by Richard Rohr
You fight things only when you are directly called and equipped to do so. We all become a well-disguised mirror image of anything that we fight too long or too directly. That which we oppose determines the energy and frames the questions after a while. You lose all your inner freedom.
By the second half of life, you have learned ever so slowly, and with much resistance, that most frontal attacks on evil just produce another kind of evil in yourself, along with a very inflated self-image to boot, and incites a lot of push-back from those you have attacked. This seems to be one of the last lessons to be learned. Think of the cold Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov, or the monk who tries to eliminate all humor in The Name of the Rose, or the frowning Koran burners of Florida. Holier-than-thou people usually end up holier than nobody.
Daily life now requires prayer and discernment more than knee-jerk responses toward either the conservative or liberal end of the spectrum. You have a spectrum of responses now, and they are not all predictable, as is too often the case with most knee-jerk responses. Law is still necessary, of course, but it is not your guiding star, or even close. It has been wrong and cruel too many times.
The Eight Beatitudes speak to you much more than the Ten Commandments now. I have always wondered why people never want to put a stone monument of the Eight Beatitudes on the courthouse lawn. Then I realize that the Eight Beatitudes of Jesus would probably not be very good for any war, any macho worldview, the wealthy, or our consumer economy. Courthouses are good and necessary first-half-of-life institutions. In the second half, you try instead to influence events, work for change, quietly persuade, change your own attitude, pray, or forgive instead of taking things to court.
Life is much more spacious now, the boundaries of the container having been enlarged by the constant addition of new experiences and relationships. You are like an expandable suitcase, and you became so almost without your noticing. Now you are just here, and here holds more than enough. Such “hereness,” however, has its own heft, authority, and influence. Just watch true elders sitting in any circle of conversation; they are often defining the center, depth, and circumference of the dialogue just by being there! Most participants do not even know it is happening. When elders speak, they need very few words to make their point. Too many words, the use of which I am surely guilty, are not needed by true elders. Second simplicity has its own kind of brightness and clarity, but much of it is expressed in nonverbal terms, and only when really needed. If you talk too much or too loud, you are usually not an elder.
If we know anything at this stage, we know that we are all in this together and that we are all equally naked underneath our clothes. Which probably does not feel like a whole lot of knowing, but even this little bit of honesty gives us a strange and restful consolation. 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 between people or exaggerate the problems. Creating dramas has become boring.
In the second half of life, it is good just to be a part of the general dance. We do not have to stand out, make defining moves, or be better than anyone else on the dance floor. 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. The dance has a seriousness to it, but also an unself-conscious freedom of form that makes it bright and shining. Think of two old lovers quietly dancing to a soft clarinet and piano melody of the 1940s, safe and relaxed in one another's arms, and unconcerned whether anyone is watching. The dance is completely for its own sake.
At this stage, I no longer have to prove that I or my group is the best, that my ethnicity is superior, that my religion is the only one that God loves, or that my role and place in society deserve superior treatment. I am not preoccupied with collecting more goods and services; 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. I now realize that I have been gratuitously given to—from the universe, from society, and from God. I try now, as Elizabeth Seton said, to “live simply so that others can simply live.”
Erik Erikson calls someone at this stage a “generative” person, one who is eager and able to generate life from his or her own abundance and for the benefit of following generations. 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 of a mysterious and outpouring God.
Their God is no longer small, punitive, or tribal. They once worshiped their raft; now they love the shore where it has taken them. They once defended signposts; now they have arrived where the signs pointed. They now enjoy the moon itself instead of fighting over whose finger points to it most accurately, quickly, or definitively.
One's growing sense of infinity and spaciousness is no longer found just “out there” but most especially “in here.” The inner and the outer have become one. You can trust your inner experience now, because even God has allowed it, used it, received it, and refined it. As St. Augustine dramatically put it in his Confessions,
You were within, but I was without. You were with me, but I was not with you. So you called, you shouted, you broke through my deafness, you flared, blazed, and banished my blindness, you lavished your fragrance, and I gasped.1
It takes such gasping several times in your life to eventually rest in a bright sadness: you are sad because you now hold the pain of the larger world, and you wish everyone enjoyed what you now enjoy; but there is brightness because life is somehow—on some levels—still “very good,” just as Genesis promised. Merton again says this best, as he concludes my favorite book of his: “It does not matter much [now], because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things, or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there. … We are [now] invited to forget ourselves on purpose, cast our awful solemnity to the winds and join in the general dance.”2
In the second half of life, we do not have strong and final opinions about everything, every event, or most people, as much as we allow things and people to delight us, sadden us, and truly influence us. We no longer need to change or adjust other people to be happy ourselves. Ironically, we are more than ever before in a position to change people—but we do not need to—and that makes all the difference. We have moved from doing to being to an utterly new kind of doing that flows almost organically, quietly, and by osmosis. Our actions are less compulsive. We do what we are called to do, and then try to let go of the consequences. We usually cannot do that very well when we are young.
