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Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life Hardcover – April 19, 2011
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- Explains why the second half of life can and should be full of spiritual richness
- Offers a new view of how spiritual growth happens?loss is gain
- Richard. Rohr is a regular contributing writer for Sojourners and Tikkun magazines
This important book explores the counterintuitive message that we grow spiritually much more by doing wrong than by doing right--a fresh way of thinking about spirituality that grows throughout life.
- Print length240 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherJossey-Bass
- Publication dateApril 19, 2011
- Dimensions5.2 x 1 x 7.1 inches
- ISBN-100470907754
- ISBN-13978-0470907757
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Author Richard Rohr What do you mean by the two halves of life?
The phrase “two halves of life” was first popularized by Carl Jung, the Swiss psychologist. He says that there are two major tasks. In the first half [of life] you've got to find your identity, your significance; you create your ego boundaries, your ego structure, what I call “the creating of the container.” But that's just to get you started. In the second half of life, once you've created your ego structure, you finally have the courage to ask: What is this all for? What am I supposed to do with this? Is it just to protect it, to promote it, to defend it, or is there some deeper purpose? The search for meaning is the task of the second half of life. (This is not always a chronological matter – I've met 11 year-old children in cancer wards who are in the second half of life, and I have met 68 year-old men like me who are still in the first half of life.)
Why is the “further journey” of the second half of life especially important for people of faith who are seeking a deeper relationship with God?
I think the further journey has to be clarified especially for religious people because for the most part we've pushed off the journey into the next world. We’ve made the teaching of Jesus largely into an evacuation plan for the next world so we don’t have to take this world seriously, this life, this earth, what's happening right here or now. The further journey has to happen in this world. I wrote the book because I want to say the further journey happens in this world and then you're ready for heaven. You're living in heaven now, you're practicing for heaven and so heaven is not even a big change of venue. It's a continuation of what you've already begun to experience.
What do you mean when you say, “we grow by falling down”?
You know, when I chose the title of Falling Upward I thought that surely there would be six other books with that title. Believe it or not, there weren't. I thought it was a perfect title because it conveys a sense of paradox. The first part of the title (about falling) isn't about what you expect. In fact, most of our concern in the first half of life is about rising, achieving, accomplishing, performing. I tried deliberately to use a somewhat shocking or controversial phrase, implying that there is a necessary falling that comes into every life. It's not like you have to manufacture or create the falling; it will happen. If you can find grace or freedom in and through that falling, you find that it moves you forward, upward, broader, deeper, better—to growth. That’s just the opposite of what you first think when you fall, fail, or lose.
What is so important about the idea of necessary suffering? Why is it necessary?
The question of why is suffering necessary is probably the greatest and most problematic question in Christian theology. Why is there suffering? How is God good if there's so much suffering on this Earth? There’s no answer that appeals to the rational mind. The answer lies elsewhere; I'm going to therefore start with the psychology. Carl Jung and many others said that suffering is the only thing strong enough to defeat the imperial ego. In other words, when you're in control, in charge, looking good, building your tower of success -- which is what you expect a young person to be doing into their 30s -- you get so addicted to it that you think it's the only game in town. When that game falls apart, it’s because it's largely a self-constructed game, a game at which you can look good, you can succeed, you're building your own kingdom, which is not, in Christian language, what Jesus calls the Kingdom of God, so your little kingdom usually has to fail you. It has to fall apart. It has to, or you'll remain narcissistic, egocentric well into your later years, asking questions like what makes me feel good? What makes me look good? What makes me make money? Many people do. It might feel like success, but no spiritual teacher would agree. First half of life preoccupations won't get you into the great picture, the big picture, which Jesus would call the Reign of God. So, necessary suffering is whatever it takes to make your small self fall apart, so you can experience your big self--maybe what Buddhists would say is your Buddha self. We would say your Christ self, your God self. It doesn't really matter. You can tell people who have passed over from the first to the second half of life, usually you can tell it within the first ten minutes, whether someone is still building their tower of success. And that isn't even wrong; it's just they have something else to experience, and you pray for them and you hope that they will be able to see suffering as a doorway and not an obstacle when it happens.
What do you think prevents many of us from growing in the second half of life?
