This is a LONG blog post... probably a 30 minute read intended for deep personal self-reflection...
I really encourage you to PRINT it for later contemplation ...and also to PASS IT ON to friends or loved ones you know who are struggling with the challenges and changes unique to the MID LIFE time of life (say 39-65ish!) and seeking an integrated and holistic mind/body/spirit understanding to self-healing and renewal.
I really encourage you to PRINT it for later contemplation ...and also to PASS IT ON to friends or loved ones you know who are struggling with the challenges and changes unique to the MID LIFE time of life (say 39-65ish!) and seeking an integrated and holistic mind/body/spirit understanding to self-healing and renewal.
SPECIAL NOTE: At the end of this blog I have posted the dates for the upcoming life-transforming Midlife Retreats I currently have scheduled in Southern California and elsewhere.
...May this contemplative blog post help those of you struggling at the challenging middle years of life to start to fit all the pieces together, and thus find healing renewal and the insight to live your soul's true passion and purpose in the years ahead!
For those who have read my books or worked with me already in one of my SoulArts apprenticeship programs, you will be intrigued to know that my unique inner work processes have recently taken on a new depth resulting from my own next level of inner transformation. I will share some of this here!
What a surprising jolt, the radical and challenging changes that occur to mind, body and spirit at mid life! At least it was a TOTAL surprise to me! First of all I spent probably a good 5 years not even recognizing or understanding the signs...
By the time I finally "got it" and realized that my body, mind and soul were all going through something REALLY BIG! And that "something BIG" was affecting EVERY aspect of my former well being in ways very challenging (to say the least).
By the time I spent (dare I account?) many thousands of dollars on various doctors and lab tests for every possible dreaded disease imaginable that all seem to mimic the bizarre and shifting symptomotology of mid life and menopause, I finally realized that our standard medical culture is still not well enough informed to deal effectively with the slippery slopes of what is happening in our body, our heart, our psyche, and our spirit at mid-life.
I have been a research scholar much of my life. Now, an author and respected spiritual teacher for many years. But I confess: midlife caught me up short. IT GOT ME!...and it ALMOST took me down. Well it did in truth. .. which is part of the process of the transformation actually! But hell at the time!
In the last several years I have built a large library and practically earned a second masters degree in my desperate search to meet, understand, and rise above the dreadful physical, emotional and spiritual challenges of midlife and menopause.
So now, in addition to my very active spiritual practice as a healer/teacher/shaman (minister) and graduate training in social psychology, I have added a very deep study of nutrition, brain chemistry and the amazing complexity of the endocrine system, the functioning of neurotransmitters in the brain, and the medical vs. alternative science and art to curing mental dis-ease and restoring true health and wellbeing to the body/mind so that the spirit can again soar!
From a problem-solving standpoint, I've discovered primarily this: Until or unless we take a fully holistic and self-responsible approach to address the full mind/body/spirit interconnection of health and well being, the results of any incremental symptom relief we try will be very limited, and the true potential of restoring life to its absolute fullest just plain can't happen! We're a cosmos unto ourselves ...and true healing and balance restored has to take that into account and move the entire system back into its orchestrated magic if we are to know our fullest birthright. That's a BIG discovery!
So let's get into it....
There is something particularly awkward, damned stupefying, and deadly perilous that occurs to most people in our culture at and around the mid life years. It is an actual developmental phase of necessary transition, just like the transition from childhood into puberty that marks the entrance into adulthood...yet we don't understand this!
We're not taught how to effectively traverse this most challenging and powerful time of change in our life! It's a tragedy: What is meant to be a great time of liberation, empowerment, and freedom too often becomes a source of divorce, depression, and dis-ease. Not right!
Look at what happens to people at midlife. Usually we first come into it by surprise and ignorance. I for one never gave midlife any credence for being any different than any other time of life. I thought menopause and the male equivalent complaints where just "people being whimpy complainers" I APOLOGIZE! Eee gads! what whole body/mind/spirit changes this midlife era stirs up in one's life! Havoc!
