Spirituality of Aging e-book available now

Spirituality of AgingSo many people in midlife and beyond have a fear of aging.
Society hasn’t helped this.
Ageism is still a factor in our experience and advertisers
keep telling us we need to be using products that are anti-aging.

I don’t know about you but I’m NOT ANTI – aging….
In fact, every day I experience new growth when I look at
what the aging process is teaching me.

I’m excited to tell you that my new E-Book is now available. It’s all about the
reflections I’ve been having on the aging process itself. Rather than bemoan
the fact that my bones are creaking and my memory waxing and waning,

I decided to look at the meaning behind it all. And, low and behold, I began
to discover that the Aging Process itself is not a matter of continual
decrepitude – but an opportunity to grow spiritually. WOW!

That changes the game considerably.
If you are in MIDLIFE or BEYOND, this is an important issue
to consider right now.

I’d love to share this e-book with you and get your help in fleshing it out
even further into a full manuscript. Please comment when you have read it.

Get your copy here

From [Exploring Life] by Brian Alger

The Spirituality of Aging

A spirituality of aging is a way of being that reflects a deep, authentic, and compelling engagement in understanding and merging with the essence of life. A spiritual response to life is simultaneously intellectual, emotional, and biological: spirituality seeks to evoke positive states of being in which we embraced by an urgency of wonder that shelters us with deep feelings of significance, unity, awe, contentment, acceptance, and awareness. In this sense, spirituality addresses our innate need to celebrate being alive.

In losing my elderly parents I entered into a spiritual terrain that was completely unfamiliar. My experiences in being with and supporting my parents during their final years and their eventual deaths thrust me into the midst of a spiritual crucible that felt harsh and relentless.

Spirituality also recognizes the trial and tribulations of life including loss, illness, regret, grief, bereavement, and death. In this sense, spirituality helps us to reconcile the inevitable veil of tears that visits us from time to time during our lifetime. The spiritual nature of grief and bereavement is to find a way to reconcile our loss, retrieve our own authenticity, and to invite us into conversation with meaning and purpose.

All life is imbued with impermanence. That is to say, impermanence is the essential element that brings spirituality into intimate proximity with aging. Aging as a source of spiritual guidance serves to remind us of our unavoidable destiny. Though we sometimes recoil from exploring death and dying in a meaningful and purposeful way, these harsher elements of life require our attention and care since they offer deep insight in the nature of our own existence.

The spirituality of aging is an idea that may continue to gain in popularity. A new and more sensitive sensibility about aging seems to be emerging. The media are beginning to embrace various aspects and issues associated with the aging population. The more intimate and difficult aspects of aging are beginning to become more commonplace in the news and entertainment industries. For example, in the movie The Way, we are presented with a sensitive and compelling journey into the spiritual landscape of a father experiencing the loss of his son.

All spirituality represents an effort to forge a close bond with essential elements such as beauty, resilience, gratitude, and love. An essential task in embracing a spirituality of aging is to find the beauty and good in aging, while learning the lessons hidden within it’s more mercurial and painful realities. Cicero’s On Old Age is an oration that, while not necessarily focused on spirituality, deeply embraces of the sensibility of aging spiritually.

Fear of Aging – by Keith Wommack

What we fear can only keep us in captivity
Keith Wommack, In Your Words

Recently, when asked, “What can fear do to you?” I was reminded of two experiences.

The first started with me asking a Sunday school class of first-graders: “What would you say if someone wanted you to pray for them?”

A visitor to the class, a young girl, spoke up and confidently said, “I would tell them that they were safe in God’s pocket.”

A few hours later, my phone rang. A man who had a physical problem asked me to pray for him. Because the girl’s simple but confident response had so impressed me, and because I understand the cause of most problems to be fear, I was led to say, “You are safe in God’s pocket.”

He began to cry and hung up, without giving his name.

A week later, he called back to report he’d been healed of the physical problem the instant he hung up the phone. He also stated that for the next few days, every time he tried to smoke cigarettes, they tasted terrible. Not only had he been healed of the physical trouble, he’d stopped a long time habit of smoking, as well.

