiritual maturity and a greater experience of the sacred, now is the time to pursue it, to grow up. “When I was a child I thought, and spoke as a child, but no longer.”
9. “I am of the nature of growing old, and there’s no escape. I am of the nature of ill health, and there’s no escape. I am of the nature to die, and there is no escape. All that I love will be separated, and there’s no escape.” -Thich Nhat Hanh
10. Most have had fleeting moments of selfless awareness, glimpses of formlessness and liberation. To embrace selflessness is to embrace freedom and the dance between form and formlessness.
11. To ripen into an elder is more than merely getting old. It requires realization that everything that can be lost will be lost. “Let’s be Resurrection! Life, not death has the last word.” -Matthew Fox. We must examine our attachments, none of which will last and that includes our bodies and relationships.
12. To awaken we begin by looking and truly seeing reality. As we age, we fear the loss of our control, appearance, health, mental ability or reputation and self image. The moment that changes, everything arrives unannounced.
13. Our suffering will be controlled by our willingness to accept reality. Aging, suffering and death are in fact treasures for those with understanding and wisdom.
14. Our life begins with endearing dependency as an infant, then moves to independence, interdependence as we mature, but can end in shame as we face the dependency of old age. This is the cycle of life.
15. The standards of success of mid-life are very different from older-life. Rather than upward mobility, we begin exploring downward mobility in the second half of life.
16. Learning how to let go while living saves us much difficulty and psychological anguish at death. Living with defendedness of our self, prevents us from loving fully. To contemplate aging and dying brings us to a new view of wisdom and an instant re-ordering of priorities.
17. Forgiveness: The real culprit behind unforgiveness is the mind of aversion — to our disappointment, frustration, irritation, anger, judging annoyance and hate.
18. Aversion arises from inappropriate attention, like the story of the Princess and the Pea. We set our self up for an impossible goal such as; life without death, meeting without parting, gain without loss, pleasure without pain. We resist reality, which traps us in suffering.
19. A mind unwilling to let go cannot enter the tender world of surrender and presence. By nature, we have a tendency to like being angry and having a target to direct our anger at, someone to blame.
20. It is wise to practice ridding our mind of aversion while we have time to gradually work on it, before we either systematically or suddenly lose our health, wealth, friends, family, or even our body.
21. It is wise to rid our self of unforgiveness long before the dying process demands it. Over time we have developed deep neuropathways of negativity against those who we feel have caused us anger, pain and upset. Many do not like to let go of grudges because they are the foundation of our stories. Our grudges keep us stuck in the past for all time, causing us to miss living in the now.
22. Anger and grudges are a spiritual survival pattern established as a protection of the self from external threats, but they are also obstructions to the awakened self.
23. The mind of aversion is a major distraction to our spiritual evolution which creates stress, lost days and lost years in family conflicts. The mind of anger also keeps centuries of international wars going on.
24. Meditation and spiritual practices can help dissolve the mind of aversion and release the mind from attachment to self. Beyond self is our real home — the ground of being. The boundary between self and reality is dissolved by an awakened mind, the illusion of duality dissolves.
25. Presence: Liberation from frivolity and other non-essentials. Most of us are rarely at home in the present, in the now and yet this is where we find the grace that we long for.
26. Most people spend the vast majority of their life trapped in frivolity, an illusion of what is essential, due to being stuck either in the past or worried about the future. Presence has no room for self. It requires practice and skill to focus attention on the present, but it is a key to the kingdom of God.
27. Regarding commitment to practice the presence of God, Brother Lawrence said he felt like he was holding a rope in a snowstorm to maintain his daily focus on imitating Christ.
28. “If we’ve faced the first death, the second death can do us no harm,” said Saint Francis. A radical opening of heart and mind occurs during the dying process, releasing all that has kept us closed in life.
29. To cultivate an open heart is immeasurably noble and rewarding — good for yourself and the world around you. Release the burden of being “someone.” Dissolve the illusory wall that divides us from one another and from the Divine. As Ram Dass said in “Becoming Nobody.”
30. The goal is to cultivate an undefended heart and an undefended mind. Imagine being able to in love everyone, everything and every circumstance. This ability for deepening compassion is found in every tradition. It is the imitation of Christ.
31. The Four Immeasurable Practices are; Love, Compassion, Joy, and Equanimity, which promote inclusivity and a pathway out of selfing in the Buddhist tradition.
32. Conduct a periodic, spiritual awakening inventory, which examines the areas that you have ripened as well as the areas that you’re still holding back. “By their fruit you shall know them.”
33. “If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I eat. Ask me what I am living for. Ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully.” -Thomas Merton.
Conclusion
I am grateful for the wisdom Kathleen so freely shares in this and her other books. She represents one of the foremost leaders in self-discovery and in the emerging inter-spiritual awakening movement which seeks to find points of agreement between spiritual traditions to help guide seekers further down their own path to spiritual enlightenment.
I also highly recommend her book, The Grace in Living: Recognize it, Trust it, Abide in it, which encourages spiritual sojourners to recognize, then write out our spiritual awakening biography that describes a progressive movement out of our small, false self and into “being” our “True Self”.