Then too along with an understandable naiveté regarding the powerful biological and spiritual forces at play in ones life starting in these early to late middle years of life, comes an ignorant or well intended denial: i.e., most of us in today's hectic culture simply ignore or push away the various forms of angst and confusing physical/emotional experiences and just keep going "balls to the walls" (as they say) getting more and more depleted and distracted by all the roles and responsibilities of daily life.
We keep pushing against and pushing away fear of this inner nagging pain, so that by the time we finally stop to catch our breath (or "get stopped" by a disease or personal life crisis!) we look up and find to our dismay that a whole chapter of our life has passed us right by - and realize that we weren't really even there!
We were too busy fighting to stay "up", pretending all is the same, holding on to what is no longer working. All the assorted "things" in our lives have run us ragged right into the ground. ... and we find we've lost touch with our heart and our soul in the process. ..Now we start to recognize that the problem isn't just going away...
When this deadening soul loss just can't be ignored any longer, we try anti-depressants, affirmations, power yoga, a new diet; we make a renewed commitment to our responsibilities. ...This helps for a while, but it doesn't do the job either! In fact now we add shame to the list of worried, confused, and depleted, because of a new experience: "The old ways of handling it are not working here!."
So in one last flurry of self-marshaled zeal, we may try abrupt and radical change: new job, new lover, new home, new face lift....hoping against hope that these changes will somehow prove that there is still life to draw out from this empty shell of existence.
Enter despair. We give up; we give in; we fall into a cycle of anxiety and depression... and we start dying inside...old age issues slip in as well and that seals it. We tell ourselves we simply must get over it: "we're becoming old". Fear and horror crawl up beside us for the long haul and is staved off only by our numbing depression and deadening distraction.Depressing picture isn't it?
Now I know this isn't everybody's story! But many aspects of it (if you really look into and track your own areas of fear, discomfort, angst) are true for all who must pass through this midlife threshold of change.
For me, personally, midlife has been one of the most difficult trails of my life journey to date. As one who has been called down the path of shaman teacher/guide, it seems I am called to directly live, experience - and thereby best study and understand (IF I make it through!) the depths of human suffering and self-limiting blocks... As one who has suffered and "stucked myself" right alongside many of you, I am here to say that there truly is a meaning to this madness!
Midlife has its own special kind of growing pains. We're meant to know this and to learn how to use the crisis as the change-agent for a whole new freedom of being!
At midlife we're actually meant to make quantum leap to a brand new depth of perception, wisdom, artistry ...and peace! It's a cocoon to butterfly process ...and most of us miss it entirely, and give up...becoming old worn out worms (ugh!) ...or alternatively, we put on a really hefty mask and pretend youth beyond our stature (ugh"er"!)
What is continually amazing to me is that the farther I consciously go into my own vulnerable depth process through this midlife cauldron of change (and the awkward biochemical/hormonal shifts and the bizarrely confusing moods that come with it), the more powerful my work and my vision becomes.
This is true of each one of us! Every time you enter into that which causes you fear or shame or woundedness, and learn how to meet it consciously and with creative curiosity rather than with constricting resistance, you begin the self-healing journey of the inner wisdom way ...to your freedom.
Said another way: Every time another mask of your wounded self-protective hiding is recognized in the light of curious soulful attention, it very naturally and simply loses its power ....and a genuine power that is your genius, is released and reclaimed.
It's awesome to experience this! If you've not YET experienced this, you can't imagine the relief and the restored vitality that comes with it! When this clarity of true Seeing occurs, the healing innocence of your heart is automatically reclaimed and restored. You become magnificent! You become simultaneously more genuine, more empowered, more creative, and more fully alive.
