The seismic shift that each of us experiences in the course of the midlife transition has varied and far-reaching consequences. Like the goads of the ancients, that transition urges us forward into paths that we may be very reluctant to embark upon. After all, don’t we spend the first half of our lives striving for independence and autonomy? The changes that come over us at midlife seem to be focused on our physical nature. For the second time in our lives, — for men and women both — our hormones seem to be taking over. Yet the physical aspects of midlife, although fundamental, do not define the ground where most of our personal transformation is taking place. When the goads of midlife are applied, what we experience can only be described as a ‘soul-quake’ of enormous proportions. It’s a 9 on our emotional Richter scale.

At some point in our personal evolution, we either change our minds about our relationship to life in this world, or we risk causing great harm to ourselves and to those we profess to love. We kick against the goads at our own peril, yet we do that whenever we refuse to accept life on life’s terms (and the radical changes that entails) and refuse to trust the process and the One who drives it forward. That’s one reason why I feel called to confront political and religious conservatism. People want to believe that the truth (‘Truth’?) is ‘out there’ and changeless. Yet ‘truth’ necessarily involves both a knower and whatever is known. To suggest that the ‘truth’ is eternal is only to suggest that knower him- or herself also cannot change.

The truth of what we know and experience derives from our dialog with what is. As we change, our ‘truth’ must change, too. To try to resist that change and to cling to old ways of seeing and understanding our world can only be described as ‘kicking against the goads.’ We spend the first half of our lives learning to hang on, and the second half of life learning to let go. Hanging on to old ways of seeing, thinking, and believing in the face of life’s invitation to change can only lead to frustration and pain. That’s the insight behind what Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong wrote about in his book, Why Christianity Must Change or Die: A Bishop Speaks to Believers in Exile. Using outmoded human paradigms to explore the wildness of God’s relationship to humankind can only lead us to an impotent caricature of faith. Tradition can give nothing to a people who cannot comprehend it.

It’s been a tense week here. My 88 year old mother-in-law has been very sick, and we thought for a time that we were going to lose her. After some relatively minor surgery (there’s nothing minor about surgery at 88), her doctor prepared us for the worst, based on her experience. Just as she was being released from the hospital yesterday, the tests results came back negative. Living life on life’s terms meant knowing that we would have to cope with the results, regardless of whether or not the news was going to be good. We had to let go of our own expectations and our own hopes, and live simply in acceptance and trust: not necessarily an easy thing to do, regardless of the outcome.

That’s the lesson that comes with maturity: ultimately, we’re not in control. Living life on life’s terms means living in an attitude of acceptance with the realization that “all things work together for the good.” Whether we’re looking back at the so-called tragedies of our lives, or looking forward toward the obstacles that still seem too daunting to overcome, it’s ultimately our spiritual connection with our Higher Power that will allow us to see everything in its true perspective. I’ll repeat once again that perfect prayer from Dag Hammarskjöld: “For all that has been, thanks; for all that will be, yes!”

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

Then, the weather turned cold again, just in time for the weekend, with low temperatures below freezing and the highs barely breaking 40. The sweaters and lined jackets from past months haven’t been mothballed quite yet, and they come in handy once again against the chill. That little lever on the thermostat got pushed back from ‘cool’ to ‘heat’ once again. It’s no big deal. It’s only a temporary cold snap: some vagrant left-over Arctic air that wandered down our way. It’ll be gone soon enough. The forsythia’s in full bloom. The clematis is a foot tall already. The garden is full of the green leaves that promise a summer of colorful blooms. Change has come.

See how gracefully we accept the seasonal transformations of our world, even when we experience unexpected (and unwelcome) setbacks? Surely, we may complain about having to get bundled up again after having had a taste of unseasonable warmth. Regardless, we accept these things as just part of the cycles of nature. We know that these changes come and go, each with its own particular joys and sorrows, comforts and discomforts. “To everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven.”

Perspective is everything. The wave of cold that embraces us today would have seemed like a break from the bitterness of winter only a few weeks ago instead of a setback in our steady march toward summer. So it is when we look at the midlife transition from a spiritual perspective. Once again, perspective is everything. We have trained ourselves to face even the worst that the planet has to offer us with a certain amount of equanimity: we face ‘hurricane season’ knowing that, although there’s a chance we may have to deal with danger and damage, chances are very good that we won’t. We hope for the best and pray that others, too, will be spared.

