Falling Upward, Again and Again
(I am taking time off from writing new columns this summer. This column seems especially timely, though, as we slowly begin to imagine our lives after COVID. All of us have fallen; now we have the opportunity to reflect on what it means to fall upward.)
One of the best books I have read in the last five years is Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life by Richard Rohr. Rohr is a priest in the Franciscan order who integrates wisdom from spirituality and depth psychology. He has traveled the world for the last forty-two years leading retreats and conferences on wholeness and wellness. Falling Upward, published in 2011, is a book about the two halves of our lives. The first half of life, according to Rohr, is characterized by external growth, expansion, and accomplishment. It is the time of life when people finish school, begin careers, begin relationships and families, and most things in one's life are on an upward trajectory. Rohr talks about the first half of life as being primarily about building and solidifying one's identity and ego.
In contrast, Rohr describes the second half of life as primarily about deepening one's identity and developing one's soul. In the second half of life, things begin to get more complicated. Loss becomes more prevalent. Relationships end through separation or death. Bad things happen to good people. Dreams fall short, and disappointments occur. We are aging and now facing the finite limits of our lives in the second half of life. Things begin to fall apart, but the point that Rohr makes is that we have a choice when we face an experience of things falling apart. We can choose to fall down, or we can choose to fall upward--hence the name for his book.
Rohr's book resonates entirely with my own experience in life, both personally and professionally. In my experience, all spiritual growth--all growth of the soul--occurs in response to working through some experience of challenge or loss, some experience of facing a problem that cannot be solved by simply working harder (the striving of the ego). Another way to capture this is to quote one of my favorite sayings: wisdom is simply healed pain. Those who face and heal their pain as they move into and through the second half of life become wise. They are the sages and elders of our lives whose wisdom and counsel we regularly seek. Their souls are well developed. They have depth and a palpable gravitas. Those who do not face and heal their pain in the second half of life become constricted, bitter, and cynical. Rohr captured this difference in a lecture I once heard him deliver when he said, "we have a growing population of elderly in our country, but not necessarily a growing population of elders."
The field of personal growth literature is vast. Much of it is geared toward the first half of life, toward what Rohr would call the growth of the ego. Most of these books are some version of "Ten Steps To A Better You." There is, of course, nothing wrong with this kind of literature as far as it goes. But if you are looking for a book that will nurture your soul's growth, you will benefit from reading Falling Upward by Richard Rohr. You can read the book for a couple of days, but you will spend the rest of your life integrating and applying the wisdom found in this book.
Regular readers of this column know that one of my favorite sayings is, "Change is inevitable. Growth is optional." Richard Rohr makes this more specific by saying, "Falling is inevitable. Falling upward is optional." Rohr says that when we fall upward, what we come to discover is that what is falling away as we get older is the false self and that what is finally emerging is the true self. He is clear, though, that this is a choice that we have to make. We make it one day at a time, in community with those we love and trust, and in community with a Higher Power that is always guiding us to discover our true selves.
Subscribe Now to Weekly Words of Wellness:
Click the button below to signup for the e-mail version of Weekly Words of Wellness. This weekly article can be shared with your community electronically and/or used for group discussion.
You can unsubscribe at any time.
