Essentials of Elderhood - Fulfilling your potential as an Elder by Richard Clarke - HTML preview

SESSION 6: FINDING YOUR JOY

OPENING WORDS: BY MARGARET KUHN, GRAY PANTHERS FOUNDER

Being an elder of the tribe is awesome, demanding, and exhilarating.

Elders have a purpose for living that’s stronger than any physical disabilities that might slow us down. As the mind and spirit triumph over the body’s infirmities, we work passionately to achieve our goals of social justice, environmental safety, and cross-cultural understanding.

ELDERS’ MANTLE OF RESPONSIBILITY

Elders Extended Longevity and Extended Consciousness, from From Age-ing to Sage-ing.

1. Marty Knowlton says that elders are the dominant force in society. We control 75 percent of the wealth, and because we typically vote in greater numbers than younger people, we wield enormous clout. Elders have the potential of influencing the political, economic, and cultural agendas of the future.
2. Elders can model how to transform work from competition to cooperation.  Elders model how to live a full life, to keep growing and contributing, and being alive and happy.
3. Elders can mediate conflicts and witness the authority of their inner experience.
4. Erikson: Elders’ higher-order needs are for altruistic community service and environmental activism.
5. Gandhi: “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service to others.”

DISCUSSION, REFLECTION, JOURNALING: HOW CAN YOU SERVE? WHOM CAN YOU SERVE?

GUIDED MEDITATION FOR FINDING YOUR PURPOSE

Breathe deeply in and out…. in and out.

Take your attention to between your eyebrows, breathing into your eyebrows.

Turning your attention around, becoming the observer becoming your inner being, the unseen part of you, the true being that you are.

You are all knowing, you are the source if energy, you are magnificent.

Be your inner being and focus into your heart.

Ask it “what is my purpose, what do I really want, what do I really love to do?”

If anything and everything is possible, and your inner being completely knows this.

In this magnificent universe if I have a choice, what would make me truly happy, what would I choose?

Let your heart feel your inner being, let it speak to you through your feelings in your heart.

What is your feeling, what would make you truly happy?

Happiness would make you truly happy. Love would make you truly happy, joy, laughter, fun is happiness, feeling fulfilled because you are expressing your true
talents and gifts to the world or just to a few, is happiness. Giving to others is happiness.

Feel your heart speaking to you.

Become conscious of your feelings.

Everything that has lead you to this space is because there is a part of you who knows that it deserves to be happy.

This world is made for you to expand and to express your joy that is why we are here.

What is your joy?

Feel your inner being, who you really are, feel it talking to you through your heart.

The only limitations there are, are the ones you put on yourself. Become aware, become aware of what you really are. You are consciousness, shining by its own light, you are energy and everything around you is energy.

You can create your life the way you want it.

It starts with you allowing yourself to feel. Follow your good feelings, what makes your inner being sing, what makes your heart feel happiness. What is your true purpose?

Everyone’s true purpose is to feel happiness, joy, love, everyone’s true purpose is to expand to allow these feelings in all the time, regardless of the circumstances.

Feel the love, the joy the happiness, just in being, in acknowledging your inner being.

This is where everything starts.

Inside out.

Feel the love and happiness that is within you all the time regardless of what is going on around you and know that the outside pictures will change the more you focus within.

Follow your good feelings in your heart, they are your indicator.

Breathe deeply, in and out.

WHAT ARE YOUR SPECIAL GIFTS?

Each of us has special gifts and skills developed over a lifetime.

What are your special gifts?

What are your special skills?

What within you do you have to express, say through art or writing or music?

What do you have to teach others?

What do you have to give?

How can you best serve? The planet? My community? My family and friends?

REFLECTIVE QUESTIONS AND DIALOG: ELDER OF THE TRIBE

Find a spiritual partner and engage in dialogue, or journal by yourself, around ways you will become an Elder of the Tribe using the questions above to guide your conversations.

What is your special gift?

What elder responsibilities do you feel most strongly about? Why?

How will you further your spiritual eldering work?

Is there some way you can use your Elderhood to service others?

CLOSING WORDS

Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

An Elder’s work is to synthesize wisdom

from long life experience and

formulate this into a

legacy for future generations.

FINAL JOURNAL EXERCISE

Elder of the Tribe

Like tribal elders of the past, today’s spiritual elders are wisdom-keepers entrusted with the responsibility of maintaining the well-being of our families and communities. Remember conversations that you have had where you spoke with passion and vision about issues and problems.

What might you tell them now?

TRACK YOUR PROGRESS

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