Written ty Connie Zweig and Narrated by Marie T. Russell
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Each day, as sunlight dims and dusk falls, I stop. For more than fifty years, I’ve watched the light turn to darkness, then closed my eyes to make the transition from doing to being, from fast to slow, from outward to inward.
For me, dusk, the time when the glare of the day diminishes but the blackness of night has not yet blanketed the sky, is a sacred time. So, I have paid attention to dusk, the time between the world of light and the world of darkness, and I noticed a feeling of loss as another day wanes and a feeling of eagerness as another evening embraces me.
Eager For What?
I’m eager to immerse myself in the expansive ocean of silence that is simply there as I close my eyes and enter meditation, breathing in, breathing out, releasing the day’s stimulation, emptying the internal noise that goes with it, and sinking into the vastness.
After some years of feeling precious intimacy with my breath, I realized that each meditation is like practicing dying, going deeper within, letting go of it all, and breathing out one last time. Then I realized, while writing this paragraph, that this ritualized practice has helped me to prepare for the greater Dusk—for aging consciously into the twilight of my time here.
Before we cultivate pure awareness, our inner world is splashed with the colors of intense emotions. We believe our fleeting thoughts, and we unconsciously identify with the shadow character that is emerging in the moment. In the context of aging, the result is grief, paralysis, shame: “I’m too old or weak for that,” rather than “I’m feeling weak today.” Or “I am useless,” rather than “I’m not feeling like doing much today.” We become lost in the shadow character—and have no portal to silence...
Continue Reading at InnerSelf.com (plus audio/mp3 version of article)
Music By Caffeine Creek Band, Pixabay
Narrated by Marie T. Russell, InnerSelf.com
Copyright 2021 by Connie Zweig, All Rights Reserved.
Reprinted with permission of the publisher,
Park Street Press, an imprint of Inner Traditions Intl.
Article Source
The Inner Work of Age: Shifting from Role to Soul
by Connie Zweig PhD.
With extended longevity comes the opportunity for extended personal growth and spiritual development. You now have the chance to become an Elder, to leave behind past roles, shift from work in the outer world to inner work with the soul, and become authentically who you are. This book is a guide to help get past the inner obstacles and embrace the hidden spiritual gifts of age.
Offering a radical reimagining of age for all generations, psychotherapist and bestselling author Connie Zweig explores the obstacles encountered in the transition to wise Elder and offers psychological shadow-work and diverse spiritual practices to help you break through denial to awareness, move from self-rejection to self-acceptance, repair the past to be fully present, reclaim your creativity, and allow mortality to be a teacher.
For more info and/or to order this book, click here. Also available as a Kindle edition.
About the Author
Connie Zweig, Ph.D., is a retired therapist, co-author of Meeting the Shadow and Romancing the Shadow, author of Meeting the Shadow of Spirituality and a novel, A Moth to the Flame: The Life of Sufi Poet Rumi. Her forthcoming book, The Inner Work of Age: Shifting from Role to Soul, (Sept. 2021), extends shadow-work into late life and teaches aging as a spiritual practice. Connie has been doing contemplative practices for 50 years. She is a wife and grandmother and was initiated as an Elder by Sage-ing International in 2017. After investing in all these roles, she is practicing the shift from role to soul.
Visit the author's website: ConnieZweig.com
