Here is a survey about YOUR future when you get older: How do you see the second half of life?
Please go to https://de.surveymonkey.com/r/8NZQ3XV
OUR FIRST COMMUNITY LIVE CONVERSATION – about AGEING
Hear our presentation at the INTEGRAL EUROPEAN CONFERENCE in Hungary,
May 6th, 2016
We were pleased and grateful to witness a lively interest in the topic.
You are invited to join the discussion by filling in the survey above and by joining our Facebook Group http://bit.ly/integralageing
Hear our pre-conference talk about what we will be talking about on May 6th, 2016 in Siofok/Hungary.
Ann Roberts – an inquiry into elderhood
SEASON 6 EPISODE 1
September 4th 2019
Active Wisdom: An inquiry into elderhood
WITH ANN ROBERTS
After retirement – Ann calls it “refirement” – she went back to University. For her Masters in Applied Social Science she interviewed grandparents about the flow of love across the generations. The insight and learning she gained has led her to be actively engaged in an inquiry, with others, into Elderhood.
ACTIVE WISDOM is the term that applies to her work which aims to create a community of people who are curious about their Elderhood and wish to inquire this new stage in their lives.
HEIDI´S INTRO
We are kicking off season 6 of CONSCIOUS AGEING with Ann Roberts who already, 2 years ago, had inspired us with her life story and her work in ACTIVE WISDOM. Yes, once upon a time, old people were considered and appreciated for the wisdom they had gathered through their long life time. Today, their wisdom seems to be somehow unacknowledged or rejected by a hyper active youth culture. Young is good, old is bad. So instead of learning from other peoples’ experience and instead of learning from history, the wheel gets invented anew again and again and the same mistakes are made over and over.
If elders have no natural place of respect and appreciation in our societies, what to do? Our generation of Babyboomers is experienced in having new ideas and of not accepting societal norms which would put them into the corner of drawing back and be silent. If nobody asks us for our wisdom, we need to step up ourselves and offer it in an appropriate way. As elders, we can use this position to wisely offer our knowledge to the younger generations to give them the trusted help they may need to get oriented in a confusing world. Listening to them and gently guiding them would be the future task of elders who have developed themselves into mature human beings.
This time we are talking about her project of creating a network of people to inquire into elderhood. She starts with a couple of colleagues and offers a 3 months course, a place where people meet live on video and explore together important questions about elderhood. It is not about giving advice or selling solutions. It is about digging deep into the challenges and possibilities which arise when getting older.
ABOUT ANN ROBERTS
ABOUT ANN ROBERTS
After a 30 years career in organisational, team and personal development Ann ‘retired’ from Police Scotland in 2015 from her role as a Leadership Development Consultant.
As she prepared to leave, she realised there was more she wanted to achieve, and so the following September she undertook a Masters in Applied Social Research. She enjoyed the experience, particularly being with young people who helped her find her way in 21st Century academia.
At that time, Ann and her husband had three frail parents in their 90’s, adult children in their 20’s/30’s as well as a growing number of grandchildren. It was challenging time for Ann as she experienced the stretch that many of the baby boomer generation have in supporting different generation at the same time as well as her studies.
Ann’s research led her to the work of Mary Catherine Bateson who proposed a new stage in Erik Erikson’s adult psychosocial development model that she called “Active Wisdom”. This new stage sits between the Erikson’s original mid-life time of Generativity and that of Old Age. This new stage arises due to the healthy longevity that many of Ann’s generation now enjoy.
Mary Catherine describes the “virtue” of Active Wisdom as being about sharing insight gained from rich life experience, combined with new levels of experimenting, travel, study, and a refreshed interest in giving back to others. The “vulnerability” of this stage can be an attendant loss of identity that leads us to withdraw rather than whole-heartedly engage with new possibilities.