Yes, the girl’s pure trust in God’s constant care inspired a prayer that erased the man’s fear.

The second experience I was reminded of took place when I stepped out of a dressing room and into a packed church auditorium. I was suddenly nervous. Anxiously, I stepped over to a chair, sat and waited for the prelude music to finish.

My fear was puzzling. I had freely performed in a rock band in front of small and large audiences for many years. And although I was about to conduct my first church service of a three-year term, I was prepared. Everything I needed to conduct the service was in place on the podium. There was nothing to worry about.

Then, while the music continued, I recognized that the fear wasn’t mine but rather waves of sympathy from the audience. Many people have a fear of public speaking, and I was mentally sensing this fear.

I affirmed to myself that the fear wasn’t mine, and that I didn’t have to suffer from the thoughts of others.

When the music stopped, I stepped up and began the service. Immediately, the fear vanished. I found that I had the ability to stop being afraid. I could stop being a victim of fear.

What can fear do to you? It seems a lot. Anxiety, fear and worry can be mentally and physically harmful. Jere Daniel in a Psychology Today column, “Learning to Love Growing Old,” wrote, “Fear of aging speeds the very decline we dread most. And it ultimately robs our life of any meaning.”

I’m discovering that we experience what we think and that fear seems to be able to negatively touch every part of the body, if we allow it. I’ve found it effective to filter my thoughts through spiritual reasoning. Many call this prayer.

As I was listening to the prelude music in the church auditorium, I realized that fear was not a power to be battled with and defeated. The thought, “I am afraid,” was not mine. Not only did I affirm mentally that the fear wasn’t mine, I also knew that no power apart from God could govern my being.

If one glances through the King James version of the Bible, it is hard not to spot one of the 70 times “Fear not” appears. The second book of Timothy has helped me when I’ve been afraid. It states in part, “God has not given us a spirit of fear. But he has given us a spirit of power and love and self-control.”

Jeff Levin, in his book, “God, Faith, and Health: Exploring the Spirituality Healing Connection,” writes, “The best study conducted to date on the topic of religious attendance and health found the most amazing results. It showed that the protective effects of frequent participation in church can last a lifetime. … Published in the American Journal of Public Health, [one] study found that frequent religious attenders had greater survival rates — that is, lower mortality — that extended over a twenty-eight-year period. Frequent religious attendance in 1965 was still reducing the risk of dying in 1994.”

If we are children of God, a fearing soul is not who we really are. Fear keeps us from living freely as spiritual beings. However, fear disappears when we glimpse our identity as the image of the divine.

Keith Wommack is a syndicated columnist, Christian Science practitioner and teacher, husband and stepdad. He is a legislative liaison for spiritual healing and Christian Science in Texas.

http://www.statesman.com/life/faith/what-we-fear-can-only-keep-us-in-2402785.html

The Process of Aging and the Stages of Spiritual Development

Many years ago I learned about stages of spiritual development. I’ve since discovered that many different spiritual teachers and teachings have different names for what seems quite similar to me.  Because I spend so much time thinking about the process of aging and the spirituality of aging, I began to wonder if we experience this process differently depending upon the stage of spiritual development that we are in.  This is just the beginning of my exploration.

The FOUR STAGES
Here’s a simple way I like to remember the stages.
TO ME;  BY ME;  THROUGH ME and AS ME

Stage one – Life is happening TO ME – I am a victim
Stage two – I create my reality; I can manifest whatever it is I put my attention to and life seems to be one miracle after another.
Stage three – I learn to surrender – to LET IT BE – to know thy will not mine be done and that indeed all I do is truly letting Spirit flow through me to do.
Stage four is  Living in EXPERIENCE. Living in pure ENERGY and pure Energy is the way many people today- scientists and theologians alike – are describing the state of God Realization – Knowing that I am one with all that is and all that is is Good or God.

