Mid life challenges : Time to seek the spirit

In the life of every adult, one day comes the time of traveling for strength, searching for the spirit, the transition from external maturity to internal maturity. In this post, I want to share my understanding and experience of living this transition to help other people going through difficult midlife challenges.

One day in life it comes to noon, and from that moment on, "the sun hides its rays to illuminate itself after it has scattered its light to the world." The focus of our attention is gradually shifting from the external world of activities, goals and achievements inward, to the life of the soul.

It is becoming more and more difficult to believe that external changes - change of job, field of activity, place of residence, the implementation of the next large-scale project will change something in who you are.

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The main illusion, which is so difficult to part with during this period, is the illusion of progressive growth. In the first half of life, a person strives for external expansion. Life appears to be a deliberate chain of goals.

It seems to us that we are managing our development, moving in a consciously chosen direction, and this will always be so. It is hard to believe that a moment may come when further forward movement loses its meaning.

I would like to think that until your death you will be the same who you are now, only even more perfect, you will do everything the same that you are doing now, only even better and more.

The middle of life is the boundary of eras. The transition to the second half of life requires the acceptance of everything that was repressed in the first - death, shadow, its limitations, finiteness, corporeality.

This transition has two dimensions. First of all, this is an event that must be lived - with the body, feeling, in close communication with others like them and in the deepest loneliness, being entirely at stake. It is important to enter it consciously.

It is equally important to accept the fact that the right to go further will have to pay dearly - at least with serious internal work, and this is the second dimension of the transition.

The tasks of this work are the purification of the soul, the withering away of the old and the birth of the new, the search for a new meaning and the revision of the life mission, the knowledge of the difficult art of cultivating the spirit in oneself and those around, which in the second half of life is needed like air.

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A journey for power is not a search for something new, yet unseen, that will return everything to its place. This is not a search for a solution at all - a strategy for the first half of life that no longer works.

The source of power is hidden in you - while you are looking for it outside, you have not budged. You have to stop to take a step, go out of the way to find a way, go beyond your limits in order to come back with strength.

In a strange way, salvation comes when you find yourself alone in the very heart of the forest, in the very center of the labyrinth. The forest becomes healing, the labyrinth becomes a place of rebirth, crisis becomes initiation. One who has been healed and reborn in the labyrinth receives the power to heal.

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