Somehow, though, when it comes to coping with the seasons of our own lives, we may not find ourselves exercising the same degree of calm acceptance. Like women and men fighting fiercely to hang on to the last vestiges of summer as the first snowflakes fall, some of us cling unrelentingly to the hopes and dreams of adulthood (that all too often are simply recapitulations of childhood imaginings) even as the transition into midlife is sweeping them away. What those who descend into midlife crisis lack is the same perspective that allows us gracefully to accept the passing of the seasons, knowing, as we do, that along with the discomforts of the coming season, each will have its own very special grace and charm.

The joys and the sorrows of youth (did we forget about those?) have given way to the joys and sorrows of adulthood. Likewise, these, too, are destined to give way and make way for the still deeper experiences of maturity. Only with the perspective of the whole of life, and the spiritual strengths (virtues) of faith, hope, and love, will we be able to appreciate properly the gifts that maturity has to offer us. Once again, we can learn much from the perspective of Robert Browning’s poem, Rabbi Ben Ezra:

Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in His hand
Who saith “A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!”

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

Technorati Tags:
youth, adulthood, maturity, seasons, acceptance, perspective
Add to: | Technorati | Digg | del.icio.us | Yahoo | BlinkList | Spurl | reddit | Furl |

“Why are you doing this to me” emerges as the heart-rending cry of a woman or man who’s just had the stilts knocked out from under him or her and it’s the lament of the person suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of injustice. We have heard this lament (or similar cries) for as long as we humans have been encountering adversity. Here’s a passage from the prophet Isaiah (6:11-12):

Then I said, “Lord, how long?” And He answered,
“Until cities are devastated and without inhabitant,
Houses are without people
And the land is utterly desolate,
The LORD has removed men far away,
And the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land.”

We might consider this age-old lament — first thought and then spoken — to be the “opening theme,” so to speak, for the entrance into the midlife transition. “Why are you doing this to me?” is the sound an adult makes when her or his world has been upended. To understand this, we need to remember the characteristics of adulthood. Once we have become an adult, we assume our independence and personal authority. Not only are we emancipated from parental controls, we also emerge from parental protection. The burden of providing for our own security is transferred onto our own shoulders and, to a great extent, we are judged (and we judge ourselves) on how successfully we’re able to provide for ourselves (and, eventually, for our families).

Adulthood provides us with some preliminary answers to life’s greatest questions: Am I good enough? Am I smart enough? Am I capable? Am I lovable? Am I respectable? Am I honorable? Am I the woman or man whom my parents, my spouse, my children, my community can be proud of? Do I measure up to expectations? Adulthood defines success as receiving a resounding “Yes!” to all of these questions. For the adult, even kindness and generosity will be motivated and judged by what we imagine others are expecting of us, which, unsurprisingly, is most often identical to what we are expecting of ourselves. This is how the adult defines self-esteem, and this is precisely why, when one of those ‘but bombs’ hits an adult, it can be so devastating. “Why are you doing this to me?” means, in effect, “Why are you deliberately sabotaging everything that I’ve been trying to accomplish?”

Welcome to the midlife transition! Here’s your opportunity to leave the misconceptions of adulthood behind, and to step out into the clear light of maturity. All of the misconceptions of adulthood — that your value as a person is based on how well you perform and how effective you are at achieving a reasonable level of security — are based on one fundamentally flawed concept: that it’s all about you. How successful you are at making the midlife transition depends almost entirely on how effective you are at ridding yourself of that one erroneous concept. No, it’s not all about you, and it never was. ‘Success’ can never be achieved through living up to anyone’s expectations . . . even God’s!*

So long as we’re stuck in the ‘me-centered’ universe of adulthood, challenges and adversity will continue to appear to us to be focused on us (because that’s where our unconscious focus lies, and that’s the perspective from which we view everything that happens around us). As I mentioned before, “Why are you doing this to me?” is the cry of the ‘innocent victim.’ You may, possibly, be ‘innocent’ (although in the majority of cases, you have very probably been guilty at least of neglect and/or misprioritization), but you are not a victim. Keep this in mind: nobody can make you a victim without your permission. Victimhood represents the childish ‘it’s all about me’ attitude taken to its logical conclusion: I’m the cause of everything that happens.

What if you’re not all that important? What if it’s not “all about you”? What if the challenges that you’re facing in life (including all the ‘but bombs’) are simply examples of the collateral damage that occurs naturally as the universe struggles to sort itself out in its evolution? There’s the paradigm shift — the evolution in perspective — that differentiates mere ‘adults’ from those who are spiritually mature: stuff happens. Very often you may become implicated in that stuff that happens, and you have to deal with it, even though it’s not about you. The longer you live, the more stuff you’ll encounter: you’re going to lose every job you hold; every relationship that you value is going to break up; your health will be compromised; you will die. Nobody — God included — is ‘doing this stuff to you.’ It’s just life, and, with birth, you’ve bought your ticket and you’re on the ride.

