The Second Half of Life: Opening the Eight Gates of Wisdom

by Angeles Arrien

Through the gateway of feeling your weakness lies your strength. Through the gateway of feeling your pain lies your pleasure and joy. Through the gateway of feeling your fear lies your security and safety. Through the gateway of feeling your loneliness lies your capacity to have fulfillment, love, and companionship. Through the gateway of feeling your hopelessness lies true and justified hope. Through the gateway of accepting the lacks in your childhood lies your fulfillment now. Eva Pierrakos The Pathwork of Self-Transformation

Birth is a beginning and Death a destination; From childhood to maturity and youth to age, From innocence to awareness and ignorance to knowing. From foolishness to discretion and then, perhaps to wisdom. From weakness to strength or strength to weakness, and back again. From health to sickness and back, we pray, to health again. From offense to forgiveness, from loneliness to love. From joy to gratitude, from pain to compassion. From grief to understanding, from fear to faith. From defeat to defeat. Until looking backward or ahead, we see that Victory lies not at some high place along the way, But in having made the Journey, stage by stage. Yom Kippur prayer

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed every day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory. 2 Corinthians 4:16–17

these years offer a new opportunity to reexamine the wisdom and knowledge we have gathered over time. The mysterious mirrorlike Silver Gate compels us to look past what we already know of our nature, and begin the long journey back home to our true selves.

Our task at this gate is to move beyond the familiar and strengthen our capacity to develop curiosity, trust, and flexibility. Our willingness to approach the reflective Silver Gate and see ourselves anew demonstrates a desire to leave our fixed view of reality behind. At this gate, we wholeheartedly review our lives and discover what is now emerging in both our inner and outer worlds. We begin to see what truly fosters meaning and vitality for us, and what does not.

“To be old is a glorious thing when one has not unlearned what it means to begin.”

This gate represents all that we have not yet discovered in our lives and our characters, whether it is a new belief, interest, relationship, creative project, or source of inspiration.

Theologian John O’Donohue offers a compelling approach to exploring the unknown—the practice of befriending both life and death. In his poem “Fluent,” he expresses the need to explore each day anew: I would love to live Like a river flows, Carried by the surprise Of its own unfolding

Rivers are nature’s teachers and exemplify flexibility, resilience, and perseverance, all resources and qualities that are both necessary and available to us in our later years. To live “Like a river flows,/Carried by the surprise/Of its own unfolding” is the supreme invitation of the second half of life, and the essential task of the Silver Gate.

Soul loss, or disconnection from what is life-giving and meaningful, often reveals itself at the Silver Gate. Its symptoms can take the form of inertia, apathy, anxiety, emptiness, depression, futility, or numbness. It may also appear as confusion, preoccupation, self-doubt, restlessness, irritation, a tendency to be extremely critical, or a lack of vitality.

People are encouraged to celebrate their birth date each month for a year by doing something they have not done before. This practice requires discipline, ingenuity, creativity, and motivated engagement.

it is essential at the Silver Gate to listen deeply to what we may be longing for and to recognize restlessness or dissipation as a sign of the soul’s urging us to grow and move toward something new.

Tolstoy gave birth to the intergrated life he longed for, and began to live a life of simplicity and contentment. He grew his own food, and lived out his days in meaningful service and meditation. His writing shifted to express what he was learning internally and what was satisfying to him—whether it was going to be published or not. What renews us often helps us realign with what has meaning for us. This realignment regenerates us, as it did Tolstoy, and helps a new aspect of ourselves to unfold—our primary task at this gate.

Universally, fire is regarded as a spiritual symbol of awakening.

Traditionally, the four fires that these sacred texts refer to are the fire of vision, the fire of the heart, the creative fire, and the soul’s fire.

The fire of vision provides visions or dreams that show us possibilities and potential in our lives, inspiring us to manifest what we see or are called upon to do. The fire of the heart teaches us about what and whom we love. The creative fire signals the work that we love, a keen awareness of our gifts, and our desire to express them as a way of contributing to the world. The soul’s fire calls us to be authentically who we are and serve others rather than our own egos.

Deep in the wintry parts of our minds, we are hardy stock and know there is no such thing as work-free transformation. We know that we will have to burn to the ground in one way or another, and then sit right in the ashes of who we once thought we were and go on from there.

The spirit of passionate renewal, the igniting power of fire that comes from the depths of the human spirit, is known cross-culturally by different names: as duende in Spain’s flamenco; verissimo in Italian opera; fado in Portugal; tango in Argentina; sandade in Latin America; and jazz in America.

Recognizing grace in our lives is a blessing that comes from the curiosity, hope, flexibility, meaning, and gratitude that we regain at the Silver Gate.

Tracking is an essential component of any spiritual practice or discipline. It is an active tool that develops the objective, fair-witnessing mind. In tracking, we focus attention, maintaining curiosity and equanimity as we look at whatever is surfacing in our minds in the moment. This cultivates balance, objectivity, and discernment, allowing us to see courses of action that create positive change for ourselves and others. And by tracking our experience, we can integrate it within ourselves.

Pay attention to where you have been, the results you are getting, and if you are “on track” as you head in a new direction.

A valuable approach to tracking is found in Harry R. Moody and David Carroll’s book The Five Stages of the Soul. The five stages are the call, the search, the struggle, the breakthrough, and the return. Each is a logical extension of the preceding one, and leads naturally to the next.

