Summary of Connie Zweig's The Inner Work of Age

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1Part 1 explores the identity crisis that often accompanies late life. It may be triggered when we encounter the divine messengers that were witnessed by Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha.
#2 Our identity is formed of countless generations of genetic streams running through us, family narratives filled with memory, pride, and shame, and socially constructed stories of gender, race, and class.
#3 As the vehicle of life begins to decline in late life, what does the soul ask of us. Are we stuck in a past identity that no longer serves us. Are we unknowingly living a worn-out personal story or myth that we no longer believe.
#4 The dream messenger reminded me of a famous Buddhist tale of divine messengers, a tale of waking up to the truths of human life. I was in denial, sheltered from the storm of the phenomenal world. I had grown up under my father’s protection, and when I left his palace garden at eighteen, I was under a spell: oblivious of the stark realities of human suffering and death.

Sujets

• Santé et bien-être
• Santé du quotidien
• Santé au quotidien
• Santé au quotidien
• Aging
• Ageing
• Self-help

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 16 mai 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798822510708
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Connie Zweig's The Inner Work of Age
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Part 1 explores the identity crisis that often accompanies late life. It may be triggered when we encounter the divine messengers that were witnessed by Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha.

#2

Our identity is formed of countless generations of genetic streams running through us, family narratives filled with memory, pride, and shame, and socially constructed stories of gender, race, and class.

#3

As the vehicle of life begins to decline in late life, what does the soul ask of us. Are we stuck in a past identity that no longer serves us. Are we unknowingly living a worn-out personal story or myth that we no longer believe.

#4

The dream messenger reminded me of a famous Buddhist tale of divine messengers, a tale of waking up to the truths of human life. I was in denial, sheltered from the storm of the phenomenal world. I had grown up under my father’s protection, and when I left his palace garden at eighteen, I was under a spell: oblivious of the stark realities of human suffering and death.

#5

If we have been in denial, the emergence of these divine messengers, old age, illness, and death, triggers a profound identity crisis in us. They are gods or archetypal forces that carry the power to shock us out of the spell.

#6

The messengers of age go unheralded. We celebrate a christening, a toddler’s first steps, a bar mitzvah, a graduation, a wedding. But afterward, we view our final years simply as a slow decline leading to death.

#7

With inner work, we move beyond midlife and cross a threshold into late life, emerging as an Elder. We let go of the striving and pushing, and we let go of the shoulds. We release our past identities, but we carry all that we’ve learned and all that we love within us.

#8

We are often not ready for the changes that come with age, and we try to avoid them at all costs. We may delay our awareness of these changes until they are too late, or we may try to bargain with them by exercising harder and longer.

#9

Those who have explored their consciousness in previous decades are called to return in late life. Aging is a vehicle for slowing down, reorienting to the inner world, and learning to witness the internal obstacles that arise.

#10

Late life is not a stereotype. It can be more than just accommodation of change. It can mean overcoming past fears, developing fresh aptitudes, cleaning up toxic relationships, and living more in the present moment.

#11

We all have attitudes that support or undermine our health and resilience. If our identity is rooted in our image, we may struggle to adjust to the incremental changes that occur in our appearance, and lose confidence and motivation.

#12

Our cultures also define and limit aging. We age in contexts that communicate possibilities and limits about everything, including age. They shape what goes into the shadow and what remains unexpressed, as well as what is consciously lived out and fully expressed in our late life.

#13

The idea of successful aging has had a positive impact on raising awareness about the many possibilities of reimagining late life. But the concept sets up a false dichotomy between inner and outer orientation. Most of us experience a degree of youthfulness or even changelessness beneath the many physical, emotional, cognitive, and social diminishments of late life.

#14

Aging is not one-dimensional. It’s full of opposites: being and doing, freedom and dependency, purpose and disorientation, vitality and fatigue, and so on. When we inquire into late life, we must be mindful of where we put our attention: on growth or decline, gains or losses, holding on or letting go.

#15

There is a large gap between young people’s perceptions of old age and the lived experiences of older people. While young people believe that old age begins at 59, older generations think that old age begins at 65.

#16

At the age of seventy-three, Kit began to consider his future self as a contemplative, not a doing machine. He recognized that late life comes with a freedom from doing, from obligatory roles, financial concerns, and even family duties.

#17

The archetype of age is the foundation of our experience of aging. It is the set of meanings we give to the construct of age, and it is rooted in our early and ongoing life experiences.

#18

Aging from the inside out means moving our attention from the exterior world to the interior one, and from the ego’s role in society to the soul’s deeper purpose. This requires three qualities of awareness: shadow awareness, pure awareness, and mortality awareness.

#19

The shadow is our personal unconscious, which is behind or beneath our conscious awareness. We can’t gaze at it directly. It’s like a blind spot in our field of vision. We must learn how to seek it, and see in the dark.

#20

The process of bringing the shadow into awareness, shedding light on the darkness, and forgetting and remembering it again is the nature of shadow-work. We can learn to create a conscious relationship with our shadow and reduce its power to unconsciously sabotage us.

#21

Shadow-work helps us reduce the magnetic pull of inner and outer ageism, and break the spell of youth that keeps us in denial so that we can ripen into the full truth of who we are now. If we apply Bly’s metaphor to the shadows of age, what about old is stuffed into the bag that you drag around behind you.

#22

When listening to a client, it is important to be aware of the mechanical, repetitive statements that are a sign of a shadow character emerging. These are the thoughts, feelings, or sensations that accompany them.

#23

As we enter late life, we can face the challenges of our shadow characters, which can sabotage the evolution of our soul. We must become aware of these characters and how they affect us, and learn to watch them rather than stuff them back into the bag.

#24

The Sisyphus shadow drove Joseph to maintain his responsibilities at a reckless pace. But he needed to take a different kind of responsibility: to be internally accountable for the choices he had made so that he could stop feeling like a victim of his story.

#25

Pure awareness is a state in which the mind has gone beyond itself and is silent, open, and simply aware of awareness. It is a portal to silence, which is already always there. We can develop and dwell in this silence as a regular practice, and eventually a dispassionate inner observer will unfold.

#26

We need more than ever a daily refuge where we can silence our noisy mind and go beyond our shadowy thoughts, in order to align with something deeper than the day’s headlines.

#27

We can’t wait until nightfall to practice meditation. As we immerse ourselves in the silence of the present, we begin to realize that we are not those thoughts, emotions, and judgments that constantly stream through our minds. We are not those feelings that ebb and flow. Instead, we are pure awareness.

#28

We can’t choose the circumstances of our age, but we can choose the quality of awareness we bring to those circumstances. We can open the portal to silent vastness and experience our thoughts and feelings as a quiet witness, freed of the grasp of the shadow.

#29

The tasks of late life require the very traits and skills that meditation develops: a capacity to slow down and slow downward, manage the mind, release the ego’s striving, be fully present, and attune to the voice of soul.

#30

The goal of all mystical or contemplative practice is to quiet the mind until it rests in nondual pure awareness. In this era, more than ever, we need to find a calm center, a refuge from the noise, and a way to clear our minds and open our hearts.