Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

by Richard Rohr

Mature religions, and now some scientists, say that we are hardwired for the Big Picture, for transcendence, for ongoing growth, for union with ourselves and everything else.

“Everything that rises must converge,” as Teilhard de Chardin put it.

But many get stopped and fixated at lower levels where God seems to torture and exclude forever those people who don't agree with “him” or get “his” name right. How could you possibly feel safe, free, loved, trustful, or invited by such a small God?

Unfortunately, most Christians are not well trained in holding opposites for very long, or living with what could be very creative tension.

This belief is perhaps the same act of faith as that of Albert Einstein, who said before he discovered his unified field that he assumed just two things: that whatever reality is, it would show itself to be both “simple and beautiful.” I agree! Faith in any religion is always somehow saying that God is one and God is good, and if so, then all of reality must be that simple and beautiful too.

To hold the full mystery of life is always to endure its other half, which is the equal mystery of death and doubt.

I must sadly admit that I am impatient with people who do not see things this way; but it took me a long time to get here myself, so I have learned to be more patient and compassionate over time. I don't need to push the river as much now, or own the river, or get everybody in my precise river; nor do others have to name the river the same way I do in order for me to trust them or their goodwill. It takes lots of drowning in your own too tiny river to get to this big and good place.

Our mature years are characterized by a kind of bright sadness and a sober happiness, if that makes any sense. I am just grabbing for words to describe many wonderful older people I have met.

There is still darkness in the second half of life—in fact maybe even more. But there is now a changed capacity to hold it creatively and with less anxiety.

You fight things only when you are directly called and equipped to do so. We all become a well-disguised mirror image of anything that we fight too long or too directly. That which we oppose determines the energy and frames the questions after a while. You lose all your inner freedom.

At this stage, I no longer have to prove that I or my group is the best, that my ethnicity is superior, that my religion is the only one that God loves, or that my role and place in society deserve superior treatment. I am not preoccupied with collecting more goods and services; quite simply, my desire and effort—every day—is to pay back, to give back to the world a bit of what I have received. I now realize that I have been gratuitously given to—from the universe, from society, and from God. I try now, as Elizabeth Seton said, to “live simply so that others can simply live.”

Merton again says this best, as he concludes my favorite book of his: “It does not matter much [now], because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things, or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there. … We are [now] invited to forget ourselves on purpose, cast our awful solemnity to the winds and join in the general dance.”

In the second half of life, we do not have strong and final opinions about everything, every event, or most people, as much as we allow things and people to delight us, sadden us, and truly influence us. We no longer need to change or adjust other people to be happy ourselves.

We do what we are called to do, and then try to let go of the consequences.

“The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better.”

Pema Chodron says that once you create a self-justifying story line, your emotional entrapment within it quadruples!

Shadow work is humiliating work, but properly so. If you do not “eat” such humiliations with regularity and make friends with the judges, the courtrooms, and the officers (that is, all those who reveal to you and convict you of your own denied faults) who come into your life, you will surely remain in the first half of life forever.

Remember, hypocrite is a Greek word that simply means “actor,” someone playing a role rather than being “real.”

I am afraid that the closer you get to the Light, the more of your shadow you see. Thus truly holy people are always humble people.

The shadow self invariably presents itself as something like prudence, common sense, justice, or “I am doing this for your good,” when it is actually manifesting fear, control, manipulation, or even vengeance.

Invariably when something upsets you, and you have a strong emotional reaction out of proportion to the moment, your shadow self has just been exposed.

Once you have faced your own hidden or denied self, there is not much to be anxious about anymore, because there is no fear of exposure—to yourself or others.

In our work with men, we have found that in many men this inability or refusal to feel their deep sadness takes the form of aimless anger.1 The only way to get to the bottom of their anger is to face the ocean of sadness underneath it. Men are not free to cry, so they just transmute their tears into anger, and sometimes it pools up in their soul in the form of real depression. Men are actually encouraged to deny their shadow self in any competitive society, so we all end up with a lot of sad and angry old men. Men are capable of so much more, if they will only do some shadowboxing.

People who have had no inner struggles are invariably both superficial and uninteresting. We tend to endure them more than communicate with them, because they have little to communicate.

Learn and obey the rules very well, so you will know how to break them properly. —THE DALAI LAMA

when I remember that the first half of life defines itself by “no” and the second half of life by “yes,” I can understand. I am grateful that Jesus himself was a teacher from the second half of life, who, according to Paul, “always said yes” (2 Corinthians 2:20).

Unless you let the truth of life teach you on its own terms, unless you develop some concrete practice for recognizing and overcoming your dualistic mind, you will remain in the first half of life forever, as most of humanity has up to now.

How surely gravity's law, strong as an ocean current, takes hold of even the smallest thing and pulls it toward the heart of the world…. This is what the things can teach us: to fall, patiently to trust our heaviness. —RAINER MARIA RILKE, BOOK OF HOURS

What looks like falling can largely be experienced as falling upward and onward, into a broader and deeper world, where the soul has found its fullness, is finally connected to the whole, and lives inside the Big Picture.

The only final and meaningful question is “Is it true?”

Mystics often intuit and live what scientists later prove to be true.

Pain is part of the deal. If you don't walk into the second half of your own life, it is you who do not want it. God will always give you exactly what you truly want and desire. So make sure you desire, desire deeply, desire yourself, desire God, desire everything good, true, and beautiful. All the emptying out is only for the sake of a Great Outpouring. God, like nature, abhors all vacuums, and rushes to fill them.