Midlife Mastery Journal » loss

When You Wake Up

Les Brown — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 12:56:29 +0000

When I woke up this morning, I was surprised to find that it was an hour later than I thought it was. Of course, I forgot to turn my clocks ahead last night before I went to bed. But life is all about waking up to surprises, isn’t it? Nothing turns out the way you anticipate that it will. The challenge that each one of us faces — and that challenge that erupts in the midlife transition — is to see the way things turn out as better than what we had expected. That’s not as simple and straight-forward as simply walking around the house, re-setting the clocks to daylight saving time. No, indeed!

Today marks the end of my life. That’s right: my life as I’ve known it for over six years ends today. Tomorrow, I get dressed in a suit, tuck my brand new organizer under my arm, and head off to take the Metro to work. As of tomorrow (Monday morning), I am a Federal bureaucrat, and my time — my life — is no longer my own. What happened to all the exciting plans that I had, following my passion to provide life coaching services to people in transition, building my own business,creating inspirational online content, offering life-altering content of tremendous value? It appears on the surface that all that collapsed into the quicksand of market disinterest. At first I saw it as the end of a dream. Then, once again, I woke up. Let me explain.

The essence of life can only be discovered in a spiritual awakening. Last night, we went to the movies and saw A Single Man with Colin Firth and Julianne Moore. It is the story of a man who rediscovers meaning in his life after the death of his life partner. He finds, just when he least expects it, a “moment of clarity” that makes all the difference. It was his spiritual awakening. All of my favorite authors talk about a ‘spiritual awakening’ as the core of the midlife transition, whether or not they use those exact words. It’s the ‘moment of clarity’ that separates adulthood from maturity. Like Firth’s character in A Single Man, we don’t get to chose when that moment comes, nor what it will look like when it arrives. The only thing that I can say for certain about it is that you will not recognize it before it hits.

I had two amazing interviews last week, both with women who have had their own moments of clarity and have, as a result, experienced their own spiritual awakenings. The first was during last week’s Midlife Matters internet radio program with my guest, life coach, author, and spiritual thought leader, Anita Pathik Law. She told her story of how chronic illness drove her into a corner until she surrendered to a Power greater than herself that not only brought her physical healing, but gave her the clarity to see her life’s purpose. A couple of days later, I interviewed Amona Maa Jeevan from the U.K. for a recorded segment of next week’s edition of the same program. We talked about her encounter with the Dark Night (as defined by the 16th century Spanish writer, Saint John of the Cross and other mystics), and the spiritual clarity that she received on emerging from it. Between those two conversations, I was powerfully reminded of how “God writes straight with crooked lines.”

Awakening to spiritual clarity and emerging from the midlife transition (which are really equivalent events in a person’s life) generally involves considerable pain of one or more types: spiritual, emotional, mental, and even physical. In every case, it’s pain born of a fear of letting go. The ‘dark night’ experience leads us to the brink of a seemingly-unbridgeable chasm. It’s the moment when we realize that life as we’ve defined it for ourselves is no longer working. There’s no going back and there’s no way forward (or so it seems). Perhaps we’ve experienced the loss of everything we valued: relationships, career, possessions, health, or even our own capacity to control our own behavior. At that point, we may be left with nowhere to turn but to our faith. We may find great comfort in our belief in a Power greater than ourselves. This is what John of the Cross described as the “dark night of the senses.” It’s quite awful, and the inspiration for many a ‘prison’ conversion or ‘death-bed’ conversion. This may be enough to create a kind of spiritual awakening in anyone.

It’s not the end of the story, however. There’s a ‘dark night’ that goes even deeper. John of the Cross called it the ‘dark night of the soul.’ People often use this term too loosely, confusing it with the dark night of the senses. The dark night of the soul does not necessarily involve the loss of any of the trappings of life. One can pass through it surrounded by loving spouse and friends, successful career, a multitude of possessions, exceptional health, etc. All these things simply make the experience that much more painful, as one experiences the complete and total loss of direction, meaning, purpose, and faith in God. Not everyone experiences this kind of dark night; it seems to be reserved for those who will be called upon to become a source of hope and inspiration to others. It is the ultimate challenge of a lifetime: to go forward boldly without any possible hope for success.

What arises on the other side of a ‘dark night’ is simple to describe but seemingly impossible to live. It is the experience of grace. The term ‘grace’ comes from the Latin gratia, meaning ‘gift.’ It also forms the root of our word ‘gratitude’ — our response to the gift. The meaning and purpose of our lives, and therefore, our destiny, is pure gift, and our authentic response to it can ultimately only be gratitude, pure and simple. Spiritual awakening only happens once we come to terms with certain fundamental truths. Our plans, our choices, our decisions all have an incredible impact not only on our own evolution, but, because we (collectively) form the decision-making organ for the universe itself, they also help to determine how the universe itself evolves. Nevertheless, whatever our plans, choices, and decisions may be, they are ultimately the gift of the inscrutable will of God.

Passage through the dark nights (of the senses as well as of the soul) are not, strictly speaking, the will of God. They are, like those animals whose insides outgrow their outsides, the result of our resisting having a spiritual awakening. We enjoy sleeping and dreaming the illusion of our own self-will. We even go so far as to convince ourselves that what we see and what we want is, in fact, our purpose and destiny (leaving no room to expand beyond the limits we impose upon ourselves this way). Thus, spiritual awakenings can be very painful because they demand that we puncture right through our comfort zone and right into the heart of the Unknown. We don’t want to wake up. We don’t want to climb out of our comfortable beds into the cold reality of the life that we are meant to live. It’s a fearful life, because it necessarily goes beyond what we know or can even imagine.

