Reframing Aging From Decline to a Spiritual Journey

The new longevity—more healthy years after retirement than any time in history—implies that we need, as a culture and as individuals, to reframe aging from decline and uselessness to an unprecedented stage of life full of possibilities. Some people in their seventies, eighties, and nineties are reclaiming creative aspirations, engaging in service for the common good, and learning contemplative practices. They are defying ageist notions of old age.

However, millions of others report feeling disoriented, marginalized, invisible, and unimportant. They are aging without a map. So, how can they find the treasures of this stage of life, the opportunities to extend emotional, creative, and spiritual development?

The late-life identity crisis

In my interviews, most participants over 60 describe what I call a late-life identity crisis: They are asking questions of meaning and purpose and, most essentially, the perennial question: Who am I?

I share with them the idea that late life is a call to another rite of passage—a transition like those from childhood to adolescence to adulthood to midlife. However, this transition is not automatic, merely chronological; it's an intentional passage that requires guidance, practices, and inner work. When I offer these practices in my workshops, people tell me that they discover how to find a new orientation in space and time. As one woman told me, “Oh, I’ve had an identity crisis before. I’ve heeded a call to change. What was frightening me before is familiar to me now with this framework.”

As one man said, “In midlife, I was always striving to progress, to move forward. It doesn’t feel right to say that I’m moving forward now. It’s more like I’m moving further, still growing but in a totally different way at a different pace.”

Another woman told me that, when she turned 70, she couldn’t find an internal GPS for this period. She had no navigator and no destination, until she learned, with the inner work of age, how to orient toward soul.

And, importantly, most of us are not aware that we are in denial of our aging, struggling with internal obstacles or unconscious parts of ourselves that block our development and the flow of our lives. These “shadow characters” resist transition and impede us from discovering the hidden power of late-life. They reinforce the walls of denial out of fear of change or loss, keeping us stuck in archaic roles and identities for years, which leads to an absence of aliveness and stagnation, even depression. Under the guise of protecting us from risk, they sabotage us by standing guard at the threshold, shutting down our spiritual longing, and silencing the whispers of our soul. So, in the clutches of an internal character, we fail to cross over and enter a new stage of development. We fail to fulfill our destiny.

That is the purpose of my work: to guide you past denial to the inner work that allows you to fully respond to the messengers of age. Then you have the freedom to make the transitions in late life as meaningful and rewarding as they can be. As a result, you can age from the inside out.

For life transitions to become successful rites of passage, they require three steps:

1. Letting go refers to leaving behind past roles, attitudes, regrets, and identities that no longer serve our development so that we can move forward.
2. Liminal time, or the neutral zone, refers to the fallow period between identities, in which we feel lost, formless, empty, and afraid. It’s a bit like a chrysalis — no longer caterpillar, not yet butterfly. And it may include deep grieving for all that has been lost.
3. New beginnings refers to the emergence of a new sense of self, passion, purpose, and vision. I would add, a potential next stage of awareness.

During the passages of retirement, emotional repair, spiritual repair, illness and caregiving, becoming an elder, sacred service, and cultivating spiritual development, these three steps of transition are key. For instance, as we transcend midlife, letting of the roles and responsibilities of this time, we may enter a neutral zone, in which we feel not young/not old. We are between clear-cut roles and identities, still active and engaged, but not quite sure who we are anymore. We are no longer primarily parents or primarily our work roles. There is a fundamental anxiety in the neutral zone with its uncertainty and absence of labels, and with its built-in loss of the past.

Eventually, 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; we let go of the “shoulds.” We release our past identities but carry all that we’ve learned, all that we love, always, within us. With spiritual practice, we shift our identities from fleeting roles to something essential behind the mask: a spiritual identity, with any name you choose. In this way, evolution is moving from role to soul.

Spirituality Essential Reads

Addressing Religion and Spirituality in Therapy

The Psychology of Rumi's Poetry

This vision of aging as a spiritual journey is not a new idea. Most of the world’s spiritual traditions envision late-life as a time for retreat from the world, contemplation, and ego transcendence. This, then, is the real treasure of this stage of life.