SOUL SHERPA STRATEGIES FOR BROKEN HEARTED MEN AT MIDLIFE: SEEING IN THE DARK

This is a time of initiation and chaos for our country, for the world, and possibly for you. There is much to distract us, to disturb us, to distress us in the world today.

We do not have established rites of passage for times of great change for any stage of life particularly at midlife when the soul often begins to call to us quite insistently. Often colloquially referred to as “midlife crisis” the root meaning of the word is “a turning point”, and points to the need to choose, to decide. As a SOUL SHERPA (named by client, used with permission) I can help you revision success. Redefine power. Reclaim joy. And come alive to the new story that will lead you home.

 1) You have traveled too fast over false ground. Now your soul has come to take you back. John O’Donahue (“For one who is exhausted”)

Whatever the loss, illness, failure, financial wipe-out or inner deadness, it was not to be avoided. Spirit, Higher Power, your Self is calling you to come alive to your new soul story. It is a dying that makes space for new life. As Jung said, the road to individuation is filled with fateful detours and wrong turnings. A bigger story is calling you to heal the secret sorrows of your heart and become more of who you truly are.

2) “We must come to the end before a new beginning can come to us.” Helene Cixous

This period of growth and expansion requires more than a “stepping out of your comfort zone”. It feels like death. In betwixt and between, this is a liminal space where the old you can no longer live yet the new you has not yet emerged.

3) You cannot rely exclusively on your left-brain, logical, linear, analytical mind to figure out your new path. You need to access your holistic, wild genius to awaken the indigenous soul, the wild soul, to connect to “the one who knows” deep within.

Although always connected to a collective intelligence, you must raise your spiritual antennae and tune in. There is forgotten wisdom residing in the heart of your psyche. It is not only in some of us. It is in all of us. You must learn how to perceive through the eyes of soul as well as through the eyes of ego.

 4) What is worth saving in the ego is saved. What is not worth saving is dissolved and melted down in order to be recast in new life forms.

5) “…anything or anyone/that does not bring you alive is too small for you.” David Whyte

It is the cul-de-sac in your life, the place where you no longer know how to proceed, that can call from deep within new vitality, new possibilities, an expanded and free Self.  

6) Change is neither linear, cumulative, nor accomplished in a step-by-step, stage by stage manner. The process of Becoming means traveling a spiral path and moving in discontinuous leaps. Chaos is a source of new order to richer patterns of being.   

" And now we know that we are not merely prisoners of circumstances. We know we can interact with nature. This is the heart of the message I give. Matter is not inert. It is alive and active…With the old idea of a doomed determinist world now gone, we can feel free to make our fate for good or ill… Nature is part of us, as we are part of it.”

Ilya Prigogine (Nobel laureate, Order out Chaos; From Being to Becoming)

7) This transformation process is begun by Nature at midlife but requires consciousness, creativity, courage and companionship to complete the transformation. Like a baptism, a purification, the call to change often arrives as a flood in our life. Dissolution. Dispersal. Dismemberment. Perhaps you are experiencing an initiation by fire rather than water. The burning away of what is not essential to your true self and wild freedom.

Sometimes with

  the bones of the black

  sticks left when the fire

   has gone out

someone has written

  something new

  in the ashes of your life

You are not leaving.

  Even as the light

  fades quickly.

  You are arriving.

David Whyte (The Journey)

Know that as you are seeking your future, your future is also seeking you. You are in partnership with the Mystery, creator and created. We are not at war with nature when we are in alignment with our own natures.

Sometimes it helps to have a translator, a mediator, an experienced guide to navigate this challenging rite of passage you are undergoing, to come alive to your new story. This may be a turning point in your life. A doorway is ready to open, perhaps a door of many opportunities. If I can be of service to you as Jungian psychologist, dream consultant, spiritual mentor contact me at [email protected] to schedule a complimentary 15 minute introductory conversation via telephone or Skype to explore how we might work together. Also available: Appointments in person at offices in Bay Area, San Rafael or El Cerrito, or via Skype. 510-540-0777

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