Elderhood is not relegated to those who are over a certain age - the elder lives within us all! Dive into the following mysteries that teach us how to become true elders at any age. In my early spiritual studies {15+ years ago} I searched tenaciously for the people to teach me to help me with my problems and answer my questions. I met and studied with numerous teachers, spiritual healers, psychics and experts in their field of expertise and yes, I expected them to be masters, compassionately sharing what they knew. What I found were emotionally volatile narcissistic, egocentric grown-up children who saw themselves as being better than everyone else. Looking back now, I realise that in all my searching, I wasn’t seeking knowledge. I was seeking to be witnessed. What I craved and needed {but didn’t have the language for at the time) was the profound gaze of an elder. As I started doing client sessions, the question of purpose always came up and continues to do so today. As it should! However, much to my clients’ {and even my own} disappointment, purpose never shows up like a well-laid-out map. Purpose reveals itself a little at a time through the activity of a person’s life. After all this time with my own seeking and with my clients, I now know of only one surefire way to create the environment for true purpose to show up. And that is to cultivate an attitude of elderhood.
Symptoms of a World Lacking in True Elders
We are living in a world lacking in elders. We have a lot of “adults,” but very few elders. An elder is not someone older in age. Nor are they a young person who is an “old soul.” What marks an elder is their mastery of the love mindset. Elders have a refined, idiosyncratic way with which they give love. And love leads to purpose. A world lacking in elders produces human beings who are conditioned, not nurtured. There’s a lot of “obey this” and “follow that” and not enough exploration of the individual soul. For true purpose to come forth, there must be a nourishment of the individual psyche. The paradox is when an individual psyche is truly nourished, it almost always moves into service for the whole {which is one’s true purpose}. Unfortunately, in societies that lack elders, there is more focus on judging, criticising, and correcting - all the things that destroy purpose. And so we end up with entire cities of highly intellectual people who crave depth that they don’t know how to reach. Intelligence nowadays is purely mental. This has created a mass disconnection from the soul, spirit, heart, and body - all aspects of the human psyche that are perceived as the least controllable and the most unknowable. And, you guessed it, these are the very elements of our being that we need to travel to the realm of purpose. Finally, in societies that lack elders, the most vulnerable populations are easily harmed. This is especially seen with the treatment of women, children, and animals. So how do we start inhabiting the domain of eldership and therefore our purpose? This is a question that pushes us into the realm of the mysteries. Because, in simply contemplating these three facets of eldership, we open to levels upon levels of our truth.
Elder Mystery #1 - Offering True, Loving Feedback
The most important quality of an elder is their capacity to offer their words in service to love.
This is the most important quality because our words are easily accessible to us. Therefore, they can either be treated with a kind of casual callousness or treated with a deep reverence. Too often it’s the former. Regularly I see people give “feedback” that is just an opinionated, biased, and conditioned response. The true nature of feedback is revealed in the word “feedback”: to offer food back to someone. An elder offers feedback to someone as though they were a guest at their table. They no longer ask themselves, “What is wrong with this person?” or “How can I cut this person down to size?” or “How can I show off my intelligent opinion?” Instead, they ask themselves, “What would help this person become even more alive?" They see the world with softer and clearer eyes and explain this world with soulful words.
Elder Mystery #2 - Lovingly Sharing a Tangible Skill
It doesn’t matter what form an elder’s skill takes. It could be a hobby, a mechanical skill, a specific technique, or an art form; anything from bird-watching to changing a tire. What matters is the offering of their skills. The skill in question becomes a foundation stone for someone else’s life - often in ways no one can predict. We often underestimate the quiet, accumulative benefits of skills. This is an elder’s true legacy: the skills they leave behind.
Elder Mystery #3 - Fierce, Loving Stewardship
Elders often stand for something and they actively {and joyfully} work in service to it. They are caretakers or stewards of this thing that they hold dearly. They are so devoted to it in speech, action, and thought, such that their cause becomes a matter of fact for the next generation and the people closest to them. An elder plants trees whose shade they will likely never sit under. They plant it anyway, for the love of being able to see some version of this tree in the world. Elders could be stewards of humans - their family, friends, and co-workers. They could be stewards of beings without a human voice - animals, birds, bees, the land. They could be stewards of the intangible - events, high ideals, ethics, authenticity, honesty.
The Impact of True Elderhood
As people learn to observe soulfully and respond with nourishing feedback, share whatever gifts they have, big or small, and stand for something close to their hearts, the world begins to respond to them. This response becomes the true inspiration for and an authentic connection to their purpose. They sort of stumble into it.