This is what our life journey is all about: dismantling the limitations and false security of fear (the real meaning of the word "sin") and becoming one who knows and aims to live by his or her true divine nature and unique "spectrum of God-consciousness". When we "give up the ghosts" of our past and learn the soul artistry of honoring our life, we very naturally step into the realization that we are, by nature, already (holy) whole.
Want to honor Truth (call it what you will: God/Life/Creation)? You can only do so by having the courage to stop dishonoring and denying and struggling against the ALL of your life!
Once you can love yourself (warts and all) only then is it truly possible to love and serve others and to live your fullest birthright and genius. This is the powerful hand that is held out and offered to you through the seeming Midlife Crisis!
Want to honor God? Stop praying "to get more of this or less of that" ...and instead discover this:
Discover what it is to so honor life itself, and YOUR LIFE ITSELF that you say "YES" to each moment -- by really being here for it!
Learn what it means to actually stand up to your life, and allow life to change you through an evolutionary process of remembering who you really are! Get intentional. Read and discover ...trouble shoot from a stance of being the "curious scientist and artist of your life"...Discover for yourself how to claim self-healing, holy wholeness and inner peace. It is actually very simple ...and yet we'll do anything but the inner responsibility required to claim our true joy.
Why? We're afraid of what we have to let drop from our hands without any assurance of what (if anything) will replace it. We do the common "faux security trick of the mind": We say: Better a lousy but known situation than a totally unknown one. I'll just hold on to this until something better comes along."
Something better cannot and will not come along from that stagnant stance! It can't. "Something better" requires a letting go (dropping) of an old way of responding, thinking, and learning to realize how to perceive and see from another whole light of being. It's a quantum leap of perception (like it is when a baby first realizes (s)he is not it's mother) There's a natural transition time for such change (just like the awkward change of power between administrations during a presidential election year). This is often a dark night of soul period in the metamorphosis cycle of a person’s life.
I have just recently undergone another personal transformational depth cycle. This is one of the most profound inner seeing changes I've yet experienced. And like all radical or quantum leaps of conscious seeing, another façade has been shed ...And in its place, a deeper creative vitality and power than I could ever have imagined possible, is infusing my life and my work in ways of genius that I as a mental function alone could never produce.
This renewed creative power is also what is awaiting you behind these very (and I mean VERY!) challenging times. And what's really great is this: Once you first glimpse (or capture even the smallest hint of the fragrance of) your own creative metamorphosis, your life begins to heal and reconfigure in beautiful and powerful ways you could never have imagined possible. We just need to get out of our own way!
Becoming conscious that midlife is a unique developmental phase of life and a potent healing/awakening process, is an essential first step.
Midlife transition is not another problem to solve or hurtle to get over. It is offering you a whole new light of Seeing and Being that re-claims and re-births you into your own special holy wholeness. A great miracle is at play ...if you will invest yourself into its artful and playful unfolding.
As many of you know, I have made a very deep inquiry and study of midlife including: the changes to our brain chemistry; mood swings and mood foods; depression and grief; body change and dietary needs, as well as startling spiritual call of soul that we are finally developmentally prepared to understand and to embrace. ...Like a good wine: Inner wisdom cannot be served before it's time.
I tell you this: if you, or someone you know, is hurting at midlife with feelings of loss, emptiness, depression, lack of purpose or meaningful direction, it signals a life-renewing opportunity waiting to be ushered in!
It also signals that something must change if you are to ever really live. It's rarely "the place" or "the spouse" or "the job" or any of "the things" of life that need changing for the most part (though sometimes these are true too). It is your orientation to YOU and to life itself that must change!
In a sentence,
You have become too small for the Whole Truth of You! ...And it's time to grow...
At midlife, our "labor pains" (especially fear, insecurity, and awkward vulnerability) are the precursors that often bring us to our knees and wake us up to the need of a new way.
If you want to begin the miraculous journey of renewed life force rather than the repeated practice of slow dying, you will have to uncover what it means to dedicate your life to the love-making journey of soul.