If you eliminate necessary suffering in the first half of life and you don't know anything about the second half of life, you won’t know what to do. As a Christian, I would say that's why we largely don't understand Jesus. He's talking from the ultimate perspective of maturity and we're all back here just trying to look good. It doesn't work.
Right now there's a lot going on in the world. We have a financial crisis in the U.S. We had a natural disaster in Japan, political upheaval in the Middle East. How would you address suffering in regard to those situations?
I can talk about necessary suffering somewhat glibly and theologically, but if I were in Japan right now, I might not be talking about it so easily. Or if I was a rebel in Libya, perhaps I would not be talking about it so glibly. We have to try to talk about it, to give some kind of frame, to give some kind of direction or meaning, but it never satisfies the rational mind. As a Christian, we're the only religion that has a very strange God image: a naked, bleeding, dying man. A naked, bleeding man is not a natural, even rational or even attractive, image of God. It's not an image anybody would have expected, really. It's about as counterintuitive as you can get. And, so, as a Christian, I've got to say: if I am to believe that Jesus is the image of God, then what is Jesus saying about the nature of God? He's saying, “I am in this crucified situation with you.” For those who are suffering, those who can gaze upon the crucified one, it is an unbelievable consolation to the soul. It gives deep meaning to human suffering. At the heart of Christianity is what I call the myth of redemptive suffering. Actually, even though Jesus gave us the myth of redemptive suffering, if I look at most of our history, the myth we've really lived out of is the myth of redemptive violence, that somehow by killing bad people, we were going to redeem the world and make the world safe for democracy or safe for Christianity. Jesus gives no such message. He doesn't inflict suffering on other people. He, as the image of God, participates in the pain of the world, and that's an answer to the soul. I admit, it is not a satisfying answer to the brain. When you're seeing your loved ones suffering, you better be looking at the crucified every hour, and trying to find some meaning for the soul, because the rational mind will rebel (and it probably should).
What are the qualities of people who have successfully taken the further journey into the second half of their life?
You can recognize a second half of life person is by a kind of inner outpouring, a kind of inner generativity. They're not guarded. They're not overly self-protected. They're looking for ways to give themselves away, because they're now living out of their abundance, and they find that it's an overflowing wealth. I think of a wonderful woman like Maya Angelou. When she talks, you yourself feel grounded because she is. You want to be compassionate because you can feel the compassion in her very voice. You want to have soft eyes, because you see her soft eyes. It almost comes through non verbally, but you especially see her concern about others. So, second half of life people are generative people. They're people who've learned to pay back. They know they've been given to abundantly so now they say, "Okay, I've got enough. In fact, I've been given more than enough, and the only thing that makes sense is to give away this generous grace that has been handed to me when so many people in this world have never experienced it." So in the second half of life, I think you have an increased empathy and sympathy; you know inside how much it hurts to hurt, and so when you see another person hurting, you can feel it and you know, many times, that you can't change it. Most of the time you can't change it, so you want to pray for them. You want to help them if you can. You want to send good energy toward them. You want to give them wisdom that will lead them out of their suffering according to your gift, and we're each gifted in different ways. What you'll never not find in a second half of life person is this universal caring.
I want to emphasize, finally, the word universal. In the first half of life, as Jesus put it, you can only care for your neighbor, those who are your own religion, your own class, your own social group, your own skin color. That means very little by the second half of life. You've learned to see the soul, and once you see the soul, you see it's evenly distributed, and you don't look at externals. They don't mean that much. You know that the wino on the street has just as much a soul as the rich man who's working at the bank. You stop being what we used to call a “respecter of persons.” Of course, that upsets first half of life people, because they think you're not patriotic. Now you see that Mexicans are just like Americans, that Americans aren't any better than Mexicans. Or, as a Catholic, you can’t say anymore that only Catholics are going to heaven. Lots of people who are still in the first half of life will say you're a heretic or disloyal or rebellious or unfaithful, but you are thick skinned enough that those criticisms don't deter you from what you know you have to do, what you know you have to be. You like to make people happy, but you don't need to please them to be happy yourself. A second half of life person knows that happiness comes from within, not from whether other people like you.
How can people start to look at that second half of their lives?
