An Aging Elder

I woke up this morning with more aches than a porcupine has quills. (OK, a slight exaggeration here). My knee, back and shoulder all were seeing who could scream the loudest for my brains’ distracted attention. Aging and Elderhood, encroaching personal entropy and joyful evolving consciousness. What a juxtaposition!

While I am extremely grateful for entering conscious Elderhood, I am very aware that my body is slowly running down. I was talking to a friend about running recently and he said, “The older I get, the faster I was.” So true. I was reading recently that the best hope for the world was that more people worldwide were living past 50. However, it has also been noted that civilization often advances one death at a time. Enough already – I’m confusing me!

I think it is no longer enough to just get older, even though it’s true that old age is not for sissies! We also can choose to become Elders, and our journey to Elderhood begins in adulthood. I have written about Signs of Elderhood in an earlier post. If you want to become an elder, you have to begin to wake up, grow up and clean up in adulthood. Briefly, cleaning up, in addition to eating healthier and exercising more, usually involves embracing some form of depth work in psychotherapy to heal wounds from the past. Waking up means realizing you need to move beyond dogma of all stripes and become a seeker of what IS and your true nature. Growing up means a willingness to recognize and move through actual developmental stages that we have become aware of in the last hundred years.

This work may be very challenging as you transcend and include the mainstays of your culture. All of this is necessary to be able to show up as an Elder and not just an old person. Gratefully, when you choose to enter conscious Elderhood, there is much more to life than aches and pains!

John Mariner

The Four Quadrants of Integral Elderhood

From Pinterest

It is exciting to me to view Integral Elderhood from the perspectives of each of the four quadrants of AQAL. (This is a first attempt in viewing it from this perspective).

In the upper right, the exterior of the individual, the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex of the brain is both highly developed and gradually more challenged with advancing aging. An integral Elder has discerned and adopted a wide range of healthy habits to the best of their ability. The book, Integral Life Practice, is an excellent guide and easily modified for older adults.

In the upper left, the interior of the individual, an integral Elder has embraced a high level of Waking Up and Growing Up, spiritual experience and spiritual intelligence. The practices begun in Adulthood continue to expand and deepen in Elderhood, at the same time that physical ailments may be increasing for the Elders. De Chardin’s Within and Without (of evolutionary development in the face of increasing entropy) may be immediately present in the growing consciousness and increasing physical limitations of integral Elders.

In the lower left, the interior of the collective, the Integral “we” space hopefully becomes sharper and clearer. Integral Elders are future oriented, caring deeply about others, and the sentient beings who haven’t been born yet. They understand that thoughts and feelings are actually structures of reality. They work together with millennials and baby boomers as Integral activists for a better future, blending their wisdom with the wisdom of the younger generation to envision a better world for all. They look at emerging patterns that may be as yet barely visible to the world at large. They help to discern the wheat from the chaff as the bare outlines of the structures and institutions of the future are contemplated.

In the lower right, the exterior of the collective, Integral Elders, like the biblical Moses, may only be able to envision, to glimpse the “promised land” that they will not inhabit, that they will not live to see. They can only hope that the structures and institutions of the future that they are beginning to envision and create will offer new options for more people. But do not think that this bright hope is in vain. The evolutionary vanguard, the lovers of a better future for all, and among them, Integral Elders, have sided with the advance into novelty, the creative impulse that exploded this universe into being and becoming 13.5 billion years ago.

I think they have picked the winning horse.

By John Mariner,
Licensed Clinical Social Worker

Growing in Love in Elderhood AKA Elderlove

Elderlove . . . it’s not quite the same as love in adulthood, even though conscious love must begin in adulthood to grow into the Love that is an essential characteristic of Conscious Elderhood.

I do not want to limit my investigations, however, to the growth of love in couplehood that is possible in Elderhood, as wonderful as that may be. In our culture, marriage or coupling is too often regarded as “THE” realm of the sacred rather than “A” realm of the sacred; the former not so subtly discounting how singles also grow in love in adulthood leading to Elderlove.

When conscious love grows within the couple relationship in adulthood, that is truly wonderful and sadly, too often, rare. Not impossible, as I personally know, but not easy. It’s almost as if love begins to split its seams and demands its inherent expansion. Children demand that it opens up to embrace them, sometimes stretching the couple relationship beyond its limits. Sometimes one person grows and the other doesn’t, and the relationship bursts apart. Most often, people try the coupling route with someone else, hopefully expanding their ability to love with lessons learned from the past. Conscious love wants to keep expanding to include others, actually until there are no “others.” Conscious love keeps breaking our hearts open on the way to Elderhood, if we will allow it to. Otherwise, we gradually just close down, and at most become old and not Elders.

Elderlove is conscious love, ever expanding and developing to include more people toward the inclusion of all beings. It grows out of conscious adulthood, often but not always, developing in couplehood and parenting and tempered in the crucibles of our aging bodies and inevitable losses. Love teaches us HOW to Love if we will let it. This is one of love’s great secrets, opening us up to loving those beings we come in contact with as they need and want to be loved, awakening Love in them.