Once you’ve attained this shift in perspective that so characterizes the midlife transformation, your whole approach to life and love will change. You will no longer be so preoccupied with your acquisitions and your accomplishments, and you will increasingly dedicate yourself to discovering and carrying out with integrity the purpose for which you’ve been given this amazing gift of life. Happily, the mature woman or man realizes that his or her life’s ‘purpose’ is always evolving, always ‘in process’ and, therefore, always in constant need of rediscovery, reinterpretation and redefinition. Regardless of the challenges you may face, you can receive each one as it really is: just another opportunity to grow, to evolve, and to deepen your connection with and reliance on the Ground of your being, that Power greater than yourself, the One who sent you here.

God, I offer myself to Thee, to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt.
Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will.
Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help
of Thy power, Thy love and Thy way of life.
May I do Thy will always.
Amen.

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

______
“God’s expectations” of us refers, of course, to our understanding of those expectations. God’s real expectations of us only reveal themselves gradually over time. Much of what we think are God’s expectations are merely our assumptions based on what we’ve been taught or projections of our expectations of ourselves.

Think, if you will, about the RMS Titanic, resting on the bottom of the deep Atlantic Ocean since its spectacular sinking one cold April night in 1914. I’m sure you’re familiar with the photos and videos that have been published over the years since the wreck was finally discovered by Robert Ballard in 1977. The great ship, weighing in at 46,326 tons when she left the shipyards in Belfast, is now festooned with ugly growths called ‘rusticles.’ Gradually, the iron ship’s massive hull is being consumed – eaten actually – by iron-eating bacteria. Before too very long, the great ship’s entire structure will disappear into virtual puddles of bacterial excretions. The pile of refuse that remains after the bacteria have done their work will be unrecognizable.

The Jeep, the Titanic, and your most intimate relationships may have a great deal in common. We humans are subject to a corrosion that beats out the destruction caused by oxidation and bacteria hands-down. I am convinced that fear causes more destruction in the lives of men and women than any other single agent. We all have it; yet, when the bravado of self-assured adulthood begins to yield to the deeper questioning that comes with midlife, fear emerges with a ferocity seldom experienced at any other period of life.

When I was considering the subject of this article over the past week, I was troubled and questioning my own understanding and appreciation of this universal phenomenon. “If fear is so corrosive and damaging to life and to relationships,” I wondered, “why is it so universal? Why is it there at all?” I’ve often heard that a little fear is a good thing. The more I think about it, the more I am certain that fear provides us with the necessary protection that we need to avoid getting into life-threatening trouble. There definitely is such a thing as a ‘healthy’ fear. We all need it to keep us from getting too irresponsibly cocky and making rash and self-destructive decisions. A little fear is a very good thing, I concluded. “So,” I asked myself, “is a little fear like a little rust?”

I have come to believe that there are actually two types of fear. The one – healthy caution – provides us with the protection that we need against rash decision-making. There is another type of fear, however, that arises from insecurity and self-doubt. This kind of fear, like the iron-eating bacteria in the hull of the Titanic, slowly but consumes its host. Psychologist Carl Jung located the core of self-doubt in what he called the ‘ego,’ while the true personality he identified as the ‘Self.’ In this sense, your ego, convinced of your fundamental vulnerability, lives in mortal terror. While the Self continues to try to convince you that you’re fundamentally OK – regardless of what’s happening within or around you – the ego drowns out that more rational voice with its own terrified screaming.

At midlife especially, when the Self finds itself beset with radical changes on all fronts, the Ego’s constant doubts have a chance to erode not only your self-confidence, but also, at the same time, your capacity for acceptance, trust, and engagement. Under the fearful influence of your ego, your willingness to accept life on life’s terms (and your most significant relationships on their own terms), to trust in your own judgment and others’ good will, and to engage yourself unreservedly in the work of giving of yourself begins to collapse. Self-preservation begins to assume a priority beyond anything you’d previously experience. Your choices no longer to accept, no longer to trust, and no longer to engage begin to take their toll. Fear begins its corrosive corruption of your quality of life.

The popular spiritual work, A Course in Miracles, defines the ego as “a fearful thought.” I completely agree. The ego is convinced (and is determined to convince you) that you are in mortal danger and that only you can save yourself by withdrawing from intimacy. Ironically, under the guise of self-preservation, your ego infects you with the fear of being killed, while, at the same time, it’s in love with death. Its strangling fear begins by cutting off your vital connection with the divine Spirit by convincing you that your Higher Power, or God, cannot and will not save you from death and destruction: that the only Savior you can count on is yourself.