Finding this research was pivotal in helping Ann to understand this stage in her life and led to her passion to explore this concept in a new on-line programme called Active Wisdom: An Inquiry into Elderhood. Information on this new program can be found at http://bit.ly/AW4HOME
CLICK ON THE LINKS BELOW FOR THE BOOKS RECOMMENDED BY Ann Roberts
Counscious Ageing and the IEC Conference in Hungary
BLOG – CONVERSATIONS THAT MATTER
Conscious Ageing and the IEC Conference in Hungary
HEIDI & MARK AT THE IEC CONFERENCE
It is today that the Integral European Conference (IEC) ends in Siofok at Lake Balaton in Hungary, and tomorrow the “Magical Tour” through Hungary starts which brings people to exquisite selected places and experiences in that country for three days.
It is a wonderful experience, the conference itself and the tour. People who meet there are different, the contents are different, the atmosphere is different than on every other conference or group event I have ever been so far. Mark and I went to Hungary every time since 2014, to be there and to bring our contributions.
In the last conference Mark (and I) spoke about “CONSCIOUS AGEING”.
WHAT WE DID AFTER THE LAST CONFERENCE
After the conference we started our broadcast series CONSCIOUS AGEING. We organized about 40 conversations about “Conscious Ageing” from many perspectives and, this time in Hungary we wanted to talk to you about this initiative, about who the participants were, what topics came up and how, overall, it went. We also wanted to extend the invitation to you to be our guest in the next season of broadcasts, planned for autumn 2018.
After 4+ weeks of hoping that we would be able to come to the conference, we decide that we cannot participate due to Mark’s state of health. The initial weakness and coughing has revealed itself as metastasising lung cancer.
We are now called to walk our talk, to make treasure of what we learned from our guests and to face the challenge in a conscious and 2nd tier way. So far we are good and we pray that we won’t lose our humour and love even if things proceed in a way which puts an end to our relationship as human beings on earth.
We would like to ask you to include us in your meditations and prayers and, if you see a possibility, to come and see us in Paradiso Integrale in Italy, live or via internet to stay in contact and exchange “knowledge, experience and wisdom” – the slogan of our Wisdom Factory events.
OUR GREETINGS TO HUNGARY FOR 2018
OUR TALK IN HUNGARY IN 2016
VISIT OUR OTHER WEBPAGES
Facilitating the growth of young leaders with Fred Jones
Fred Jones
When people get older they often feel distant to the younger generations and at the same time they perceive themselves as not really belonging to the “world” anymore, especially when they are retired and lack life purpose. Well, we know from psychology that our beliefs are constructed by ourselves – and therefore we can also change them and are not their helpless victim.
So, let’s try: You feel not connected to young people and you don’t have a compelling life purpose? Why not combining the two things for the benefit of everyone?
Fred Jones gives a perfect example of how you can do it: First get yourself together and become confident of your abilities – which you certainly have gathered during a long life time. And then educate yourself to speak and inspire with what you say. And when you are good in doing that get some young people together, your grand children, their friends, whoever you can reach and PLAY with them really useful role plays where they can practice their speaking skills, their ability to listen and give constructive feedback and finally to lead themselves their groups.
I hope you will get inspired by the conversation we had with Fred Jones to create something alike in your surrounding!
Unmasking Internalised Ageism with Susan Farling
An interesting conversation with Susan Farling about our tendency to see everything through the filter of age.
It is surprising how much we have internalised AGEISM, the discrimination by age, towards people of all ages. In the episode we talk especially about the older years of life and how older people themselves reinforce the stereotypes.
Please find the detailed list of topics we talked about here: https://thewisdomfactory.net/susan-farling/
Conscious Ageing encore series
We are happy to offer you more conversations on CONSCIOUS AGEING.
Between October 19th and late November you can assist live or in replay to our conversations with six more amazing guest who want to share their insights and expertise with you! Below you see Dr.Roger Jahnke, a martial arts teacher, who will talk about healing yourself without drugs – but with the wisdom of your body and mind. A rather young man, Nicola Bagalà shares his knowledge about life-extension practises and research and Susan Farling, a licensed counselor and coach will address the ageism which everyone of us is practising towards ourselves and others , which is often out of our conscious awareness.
October 19th we will talk with Nicola Bagalà on the Possibility of extending our lives far beyond of what seems possible right now. More info HERE.
October 26: Dr. Roger Jahnke on Non-Pharmacological healing with Mind-Body practice. Get more info HERE.
November 2nd: Susan Farling will share her insights about Unmasking Internalised Ageism. Find out more HERE.