You can plan for it. As I say at the beginning of the book, you fall into it just like you fall into love. You normally have to fail through some form of transgression or humiliation or defeat (the necessary suffering). Then you can look to some elders, some wiser people in your circle of friends or to a book if you don’t have friends who know how to guide you across the transition and into the second half of life. We're a culture with many elderly people but not a lot of elders.
How do you hope your book will make a difference in people’s lives?
Well, I guess first of all I hope it’s going to give them courage and some kind of safety in that courage. Most of us have been taught to be afraid of ourselves, afraid of our journey, afraid of our mistakes, our sins. Sin was something you just didn’t do. But I don’t think that’s what the Bible is saying at all. The Bible takes sin for granted. It’s given, even in the Genesis story, where God tells Adam and Eve not to eat the apple. That creates the whole story line. God absolutely knows they’re going to eat the apple. That’s what creates the creative tension and it’s in the eating of the apple and the struggling with the relationship that they come to relationship with God. An awful lot of Christian people live in shame and guilt and enormous lack of self esteem. I knew the great spiritual teacher Henri Nouwen as a personal friend. We were walking once on the streets in Cincinnati and I said to him, “Henri, how would you define what the Church called original sin?” And he said, “Richard, I think original sin is humanity’s endless capacity for self-loathing, or maybe self-doubt.” I think that’s true, but sadly I think we in the world of religion have often contributed to that self-doubt and self-loathing. In that, we haven’t given the world good news at all, but bad news, and you know the world Gospel means good news. So I hope my book is a bit of a gospel. I hope it’s good news. I hope it’s truthful news, not false good news, but good news that really is good and new.
Review
religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/09/17/priest-offers-spiritual-survival-guide-for-recession/
"Imperfect people" are sometimes more equipped than "perfect people" to help those who are struggling... The person who feels that he has ruined his life often has more capacity for humility and compassion."
From the Inside Flap
In Falling Upward, Father Richard Rohr―the founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation―offers a new paradigm for understanding one of the most profound of life's mysteries: how our failings can be the foundation for our ongoing spiritual growth. Drawing on the wisdom from time-honored myths, heroic poems, great thinkers, and sacred religious texts, the author explores the two halves of life to show that those who have fallen, failed, or "gone down" are the only ones who understand "up." We grow spiritually more by doing it wrong than by doing it right.
With rare insight, Rohr takes us on a journey to give us an understanding of how the heartbreaks, disappointments, and first loves of life are actually stepping stones to the spiritual joys that the second half of life has in store for us.
From the Back Cover
"Understanding the spiritual aspects of aging is as important as appreciating the systems and biological processes that age us. Richard Rohr has given us a perfect guide to what he calls the 'further journey,' a voyage into the mystery and beauty of healthy spiritual maturity."
―Mehmet Oz, M.D., host of the "Dr. Oz Show"
"Falling Upward calls forth the promise within us and frees us to follow it into wider dimensions of our spiritual authenticity. This 'second half of life' need not wait till our middle years. It emerges whenever we are ready and able to expand beyond the structures and strictures of our chosen path. With Richard Rohr as a guide, this mystery can become as real and immediate as your hand on the doorknob."
―Joanna Macy, author of World as Lover, World as Self
"In Falling Upward, Richard offers a simple but deeply helpful framework for seeing the whole spiritual life―one that will help both beginners on the path as they look ahead and long-term pilgrims as they look back over their journey so far."
―Brian McLaren, author of A New Kind of Christianity and Naked Spirituality brianmclaren.net
"The value of this book lies in the way Richard Rohr shares his own aging process with us in ways that help us be less afraid. We begin to see that, as we grow older, we are being awakened to deep, simple, and mysterious things we simply could not see when we were younger."
―Jim Finley, retreat leader, Merton scholar, and author of The Contemplative Heart
"This is Richard Rohr at his vintage best: prophetic, pastoral, practical. A book I will gratefully share with my children and grandchildren."
―Cynthia Bourgeault, Episcopal priest, retreat leader, and author of The Meaning of Mary Magdalene, Centering Prayer, Inner Awakening, and The Wisdom Way of Knowing
About the Author
The CAC will soon be home to The Rohr Institute. Drawing upon Christianity's place within the Perennial Tradition, the mission of the Rohr Institute is to produce compassionate and powerfully learned individuals who will work for positive change in the world based on awareness of our common union with Divine Reality and all beings.