Next, its corrosive influence extends to your most intimate relationships, seeding doubts and watering them with imagined faults and failings in the other that “threaten” your security and well-being. It convinces you that, once again, only you can “protect” yourself from ruin. Finally, as its work runs its course, it not only cuts off your capacity for unconditional and unqualified love of others, it locks you into a kind of imagined self-protective mode where not even the grace of God can reach you. Ego-driven fear, left to run its course, will eventually succeed in causing you to forget, at the deepest level of your being, who you are.

Who are you? You are the beloved Child of a Power greater than yourself Who called you into being from the origins of the universe and who sustains and protects you in all your ways, regardless of any detours your fallible human consciousness my send you on along your way. All your Higher Power or God requires of you are the ‘virtues’ that I wrote about in my last article: acceptance, trust, and engagement (or ‘faith,’ ‘hope,’ and ‘love’). If only you would choose to ignore the fearful screaming of your ego and focus on the invulnerability of your Self and your connection with your Higher Power, you can be set free from fear to choose to respond to that Power with unconditional Faith, unconditional Hope and unconditional Love. Only then, in truth, can you accept, trust, and love yourself or anyone else.

Do your choices show that you actually believe that you are who you are? As a Child of your Higher Power, do you exercise unconditional acceptance of life on life’s terms and of the others with whom you share the gift of intimacy in this life? Do you trust that, no matter what happens to you or to others, you will always be cared and provided for? Are you willing to accept that your life depends on the quality of the commitments that you’re prepared to make on a daily basis?

“What about getting hurt?” “What about betrayal?” you may ask. In return, I want to ask you, “What is your circle of influence, and what is your circle of concern?” You may well be concerned about other peoples’ ideas or behaviors, but you have no control over them! You have control only over your own attitudes and choices. Your decisions to accept, trust, and be committed never depend on what the other person says or does. They depend wholly and exclusively on you and your willingness to love regardless of the cost. That’s the way your Higher Power loves you; that, in a nutshell describes the essence of Love itself. Love doesn’t necessarily involve intimacy; love doesn’t necessarily involve intimacy (those things require two committed people). But love does require you to choose commitment over fear, and forgiveness over anger and resentment. Can you handle it?

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

Technorati Tags:
acceptance, adult, anger, choice, commitment, courage, engagement, fear, love, midlife mastery, maturity, midlife, relationship, spirituality, trust
Add to: | Technorati | Digg | del.icio.us | Yahoo | BlinkList | Spurl | reddit | Furl |

Must couples in trouble necessarily fail? No, not necessarily: no healthy couple is doomed to failure. In fact, the only ‘doomed’ relationships are those where one or both partners are unapologetically physically or emotionally abusive . Without a doubt, the only realistic option for someone who finds her- or himself in a fundamentally abusive or exploitative relationship is to exit immediately. Apart from that, I believe that many (if not all) relationships “on the rocks” could be healed under the right circumstances. From my perspective, the fact that this healing so often fails to take place could be an indication that one or both of the partners have stopped listening. Additionally, ceasing to listen indicates a spiritual problem. Let me explain.

It would seem that the  person who hears another’s voice, but is no longer committed to listening to what the other has to say has given up on her or his partner, as well as their relationship together. If you look more closely, however, it soon becomes clear that the person has actually given up on him- or herself. Empathetic listening and appreciative inquiry represent a three-fold choice: 1) to accept the other, 2) to trust the other, and 3) to engage with the other. Closing off the lines of communication also represents a choice: to cease accepting, trusting and engaging with one’s partner. Before I relate this to fundamental spiritual principles, let’s look briefly at each choice.

The choice to accept another human being is foundational. True acceptance represents a fundamental option to see in the other person another self, with exactly the same sorts of strengths and weaknesses that we ourselves possess. This choice to acknowledge the other person as another self  has two destructive opposites. The first perversion of acceptance we call ‘exploitation‘. Philosopher Martin Buber contrasts these approaches with the terms I-Thou (for true acceptance of the other), and I-It (for exploitation). To see your partner merely in terms of his or her usefulness (like a tool or a piece of furniture) or her or his capacity to satisfy you represents a fundamental denial of humanity on your part. The second perversion of the choice to accept your partner shows itself as conditional acceptance. In brief, “I’ll accept you if you do such-and-such or so-and-so.” Conditional acceptance of another puts you in the position of being their judge, jury and executioner. In fact, it represents nothing less than your attempt to usurp the position in your partner’s life properly held by God alone.