In the journey of soul, you will discover something truly astonishing: you will discover the secret of true unconditional self-love, gentle acceptance (which is peace) and depth of purpose (which is your genius given its full expression).
THIS IS AN AWESOME TIME, MIDLIFE! We are called to reclaim our inner wisdom; a wisdom that we are only, just now, ready to hear and claim in our world.
I too have hurt and struggled and suffered. I know (truly) what it means to despair and to feel you can never break free. I know what it is to remain trapped and to not be able to get past depression, anger, fatigue, addictive behaviors, a noisy mind...fear.
AND I have learned and discovered a unique process I call Unmasking. I have learned how to take the wounds and fears of life that are right here and right now, and listen to them in such a profoundly creative way, that they literally reveal what has been hidden behind them all along, which is: your amazingly unique and brilliant innocence of heart now tempered with the counsel of your own wise inner guidance, and genius!
I mean it! We each have God-given genius that is literally lying in wait, masked behind our fears and our wounds...Your wisdom is indeed closer than you realize!
So whew... so much for my "short email", on this day of our newly elected President of the United States! In honor of this momentous day and a brilliant call to responsible action on the part of each one of us during this time of difficulty and fear, I will pose President Obama's call to each of us in this way:
By what character will you step into your own life struggles and those around you? How will you invest yourself this year? Rather than weaken yourself further by cowing into a fearful cycle of desperate grasping and self-protective hording or holding on to what is no longer even serving you, how will you instead learn to use these struggles as a means of endowing you with greater courage and strength, deeper love and vision, truer wisdom and power, greater service and love?
Put another way:
What do you stand for in your life? What do you vest yourself in....really? By what focus do you live and make your living worthwhile? Will fear dictate your life until you eventually grow old and die...or will you dare to enter into the bold adventure of actually seeking and knowing what it is to be truly alive?
I invite you to take time and really wrestle with these questions. In fact, live these questions every day of your life ..for the rest of your life!
In these questions, real aliveness resides. It is the actions that you take as you engage these questions in your daily living that you will find what you seek. Don't manufacture some ideal of a spiritual life that is separate from your everyday life. Your everyday life - and how you live it - is the only place you will ever know your true spiritual and artful nature!
I thank you for engaging this engthy contemplative writing as your own inner quest to discover that which you seek. ...May you step into this opportunity of a lifetime and realize the power of your soul. May you be here, awake, vibrant, and creatively engaged in this magnificent love affair with life! What a dance!
Namaste,
ronda larue, January 20, 2009
For me, personally, midlife has been one of the most difficult trails of my life journey to date. As one who has been called down the path of shaman teacher/guide, it seems I am called to directly live, experience - and thereby best study and understand (IF I make it through!) the depths of human suffering and self-limiting blocks... As one who has suffered and "stucked myself" right alongside many of you, I am here to say that there truly is a meaning to this madness!
Midlife has its own special kind of growing pains. We're meant to know this and to learn how to use the crisis as the change-agent for a whole new freedom of being!
At midlife we're actually meant to make quantum leap to a brand new depth of perception, wisdom, artistry ...and peace! It's a cocoon to butterfly process ...and most of us miss it entirely, and give up...becoming old worn out worms (ugh!) ...or alternatively, we put on a really hefty mask and pretend youth beyond our stature (ugh"er"!)
What is continually amazing to me is that the farther I consciously go into my own vulnerable depth process through this midlife cauldron of change (and the awkward biochemical/hormonal shifts and the bizarrely confusing moods that come with it), the more powerful my work and my vision becomes.
This is true of each one of us! Every time you enter into that which causes you fear or shame or woundedness, and learn how to meet it consciously and with creative curiosity rather than with constricting resistance, you begin the self-healing journey of the inner wisdom way ...to your freedom.
Said another way: Every time another mask of your wounded self-protective hiding is recognized in the light of curious soulful attention, it very naturally and simply loses its power ....and a genuine power that is your genius, is released and reclaimed.
