Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

by Richard Rohr

“Hating” Family

Critical

First of all, do you recognize that he is actually undoing the fourth commandment of Moses, which tells us to “honor your father and mother”? This commandment is necessary for the first half of life, and, one hopes, it can be possible forever. As we move into the second half of life, however, we are very often at odds with our natural family and the “dominant consciousness” of our cultures. It is true more often than I would have ever imagined. Many people are kept from mature religion because of the pious, immature, or rigid expectations of their first-half-of-life family.

Oh snap

For postmodern people, the universe is not inherently enchanted, as it was for the ancients. We have to do all the “enchanting” ourselves. This leaves us alone, confused, and doubtful. There is no meaning already in place for our discovery and enjoyment. We have to create all meaning by ourselves in such an inert and empty world, and most of us do not seem to succeed very well. This is the burden of living in our heady and lonely time, when we think it is all up to us.

This “something real” is what all the world religions were pointing to when they spoke of heaven, nirvana, bliss, or enlightenment. They were not wrong at all; their only mistake was that they pushed it off into the next world. If heaven is later, it is because it is first of all now.

The kingdom of God is here

It is religion's job to teach us and guide us on this discovery of our True Self, but it usually makes the mistake of turning this into a worthiness contest of some sort, a private performance, or some kind of religious achievement on our part, through our belonging to the right group, practicing the right rituals, or believing the right things. These are just tugboats to get you away from the shore and out into the right sea; they are the oars to get you working and engaged with the Mystery. But never confuse these instruments with your profound “ability to share in the divine nature” itself (2 Peter 1:4). It is the common, and in this case tragic, confusion of the medium with the message, or the style with the substance.

I can get down with that. Don’t worship the tools

spirituality is much more about unlearning than learning,

Any discovery or recovery of our divine union has been called “heaven” by most traditions. Its loss has been called “hell.” The tragic result of our amnesia is that we cannot imagine that these terms are first of all referring to present experiences. When you do not know who you are, you push all enlightenment off into a possible future reward and punishment system, within which hardly anyone wins. Only the True Self knows that heaven is now and that its loss is hell—now.

This is one of the most beautiful descriptions of this reality I’ve ever read

No one is in heaven unless he or she wants to be, and all are in heaven as soon as they live in union. Everyone is in heaven when he or she has plenty of room for communion and no need for exclusion. The more room you have to include, the bigger your heaven will be.

If you accept a punitive notion of God, who punishes or even eternally tortures those who do not love him, then you have an absurd universe where most people on this earth end up being more loving than God! God excludes no one from union, but must allow us to exclude ourselves in order for us to maintain our freedom. Our word for that exclusion is hell, and it must be maintained as a logical possibility. There must be the logical possibility of excluding oneself from union and to choose separation or superiority over community and love. No one is in hell unless that individual himself or herself chooses a final aloneness and separation. It is all about desire, both allowing and drawing from the deepest level of our desiring. It is interesting to me that the official church has never declared a single person to be in hell, not even Judas, Hitler, or Stalin.

(Literalism is usually the lowest and least level of meaning.)

Either Jesus is the “savior of the world” (John 4:42), or he is not much of a savior at all.

Without elders, a society perishes socially and spiritually.

I have never figured out why unknowing becomes another kind of knowing, but it surely seems to be.2 It takes a lot of learning to finally “learn ignorance” (docta ignorantia) as Dionysius, Augustine, Bonaventure, and Nicholas of Cusa all agreed.

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.”

Their God is no longer small, punitive, or tribal. They once worshiped their raft; now they love the shore where it has taken them. They once defended signposts; now they have arrived where the signs pointed. They now enjoy the moon itself instead of fighting over whose finger points to it most accurately, quickly, or definitively.

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. Ironically, we are more than ever before in a position to change people—but we do not need to—and that makes all the difference.

Your stage mask is not bad, evil, or necessarily egocentric; it is just not “true.” It is manufactured and sustained unconsciously by your mind; but it can and will die, as all fictions must die.

This destinction about the container not being bad or evil is helpful

I have prayed for years for one good humiliation a day, and then I must watch my reaction to it. In my position, I have no other way of spotting both my well-denied shadow self and my idealized persona. I am actually surprised there are not more clergy scandals, because “spiritual leader” or “professional religious person” is such a dangerous and ego-inflating self-image. Whenever ministers, or any true believers, are too anti anything, you can be pretty sure there is some shadow material lurking somewhere nearby.

Such people do not need to be perfectly right, and they know they cannot be anyway; so they just try to be in right relationship.

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. Christians could have been done a great service if shadow had been distinguished from sin. Sin and shadow are not the same. We were so encouraged to avoid sin that many of us instead avoided facing our shadow, and then we ended up “sinning” even worse—while unaware besides!

Oh yes. This Is critcal. Why havent i heard this

Lady Julian put it best of all: “First there is the fall, and then we recover from the fall. Both are the mercy of God!”

Institutions must by necessity be concerned with membership requirements, policies, procedures, protocols, and precedents. If they are working organizations, they need to have very clear criteria for hiring and firing, for supervision and management, and have rules for promotion and salaries. They have to be seriously concerned about lawsuits and litigation. You would resent them even more if they did not do these things well, but these are nevertheless ego needs and not soul needs. That is our common dilemma, and it is not easily resolved. But it can be a very creative tension.

The bottom line of the Gospel is that most of us have to hit some kind of bottom before we even start the real spiritual journey. Up to that point, it is mostly religion. At the bottom, there is little time or interest in being totally practical, efficient, or revenue generating. You just want to breathe fresh air. The true Gospel is always fresh air and spacious breathing room.

Don't expect or demand from groups what they usually cannot give. Doing so will make you needlessly angry and reactionary. They must and will be concerned with identity, boundaries, self-maintenance, self-perpetuation, and self-congratulation. This is their nature and purpose. The most you can hope for is a few enlightened leaders and policies now and then from among those “two or three gathered in my name.”

At the risk of being too cleverly alliterative (though it may help you remember), here is the normal sequencing of the dualistic mind: it compares, it competes, it conflicts, it conspires, it condemns, it cancels out any contrary evidence, and it then crucifies with impunity. You can call it the seven C's of delusion, and the source of most violence, which is invariably sacralized as good and necessary to “make the world safe for democracy” or to “save souls for heaven.”

It is fine for teenagers to really think that there is some moral or “supernatural” superiority to their chosen baseball team, their army, their ethnic group, or even their religion; but one hopes they learn that such polarity thinking is recognized as just an agreed-upon game by the second half of life. Your frame should grow larger as you move toward the Big Picture in which one God creates all and loves all, both Dodgers and Yankees, blacks and whites, Palestinians and Jews, Americans and Afghanis.

most people do not see things as they are; rather, they see things as they are.

In the second half of the spiritual life, you are not making choices as much as you are being guided, taught, and led—which leads to “choiceless choices.” These are the things you cannot not do because of what you have become, things you do not need to do because they are just not yours to do, and things you absolutely must do because they are your destiny and your deepest desire. Your driving motives are no longer money, success, or the approval of others. You have found your sacred dance.

You do not need your “visions” anymore; you are happily participating in God's vision for you. With that, the wonderful dreaming and the dreamer that we were in our early years have morphed into Someone Else's dream for us. We move from the driver's seat to being a happy passenger, one who is still allowed to make helpful suggestions to the Driver.