(direct quotes from the book except the italics which are not)
I. First half of life – Building of the ego
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 first-half- of-life issues are the big three concerns of identity, security, and sexuality and gender… little time left for simply living, pure friendship, useless beauty, or moments of communion with nature or anything
-> Often, in the first half of life, we live with either/or categories. But, staying put in this first stage of life means that our containers remain largely empty and ill-defined. It is when we begin to pay attention, and seek integrity precisely in the task within the task that we begin to move from the first to the second half of our own lives
II Second half of life – Spiritual Maturity
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. This is to find our true self – our soul. 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!
I believe that God gives us our soul, our deepest identity, our True Self, our unique blueprint, at our own "immaculate conception." Our unique little bit of heaven is installed by the Manufacturer within the product, at the beginning! Our soul’s discovery is utterly crucial, momentous, and of pressing importance for each of us and for the world. We do not "make" or "create" our souls; we just "grow" them up
->The first half of life is discovering the script, and the second half is actually writing it and owning it
The journey into maturity requires us to honor the needs of the first half of life – identity formation and security – while providing room to move into the second half. There is a tension here, but if we’re able to keep this tension then there will be an opportunity to grow wisdom. But, as is clear from the book, none of this is easy. It will likely involve endurance of suffering and pain, of overcoming obstacles, and maybe even hitting bottom before climbing back up toward union with God.
It tends to move toward a happy and needed introversion as we get older.
III. Falling Upward
He uses the term “falling upward” as a way to describe the process of moving toward the Second Half of Life. What has to happen?
A. Requirement to Fail – “The way up is the way down”
-> To move into the second half of life we must be comfortable with change and willing be stretched beyond our comfort zones.
We do not want to embark on a further journey if it feels like going down, especially after we have put so much sound and fury into going up… By denying their pain, avoiding the necessary falling, many have kept themselves from their own spiritual depths —and therefore have been kept from their own spiritual heights. Mature people invariably thank their harder parent, law-driven church, kick-ass coach, and most demanding professors—but usually years later. This is a clear sign of having transcended—and included
B. False self must die (ego driven) and your Shadow self must be confronted through necessary suffering to get to your true self
1. Your false self is your role, title, and personal image that is largely a creation of your own mind and attachments. It will and must die in exact correlation to how much you want the Real. "How much false self are you willing to shed to find your True Self?" is the lasting question. Many just fall in love with their first place and position, as an extension of themselves, and spend their whole life building a white picket fence around it.
2. Your Shadow Self is what you refuse to see about yourself, and what you do not want others to see. The more you have cultivated a protected a chosen persona, the more shadow work you need to do
It does not mean self-hatred or self-doubt, but exactly the contrary, because you finally accept both your gold and your weaknesses as your own—and they no longer cancel one another out . You can finally do the same for others too, and you do not let one or another fault in a person destroy your larger relationship.
3. Your True Self is who you objectively are from the beginning, in the mind and heart of God, "the face you had before you were born," It is your substantial self, your absolute identity, which can be neither gained nor lost by any technique, group affiliation, morality, or formula whatsoever.
Faith is simply to trust the real, and to trust that God is found within it—even before we change it. This is perhaps our major stumbling stone, the price we must pay to keep the human heart from closing down and to keep the soul open for something more
Sooner or later, if you are on any classic "spiritual schedule," some event, person, death, idea, or relationship will enter your life that you simply cannot deal with, using your present skill set, your acquired knowledge, or your strong willpower
In the end, we do not so much reclaim what we have lost as discover a significantly new self in and through the process
Home is another word for the Spirit that we are, our True Self in God. The self-same moment that we find God in ourselves, we also find ourselves inside God, and this is the full homecoming, according to Teresa of Avila. Until then we are homesick, although today most would probably just call it loneliness, isolation, longing, sadness, restlessness, or even a kind of depression.
Almost all heroes heard an inner voice that spoke to them.
If we go to the depths of anything, we will begin to knock upon something substantial, "real," and with a timeless quality to it. We will move from the starter kit of "belief’ to an actual inner knowing. This is most especially true if we have ever (1) loved deeply, (2) accompanied someone through the mystery of dying, (3) or stood in genuine life-changing awe before mystery, time, or beauty.
This "something real" is what all the world religions were pointing to when they spoke of heaven, nirvana, bliss, or enlightenment. They were not wrong at all; their only mistake was that they pushed it off into the next world. If heaven is later, it is because it is first of all now.
C. A person who has found his or her True Self has learned how to live in the big picture, as a part of deep time and all of history. This change of frame and venue is called living in "the kingdom of God" by Jesus
Life is all about practicing for heaven- the state of union both here and later. As now, so will it be then. The more room you have to include, the bigger your heaven will be. If you go to heaven alone, wrapped in your private worthiness, it is by definition not heaven. If your notion of heaven is based on exclusion of anybody else, then it is by definition not heaven.
Basic religious belief is a vote for some coherence, purpose, benevolence, and direction in the universe, and I suspect it emerges from all that we said in the last chapter about home, soul, and the homing device of Spirit, ! Faith in any religion is always somehow saying that God is one and God is good, and if so, then all of reality must be that simple and beautiful too
->As we move beyond the first half understandings where rules come first, we discover in the second half of life that God is less concerned about laws and more about the relationship. Thus, the ability to move forward is to embrace God’s unconditional forgiveness.
D. Return to simplicity, look for commonality, see a broader vision, pay back to the world
In this second half of life, one has less and less need or interest in eliminating the negative or fearful, making again those old rash judgments, holding on to old hurts, or feeling any need to punish other people. Your superiority complexes have gradually departed in all directions. You do not fight these things anymore; they have just shown themselves too many times to be useless, ego based, You fight things only when you are directly called and equipped to do so
When you are young, you define yourself by differentiating yourself; now you look for the things we all share in common. You find happiness in alikeness, which has become much more obvious to you now; and you do not need to dwell on the differences…
Life is more participatory than assertive, and there is no need for strong or further self-definition. God has taken care of all that, much better than we ever expected. The brightness comes from within now, and it is usually more than enough. Quite simply, my desire and effort—every day— is to pay back, to give back to the world a bit of what I have received
Because such people have built a good container, they are able to "contain" more and more truth, more and more neighbors, more and broader vision, more and more a mysterious and outpouring God. Your concern is not so much to have what you love anymore, but to love what you have—right now
You no longer need to divide the field of every moment between up and down, totally right or totally wrong, with me or against me. It just is. This calm allows you to confront what must be confronted with even greater clarity and incisiveness
E. Bright Sadness.
The second half of life is characterized by a “bright sadness”, in which we both “hold the sadness of the larger world” and at the same time realize that what God has created is good, that we can leave the survival dance behind and take part in the sacred dance.
Strangely, all of life’s problems, dilemmas, and difficulties are now resolved not by negativity, attack, criticism force, or logical resolution, but always by falling into a larger "brightness."