It's awesome to experience this! If you've not YET experienced this, you can't imagine the relief and the restored vitality that comes with it! When this clarity of true Seeing occurs, the healing innocence of your heart is automatically reclaimed and restored. You become magnificent! You become simultaneously more genuine, more empowered, more creative, and more fully alive.
This is what our life journey is all about: dismantling the limitations and false security of fear (the real meaning of the word "sin") and becoming one who knows and aims to live by his or her true divine nature and unique "spectrum of God-consciousness". When we "give up the ghosts" of our past and learn the soul artistry of honoring our life, we very naturally step into the realization that we are, by nature, already (holy) whole.
Want to honor Truth (call it what you will: God/Life/Creation)? You can only do so by having the courage to stop dishonoring and denying and struggling against the ALL of your life!
Once you can love yourself (warts and all) only then is it truly possible to love and serve others and to live your fullest birthright and genius. This is the powerful hand that is held out and offered to you through the seeming Midlife Crisis!
Want to honor God? Stop praying "to get more of this or less of that" ...and instead discover this:
Discover what it is to so honor life itself, and YOUR LIFE ITSELF that you say "YES" to each moment -- by really being here for it!
Learn what it means to actually stand up to your life, and allow life to change you through an evolutionary process of remembering who you really are! Get intentional. Read and discover ...trouble shoot from a stance of being the "curious scientist and artist of your life"...Discover for yourself how to claim self-healing, holy wholeness and inner peace. It is actually very simple ...and yet we'll do anything but the inner responsibility required to claim our true joy.
Why? We're afraid of what we have to let drop from our hands without any assurance of what (if anything) will replace it. We do the common "faux security trick of the mind": We say: Better a lousy but known situation than a totally unknown one. I'll just hold on to this until something better comes along."
Something better cannot and will not come along from that stagnant stance! It can't. "Something better" requires a letting go (dropping) of an old way of responding, thinking, and learning to realize how to perceive and see from another whole light of being. It's a quantum leap of perception (like it is when a baby first realizes (s)he is not it's mother) There's a natural transition time for such change (just like the awkward change of power between administrations during a presidential election year). This is often a dark night of soul period in the metamorphosis cycle of a person’s life.
I have just recently undergone another personal transformational depth cycle. This is one of the most profound inner seeing changes I've yet experienced. And like all radical or quantum leaps of conscious seeing, another façade has been shed ...And in its place, a deeper creative vitality and power than I could ever have imagined possible, is infusing my life and my work in ways of genius that I as a mental function alone could never produce.
This renewed creative power is also what is awaiting you behind these very (and I mean VERY!) challenging times. And what's really great is this: Once you first glimpse (or capture even the smallest hint of the fragrance of) your own creative metamorphosis, your life begins to heal and reconfigure in beautiful and powerful ways you could never have imagined possible. We just need to get out of our own way!
Becoming conscious that midlife is a unique developmental phase of life and a potent healing/awakening process, is an essential first step.
Midlife transition is not another problem to solve or hurtle to get over. It is offering you a whole new light of Seeing and Being that re-claims and re-births you into your own special holy wholeness. A great miracle is at play ...if you will invest yourself into its artful and playful unfolding.
As many of you know, I have made a very deep inquiry and study of midlife including: the changes to our brain chemistry; mood swings and mood foods; depression and grief; body change and dietary needs, as well as startling spiritual call of soul that we are finally developmentally prepared to understand and to embrace. ...Like a good wine: Inner wisdom cannot be served before it's time.
I tell you this: if you, or someone you know, is hurting at midlife with feelings of loss, emptiness, depression, lack of purpose or meaningful direction, it signals a life-renewing opportunity waiting to be ushered in!
It also signals that something must change if you are to ever really live. It's rarely "the place" or "the spouse" or "the job" or any of "the things" of life that need changing for the most part (though sometimes these are true too). It is your orientation to YOU and to life itself that must change!
