AHSS Gift of Years: Letting Go (Lesson 15)

Spiritual eyesight increases when physical eyesight decreases according to Plato. It is this spiritual eyesight, the ability to see into the inner meaning of things, the spiritual value of things, the essential core of things, that must carry us from this point on. It is the spiritual essence of a person that emerges from the natural divestment that comes with old age. In our early years we accumulate and in our later years we divest. Both are a struggle, and both are liberating.

Through the climb of our lives our parents and friends worry about us. Are we going too fast, too slow, intently? Whatever the pace, the concentration is on the climb. We know we’re doing it right because there are mile markers along the way that measure our success. The job, the car, the trip, the bank account are all markers of our coming of age and the passage of milestones. Once reached, those who have worried through all of this say settle down.

Settling down, we discover, has its own criteria, struggles, and trophies. Now comes the career, the apartment, titles and mortgages. The children, graduations, social life and weddings. And then, at long last, the retirement party. Then we have arrived at another great crossover moment in time. All we know now is that whatever we have managed to accumulate at the end of the climb is just about all we’ll ever get. Did we succeed or not?

Suddenly, none of the old milestone markers really count for much. But what does? Every major spiritual tradition knows as one of its core experiences a period of major divestment, of total renunciation of that which shaped a person before he or she began the great spiritual quest. In this period, the seeker considers the meaning of life and death, of the spiritual and the material, of Earth and its beyond, of the soul in contact with the create soul within.

This is the period when we evaluate everything we have come to know about life and look for a dimension above the things of this world, for the sake of what is yet to come. The search means we strip ourselves of whatever it is we have accrued until this time in order to give ourselves wholly to the birthing of the person within. Into this part of life, we travel light.

When the house is too crowded and the car is too big and the perfect lawn too much of a bother, we have begun a whole new adventure in life. It is the shaping of the soul that occupies us now. Now we set out to find out for ourselves who we really are, what we know, what we care about and how to be simply enough for ourselves in the world.

The problems come for those who are unable to let go. Somewhere along the line they accepted the heretical notion that what we have is what we are. They have not looked inside themselves for so long that they cannot now appreciate that they finally have the time and the freedom to furnish the soul with poetry and beauty, with friendships and adventures with children to play with rather than raise, and with peers to talk to about important matters rather than superficial things.

We have a chance to become what all the living has enabled us to be. Now we can make sense of it. But only if we can let go of the past. Only if we can let go of all the old ideas of success, all the marks of humanity and finally, now, allow ourselves to become simply human instead.

Sister Joan says: “A burden of these years is the temptation to cling to the times and things behind us rather than move to the liberating moments ahead. A blessing of these years is the invitation to go light-footed into the here and now – because we spend far too much of life preparing for the future rather than enjoying the present.”

• At this later time in life, according to Sister Joan, “The question now is, how and by what measures do we decide if our life has been a success?” Imagine you are in a conversation with Sister Joan. How would you answer her question? Role play for discussion or journal your thoughts on this.
• When Sister Joan states, “It’s what’s inside of us, not what’s outside of us that counts,” she is talking about our interior life. What choices have you made over the years to cultivate your interior life? Journal or discuss your thoughts.