Dr. Toni

Ten Practical Guidelines for Conscious Aging

Posted on by Dr. Toni
POSTED ON  BY CYNTHIA BOURGEAULT

As the humiliating debate around whether Joe Biden has “aged out” of the presidency continues to play front and center on the American political scene, it becomes more and more clear that America is basically repelled by the aging process and largely clueless about the deeper spiritual possibilities that may lie coiled within it.

The teachings unveiling these possibilities still abound in the world’s wisdom teachings, where the term “conscious aging” is not simply a polite euphemism but an active pathway of spiritual metamorphosis: in a sense, the capstone project of an entire life’s journey.

What does it mean to age consciously? What might it mean for Joe Biden? For each one of us? In putting together these preliminary guidelines, I am drawing deeply on Helen Luke’s iconic book Old Age and Ladislaus Boros’ The Mystery of Death, two modern spiritual classics that have collectively laid the foundation for my own understanding. I am also drawing on a bit of my own work-in-progress as what once seemed far off now becomes the intimate landscape of my day-to-day life.

TEN PRACTICAL GUIDELINES FOR CONSCIOUS AGING

1. Honestly accept the journey into physical diminishment as the new learning curve in your life and embrace it with curiosity and beginner’s mind. Keep facing forward with a gently yielded heart; that is always the direction from which the new integration emerges.

2. Monitor and intelligently manage your changing physical circumstances. Don’t push beyond the limits of what you can responsibly sustain—not routinely, anyway, and above all, not to “prove you can still do it” through some heroic overexertion. Binge exertion becomes increasingly costly as you age.

3. Maintain your physical body in good work working order. Fix what’s broken and easily repairable, but don’t waste vital being energy trying to reverse the aging process itself. Become familiar with your new rhythms of replenishment and resilience.

4. Be as self-aware as you possibly can, keeping a particularly watchful eye on habitual or deeply engrained self-images and personal mythologies that no longer correspond to your present season of life and that can all too easily put you at risk.

5. Watch what happens when you try to draw energy from an outmoded image of yourself. Note how there’s a certain compulsive or “forcing the fit” quality to the will itself, combined with an overall narrowing of the spaciousness and freedom of your awareness. You get an immediate rush of “Ah, I’m my old self again!!” But that is exactly who you do not want to be. Your old self is the sacrificial lamb you will lay upon the altar of your deeper becoming.

6. Pay close attention to what people are mirroring back to you, noting any obvious discrepancies between how you think you’re handling yourself and the responses you’re receiving. Notice in particular when people seem to be taking up the slack for you, or when your willful self-positing becomes increasingly high-maintenance or stressful for others; inquire directly and adjust accordingly.

7. Be alert to new traits or features emerging in yourself, perhaps previously unexplored: new qualities of being, new interests, new facets of your selfhood that you may have previously underplayed. Be curious about them; give them space to grow. There is plenty of newness still percolating within you; you simply have to look for it in slightly different places.

8. Do not confuse physical vitality or “youthfulness” with being-vitality, which comes from deeper inside you and is entirely the fruit of your inner work. Being-vitality will shine out through even a shattered container.

9. Remember that you have not only an outer body, but an inner body as well: your kesdjan or second body. Through certain types of spiritual practice (for me, the Gurdjieff exercises; for others, embodiment practice such as yoga and and tai chi), you can begin to touch it directly and sense its subtle flow as the life within your life. This is the more subtle current that Boros calls “the rising curve of being;” it will ultimately carry you through the birth canal of death and deposit you in your fully attained kesdjan selfhood. Become familiar with this inner body; ride it; trust it.

10. Throughout all of life’s passages the same instructions hold: “THE ONLY WAY OUT IS THROUGH.” Honesty, openness, and gentle acceptance (a.k.a., “surrender”) create spiritual suppleness, the true mark of being-vitality. Insistence, clinging, contraction, and willfulness create spiritual sclerosis, the infallible mark of being-malaise at whatever season of life you find yourself in.

— Cynthia Bourgeault
baby Wisdom Elder

This blog originally appeared on CynthiaBourgeault.org. If you wish to leave a comment, go to this blog post on Cynthia Bourgeault.org

Shadow Work

Posted on by Dr. Toni

Is Your Shadow Showing? Face It, Embrace It, Integrate It!
The Quantum Living Training weaves together the latest research emerging from neurobiology, developmental psychology, and quantum science with the wisdom of the world’s mystical traditions to offer a powerful path to personal evolution. Quantum Living “aware-apy” exercises and techniques are designed to reduce anxiety, foster a raised degree of self-awareness, and emotional resiliency, as well as embodying positive change. Liberated from life-constricting patterns and ineffective reactions, we are free to express our whole and sacred divine presence, live from our most noble self, and serve as we are called.

The primary aim of The Quantum Living Process™ Training is to equip participants to use the self-directed 21-day Quantum Living Process, to explore triggering or challenging moments to awaken to unconscious cultural/social programming set in motion in early childhood, often still operating by default. By uncovering and transforming the unconscious, limiting patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior, the way opens for heart-centered evolutionary transformation

Shadow Work as a Path to Deep Healing

Have you ever wondered why it is that despite all you know about how to get along in the world, despite the efforts you make in your home and work life, and in your spiritual practices, you may still not be seeing lasting transformational results? Recent research into the workings of the human brain shed some light on why we may still find ourselves stuck in old patterns of thought, feeling and action regardless of our best efforts.

Growing Up Human

Despite our best efforts, no human environment can fully and unceasingly reflect the Divine truth of our children back to them. It is widely accepted that childhood’s earliest years are the most impressionable, but the emerging fields of neurobiology suggest that it may be even more important than once thought.

Difficult early life experiences may continue to haunt us, in spire of our efforts through therapy and the spiritual journey, because the unconscious limiting beliefs about ourselves and the world we take on actually create neural networks that, when triggered in the present day, undermine the ability to make conscious choices that arise from our deepest desires and our personal faith and spiritual principles. We often react, rather than respond to life’s circumstances.

The transformational 21-day practice called The Q Process™ helps participants understand and reflect on how the brain and perception works and how they create meaning from earlier situations. Exploration and reflection leads to uncovering unconscious, limiting patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior set in motion by childhood events which may be still “running the game” by default. Through Quantum Living techniques we embrace and transform the shadow within and release our most divine self into full expression.

Transcending The Past

As individuals, teams, and communities become aware of these hidden beliefs and ingrained neural firing patterns they can be transformed and released. We can become free from old hurts, untrue assumptions and erroneous beliefs; we can be freed to manifest a greatest good in our life and in the world.

Becoming aware of these physiological and psychological pattens and applying mindfulness practices effectively fast-tracks our evolution to greater freedom that may develop an internal witnessing observer; lessen our reactivity and engage our sense of inner self-curiosity; settle negative energy and restore focused, intentional mental capacity; calm the voice of the inner critic and self-judgment; create loving kindness and compassion for self and others.

Create a New Future

The Quantum Living Process™ is a 21-day guided reflection tool to reframe triggering experiences. We explore three (3) seven-day phases. Phase One focuses on critical thoughts about external experiences. Phase Two focuses on critical thoughts directed inwardly. Phase Three follows both internal and external triggers into the past to find a memory associated with the pattern and release and reframe the moment, creating a mental and emotional shift in the present that supports a vibrant, enlivened future.