We have ongoing opportunities and possibilities to grow and evolve throughout our lifetime. This includes growing into spiritual maturity. As we age our capabilities change, our challenges change, and the ways in which we evolve also need to change. We can become more aware, more intentional, and make growth and maturity a priority. We can also refuse to grow and remain frozen in our beliefs, attitudes, and unresolved woundedness.
Our unresolved issues are generally shame-based wounds stemming from hurtful experiences in our family system, our religion, school, or other areas of abuse, including self-abuse. On the other hand, we sometimes need to get in touch with healthy, therapeutic shame to wake us, shake us, and lead us down the path of healing and growth. I recently finished reading The Tears of Things, by Father Richard Rohr.This book is essentially a study of the Old Testament prophets and the pattern that Father Rohr identifies as their journey into spiritual maturity. The pattern he describes is a journey in which the prophets start out in a stage of anger and judgement regarding the current order of things within their nation and community, moving through different forms of holy disorder, evolving into tears and sadness, and then morphing into compassion as their mature response to evil and injustice.
As Father Rohr points out, the prophets are usually not well received by their own people because they come with a prophetic voice of shame and point out truths people do not really want to hear. These voices of shame do not call out individual evil, inadequacy, unworthiness, or make threats or promises. Rather, the prophets call out where we collectively have gotten off-track and are caught in ego-centric, ethno-centric, small minded behaviors and pettiness. They speak from inside their own group and their intent is to wake us up to the faults of our current sense of order, call us to repent and to open to larger reality and truth, and to evolve. For those who repent and mature, the result is growth beyond black and white dualism and toward a more universal love that sets out to rescue those we would rather condemn. The focus shifts to unity with all, letting go of the need for control and being right, from serving the self to serving our community. He notes that salvation, to the prophets, is unitive consciousness in this world, not the anticipation of later rewards or fear of future punishment. This is very different than the voices of religious shame many of us grew up hearing.
This maturity that Father Rohr describes is a journey into a healthy sense of self and beyond the self. In his words, “our divinely inspired transformation is a nonstop, subtle, autonomous action that we now call grace” … “But our yes is important and necessary.” Grace transforms us but we must cooperate with grace, through prayer and meditation, honest self-reflection, experiencing our remorse and tears, and being willing to listen, learn, and grow. If, instead, we remain frozen in our shame-based self and concrete level of development then religion often becomes a belief system to validate our ego and give us permission for all kinds of unhealthy and self-centered behaviors.
We can clearly observe that just getting older does not guarantee we will become more whole, loving, open, or mature. Developmental psychologists like Maslow, Piaget, and Erikson have mapped out various stages of development and those tasks that must be completed before moving on to more evolved levels. Ken Wilbur, a developer of integral philosophy, noted that development is also multi-dimensional, and that we can evolve in some forms of intelligence and remain frozen in others.
Our personal sense of shame has layers that may surface in different ways at different stages of life. Learning to respond to our pain with love and forgiveness, to trust in the assurance of divine love and forgiveness, and to receive support from our community facilitates healing, dignity, and deeper meaning throughout the journey.
Later in his own life, developmental psychologist Erik Erikson and his wife Joan discussed and studied the complex challenges faced by those in advanced old age. After Erik’s passing, Joan Erikson expanded the psychosocial model by introducing a ninth stage in 1997, which describes how elderly individuals must confront new and intensified psychosocial conflicts due to physical decline, dependency, and loss of societal roles. For example, we may wrestle with issues such as independence versus feeling helpless, having value versus feeling useless, learning to trust others to care for our needs, staying connected to others as friends and family pass away, and wrestling with a changing sense of identity.
We likely know some loved ones who have become passive and depressed as they get older and others who stay engaged and look for ways to contribute to society and community. Those who maintain vitality accept and find meaning in their life story and rest in something bigger than themselves. As Father Rohr noted, mature faith and spirituality require emotional vulnerability rather than rigidness and will manifest in more compassion and experiences of unity.
Whatever stage of life you are in now it is not too late to confront shame, grow, and mature, assuming you still have the necessary health and capabilities. It starts with being honest with yourself and keeping the flames of desire to evolve burning within. As noted, growth may be disruptive and may follow times of stress, loss, or struggle. Sometimes we must walk through times of mourning for ourselves and for the world around us. However, growth is not to be feared, remembering that we do not have to travel alone.
There are some practical things that seem to facilitate and encourage late-stage maturity, integrity, generativity, and fulfillment such as taking time to reflect, remember, and to document a review of your life’s journey. Working on projects you may want to leave as a part of your legacy, finding ways to give back to your community and staying active and engaged in life have also been found to help foster dignity and meaning as we age and other capabilities wane.
Ongoing growth and maturity are natural to some degree when we keep an open mind and open heart. Many of the developmental models primarily emphasize healthy ego development and functioning. Ken Wilbur reminds us that each stage is important and we need to include the key lessons and healthy values of each stage as we advance. He also focuses on how to have a healthy relationship with oneself and one’s sense of identity, and in addition teaches that we must transcend the ego as we evolve into higher, integral levels. Father Rohr also notes that transcendence is an important element in spiritual maturity which leads to the higher unity consciousness that he observes in the prophets.
Therapy Tip:
For those of us with long-standing feelings of shame, being “not good enough” is our default way of thinking and it is a bad habit that is hard to break, even as we advance into old age. Even frameworks that are meant to give us a roadmap, encourage us, and free us from those feelings of being stuck, inadequate, and unworthy can feel like another metric we fail to live up to. The voices of the prophets, our therapists, authors, friends, or family may still sound like judgment rather than love, compassion, or guidance. When, we may ask, is enough, enough?
My personal journey and experiences as a therapist have taught me that this is the wrong question. It will be more helpful to focus on accepting that we have already been declared worthy, right now, as we are, and God’s unconditional love really means unconditional. In the words of Richard Rohr, “like any true mirror, the gaze of God receives us exactly as we are, without judgement or distortion, subtraction or addition. Such perfect receiving is what transforms us. Being received totally as we truly are is what we wait and long for all our lives.” If we internalize this in faith, it frees us then to learn and grow not because we should or to please God or someone else, but for the joy of it. You begin to relax, just being who you are, and then notice your worldview becoming more inclusive, compassionate and generative, which Erikson defines as the ability to generate life from your own internal abundance and for the benefit of following generations. This is a genuine gift we may receive for ourselves and give to those we care about.