For more information on Fr. Richard, CAC and The Rohr Institute, and all of the resources from Richard Rohr please visit cac.org
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Falling Upward
A Spirituality for the Two Halves of LifeBy Richard RohrJohn Wiley & Sons
Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, LtdAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-470-90775-7
Chapter One
THE TWO HALVES OF LIFEOne cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life's morning; for what was great in the morning will be of little importance in the evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie. —CARL JUNG, THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF THE PSYCHE
As I began to say in the Introduction, the task of the first half of life is to create a proper container for one's life and answer the first essential questions: "What makes me significant?" "How can I support myself?" and "Who will go with me?" The task of the second half of life is, quite simply, to find the actual contents that this container was meant to hold and deliver. As Mary Oliver puts it, "What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" In other words, the container is not an end in itself, but exists for the sake of your deeper and fullest life, which you largely do not know about yourself! Far too many people just keep doing repair work on the container itself and never "throw their nets into the deep" (John 21:6) to bring in the huge catch that awaits them.
Problematically, the first task invests so much of our blood, sweat, eggs and sperm, tears and years that we often cannot imagine there is a second task, or that anything more could be expected of us. "The old wineskins are good enough" (Luke 5:39), we say, even though according to Jesus they often cannot hold the new wine. According to him, if we do not get some new wineskins, "the wine and the wineskin will both be lost." The second half of life can hold some new wine because by then there should be some strong wineskins, some tested ways of holding our lives together. But that normally means that the container itself has to stretch, die in its present form, or even replace itself with something better. This is the big rub, as they say, but also the very source of our midlife excitement and discovery.
Various traditions have used many metaphors to make this differentiation clear: beginners and proficients, novices and initiated, milk and meat, letter and spirit, juniors and seniors, baptized and confirmed, apprentice and master, morning and evening, "Peter when you were young ... Peter when you are old" (John 21:18). Only when you have begun to live in the second half can you see the difference between the two. Yet the two halves are cumulative and sequential, and both are very necessary. You cannot do a nonstop flight to the second half of life by reading lots of books about it, including this one. Grace must and will edge you forward. "God has no grandchildren. God only has children," as some have said. Each generation has to make its own discoveries of Spirit for itself. If not, we just react to the previous generation, and often overreact. Or we conform, and often overconform. Neither is a positive or creative way to move forward.
No Pope, Bible quote, psychological technique, religious formula, book, or guru can do your journey for you. If you try to skip the first journey, you will never see its real necessity and also its limitations; you will never know why this first container must fail you, the wonderful fullness of the second half of the journey, and the relationship between the two. Such is the unreality of many people who "never grow up" or who remain narcissistic into their old age. I am afraid this is not a small number of people in our world today.
"Juniors" on the first part of the journey invariably think that true elders are naive, simplistic, "out of it," or just superfluous. They cannot understand what they have not yet experienced. They are totally involved in their first task, and cannot see beyond it. Conversely, if a person has transcended and included the previous stages, he or she will always have a patient understanding of the juniors, and can be patient and helpful to them somewhat naturally (although not without trial and effort). That is precisely what makes such people elders! Higher stages always empathetically include the lower, or they are not higher stages!
Almost all of culture, and even most of religious history, has been invested in the creation and maintenance of first-half-of-life issues: the big three concerns of identity, security, and sexuality and gender. They don't just preoccupy us; they totally take over. That is where history has been up to now, I am afraid. In fact, most generations have seen boundary marking and protecting those boundaries as their primary and sometimes only task in life. Most of history has been the forging of structures of security and appropriate loyalty symbols, to announce and defend one's personal identity, one's group, and one's gender issues and identity. Now we seem to live in a time when more and more people are asking, "Is that all there is?"
In our formative years, we are so self-preoccupied that we are both overly defensive and overly offensive at the same time, with little time left for simply living, pure friendship, useless beauty, or moments of communion with nature or anything. Yet that kind of ego structuring is exactly what a young person partly needs to get through the first twenty years or so, and what tribes need to survive. Maybe it is what humanity needed to get started. "Good fences make good neighbors," Robert Frost said, but he also presumed that you don't just build fences. You eventually need to cross beyond them too, to actually meet the neighbor.