Old age is not a disease: Marc Blesoff in the Wisdom Factory
Marc Blesoff was in conversation with Heidi and Mark about the topic AGEING IN PRISON. Watch live or in replay here!
Read below an article, written by Marc Blesoff and published in a local newspaper before. Reading his text inspired us to invite him to talk with us within the CONSCIOUS AGEING series. He presently is conducting workshops for the ageing population in prison – a group of people who is hardly ever in our conscious awareness. It promises to be a very interesting and informative talk!
Old is not bad. Older people are not suffering a disease called aging.
Everything is possible
Depending upon one’s worldview, the last third of life actually gets better!
However, if you think that life peaks in middle age and then it’s all downhill after that, then that’s what you’ll get. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Inside the ark that the Israelites carried through the wilderness for 40 years there were two sets of tablets bearing the Ten Commandments. The second set was whole. The first set was shattered in pieces, broken after having been smashed to the ground by Moses.
Life is both wholeness and brokenness, birth and death. Aging is not a disease.
We are on the front end of a process that is educating us about ageism. This is helping us to change our thinking about and actions regarding older people in our industrialized societies. What has previously passed as ‘just the way things are’ will no longer be acceptable or tolerated. Ageism will soon be joining the likes of racism, sexism, and homophobia on the wrong side of the moral arc of the universe.
Which is not to say we can just flip a switch and overnight these prejudices will be gone and everyone will change their minds. But becoming aware of something about which we’d previously been clueless affords one the opportunity to change. Awareness doesn’t guarantee change, it allows the possibility.
Ashton Applewhite
Ashton Applewhite is an articulate, energetic thought leader and activist who is helping galvanize our awareness about ageism. She has written a book titled This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism. It is thoughtful, well-written and it provides an important glimpse at the elephant in the room named ageism.
(watch the conversation with Ashton Applewhite in our Conscious Ageing series HERE)
Never in human history have so many lived so long
JoAnn Jenkins, the CEO of AARP, writes, “From the beginning of the modern calendar to 1900, life expectancy increased each year by an average of three days. Since 1900 it has increased by an average of 110 days a year. We added more years to average life expectancy in the last century than in all previous history combined.” Globally, human beings are living much longer and having fewer babies.
Dr. Jack Rowe has commented, “There are some who would say that we as a society cannot afford the greatest gift we’ve ever achieved in humankind, which is longer life. If we look at aging the way we have for the last 200 years, we will turn it into a crisis rather than a celebration.”
A crisis rather than a celebration – both societally and personally
Since the Industrial Revolution, our standard model of aging (with some variations on the theme) has been ‘work until retirement, wind down quietly for 2 or 3 years, become invisible and then get warehoused’. But today, those 2 or 3 years of winding down quietly are more like 20 or 30 years.
Humans are at the beginning of a change we can sense but we don’t understand very well yet
Aging/Longevity, like the recently discovered dark energy, is everywhere. We can’t see it clearly yet, we don’t have good language for it yet, but we are starting to know it is there. (It wasn’t that long ago when there wasn’t a phase called adolescence – children got older and then were considered adults.) How can we think outside the box when we don’t know the box exists?
“We can get pretty attached to what we think is true, important and real – even when presented with evidence to the contrary. To a great extent, our worldview determines what we’re capable of seeing and therefore determines our perception of reality. What our worldview doesn’t expand to contain quite literally escapes our perception. We just don’t see it. This perception of reality colors our reactions and actions, every moment of every day.” (Living Deeply: The Art and Science of Transformation in Everyday Life)
Ram Dass has noted, “Once our culture begins to honor intuition, it will expiate the doubt that usually robs intuition of its power, and much of our worldview will change…Perhaps this is somewhat analogous to how the early explorers felt after the theory that the world was flat and that one could disappear over its edge was replaced by the spherical concept of our planet. What courage that theory must have released, thus allowing explorers to go fearlessly into the unknown.”
We are way behind the aging curve. We need to go fearlessly into this unknown, fearlessly but guided by intention – in other words, consciously. One topic we need to explore fearlessly is ageism, one of the biggest elephants in the room.
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