I have stated in another post that elderhood is better than adulthood. One of the reasons is that our capacity for conscious love can keep growing based on its beginnings in childhood and adulthood. Elderhood, today beginning at 65 or 70, is an expansion of our ability to love and not a diminishment! Conscious Adulthood is the necessary scaffolding for Conscious Elderhood that supports us growing in love all of our lives. The life stage of elderhood is the flowering of what has gone before. All of our work is worth it as love in elderhood pervades our lives and the lives of all that we touch in ever expanding and often surprising circles!

By John Mariner,
Licensed Clinical Social Worker

Martin Luther King: Reflections from an Integral Elder

I was 27 when Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered in 1968 at the age of 39. Integral consciousness was mostly latent at that time, both in me and in the world. He was a harbinger of that consciousness. His “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington D.C. was prophetic of an integral world, even though that dream is not yet fully realized in 2019.

My adopted daughter is primarily African American. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s legacy and that of President Barack Obama are directly responsible for the evolving Integral world she is embracing wholeheartedly today. At 21 years old, she is a junior in college and active in politics, working to support women becoming elected to public office. Her amazing future is possible because no one, “trumpet” as they might, can destroy the scaffolding that these great American leaders have laid down.

On this great American holiday celebrating the life of Martin Luther King, I am deeply grateful.

By John Mariner,
Licensed Clinical Social Worker

Elderhood and Community

I think it is at the stage of Elderhood that the paucity of community in our lives is felt the strongest. Elders know that we cannot fully live alone, and that the nuclear family structure as “the realm of the sacred” as one writer referred to it, is an emotionally impoverished holdover from the relatively recent past. It is a product of the great experiment of modernity and was not supplanted by the variety of postmodern experiments from the 1960s onward. “Unrelated people living together” was mostly zoned out of existence by neighborhood groups and zoning boards with a decided preference for two adults with or without children occupying thousands of square feet in single family dwellings! The nuclear family, invented to serve the needs of all-consuming capitalism, has succeeded admirably in eradicating or severely weakening traditional bulwarks of community, including the extended family and church communities as well as many secular forms of association that people enjoyed in the slightly more distant past.

The reality is that neither traditionals nor the modernists nor the hippies could successfully evolve the communities that are needed today, although each of these earlier stages of consciousness has something to offer, especially with regard to their core values. Traditional cultures knew that we cannot survive without depending on one another. They could not see that the tribal proscriptions against outsiders unfortunately locked people in and out from the wider world. The modern nuclear family offered more flexibility of movement for small families as well as the ability to take a world-centric view of the needs of others. Unfortunately, the unbridled capitalism of modernity sanctioned extreme competitiveness and inequality. Post-modern consciousness went even further in valuing diversity and inclusiveness, but did not have the “chicken wire,” the scaffolding, the natural hierarchy necessary for community to develop beyond isolated experiments.
Thus, elders today see the need to develop new “integral” forms of community that include the positive elements offered by each of the preceding worldview’s forms of community and offer wider, higher and deeper perspectives that can enable communities and the individuals who participate in them to thrive and grow at ever-expanding levels.

By John Mariner,
Licensed Clinical Social Worker

A Letter to the Younger Progressives from the Elders

“There are three ways to approach the mystery of the divine.
The first practice is prayer.
The second is meditation.
And the third and most important is conversation.”
– Rumi

Dear Youngers,

We are so glad, so grateful for all of you and for all that you do! You are deeply inspired by one of us as we are inspired by you. I am Bernie Sanders’s age and went to school in Brooklyn and ran track the same years he did. More importantly, he never gave up on taking action on his deeply held human values; neither did I, and neither did many of us of his generation. And now, more than ever, we need each other, the Elders and the Youngers of this world. Let us begin a powerful, loving and essential conversation about working together for a better world.

It is not always easy for Youngers and Elders to have meaningful conversations. In many ways, we inhabit different life-worlds. The tasks and challenges we face in our daily lives are “ages” apart. And too often we do not deeply respect one another. Ageism is a reality in our times as is a terrible and callous disregard for the needs of the young. Even though we share progressive values, that in itself is not enough. We need to bring our different skills and different kinds of wisdom together to bring into existence the better world we seek.

We need you, and you need us to bring about a better world! As Elders and not just older people, we are future-oriented and care more about you, our Youngers, than we do about ourselves! In our long lives, some of us have done a lot of work to become Elders and not fossils. We are growing into Elderhood even as you are growing into Adulthood. Elderhood, probably beginning around fifty five or sixty, is an amazing and wonderful place, not at all clearly seen by the culture at this time and gradually being embraced by a small but growing number of older people. It offers great hope not only to those who embark on this journey, but also to a world starving for authentic wisdom. As it is challenging for you to become adults, it is often daunting for us to become elders. But what we have in common is a willingness to keep growing, a concern for the betterment of this world and a realization of the importance of our ongoing conversations across the artificial divide that no longer has the power to separate us.