So we need boundaries, identity, safety, and some degree of order and consistency to get started personally and culturally. We also need to feel "special"; we need our "narcissistic fix." By that I mean, we all need some successes, response, and positive feedback early in life, or we will spend the rest of our lives demanding it, or bemoaning its lack, from others. There is a good and needed "narcissism," if you want to call it that. You have to first have an ego structure to then let go of it and move beyond it. Responding to John the Baptist's hard-line approach, Jesus maintains both sides of this equation when he says, "No man born of woman is greater than John the Baptizer, yet the least who enters the kingdom of heaven is greater than he is" (Matthew 11:11). Is that double-talk? No, it is second-half-of-life talk.
Basically if you get mirrored well early in life, you do not have to spend the rest of your life looking in Narcissus's mirror or begging for the attention of others. You have already been "attended to," and now feel basically good—and always will. If you were properly mirrored when you were young, you are now free to mirror others and see yourself—honestly and helpfully. I can see why a number of saints spoke of prayer itself as simply receiving the ever-benevolent gaze of God, returning it in kind, mutually gazing, and finally recognizing that it is one single gaze received and bounced back. The Hindus called this exciting mutual beholding darshan. We will talk more about this mirroring toward the end of the book.
Once you have your narcissistic fix, you have no real need to protect your identity, defend it, prove it, or assert it. It just is, and is more than enough. This is what we actually mean by "salvation," especially when we get our narcissistic fix all the way from the Top. When you get your "Who am I?" question right, all the "What should I do?" questions tend to take care of themselves. The very fact that so many religious people have to so vigorously prove and defend their salvation theories makes one seriously doubt whether they have experienced divine mirroring at any great depth.
In the first half of life, success, security, and containment—"looking good" to ourselves and others— are almost the only questions. They are the early stages in Maslow's "hierarchy of needs." In a culture like ours, still preoccupied with security issues, enormously high military budgets are never seriously questioned by Congress or by the people, while appropriations reflecting later stages in the hierarchy of needs, like those for education, health care for the poor, and the arts, are quickly cut, if even considered. The message is clear that we are largely an adolescent culture. Religions, similarly, need to make truth claims that are absolutely absolute—and we want them for just that—because they are absolute! This feels right and necessary at this early stage, despite any talk of Biblical "faith" or trust, which can only be comprehended later.
We all want and need various certitudes, constants, and insurance policies at every stage of life. But we have to be careful, or they totally take over and become all-controlling needs, keeping us from further growth. Thus the most common one-liner in the Bible is "Do not be afraid"; in fact, someone counted and found that it occurs 365 times! If we do not move beyond our early motivations of personal security, reproduction, and survival (the fear-based preoccupations of the "lizard brain"), we will never proceed beyond the lower stages of human or spiritual development. Many church sermons I have heard my whole life seem never to move beyond this first level of development, and do not even challenge it. In fact, to challenge it is called heretical, dangerous, or ill advised.
The very unfortunate result of this preoccupation with order, control, safety, pleasure, and certitude is that a high percentage of people never get to the contents of their own lives! Human life is about more than building boundaries, protecting identities, creating tribes, and teaching impulse control. As Jesus said, "Why do you ask, what am I to eat? What am I to wear?" And to that he says, "Is life not so much more than food? Is life not so much more than clothing?" (Luke 12:23). "What will it profit you if you gain the whole world, and lose your very soul?" (Matthew 16:26).
There is too much defensive behavior and therefore too much offensive behavior in the first half of life to get to the really substantial questions, which are what drive you forward on the further journey. Human maturity is neither offensive nor defensive; it is finally able to accept that reality is what it is. Ken Keyes so wisely said, "More suffering comes into the world by people taking offense than by people intending to give offense." The offended ones feel the need to offend back those who they think have offended them, creating defensiveness on the part of the presumed offenders, which often becomes a new offensive—ad infinitum. There seems to be no way out of this self-defeating and violent Ping-Pong game—except growing up spiritually. The True Self, you see, is very hard to offend!
STEPS AND STAGES
It was Carl Jung who first popularized the phrase "the two halves of life" to describe these two major tangents and tasks, yet many other teachers have recognized that there are clear stages and steps of human and spiritual maturation. Process language is not new; it has just used different images.