If you’re at midlife, or if you’re facing seemingly-catastrophic loss, if you’re feeling lost, purposeless, directionless and completely bereft of any semblance of spirituality, rejoice! Your spiritual awakening is here! You’ve received an engraved invitation from your God to enter into the life you were meant to live, no matter how different it may seem from the one you thought you were having. Your response to this invitation — this grace that I mentioned — is, as I said, easy to understand but hard to live. Can you bring yourself to pray this simple prayer composed by the second Secretary General of the United Nations and modern mystic, Dag Hammarskjöld: “For all that has been, thanks. For all that will be, yes“? Can you pray that prayer today without reservation?

Regardless of your age, if you’re struggling, a spiritual awakening awaits you. The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous spells out the hope of a spiritual awakening that sustains every one of us in this process we call ‘life’: “Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us — sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them” [emphasis added].

H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC
Copyright © 2010 H. Les Brown

Involuntary Midlife Reinvention

Les Brown — Sun, 17 May 2009 13:00:00 +0000

What’s the difference between reinventing yourself and starting all over again? I think there are two factors that clearly differentiate one from the other: 1) reinventing yourself consists in an act of personal volition: it’s voluntary; and 2) reinvention (at least in theory) is purposeful. As for ‘starting all over again’ . . . it’s very likely both involuntary and without a conscious goal (other than to move away from whatever unfortunate circumstance has left you in that condition). If these things are true (and I’m open to discussion on the matter), then why do I find myself in the throes of an involuntary midlife reinvention? Isn’t ‘involuntary reinvention’ a contradiction in terms?

Perhaps it is. However, I’m discovering that, although the conditions of my migration away from my latest entrepreneurial venture may not be entirely voluntary, the movement toward personal reinvention is becoming increasingly more so. Whatever lapses in judgment led me to market midlife insights to people who largely preferred (or, for some psychological and emotional needs, needed) to stay fixed in denial, it was ultimately a good thing to recognize that paying my bills trumped providing quality intellectual products without remuneration — particularly under current market conditions. So, although closing down my internet marketing business was not wholly voluntary, nonetheless it wasn’t involuntary, either. The ability to read the handwriting on the wall is, after all, one of the hallmarks of the spiritual life strategy I call ‘discernment’.

Here’s where I repeat one of my all-time favorite stories: how the Greek philosopher, Epictetus, came to his ‘enlightenment’. Epictetus, although highly educated, was captured and sold into slavery to the Romans where he was forced into service as tutor to a wealthy Roman’s children. The young man chafed in servitude until finally, one day, he went to his mater and said, “Master, from this day forward, I am no longer your slave.” The Roman was both surprised and aghast at the Greek’s declaration. “From now on,” Epictetus continued, “I choose to serve you freely.” In one act of will, Epictetus reinvented himself, throwing off the mantle of victimhood and taking full ownership of his condition. He transformed involuntary service into voluntary. Can’t we, in midlife transition, do the same?

Of course we can. Every event in life can be seen either as happening to us, or happening for us. How we look at it takes no more effort than Epictetus expended in coming to the realization that we are, after all, the Meaning Givers in the physical universe and that whatever meaning we choose to put on events will, ultimately, determine their outcome and their effects. Those in my potential ‘market’ who preferred to allow the midlife transition to take over their lives, blaming their ‘fate’ on others (the boss, the wife or husband, the kids, the neighbors, the government, the establishment, or whatever) chose to surrender their freedom of choice to others, and then to blame others for their predicament. No wonder life under those circumstances sucks!

So, how do you make closing a business or being laid off work for you, especially when your most significant goal for the future is to maintain (or attain) financial solvency? Choosing to accept the situation as you experience it as an opportunity (rather than as an obstacle) becomes the first step. My guest on this week’s Midlife Matters internet radio program, Rosanna Tufts, had a great slogan that works very well here: ‘creation’ and ‘reaction’ are made up of all the same letters, only rearranged. We always have the option of choosing the former over the latter. Once we’ve decided to interpret what’s happened as an opportunity, we then have the possibility of creating our future out of the raw materials of the past. Regardless of the circumstances, we’re never put in the situation of ‘starting over’ from scratch. We have a wealth of knowledge, skills and experience with which we can create a fully positive future.

Your world has only changed, not ended. You can, if you so choose, decide to mourn the possibilities that have passed. Or, you can more fully recognize that not all possibilities were yours from the very outset. Your nature (genetics) and your nurture (training and upbringing) set you out from day 1 with obvious limitations. There are things you could never do, places you could never go, plans you could never accomplish. In fact, your limitations define you: they’re truly what makes you you! From birth onward, every choice you make imposes further limits on your pool of possibility. Day by day, youj’re further defining who you are. Events, like job or career change, have only a limited impact on those determinations. These events are just one more brick added to the structure that is the person who you are becoming. How are you going to use that brick? You’re still the chief architect, you know. There are many things that you can do with the heand that you’re dealt. The real question now is, ‘How will you use your knowledge, skills, experience and imagination to create something new and wonderful for yourself today?