Next, let’s look at the choice not to trust your partner. Why don’t you trust her or him? Because you’ve been hurt before? The refusal to trust your partner goes way beyond self-preservation. Once again, it is passing a judgment of condemnation on another person — another self — who exhibits the same sorts of faults and failings that you yourself exhibit. In fact, if the truth were known, the faults and failings that you find most easy to condemn and most difficult to forgive in others are the very ones that you exhibit most strongly yourself. In fact, the two keys that are absolutely essential to unlocking both acceptance and trust are these: first, to acknowledge an identical humanity in both yourself and the other, and, second, to commit yourself to the path of unconditional forgiveness. Who cannot look at the plight of even the most desperate of people around us and not be able truthfully to say, “There, but for the grace of God, go I?” The greatest message of Christianity — and also, I’m afraid,  its most forgotten and neglected — is simply this: unconditional, unlimited forgiveness. If you cannot forgive unconditionally, you cannot trust for very long.

The final choice is the choice to engage with your partner. If you refuse to engage with her or him, you thereby give credence to the (Jungian) ego’s false belief that you are vulnerable and need protection. It’s the same force that drives people’s frantic searching for that illusive (and illusory) ‘security’ that they believe will fix everything and protect them from danger. Once again, it would be foolish to put ourselves in harm’s way by engaging with an abusive partner. We owe it to ourselves and to them to take the necessary precautions so as not to allow ourselves to become victims of deliberate abuse. However, if you imagine that refusing to engage with your well-intentioned partner will grant you some sort of immunity from harm and from hurt, you are mistaken. Do you believe that spiritually you are invulnerable and that nothing outside of yourself — not even death — can destroy the essence of you? “Greater love has no one,” we have heard, “than to lay down his life for another.” Oddly, dieing for someone can actually be a whole lot easier than living for them.

Finally, what does the choice not to listen say about that person’s spiritual condition? The testimony it gives is nothing short of damning. Personally, I would liken it to what Christians refer to as the ‘sin against the Holy Spirit’ or the ‘unforgivable sin.’ Here’s what I mean. Whenever I write, I use the terms ‘acceptance,’  ‘trust’ and ‘engagement’ as  synonyms for what are called the ‘theological virtues’, namely: faith, hope , and love. The ‘sin’ against faith is the decision not to accept the will of God exactly as we encounter it in our world. The ‘sin’ against hope is the choice not to trust that our only Source of genuine security is divine providence. The ‘sin’ against love is the refusal to become meaningfully engaged with those we were sent to serve: our fellow creatures who, along with us, share the “image and likeness of God.” If the ‘sin against the Holy Spirit’ is a refusal to believe that the love of God is powerful enough to forgive us (and so we refuse to ask for forgiveness, and therefore refuse to accept it), then turning a deaf ear to someone we once claimed to love is a ‘sin against love’, for, as we know, the opposite of love is not hate, but deliberate indifference.

What can you do if you find yourself failing to listen? Remember the futility of protecting yourself. What can you protect yourself from? Even more importantly, what are you protecting yourself for? After all, your mission here in this world is not to try (futilely) to keep yourself safe. It’s to share with your fellows (and especially those in relationship with you) the same kind of acceptance, trust, and engagement that your God has shown to you. God hears his people’s cry . . . can you do any less?

And what about you who find yourself ‘learning to love one another’ and your words keep falling on deaf ears? You, too, have the opportunity to pass on the love of God. Your acceptance of the other can be renewed continually. Your trust of the other need never fail or fade. You may stand ever at the ready to engage. However, engagement (love) requires reciprocity. God does not condemn, so how could you? God does not constrain, either (because love can never be forced), but rather waits for all eternity for the other to emerge from his or her isolation and re-engage. You can have the willingness to re-engage, whether or not the other ever seeks it. You may never re-engage as you once did: time and the world goes on while the other chooses to isolate, stagnate, or (what’s worse) repeat the same self-defeating choices and behaviors with other partners. You, on the other hand, have the opportunity to accept and trust and engage with people at every stage and every condition of your life: people who, like you, have chosen to listen not only with their ears, but with their hearts.

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

Technorati Tags:
acceptance, anger, avoidance, blame, challenge, challenges, change, choice, communication, courage, crisis, death, denial, direction, emotions, engagement, faith, fear, future, grief, hope, humility, integrity, intention, isolation, love, mastery, maturity, meaning, midlife, midlife mastery, purpose, relationship, responsibility, spirituality, transition, trust, values, victim
Add to: | Technorati | Digg | del.icio.us | Yahoo | BlinkList | Spurl | reddit | Furl |