I have been wrestling for some time with a question I suspect occupies the thoughts of many others—how we humans have gotten to the state we find ourselves today—bitterly divided by ideology and actions that represent polar extremes. We struggle with social disparities of race, religion, gender, wealth and power, nation against nation and person against person. It seems very dark at times and violence appears to be lurking around the corner if not in the daylight all too often. We might call this a dystopian present but that would be a glib way to describe what is actually happening.
With these thoughts in mind I was re-reading a book I commend to you written by Fr. Richard Rohr, a Franciscan friar, entitled Falling Upward. In brief Rohr writes about the second half of life—a subject that has deep implications for us individually and for humanity as a whole. Rohr and many other philosophers, theologians, social scientists and psychologists have observed that life for some is divided into two parts-a first half that is primarily occupied with the outward and ego centered needs of our limbic or lizard brains: success both material and otherwise; security for ourselves and our loved ones and containment, preserving whatever status quo we have achieved from the threatening forces of change.
If you are familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs these will be familiar as early stage pre-occupations. They are almost entirely self-occupied, even narcissistic concerns and for many, eclipse all other thoughts. As we age, or if we encounter some life challenging event such as a personal loss, career setback, or illness, some will begin to move beyond these preoccupations to begin focusing on second half questions—why we are here, finding our true selves, and undertaking our second life tasks. It is in this phase that wisdom, patience, spirituality, and strength emerge and it is why we often look to more senior individuals as leaders, in the belief they possess virtues necessary for securing our collective success, security and containment.
Early on Rohr makes a statement about us as humans and about human society that was so compelling about this moment in history that I wanted to share it with you. He writes: “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…
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!”
The instant I read these passages I thought to myself that Rohr had summed up our present circumstance precisely. Humanity is in its adolescence, still stuck in first half of life behaviors, not very far along in the evolution of our collective lizard brains. But not everyone is in the same place, and not to patronize, when we see individuals—irrespective of politics or any other defining label, exhibit the maturity and insight to step beyond, to fall upward, as Rohr describes it, we are seeing a hoped-for future for humanity. We know these men and women; Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Anne Frank, Mother Teresa to name a few enlightened souls who have set an example--albeit one that is very hard for us to imagine for ourselves
They all journeyed from deep loss to deep insight and lived second-half lives in pursuit of self-less devotion to mankind—to the profound issues that grip us today. They and many others like them have shown us a path forward. But to be clear like all prophets, their words and actions are largely set aside. As Rohr notes, it is nearly impossible to stretch more than a single step above our present state of consciousness to comprehend those who are just a bit beyond us. And for this reason, we sometimes treat them, like all prophets in their time, as wrong, sinful, heretical and dangerous.
Indeed, the challenges to our future, an evolution beyond adolescence as a society, may very well first require a descent. It is not something I or any other rational person desires, but we must as scripture says, lose ourselves to find ourselves. I am not without hope that we will in time. Already many people have reached a point of rejecting the false religions, ideologies and doctrines of ego centered success, security and containment as they encounter a reality in which disease, poverty, racial and social injustice and religious hypocrisy are so manifest.
A life altering encounter with our higher selves awaits us—whether we call it finding God, or our true self. As scary as it is, I am reminded that the most frequent phrase in the bible is “Do not be afraid.” For as long as we think and act out of fear-of losing ourselves, our security, of all we think we possess, and reject change—stepping outside containment, we are enslaved. It is only when we fall upward that we can move beyond to the real freedom that awaits us.
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