There is the foundational journey of Abraham and Sarah; the Exodus of Moses; Mohammed's several key flights; Jesus' four kinds of soil; the "way of the cross" images on the walls of churches; John of the Ladder; the recurring schemas of Sts. Bonaventure, John of the Cross, and Teresa of Avila; and in the modern era, Jean Piaget, James Fowler, Lawrence Kohlberg, Clare Graves, Jean Gebser, Abraham Maslow, Erik Erikson, Ken Wilber, Carol Gilligan, Daniel Levinson, Bill Plotkin, and the entire world of "Spiral Dynamics." They all affirm that growth and development have a direction and are not a static "grit your teeth and bear it." Unless you can chart and encourage both movement and direction, you have no way to name maturity or immaturity. Most of these teachers, each in his or her own way, seem to coalesce around two key insights that continue to show themselves in almost every one of these constructs.
First of all, you can only see and understand the earlier stages from the wider perspective of the later stages. This is why mature societies were meant to be led by elders, seniors, saints, and "the initiated." They alone are in a position to be true leaders in a society, or certainly in any spiritual organization. Without them, "the blind lead the blind," which is typified by phenomena like violent gangs of youth or suicide bombers. Those who are not true leaders or elders will just affirm people at their own immature level, and of course immature people will love them and elect them for being equally immature. You can fill in the names here with your own political disaster story. But just remember, there is a symbiosis between immature groups and immature leaders, I am afraid, which is why both Plato and Jefferson said democracy was not really the best form of government. It is just the safest. A truly wise monarch would probably be the most effective at getting things done. (Don't send hate letters, please!)
If you have, in fact, deepened and grown "in wisdom, age, and grace" (Luke 2:52), you are able to be patient, inclusive, and understanding of all the previous stages. That is what I mean by my frequent use of the phrase "transcend and include." That is the infallible sign that you are enlightened, psychologically mature, or a truly adult believer. The "adepts" in all religions are always forgiving, compassionate, and radically inclusive. They do not create enemies, and they move beyond the boundaries of their own "starter group" while still honoring them and making use of them. Jesus the Jew criticizes his own religion the most, yet never leaves it! Mature people are not either-or thinkers, but they bathe in the ocean of both-and. (Think Gandhi, Anne Frank, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, and the like.) These enlightened people tend to grease the wheels of religious evolution. As Albert Einstein said, "No problem can be solved by the same consciousness that caused it in the first place." God moves humanity and religion forward by the regular appearance of such whole and holy people.
The second insight about steps and stages is that from your own level of development, you can only stretch yourself to comprehend people just a bit beyond yourself. Some theorists say you cannot stretch more than one step above your own level of consciousness, and that is on a good day! Because of this limitation, those at deeper (or "higher") levels beyond you invariably appear wrong, sinful, heretical, dangerous, or even worthy of elimination. How else can we explain the consistent killing of prophets; the marginalization of truly holy people as naive; the rather consistent racism, self-protectiveness, and warlike attitudes of people who think of themselves as civilized? You can be "civilized" and still be judging from the fully egocentric position of an early level of development. In fact, one of the best covers for very narcissistic people is to be polite, smiling, and thoroughly civilized. Hitler loved animals and classical music, I am told.
If change and growth are not programmed into your spirituality, if there are not serious warnings about the blinding nature of fear and fanaticism, your religion will always end up worshiping the status quo and protecting your present ego position and personal advantage—as if it were God! Although Jesus' first preached message is clearly "change!" (as in Mark 1:15 and Matthew 4:17), where he told his listeners to "repent," which literally means to "change your mind," it did not strongly influence Christian history. This resistance to change is so common, in fact, that it is almost what we expect from religious people, who tend to love the past more than the future or the present. All we can conclude is that much of organized religion is itself living inside of first-half-of-life issues, which usually coincides with where most people are in any culture. We all receive and pass on what our people are prepared to hear, and most people are not "early adopters." Yet even the intelligence of animals is determined by their ability to change and adjust their behavior in response to new circumstances. Those who do not, become extinct.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Falling Upwardby Richard Rohr Copyright © 2011 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Excerpted by permission of John Wiley & Sons. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Product details
- Publisher : Jossey-Bass; 1st edition (April 19, 2011)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 240 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0470907754
- ISBN-13 : 978-0470907757
- Item Weight : 9.6 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.2 x 1 x 7.1 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #41,320 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #537 in Christian Self Help
- #661 in Christian Inspirational
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About the author
Fr. Richard Rohr is a globally recognized ecumenical teacher bearing witness to the universal awakening within Christian mysticism and the Perennial Tradition. He is a Franciscan priest of the New Mexico Province and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation (www.cac.org) in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he also serves as Academic Dean of the Living School for Action and Contemplation. Fr. Richard's teaching is grounded in the Franciscan alternative orthodoxy--practices of contemplation and self-emptying, expressing itself in radical compassion, particularly for the socially marginalized.
