Angeles Arrien: The Challenge

Today is my 66th birthday. As I have shared with my husband and others, I don't feel a day over 56. Yet, here I am now approaching 70. Wow. With this awareness, I need to affirm my commitment to growing into my elder years with intention, purpose, and ever expanding consciousness, kindness, connection, and love. I'm also aware of this deep gratitude for all the teachers, healers, visionaries, and warriors for peace, justice, compassion and love who have graced my life and illuminated a path of embracing each of our life stages as significant and vital and ripe with opportunity. However, what we often see in American culture is a disappearing, denying, and disregard for the wisdom of our elders. Is it any wonder that our planet is in the midst of a sixth major extinction? It is any wonder that there is such a proliferation of Alzheimer's? I believe that there is a connection between memory loss and living our lives in the shadows rather than with wholeheartedness. It is also my experience that the many faces of violence in the world, our nation, and in our own hearts is, in part, directly linked to the loss of the wisdom of our elders and the deep listening and courage and compassion that is needed from each and every one of us. And this speaks to the great importance, I believe, of recognizing the truth of what my teacher Michael Meade has spoken to many times over the years: "A culture that disrespects its youth and ignores its elders is in deep trouble." We are needed, those of us who are growing older. Which brings to mind another quote from Michael Meade, the essence of which is that everyone grows into an "older" but not everyone grows into an Elder. Ours is a culture that is Elder starved. This speaks to the choices we have individually and collectively as we grow on in years - will we be more of an older or an Elder? It is my belief that the path of ignoring our gifts and what we have to bring to this precious life and this beautiful world we share is great. Of equal measure are the gifts of deepening into our capacity to be our authentic selves with eyes and hearts more open with each passing year. As long as there is breath in our bodies, there is more awakening to be embraced. Another one of my many teachers, Angeles Arrien, speaks with wisdom to this journey we are all on.

Bless us all - Molly

 To be young and vital is nothing. To be old and vital is sorcery.

- Carlos Casteneda

In The Wheel of Time, Carlos Casteneda said, "To be young and vital is nothing. To be old and vital is sorcery." How do we vigilantly sustain and conserve our vitality as we grow older? The Rustic Gate challenges us to learn to access our natural generative energy. Stagnation, despair, boredom, loneliness, or indifference may signal that our generative energy is blocked. These experiences are referred to as acedia, from the Greek word a-kedos, "not caring" or sour. The Chinese written word for "boredom" consists of two characters, one for heart, and the other for killing. Boredom and apathy kill the human heart, and open the door to acedia. Thomas Aquinas defined acedia as the lack of energy to look at new things, and Hildegard von Bingen recognized the impact of acedia when she talked about the soul being weakened by coldness, indifference, and neglect. When asked about his approach to life in Seasons of the Heart, Vaclav Havel, former president of the Czech Republic, said, "I am not an optimist, because I am not sure that everything ends well. Nor am I a pessimist because I am not sure everything ends badly. I just carry hope in my heart." Joy, hope, and possibility banish acedia and fuel generativity.

Matthew Fox made an important contribution to identifying the Deadly Sins of our time in his book Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh, which reveals the major barriers to creativity. He says that many are extensions or aspects of acedia: lack of passion, dissipation of energy, misdirected love, and self-imposed isolation.

Erik Erickson, in his developmental model of human nature (summarized below), notes that the later years require cultivation and expression of generativity and integrity, or the opposite states of stagnation and despair will manifest. Erickson examines these states from the perspectives of involvement, relationships, mental attitudes, physical image, and vocations --

Adult/Maturity Characteristics

Involvement

Generativity/Integrity:
Energy, Motivation, Mental growth, Other absorbed, Establishment of the next generation through altruistic and creative acts aligned with meaning and integrity
Stagnation/Despair:
Boredom, Mental Decline, Self-absorbed, Narcissist self-indulgence

Relationships

Generativity/Integrity:
Growing, Selfless, Giving, Involved in the life of the community
Stagnation/Despair:
Deterioring, Selfish, Taking

Mind

Generativity/Integrity:
Open, Flexible, Growing, Creative
Stagnation/Despair:
Closed, Rigid, Stuck

Physical

Generativity/Integrity:
Realistic body image, Balance
Stagnation/Despair:
Unrealistic body image, Imbalance

Vocation

Generativity/Integrity:
Sense of being needed, Ongoing sense of exploration and discovery, Daily contribution to life and others, Generativity, Character development
Stagnation/Despair:
Disillusionment, Boredom, No sense of contribution to others, Stagnation, Loss of memory

The Four Rivers

Many traditional societies believe that the Four Rivers of Life - Inspiration, Challenge, Surprise, and Love - sustain and support them, and connect them to great gifts. They also believe that if they fail to stay connected to these rivers, they succumb to "walking the procession of the living dead" and begin to experience soul loss, depression, stagnation, or other manifestations of acedia.

