One of the things I ask people
who are getting older is, "Are you saved?" Most of them haven’t done
any mentoring or journal writing, so when the plug gets pulled, all that memory
in (biological) RAM is gone. So we need to upload it!
You know, crazy as it may seem,
if you’ve been reincarnated a couple of times and you haven’t graduated, it may
be because you have incompletes in your eldering!
Spiritual eldering carries with
it special opportunities; it means acting as guide, mentor, and agent of
healing and reconciliation on behalf of the planet, nation, tribe, clan, and
family. We become wisdom keepers.
—Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, From Age-ing to
Sage-ing: A Profound New Vision of Growing Older
Some of the wisest writings I have read on aging are Rabbi Zalman Schacter-Shalomi`s vision of saging. My favourite expression he uses is ``harvesting`` our lives. He is realistic about the challenges of aging but idealistic at the same time about what we can do in this stage of life. To harvest our lives, he advises that we do `life repair.`` That is about letting go of the past, forgiving, attending to inter-generational relationships. He encourages us to face our mortality honestly. At the same time, he holds up a model for us that gives us purpose and meaning in our old age. He writes:
“The model that I'm proposing does more than
restore the elder to a position of honor and dignity based on age and long life
experience. It envisions the elder as an agent of evolution, attracted as much
by the future of humanity's expanded brain-mind potential as by the wisdom of
the past. With an increased life span and the psychotechnologies to expand the
mind's frontiers, the spiritual elder heralds the next phase of human and
global development.”
"I hope you sense what a glorious future
awaits you in old age. No longer will you dread the evening of life as a time
of unremitting suffering and futility, but as an opportunity for continued
growth in consciousness and service to humanity. What a vista, what a wonderful
adventure, what a miraculous window of opportunity awaits us in old age!"
Isn`t that amazing!