This is human life in its crowning, and all else has been preparation and prelude for creating such a human work of art. Now we aid and influence other people simply by being who we are. Human integrity probably influences and moves people from potency to action more than anything else. It always deeply saddens me when old folks are still full of themselves and their absolute opinions about everything. Somehow they have not taken their needed place in the social fabric. We need their deep and studied passion so much more than their superficial and loudly stated principles. We need their peace more than their anger.
Yes, the second half of life is a certain kind of weight to carry, but no other way of being makes sense or gives you the deep satisfaction your soul now demands and even enjoys. This new and deeper passion is what people mean when they say, “I must do this particular thing or my life will not make sense” or “It is no longer a choice.” Your life and your delivery system are now one, whereas before, your life and your occupation seemed like two different things. Your concern is not so much to have what you love anymore, but to love what you have—right now. This is a monumental change from the first half of life, so much so that it is almost the litmus test of whether you are in the second half of li
fe at all.
The rules are all different now, and we often see it in older folks' freedom to give things away. Hoarding, possessing, collecting, and impressing others with their things, their house, or their travels are of less and less interest to them. Inner brightness, still holding life's sadness and joy, is its own reward, its own satisfaction, and their best and truest gift to the world. Such elders are the “grand” parents of the world. Children and other adults feel so safe and loved around them, and they themselves feel so needed and helpful to children, teens, and midlife adults. And they are! They are in their natural flow.
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.” Hopkins called it “the dearest freshness deep down things.” This is the falling upward that we have been waiting for! One of the guiding principles of our Center for Action and Contemplation puts it this way: “The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better.” I learned this from my father St. Francis, who did not concentrate on attacking evil or others, but just spent his life falling, and falling many times into the good, the true, and the beautiful. It was the only way he knew how to fall into God.
Such inner brightness ends up being a much better and longer-lasting alternative to evil than any war, anger, violence, or ideology could ever be. All you have to do is meet one such shining person and you know that he or she is surely the goal of humanity and the delight of God. I hope you are becoming that shining person yourself, and that this book is helping you see it, allow it, and trust it. Otherwise, this book too will be just some more words—instead of words becoming flesh. Until it becomes flesh, it cannot shine and shine brightly.
Chapter 11
The Shadowlands
A light shines on in the darkness, a light that darkness cannot overcome.
—PROLOGUE TO JOHN'S GOSPEL 1:5
Make friends with your opponent quickly while he is taking you to court; or he will hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the officer, and the officer will throw you into prison. You will not get out until you have paid the last penny.
—MATTHEW 5:25–26
Despite the joys of such “brightness,” we must also talk more about the paradoxical journey of getting there. By the second half of life, you have been in regular unwelcome contact with your shadow self, which gradually detaches you from your not-so-bright persona (meaning “stage mask” in Greek) that you so diligently constructed in the first half of life. Your stage mask is not bad, evil, or necessarily egocentric; it is just not “true.” It is manufactured and sustained unconsciously by your mind; but it can and will die, as all fictions must die.
Persona and shadow are correlative terms. Your shadow is what you refuse to see about yourself, and what you do not want others to see. The more you have cultivated and protected a chosen persona, the more shadow work you will need to do. Be especially careful therefore of any idealized role or self-image, like that of minister, mother, doctor, nice person, professor, moral believer, or president of this or that. These are huge personas to live up to, and they trap many people in lifelong delusion. The more you are attached to and unaware of such a protected self-image, the more shadow self you will very likely have. Conversely, the more you live out of your shadow self, the less capable you are of recognizing the persona you are trying to protect and project. It is like a double blindness keeping you from seeing—and being—your best and deepest self. As Jesus put it, “If the lamp within you is, in fact, darkness, what darkness there will be” (Matthew 6:23).
I have prayed for years for one good humiliation a day, and then I must watch my reaction to it. In my position, I have no other way of spotting both my well-denied shadow self and my idealized persona. I am actually surprised there are not more clergy scandals, because “spiritual leader” or “professional religious person” is such a dangerous and ego-inflating self-image. Whenever ministers, or any true believers, are too anti anything, you can be pretty sure there is some shadow material lurking somewhere nearby.
Your persona is what most people want from you and reward you for, and what you choose to identify with, for some reason. As you do your inner work, you will begin to know that your self-image is nothing more than just that, and not worth protecting, promoting, or denying. As Jesus says in the passage above, if you can begin to “make friends” with those who have a challenging message for you, you will usually begin to see some of your own shadow. If you don't, you will miss out on much-needed wisdom and end up “imprisoned” within yourself or taken to “court” by others; and you will undoubtedly have to “pay the last penny” to reorder your life and your relationships. Think of our many politicians and clergy who have fallen into public disgrace following sexual and financial scandals.
