In preparing this presentation, which has a Hindu/Yoga focus, I ended up poking about in a number of books about aging and spirituality. In deciding which works qualified as spiritual discussions of aging, I used Frederic and Mary Ann Brussats’s very broad definition of spirituality, “…any take on our experience that looks for meaning and purpose,” which they propose in their book: Spiritual Literacy: Reading the Sacred in Everyday Life. In my explorations, I listened to voices from the Catholic, Buddhist and Protestant traditions. I re-encountered the spiritual teacher, Ram Dass, (remember him?), who seems to represent an amalgam of Eastern practices. He introduced me to a wonderful woman, Florida Scott-Maxwell, a Jungian analyst, who in her 80s wrote generously and passionately about aging. (I discovered I even had the book, purchased long ago, and waiting for me to open it. Who knew?) By now I have a little library. The writings are journals, memoirs, and spiritual manuals, taking all sorts of topics and examining them through the focusing lens of conscious aging. They contain personal stories, provocative quotes from sages, and meditations. I know there are many other books and articles, novels, short stories, and poems out there that would speak to me. I’m not at the end of this pursuit by any means. Although there have been sobering moments, the work isn’t at all depressing. In fact, I’m fascinated, and feel that I’m learning and growing.
For a while I thought about summarizing some of these readings for you, but in the end I thought better of that approach. I did bring a number of books for you to look through, should you so choose. I decided to introduce the core of my talk by briefly telling my own recent story about retirement, before sharing the yogic conception of aging, which (through the generosity of a spiritual mentor) turned out to be so inspiring and comforting to me.
In mid-June of 2007 I retired as head of the middle and upper division library at Horace Mann, an esteemed independent school in New York City. By the end of July I had given up my apartment in Manhattan, where I had lived for forty years, and moved full time to my house in the country, 2.5 miles south of Pleasant Mount in Wayne County. Surely the hard parts were behind me. I knew (or thought I knew) just what to do. Apply my skills and talents in volunteer work, reassured one friend, a retired teacher. Be of use, counseled another. I had relished generous holidays and long vacations, enjoyed living in the country, and now I had all the time I had been craving.
And so, barely taking a deep breath, I began to volunteer for the Wayne County Arts Alliance and at WJFF. For two years I coordinated artists’ row at the Roots & Rhythm music and arts festival. I accepted an invitation to join the trustee board of the Pleasant Mount Public Library. There: I was useful. I joined a book group. I continued taking yoga classes. All that not being enough, apparently, I took up the classical guitar. I arranged for more and better care for my 94-year-old mother, and since she was living at home – in my home – I took on more personal responsibility for her needs.
And so my life moved on, but not as satisfyingly as I had thought. Although I was meeting people, friendships were harder to form. Slowly I began to recognize that the volunteer work felt superficial, and I missed my former deep engagement in my profession and career. The great land leasing grab by the natural gas drilling companies resulted in a deep and it would seem permanent rift between me and my land partners, one of whom had been my closest friend for over thirty years. My mother’s decline was sad and stressful; her needs were becoming beyond my ability to meet. I lost another close friend here. I was three and a half years into retirement, and I could no longer avoid the disappointments, feelings of emptiness, and emotional pain. In the recent eponymous film, the young Hugo says, “If you lose your purpose, it’s like you’re broken.”
Something had to change, and so started the slow process of realizing I had grossly underestimated the enormity of ending a long career, in which I had enjoyed success and respect. As a librarian, I had moved among school, public and academic settings, and held a sequence of administrative positions, which allowed me to accomplish some major projects, of which I was/am proud. I had left the stimulation of an intellectually lively educational environment and a cosmopolitan city I had loved and lived in for over half my life, and where most of my friends still lived. I’d moved to a rural and more insular area, where I really wasn’t known personally or professionally. My mother was my only immediate family, and my small support network had fallen apart. No wonder I couldn’t get my bearings. Now, I marvel. What was I thinking? What illusions and delusions had I constructed for myself? In looking at all this, I could finally see that in part I had replaced meaningful work by creating another schedule for myself, and that hadn’t been very satisfying in the end. I had to face my limitations as a caregiver for my mother, and that was wrenching emotionally.