Thank you.

By John Mariner,
Licensed Clinical Social Worker

The Historical Dismissal of Elders and the Emergence of Integral Elderhood

Traditional cultures valued elders for their wisdom, sometimes attributed to them because of their age, and sometimes because they really were wise.

Modernity, roughly beginning about 500 years ago, challenged this valuing of older people for many reasons. Elders were seen as holding things back and resisting the advances of science as new information and knowledge about the world and its inhabitants replaced the earlier mythical understandings of reality. Modernity had no patience for traditional world views and more often than not, subjected these views to ridicule and dismissal as well as the individuals who held them. Post modernity, beginning to take hold as a recognizable wave of development about 60 years ago, embraced more diversity, but because of its inherent allergy to any kind of hierarchy, including natural hierarchies, could not see the emergence of integral Elderhood, a developmental stage of growth transcending and including adulthood. Elderhood does not become apparent and is not easily recognizable until integral consciousness evolves out of post modernity for more and more individuals in the world. Gratefully, the contours of Elderhood as well as its significance are gradually becoming clearer.

One of the hallmarks of elders (and Elderhood) is their caring for and commitment to the youngers of this world. The World Elders, called together by Nelson Mandela, are exemplary in this regard. Because of their stature, as former leaders in their respective countries, they command respect for their positions and campaigns for the young people of this world. Senator Bernie Sanders is still attracting young people by the droves. He is an elder who the younger people in this country know in their hearts that he cares about them and they are deeply and widely responding to him. As more and more people like myself are “aging with care,” so to speak, Elderhood becomes more apparent as an evolutionary stage of development that is characterized by caring for others as deeply or even deeper than one cares for oneself. There is a zest for and a new meaning to life as one enters this stage. Unfortunately, it is not accessed by someone merely getting older. Doing your work of waking up, growing up and showing up is both necessary and extremely rewarding as this conscious stage of post-adult development, characterized by wisdom and compassion, becomes more and more visible and attainable!

By John Mariner,
Licensed Clinical Social Worker

Prolonging Adulthood – The Prime of Life

It is very understandable and very tempting to want to prolong adulthood as long as possible. After all, adulthood is the “prime of life!”

Who wouldn’t want to remain in the prime of life as long as possible?
Who wants to look forward to growing older and older and then old age and death?

Given our modern sensibilities and enculturation this makes perfect sense. Without a vision and understanding of the meaning and value of Elderhood, and especially our place or home in this evolving space, the future can look bleak indeed.

Adulthood and all that goes with it IS the prime of life. Prime is from the Latin “primus” or first. For many reasons and for most people in the world, there has been no “secundus, no gracious, zestful second, no Elderhood,” a stage of life that for all of its challenges is even better! This, on the surface, is an outrageous statement to many people. Because as it becomes clearer, Elderhood transcends and includes the arguably best of Adulthood (the growing up, waking up, and cleaning up that is the important work of adulthood), and allows us to become wiser, more loving and more compassionate for ourselves and for all others, who in Elderhood by the way, are no longer “others.” They are us, all of us.

By John Mariner,
Licensed Clinical Social Worker

Signs of Elderhood

Here are seven signs that you have reached Elderhood:

1. You recognize a profound and possibly prolonged shift out of adulthood. There is a change in consciousness internally where you recognize that you are not an adult any more in the way you were before. You are transcending and including adulthood. You are entering Elderhood.
2. You care more about the “youngers” of this world than you do about yourself. This is not masochism or self hatred. It is an expansion of your ability to love others as well as yourself, especially the younger people coming up who are the future you will not live to see. As an Elder, you are future-oriented more than past or even present-oriented. Most older people tend to be more oriented to the past. As adults we tend to be more oriented to the present. Elders are more oriented to the future.
3. You are deeply grateful for all you have been given and giving back is your work now.
4. With great humility, you realize that you are now a Caretaker of this world and of all that are in this world. You are a lover of the generations coming up and a lover of the future. You appreciate your work and the love of others in the past that has helped you arrive at where you are now.
5. You realize that there is now a path to Elderhood that you and others can follow. It is not a clear path yet, and there are lots of sand traps along the way, but it not reserved for the very few or for saints who are beyond us. It wasn’t as visible for our parents and grandparents for whom basic survival was usually more of the order of the day. The path is clearer now if you choose to walk it.
6. You realize that part of your work now is to make the way clearer. You have embarked on the journeys of Growing Up, Cleaning Up and Waking Up in adulthood and have entered Elderhood able to Show Up clearer than ever before. You live as best you can for the good of this world.
7. You are very aware of the challenges of aging even as you embrace the growth into this emerging stage of development.You are willing to live the miracle of your own ongoing evolution in the face of your individual undeniable entropy!

Welcome to Elderhood!