In a sentence,
You have become too small for the Whole Truth of You! ...And it's time to grow...
At midlife, our "labor pains" (especially fear, insecurity, and awkward vulnerability) are the precursors that often bring us to our knees and wake us up to the need of a new way.
If you want to begin the miraculous journey of renewed life force rather than the repeated practice of slow dying, you will have to uncover what it means to dedicate your life to the love-making journey of soul.
In the journey of soul, you will discover something truly astonishing: you will discover the secret of true unconditional self-love, gentle acceptance (which is peace) and depth of purpose (which is your genius given its full expression).
THIS IS AN AWESOME TIME, MIDLIFE! We are called to reclaim our inner wisdom; a wisdom that we are only, just now, ready to hear and claim in our world.
I too have hurt and struggled and suffered. I know (truly) what it means to despair and to feel you can never break free. I know what it is to remain trapped and to not be able to get past depression, anger, fatigue, addictive behaviors, a noisy mind...fear.
AND I have learned and discovered a unique process I call Unmasking. I have learned how to take the wounds and fears of life that are right here and right now, and listen to them in such a profoundly creative way, that they literally reveal what has been hidden behind them all along, which is: your amazingly unique and brilliant innocence of heart now tempered with the counsel of your own wise inner guidance, and genius!
I mean it! We each have God-given genius that is literally lying in wait, masked behind our fears and our wounds...Your wisdom is indeed closer than you realize!
So whew... so much for my "short email", on this day of our newly elected President of the United States! In honor of this momentous day and a brilliant call to responsible action on the part of each one of us during this time of difficulty and fear, I will pose President Obama's call to each of us in this way:
By what character will you step into your own life struggles and those around you? How will you invest yourself this year? Rather than weaken yourself further by cowing into a fearful cycle of desperate grasping and self-protective hording or holding on to what is no longer even serving you, how will you instead learn to use these struggles as a means of endowing you with greater courage and strength, deeper love and vision, truer wisdom and power, greater service and love?
Put another way:
What do you stand for in your life? What do you vest yourself in....really? By what focus do you live and make your living worthwhile? Will fear dictate your life until you eventually grow old and die...or will you dare to enter into the bold adventure of actually seeking and knowing what it is to be truly alive?
I invite you to take time and really wrestle with these questions. In fact, live these questions every day of your life ..for the rest of your life!
In these questions, real aliveness resides. It is the actions that you take as you engage these questions in your daily living that you will find what you seek. Don't manufacture some ideal of a spiritual life that is separate from your everyday life. Your everyday life - and how you live it - is the only place you will ever know your true spiritual and artful nature!
I thank you for engaging this engthy contemplative writing as your own inner quest to discover that which you seek. ...May you step into this opportunity of a lifetime and realize the power of your soul. May you be here, awake, vibrant, and creatively engaged in this magnificent love affair with life! What a dance!
Namaste,
ronda larue, January 20, 2009
MIDLIFE AND PRIVATE RETREAT CALL TO ACTION!
Come experience the truth of YOU that is ready to be lived!
MIDLIFE SMALL GROUP RETREAT - A deeply integrated small retreat in-residence with spiritual teacher/author Ronda LaRue including 60 days of free advance home preparation and e-forum dialogue, integrative health at midlife resources, and her own radical process of Soul Arts for inner self realization and living artistry More info here...
PRIVATE RETREATS - Ronda LaRue's novel apprenticeships and private retreat intensives at her Ojai Soul Arts Salon - rated one of the top spiritual retreats in the world by Asia Spa Magazine (2007) for her radical transformational artistry of approach More info here..
I invite you to pass this contemplative post on to anyone you know who is suffering with despair or loss of hope at midlife, or simply seeking a much more vibrant wholeness and creative life!
Here's the Yoga of Being Wholly YOU!
ronda larue