The River of Inspiration reveals where we are in touch with our creative fire and our life dream. Any time that we experience expansive or hope, or feel uplifted, we are in presence of creativity. As log as we can still be inspired, we know we are alive, refusing to join the procession of the living dead.

The River of Challenge calls us to stretch and grow beyond what is knowable or familiar. We notice who or what is asking us to leave our comfort zones and explore uncharted creative areas or interests. This river always asks us to move past any fixed notion of what we can do. If we are willing to be challenged, to become explorers again, acedia cannot come into our lives.

The River of Surprise keeps us fluid and flexible, and requires us to open to options and possibilities that we may not have considered. The Intuits have a saying about it: "There are two plans for every day - my plan and the Mystery's plan." This river reveals where we have become rigid or controlling rather than curious, flexible, and ready to trust what emerges for our consideration. The River of Surprise shows us where our attachments repress the natural flow of creativity and generosity.

The River of Love shows us where we are touched and moved by life's experience. If we are not, especially in our work, we know acedia is present and our heart has begun to close. Humor, joy, laughter and love are considered medicines for the heart by some indigenous peoples. This river indicates that the work and service that we love can make us happy. Kahlil Gibran reminds us of the value of service: "Work is love made visible."

How will we use our generative energies and stay connected to the Four Rivers of Life? This is the challenge of the Rustic Gate.

- Angeles Arrien

Excerpted from The Second Half of Life:

Opening the Eight Gates of Wisdom

Vaclav Havel: Truth and Love Overcome Lies and Hatred

 Human rights are universal and indivisible. 

Human freedom is also indivisible: 

if it is denied to anyone in the world, 

it is therefore denied, indirectly, to all people. 

This is why we cannot remain silent in the face 

of evil or violence; silence merely encourages them.

 

Nothing is more powerful than individuals 

acting out of their own conscience.

 

 Truth and love will overcome lies and hatred.

 

- Vaclav Havel

 

Francis of Assisi: Make Me an Instrument of Thy Peace

Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace. 

Where there is hatred, let me sow love, 

Where there is injury, pardon; 

Where there is doubt, faith; 

Where there is despair, hope; 

Where there is darkness, light; 

And where there is sadness, joy. 

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much 

seek to be consoled as to console, 

to be understood as to understand, 

to be loved, as to love.

 

- Francis of Assisi

 

Thomas Aquinas: The Things That We Love

The things that we love 

tell us what we are.

 

- Thomas Aquinas 

Hildegard of Bingen: If We Fall In Love With Creation

We shall awaken from our dullness and rise 

vigorously toward justice. If we fall in love with 

creation deeper and deeper, we will respond 

to its endangerment with passion.

 

- Hildegard of Bingen

 

Angeles Arrien: Walking the Mystical Path With Practical Feet

For you, Matthew... 
Synchronicity brought me once again to this great teaching from Angeles Arrien that I first read and began to absorb and practice many, many years ago. Tonight I read these words again after spending some time with my youngest son earlier this evening. At one point, and after describing the book he had just started and the ones he had just read - Daring Greatly by Brené Brown and Taking the Leap by Pema Chödrön -, Matt motioned to his bookcase lined with yet to be read books (admittedly a few of which he got from me) and said "these are going to change my life." So true. Of course, I also had to reflect back that they already were. At just two weeks away from turning 30, Matt is rooted into a radical full-blown spiritual awakening. I am filled with awe and wonder and gratitude as I witness my young son experiencing a profound transformation. I am simply blown away!! I also flash back to the many teachers I have had over the more than 30 years of my own more gradual awakening. And I am again filled with gratitude. And humility - no one does this perfectly. Transforming our lives and becoming wholly who we are is a lifelong courageous and extraordinary journey. And it has certainly been my experience that God/Goddess/Spirit/Great Mystery - or whatever name we give to the One - does indeed work through others, including teachers and visionaries such as Angeles Arrien, whose wise work and heart and soulfulness shine the bright light we need to remember what we have forgotten and open to the wisdom and love that will not die and which never ceases to call to us to wake up, wake up, wake up! Spring is here...