In what ways is your workplace struggling? Are you struggling within it? Do you see any patterns to this struggle? What can you do to disrupt these patterns and create a new dynamic?

The archetype of return is to come back to known experiences and to harvest a different result.

Blessed be my feet that I may walk in the path of my highest will. Robin Morgan

We are cradled close in your hands— And lavishly flung forth. Rainer Maria Rilke Book of Hours

Withdraw into yourself and look. And if you do not find yourself beautiful yet, act as does the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful: he cuts away here, he smoothes there, he makes this line lighter, this other purer, until a lovely face has grown upon his work. So do you also: cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labor to make all one glow of beauty and never cease chiseling your statue, until there shall shine out on you from it the godlike splendor of virtue, until you shall see the perfect goodness surely established in the stainless shrine. Plotinus The Enneads

In all faces the Face of faces is veiled as a riddle. Nicolas of Cusa, fifteenth-century Christian mystic

This gate reveals our changing identities and social masks.

The White Picket Gate is another symbol for our teeth, a metaphor for transformation and change.

Thomas Browne writes of the unmasked rewards that await us at this gate in our later years: “We carry within us the wonders we seek without us.” Often what we have long searched for in the external world has in fact always been within us, patiently awaiting our recognition while we took detours or busied ourselves creating identities that were unrelated to our true self.

This essence holds the natural wisdom and radiance of our authentic being, reminding us that we are spiritual beings having a human experience, rather than human beings trying to have a spiritual experience.

This integration is not an easy task, as Gurdjieff warns in P.D. Ouspensky’s In Search of the Miraculous: When a man is not playing any of his usual roles, when he cannot find a suitable role in his repertoire, he feels that he is undressed. He is cold and ashamed and wants to run away from everybody. But the question arises: What does he want? A quiet life or to work on himself? If he wants a quiet life, he must certainly first of all never move out of his repertoire. In his usual roles he feels comfortable and at peace. But if he wants to work on himself, he must destroy his peace. To have them both together is in no way possible.

This gate marks the choice to be someone who is fully alive, a courageous explorer and adventurer who is willing to disturb the comfort of familiar roles in order to discover the true face that lies beneath family conditioning and cultural imprinting.

In the second half of life, the White Picket is the gate of divestiture, where our values and identities shift from doing to being; from preparing to harvesting; from acquisition to legacy-leaving; from ambition to meaning; and from “I” to “we.” Here we destroy the illusory peace provided by all our roles, uncovering our true face in order to integrate and embody the true child-youth-adult-elder-essence of our nature.

The face of the adult appears at any age in one who is experienced, trustworthy, and responsible. The face of the elder, its beauty etched by time, presents a magnificence of strength, softness, and subtlety that merge to reveal a mysterious and textured wisdom; often we see this same quality of wisdom in a newborn’s face. And the face of essence is the timeless, radiant face of our being’s presence and essential spiritual nature.

In Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Carl Jung writes, “We meet ourselves time and again in a thousand disguises on the path of life.”

The White Picket Gate not only calls for the integration of the five faces, but compels us to awaken an inner spiritual authority, a ...

We must overcome two great obstacles to revealing the true face and integrating the five faces. We need to stop seeking the acceptance and approval of others, thereby abandoning our true nature. And we must stop performing, pretending, and hiding to sustain our false identities and cultivated masks.

What prompts us to perform, pretend, or hide?

Our relationship to our ego identity changes significantly in the second half of

The face of the ego, which maintains our overdeveloped identities and masks, is required to surrender to the soul’s face of essence. In his book Shadow Dance, David Richo creates an acronym for the ego’s FACE: Fear, Attachment, Control, and Entitlement.

As we enter this gate, we must shift our allegiances from fear to curiosity, from attachment to letting go, from control to trust, and from entitlement to humility. This shift allows the ego’s face to recede, the true face to emerge, the five faces to integrate, and wisdom to appear. At times, the shift can seem so awkward that we suddenly do not know who we are: we experience an identity crisis and recognize the truth of Gurdjieff’s warning—if we want a quiet life, we must never move out of our repertoire of usual roles. To work on ourselves beyond these roles, we have no choice but to destroy their illusory peace. At the White Picket Gate, we begin to see ourselves very differently as our true face emerges. This shift in self-perception creates an initial disorientation.

shapeshifters,

In her book When the Heart Waits, Sue Monk Kidd eloquently describes both the task and challenge of the White Picket Gate: Is it possible, I asked myself, that I’m being summoned from some deep and holy place within? Am I being asked to enter a passage in the spiritual life—the journey from false self to true self? Am I being asked to dismantle old masks and patterns and unfold a deeper, more authentic self—the one God created me to be? Am I being compelled to disturb my inner universe in quest of the undiscovered being who clamors from within?

The White Picket Gate offers the wisdom gifts of curiosity, flexibility, and self-acceptance.

Embracing our wisdom face, we can meet the challenge with which the eighth-century Buddhist sage Hui-Neng is reputed to have confronted his disciples: “Show me the face you had before even your parents were born.”

Reflect upon the qualities of the five faces—the child, the youth, the adult, the elder, and the essence, the timeless radiant face of your essential nature. Can you clearly distinguish each of them and their presence in different parts of your life?

Which of these two obstacles keep you from discovering and trusting your true face: abandoning your true nature for the sake of others’ acceptance and approval; or performing, pretending, and hiding because of your egoic preferences to be seen in a desired way?

Each human soul is the footprint of God. Meister Eckhart