[I want to pause here for a minute and ask you to contemplate your own experience with that border crossing from a younger self to an older one. We are of different ages and stages in our lives, and have different backgrounds, so that exercise will mean something different to each of us. Some of us are parenting; some are in full or modified career mode. Several in this group are artists, for whom the concept of retirement seems ludicrous. Some of us have been retired for shorter or longer periods of time and have found satisfaction in new pursuits and community service. Are there similarities in the major cycles of our lives? Were there misconceptions to be addressed? Were there surprises – welcome or not? Do we want advice or role models? Can some of us be those role models?]
As I read and reflected, withdrew from most of my activities, and struggled to realign myself, I followed an emerging yearning, actively exploring Buddhism and Kashmir Shavism, and last spring joining the UU Fellowship here. By the fall of 2011 I had been seeking a meaningful spiritual life for well over a year. And that development had surprised me. I had been raised a Methodist, but had abandoned religious observation throughout my adult years. Now I was attuned, and that was when I read Deborah Willoughby’s article “Enlightened Aging: Baby Boomers as Forest Dwellers,” in the fall 2011 issue of Yoga International, published by the Himalayan Institute. Shortly thereafter, I attended a program at the Institute, Yoga for 50+, for which the author was one of three presenters.
Deborah, who has given me permission to share her article with you, is the founding editor of Yoga International. She also was the president of the Himalayan Institute. In her article she describes her professional life and her administrative role at the Institute, where she had lived for the past 14 years. Being an active participant in this dynamic spiritual community, she knew intellectually about the Hindu/Yoga conception of life’s stages. She also knew about the concept of abhinivesha, “the ingrained desire for continuity,” which functions as a form of inertia, having the effect of propelling us in the direction we have been going. She was about to find out how this was to play out in her own life.
Deborah, who was 56 at the time, shares her state of mind and health, noting that she was aware that her spiritual practices had become anemic and that she had been feeling more tired. Seeking counsel from Pandit Rajmani Tigunait, spiritual head of the Institute and her personal spiritual advisor, he told her, as he had done before, that she needed to step back, to decrease her responsibilities, and to find a new editor for the magazine. In fact, he said, “You are misdirecting your attention. You’re constantly telling yourself, ‘This is what is real. These administrative problems are real. Producing a magazine is my purpose in life.’ Your endless focus on these externals drowns out the subtle dimension. It’s time for your focus to shift and your awareness to expand, but you’re resisting.” But continue to persist she did, working even harder, supervising a redesign of the magazine.
Until -- one day a hole opened in her retina. Following laser surgery, a larger hole opened, and her eye had to be reconstructed. Recovery involved lying facedown for three weeks. What did she do after that? She went back to work! And then the retina detached three more times, and incredibly she went back to work after each fix. After the fourth detachment, she writes that she “…was so depleted [she] could barely walk across our tiny living room. The entire ordeal – from the first sign of trouble to total collapse – took three months.” And that is how she finally began “the internal shift to the forest-dweller stage.”
What is the forest-dweller stage? In the Hindu/Yoga tradition “we play four distinct roles as the drama of life unfolds: student, householder, forest dweller, and renunciate.” In the West, we know the first two roles well, the householder one involving “earning a living, raising a family, and doing our civic duty. But here the resemblance ends. In our modern script, the third act – retirement – defines us in terms of what we’ve left behind instead of what lies ahead. Up through our late 50s and into our 60s, our energy has been mainly focused on tangible achievements: earning a degree, building a career, raising children, acquiring property, perhaps making a name for ourselves. Now, as these familiar identities and activities fall away, we find ourselves without a clear, purposeful direction.