With love and blessings ~ 
Molly-Mom

 Life Keeps Calling to Us to Open the Arms of Love

and Bring Our Healing Medicine to the World

In many indigenous cultures, you can find some variation on the following rules, which are intended to make living a life very simple. The first rule is, Show up. Choose to be present to life. Choosing to be present is the skill of the warrior archetype, an old fashioned term for leadership abilities. The warrior in us chooses to be present to life.

Once we show up, we can go on with rule number two, which is, Pay attention to what has heart and meaning. This rule is associated with the archetype of the healer, the one who recognizes that love is the greatest healing power in the world. When we pay attention to what has heart and meaning, we are opening the arms of love.

When we show up and pay attention to what has heart and meaning, then we can follow the third rule: Tell the truth without blame or judgment. This is the path of the visionary, the one who can give voice to what is so. Telling the truth without blame or judgment is not necessarily being "polite," but the truth teller does consider timing and context as well as delivery. Truth telling collapses our patterns of denial and indulgence, keeps us authentic.

When we are able to tell the truth, we can go to the fourth rule: Be open to outcome, but not attached to it. This is associated with the archetype of the teacher, who trusts in the unexpected and is able to be detached. Often, in the West, we define "detachment" as "not caring," but detachment is really the capacity to care deeply but objectively. If you've taken the other three steps, then the fourth rule should come naturally, if not always easily: if you have shown up, paid attention to what has heart and meaning, and told the truth without blame or judgment, then it should follow naturally that you can be open, but not attached, to outcome.

None of this is necessarily easy to do. But one of the great joys of soul work is that whether or not we are able to be fully present to life, like keeps calling to us. No one is immune to the pull of the natural cycles of the universe: no one is immune to love. And because it requires just as much energy, if not more, to stay out of life as it does to be fully engaged in it, why not be engaged? Octavio Paz, a Latin American poet and Nobel Prize winner, realized that when he was in his forties just how much of himself he had spent staying away from the deep currents of his life. He wrote this prose poem describing that experience and describing, too, the persistence of the world in spite of it all:

XII    After
     After chopping off all the arms that reached out to me; after boarding up all the windows and doors; after filling all the pits with poisoned water; after building my house on the rock of a No inaccessible to flattery and fear; after cutting my tongue and eating it; after hurling handfuls of silence and monosyllables of scorn at my loves; after forgetting my name and the name of my birthplace and the name of my race; after judging myself and sentencing myself to perpetual waiting and perpetual loneliness, I heard against the stories of my dungeon of syllogisms the humid, tender, insistent onset of spring.

No matter how we try, soul calls out to us. We may have become so injured in our instincts, so wounded in our souls, that our demons threaten to overwhelm us, that we cannot quite hear the call of spring. But spring calls to us anyway. The center of our soul work is ensuring that the good, true, and beautiful in our nature is at least as strong as the demons and the monsters: put another way, it is ensuring that my self worth is at least as strong as my self critic. That issue is central to all of the indigenous peoples I have studied. If I am living in a way that feeds the good, true, and beautiful in my nature - as opposed to feeding the self critic - then I can heal myself. If I can stay in touch with my own deep source, my soul. And I can also be a healing agent in my family, my community, my nation, and the world.

I said before that the basis of soul work is really to eliminate everything that gets in the way of my being myself and to feed that which encourages me to be myself. I want to suggest a simple exercise - two simple questions - to help you track that. Each morning, before you step out into the world, ask yourself, "Is my self worth as strong as my self-critic?" Be sure that you can say yes before you go out the door. Then, using your name, say, "Jim, are you Jim" or "Sally, are you Sally?" and be sure that you can say yes to that, too, before you go out into the world.

All of us carry, within ourselves, an original healing medicine that is not duplicated anywhere else on earth. If we say yes to those two questions every day, then we can bring our medicine fully into the world. We can, as the woman at the bus stop did, move out of reactivity into creativity. When we live soulfully, each of us can be a shape shifter: each of us can be fully engaged , moment to moment, in the great gift called life.

- Angeles Arrien

Excerpted from a chapter in Nourishing the Soul:

Discovering the Sacred In Everyday Life

- with writings from several teachers, healers, and visionaries -

This can also be found in Angeles Arrien's book The Four Fold Way:

Walking the Paths of the Warrior, Teacher, Healer, and Visionary