Victim and Blame
Most of us are familiar with 1st stage – victim stage –   Something outside of self is doing something to us =– whether it is God outside of ourselves, the devil, superstition, the day they were born, the numerological chart, the cracks on the ground, our parents  Our parents did it to us and then our mates. But victims always have a blame story about how something is doing something to them or something in their lives is happening because of some outside condition – like the economy or the weather. And perhaps even the process of aging itself when we experience the things that happen as our “enemy.”

Orderly Universe
Then somewhere along the line we discover, either through pain or through insight – those are the two ways we grow – we begin to understand that we are a part of something that is bigger than ourselves, that is orderly, it’s a universe – That something wonderful happens and it operates lawfully.  At this level we become manifestors or manipulators.  – we learn how to manipulate energy.  We learn that there is a Law in the Universe.  That as Dr. Michael Beckwith once said, “things don’t just happen – they happen Just” They happen according to what’s passing through your awareness – -what’s passing through your subjective consciousness.

Stage 2 is often called the NAME IT AND CLAIM IT stage.  If you can name it and claim it, you can have it.   It’s all about visualization,  If you can see it with your mind’s eye; you can feel that it is done, you can have it.  This is the stage where you MAKE IT HAPPEN. Movies like THE SECRET are all about this stage.

Usually, when things aren’t manifesting – it’s because we’ve reverted back to first stage thinking – and think something OUTSIDE OURSELF has to change…. Or we’re holding onto old stories – or old grudges.

When we view the process of aging from this viewpoint, we probably spend a lot of time dealing with longevity doctors and use products that are advertised as “anti-aging.” We are convinced we can control and maybe even reverse the process, and in some respect, we do. But, we limit ourselves to the acceptance and learning that comes when we face what is, rather than living from wanting to be in what was.

Make Me a Channel
During stage 2, you are working at reprogramming your thinking – ?You begin to have an feel & awareness that the Universe is Good – that things don’t just happen to you == that there is an underlying all pervading presence that is Good, it is Wonderful, it is harmonious and it begins to become your tendency. When that happens you begin to move into the stage called through us where you become a channel or instrument of the spirit.

And all of us know about this stage – if we are not in it regularly – we at least experience, brief glimpses of it. Perhaps you’ve experienced it in your writing, in art, in athletics, there came a moment when suddenly you were in the Zone and beyond what you could image or make happen, you went beyond your borders and your boundary and experiences something  and revealed some piece of music or some piece of art that was beyond what you really could make happen and sometimes you even feel somehow that you didn’t do it – it was done through you.

Those are moment of the Spirit operating through you, when you weren’t trying to make it happen but you were totally involved in it.  Do you understand what I’m saying? This is the LETTING GO AND LETTING GOD stage. At stage 3 – It’s beyond your imagination, beyond what you can visualize, beyond what you can make happen.  The Spirit of God in its Isness begins to flow through you, So, at level 2 – you make it happen. At level 3, you make it welcome. What would the process of aging look like in this stage? I believe it’s when we accept our Wisdom and Saging and begin to really live in the flow, without wishing we were younger or fearing what might happen next. The studies of adult development show that people who live in the flow are the ones who actually live longer and happier lives.

 Let it Be
When we truly LET IT BE we come to the final stage as us –    This is the stage of KNOWING our ONENESS – MYSTICAL stage which is a stage of being, a sense of at one-ment with the  presence of God where you realize there is no difference nor is there any separation between this one life – there is only the Life of God.  When you study the mystical teachers of the ages, whether it be Jesus or the Buddha, they primarily live at these particular levels.  When you hear Jesus living at level 3, he’s saying, “it’s not me that does the work, it’s the Father within”  Why call me Good, there’s only one Good that’s the father within.  At other times You hear him say, when you see me, you see he who sent me.  I and my Father are One.

If you’ve ever been at the bedside of someone who dies peacefully, you have seen this stage. There is no fear. There is no doubt. There is complete surrender. Not a surrender that gives up on Life, but a surrender that knows that life is eternal and that the aging process we experience in this realm is a stepping stone to more Good that lies ahead.

And YOU?

Where are you at? How are you experiencing these stages in your own life? Does it effect the way you see the process of aging? Please comment below.