The “opponent taking you to court” is for me a telling description of what we allow inner story lines to do to us. In ten seconds, we can create an entire and self-justifying scenario of blame, anger, and hurt—toward ourselves or toward another. Jesus is saying, Don't go there! or the judge, officer, and courtroom will quickly will take over and have their way with you. Buddhist nun and writer Pema Chodron says that once you create a self-justifying story line, your emotional entrapment within it quadruples! She is surely right, yet I still do it every day, and become my own worst, judge, attorney, and jury within ten seconds of an offending statement.
Your self-image is not substantial or lasting; it is just created out of your own mind, desire, and choice—and everybody else's preferences for you! It floats around in Plato's unreal world of ideas. It is not objective at all but entirely subjective (which does not mean that it does not have real influence). The movement to second-half-of-life wisdom has much to do with necessary shadow work and the emergence of healthy self-critical thinking, which alone allows you to see beyond your own shadow and disguise and to find who you are “hidden [with Christ] in God,” as Paul puts it (Colossians 3:3). The Zen masters call it “the face you had before you were born.” This self cannot die and always lives, and is your True Self.
As Jesus put it, “You must recognize the plank in your own eye, and only then will you see clearly enough to take the splinter out of your brother or sister's eye” (Matthew 7:5). He also said, “The lamp of the body is the eye” (Luke 11:34). Spiritual maturity is largely a growth in seeing; and full seeing seems to take most of our lifetime, with a huge leap in the final years, months, weeks, and days of life, as any hospice volunteer will tell you. There seems to be a cumulative and exponential growth in seeing in people's last years, for those who do their inner work. There is also a cumulative closing down in people who have denied all shadow work and humiliating self-knowledge. Watch the Nuremburg trials and see Nazi men who killed millions still in total denial and maintenance of their moral self-image till the very end. I am sure you all know examples of both of these types.
Shadow work is humiliating work, but properly so. If you do not “eat” such humiliations with regularity and make friends with the judges, the courtrooms, and the officers (that is, all those who reveal to you and convict you of your own denied faults) who come into your life, you will surely remain in the first half of life forever. We never get to the second half of life without major shadowboxing. And I am sorry to report that it continues until the end of life, the only difference being that you are no longer surprised by your surprises or so totally humiliated by your humiliations! You come to expect various forms of halfheartedness, deceit, vanity, or illusions from yourself. But now you see through them, which destroys most of their game and power.
Odysseus had to face his same poor judgment again and again; he and others suffered much because of it, yet he usually seemed to learn from his shadow side too. Some call this pattern the discovery of the “golden shadow” because it carries so much enlightenment for the soul. The general pattern in story and novel is that heroes learn and grow from encountering their sha
dow, whereas villains never do. Invariably, the movies and novels that are most memorable show real “character development” and growing through shadow work. This inspires us all because it calls us all.
We all identify with our persona so strongly when we are young that we become masters of denial and learn to eliminate or deny anything that doesn't support it. Neither our persona nor our shadow is evil in itself; they just allow us to do evil and not know it. Our shadow self makes us all into hypocrites on some level. Remember, hypocrite is a Greek word that simply means “actor,” someone playing a role rather than being “real.” We are all in one kind of closet or another and are even encouraged by society to play our roles. Usually everybody else can see your shadow, so it is crucial that you learn what everybody else knows about you—except you!
The saint is precisely one who has no “I” to protect or project. His or her “I” is in conscious union with the “I AM” of God, and that is more than enough. Divine union overrides any need for self-hatred or self-rejection. Such people do not need to be perfectly right, and they know they cannot be anyway; so they just try to be in right relationship. In other words, they try above all else to be loving. Love holds you tightly and safely and always. Such people have met the enemy and know that the major enemy is “me,” as Pogo said. But you do not hate “me” either, you just see through and beyond “me.” Shadow work literally “saves you from yourself” (your false self), which is the foundational meaning of salvation to begin with.
I am afraid that the closer you get to the Light, the more of your shadow you see. Thus truly holy people are always humble people. Christians could have been done a great service if shadow had been distinguished from sin. Sin and shadow are not the same. We were so encouraged to avoid sin that many of us instead avoided facing our shadow, and then we ended up “sinning” even worse—while unaware besides! As Paul taught, “The angels of darkness must disguise themselves as angels of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14). The persona does not choose to see evil in itself, so it always disguises it as good. The shadow self invariably presents itself as something like prudence, common sense, justice, or “I am doing this for your good,” when it is actually manifesting fear, control, manipulation, or even vengeance. Did anyone ever tell you that the name Lucifer literally means the “light bearer”? The evil one always makes darkness look like light—and makes light look like darkness.