In the script written by the yoga tradition the direction is clear. The student and householder phases of life are a prelude to the ultimate achievement – freeing our attention from outward preoccupations and bringing it to rest at the core of our being. Here, in the third stage of life, we have the privilege of stepping away from the external identities that so easily become all consuming….We have enough experience to realize that name, fame, possessions, and power will never be a source of lasting fulfillment, and as this realization dawns, our attention shifts from what changes to what endures, pulling our focus inward.
In the traditional culture that gave rise to yoga this was called the forest-dweller stage, not because people literally retreated to the woods (although some did), but because, recognizing the transient nature of external achievements, they withdrew from these pursuits to strengthen their connection with the deeper dimensions of their own being. Theirs was a civilization – stretching back beyond 2000 BCE – deeply immersed in the natural world. The full span of life was 100 years. Read the latest studies on the lifestyle that promotes longevity and you’ll understand why. They ate a plant-centered diet of locally grown organic foods. They walked everywhere. Their households were multi-generational and their communities were woven together in a robust web of interdependence. But above all, they had a vibrant sense of the meaning and purpose of life.
They knew that at our core we are immortal, forever untouched by decay, destruction, and death. They valued the body, sense, and mind, but viewed them in the aggregate as a vehicle for making the journey of life. They did not confuse their core being with this vehicle any more than we confuse ourselves with our cars. Like a car, the body is well engineered for a long journey. And the purpose of this journey is not to accumulate possessions or experiences or power or fame, but to gather the tools and means to promote awareness of the luminous field of conscious energy that is the core of our being. They knew that to die without having accomplished this purpose is the greatest loss. And they saw that by the time we have reached the third stage of life, we have all the tools and means necessary to accomplish this goal. When we use these years of choice and opportunity to deepen our awareness of the inner world, the third stage merges into the fourth, climactic stage – spontaneous renunciation of the transitory for an all-encompassing engagement with the eternal.”
In reflecting on her own experience, Deborah Willoughby “…began to see why abhinivesha is so seductive. Our sense of self-identity coalesces around what we know how to be, and we want to go on and on being that familiar self. We know how to be outsiders – how to get things done in the material world – but we don’t know how, as Swami Rama [the founder of the Himalayan Institute] put it, to ‘seek within and find within.’ I knew how to put a quality magazine together and I derived satisfaction from doing it, but I didn’t know how to discover the core of my being or how to derive satisfaction from my attempts to awaken an inner awareness.”
This seminal event in Deborah’s life occurred five years ago. She concludes her article with remarks about the gradual process of slowing down and refocusing her physical vision, now being essentially blind in one eye. As she attended to her spiritual practices with more of a one-pointed concentration, their meaning deepened for her. Although she still works for the Himalayan Institute and sometimes long hours, “the difference,” she says, “is that now … my focus is on weaving an ever-deepening inner awareness.” Quoting from one of Pandit Tigunait’s lectures, he said, “Old age has no power over us when we are accompanied by faith that we have something precious to experience and achieve in this lifetime. This faith sparks a burning desire to know the true nature of the invisible force that lies at the core of our being, and when it wells up, nothing – not the lack of worldly resources, a limited knowledge of philosophy, the absence of a living guide, or even old age – can stand in the way of our inner fulfillment.”
Deborah’s candor and story of spiritual integration were so important for me, giving me a kind of infusion of courage. They helped me accept with more equanimity that I had failed to see the appropriate path when I first set out post-retirement – why clinging to who I had been was and still can be so strong and so human. Furthermore, Yoga for 50+, that joyful program I attended last fall, helped me appreciate that I had indeed been given a precious opportunity for study, contemplation, and personal growth in these forest-dweller years. Whatever I set out to do now is informed by a changed perspective and a sturdier core. I find myself more respectful of my marked introverted nature. I understand better my restlessness and frustration, when I miss the second life stage of my identity as a librarian. Now I’m working more consciously on finding my own balance between going inward and extending outward. Moreover, I feel sustained by new friends and a community here of wise and giving, creative and inspirational friends, who support each other, as we seek meaning in our lives and extend our compassionate reach.
Additional Reading List