Fr. Richard is author of numerous books, including Everything Belongs, Adam's Return, The Naked Now, Breathing Under Water, Falling Upward, Immortal Diamond, and Eager to Love.
He has been a featured essayist on NPR's "This I Believe," a guest of Mehmet Oz on the Oprah and Friends radio show, and a guest of Oprah Winfrey on Super Soul Sunday. Fr. Richard was one of several spiritual leaders featured in the 2006 documentary film ONE: The Movie and was included in Watkins' Spiritual 100 List for 2013. He has given presentations with spiritual leaders such as Rob Bell, Cynthia Bourgeault, Joan Chittister, Shane Claiborne, James Finley, Laurence Freeman, Thomas Keating, Ronald Rolheiser, Jim Wallis, and the Dalai Lama.
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By Richard Rohr Reviewed by David Bradshaw
Every once in a while a new book comes along that speaks to your circumstance so clearly that it has the ability to transform, expand and elevate your worldview for the rest of your life.
Falling Upward was such a book for me.
A Visionary Book About Growing Up Spiritually
A book about growing up spiritually, Falling Upward, is by visionary Franciscan pastor/teacher/author Richard Rohr. It offers a fresh road map to guide Baby Boomers through the next vital rite of passage they face. Rohr offers readers his flashlight to help us find our way out of the dark and into a joyful, bright second half of life.
"Falling Upward is fresh way of thinking about spirituality that grows throughout life," says GoodReads.com. "Most of us tend to think of the second half of life as largely about getting old, dealing with health issues, and letting go of life, but the whole thesis of this book is exactly the opposite."
Rohr's inclusive writing style is, I suspect, the fruit of his four decades of experience in helping injured souls find healing, feel loved again and acceptance at last - and from this experience becoming free to discover the hidden meaning of the "necessary sufferings" we all face in our lifetimes.
His premise is simple: "The way up is the way down." He sees many examples of this axiom everywhere and in every culture - ranging from Greek mythology to "Man of Steel" modern heroes, and especially in Scripture, such as Jesus' Beatitudes, the Parable of the Prodigal Son, and the Apostle Paul's words, "It is when I am weak that I am strong."
Like the U-shaped curve seen in all of the natural world, so our lives are formed by a series of fallings, losses and even failures - in preparation for the next rebirth, rising, gains and successes. "The goal," Rohr writes, "is to make the sequences, the tasks, and the direction of the two halves of life clear."
"The loss and renewal pattern is so constant and ubiquitous that it should hardly be called a secret at all. Yet it is still a secret, probably because we do not want to see it. We do not want to embark on a further journey if it feels like going down."
It is this 'losing our life to find it' that eludes us during the first half of life, but becomes ever clearer in the second half of life. But we all need some help and guidance finding that road less traveled. "You cannot imagine a new space fully until you have been taken there," writes Rohr.
Falling Upward serves as a reminder to Baby Boomers that it is our duty and responsibility as elders to cross over into the second half of life to help guide the next generation down their path toward wisdom.
"In this book I would like to describe how this message of falling down is, in fact, the most counter-intuitive message in most of the world's religions, including and most especially Christianity," writes Rohr.
"We grow spiritually much more by doing it wrong than by doing it right. That might just be the central message of how spiritual growth happens; yet nothing in us wants to believe it."
The problem we all face is that our rational mind cannot process suffering or setbacks, so instead we avoid them, deny them or blame someone else for them. What we should do, Rohr explains, is embrace them as part of our journey, our pathway to growth.
The Two Halves of Life Explained
In the first half of life we move incrementally from utter dependence upon our mother and father toward independence. In the first half of life we search for identity, meaning, significance and support to create a "proper container," Rohr writes.
"We all need some successes and positive feedback early in life, or we will spend the rest of our lives demanding it, or bemoaning its lack from others," writes Rohr. How true!
In the second half of life we discover the contents that the container was meant to hold and deliver. The old wineskins must be replaced by new, stronger, tested wineskins stretched to meet the changing needs of maturity.
True elders must learn patience with "juniors" because they cannot understand what they have not yet experienced. "The 'True Self' is very hard to offend," writes Rohr.
"In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, and in all things charity," said Pope Paul XXIII, as a reflection of second half of life wisdom.
"The first journey is always about externals, formulas, superficial emotions, flags and badges, correct rituals and special clothing, all of which largely substitute for actual spirituality - yet they are all used and needed to create the container," Rohr writes. He sees that if we do not find a way to do the age-appropriate tasks of the two halves of life, both will be unfulfilled.
Today we live in a "first-half-of-life culture" largely preoccupied with surviving successfully. But, to quote a Native American aphorism, "No wise person ever wanted to be younger."
What does this say about modern American culture, driven to find the elusive fountain of eternal youth?
To me it illustrates how desperately our society needs true elders to emerge who have made a conscious choice to live and act like grownups, not like perpetual children who are content living in their first half of life forever.
The usual crossover points, writes Rohr, are a kind of "necessary suffering" and "homesickness" which could include the losses of a job, fortune, our reputation or health. This is the falling down which will end up turning into a falling upward if we allow the circumstance to do its inner work on our soul.
This second half of life also involves beginning to write our own life script, owning it and paying attention to 'the task within the task' of life. Moving from surviving to thriving.
"The familiar and habitual are so falsely reassuring, most of us make our homes in the first-half-of-life permanently," says Rohr. We do not willingly move out of our 'comfort zone' unless circumstances force us to do so.
Henry David Thoreau wrote, "If you have built your castles in the air, your work need not be lost. That is where they should be. But, now put foundations under them."
Connecting the first and second halves of life together is about seeing the world not as either-or, but rather both-and. Falling Upward presents a fresh vision of wholeness that calls us both upward and downward, for we cannot really understand Up until we have first experienced Down.
Regardless of your age, I recommend reading Falling Upward with an open heart, mind and spirit. You will better understand the spiritual aspects of aging and of making a "further journey" to discover your True Self. You will also grow in seeing how to "love thy neighbor as thy self."
This book describes life in 2 sections or halves. Other authors, like Sheehy, have described the necessary passages that a well adjusted person must pass through as we mature. Here it is done as a spiritual journey in which the first half of life is involved with building a vessel and in the second half we have the delightful task of filling that vessel with all the insights and relationships that lead to a complete, enriching and ennobling life. I believe this book is illuminating on life and its mysteries whether you accept God or not. I think the author learned much of what he shares by his experiences with various 12 step programs.
I never reread a book. This is an exception. It is short and while not finished ( I am intentional going very, very slowly to really absorb and digest everything I can squeeze out of every thought) I am planning how to go about rereading this masterpiece.
The author describes a spiritual journey we should all be on to connect with ourselves and that will tell us "who we are". The first half of life prepares us for that journey and the second half gives us the freedom to explore without any artificial boundaries. That is important. Boundaries are limiting in our development, especially on our spiritual side. Religion should be non-linear and non-dualist. It should not be neatly packaged to conform to a preset program. There is work to be done in the first half to build a good and sufficient vessel and in the second half to fill it well.
Much of the author's thinking is totally consistent with modern science and psychology. He says things like " you don't have to believe in Jesus's divinity to see that he is thinking at a level above most of us". "Many of us, including the church, can't live the Real Gospel because the message is just too big"
You are in for a real treat as you will stumble across your own selection of quotes and questions to ponder and look for friends to share these precious insights with. Happy and rewarding journey of your own.
Top reviews from other countries
For my very personal journey, this book and its perspectives sent me into a spiritual rabbit hole of rethinking my beliefs, connecting some dots (I did not know where connected) across religious believes, other mystic and spiritual writers and poets. This book felt like the presence of a kind & loving spiritual adviser or teacher.
Do I recommend this? Hell, yeah! Go for it. Forget about sin, immerse into love, change your mind.