“Leonard Cohen said his teacher once told him that, the older you get, the lonelier you become, and the deeper the love you need. This is because, as we go through life, we tend to over-identify with being the hero of our stories.
This hero isn’t exactly having fun: he’s getting kicked around, humiliated, and disgraced. But if we can let go of identifying with him, we can find our rightful place in the universe, and a love more satisfying than any we’ve ever known.
People constantly throw around the term “Hero’s Journey” without having any idea what it really means. Everyone from CEOs to wellness-influencers thinks the Hero’s Journey means facing your fears, slaying a dragon, and gaining 25k followers on Instagram. But that’s not the real hero’s journey.
In the real hero’s journey, the dragon slays YOU. Much to your surprise, you couldn’t make that marriage work. Much to your surprise, you turned forty with no kids, no house, and no prospects. Much to your surprise, the world didn’t want the gifts you proudly offered it.
If you are foolish, this is where you will abort the journey and start another, and another, abusing your heart over and over for the brief illusion of winning. But if you are wise, you will let yourself be shattered, and return to the village, humbled, but with a newfound sense that you don’t have to identify with the part of you that needs to win, needs to be recognized, needs to know. This is where your transcendent life begins.
So embrace humility in everything. Life isn’t out to get you, nor are your struggles your fault. Every defeat is just an angel, tugging at your sleeve, telling you that you don’t have to keep banging your head against the wall. Leave that striver there, trapped in his lonely ambitions. Just walk away, and life in its vastness will embrace you.”
~ Paul Weinfield, NYC meditation teacher
February 2023
Dear Friends,
This weekend I hosted my first AAPI community gathering and it was really moving to hear the shared experiences in a community setting. There is something really comforting and supportive to hearing our individual diaspora experiences mirrored in a larger group. Afterward, we shared homemade rice dumplings and baked goods in a potluck - communal sharing warmed our hearts and spirit.
And now I am excited to build another community - for those who are going through changes in midlife. The Soulcentric Mid-Life class registration is now open.
Back in December, I read a long quote by Paul Weinfield, an NYC meditation teacher I hadn’t heard before. When people talked about Joseph Campbell’s “Hero’s Journeys,” he said, they think of heroes slaying dragons and conquering obstacles, and returning home to share success and wisdom after a long journey. When very often, in real life, by the time people come to midlife, the dragons have slayed us, where we have experienced challenges and failures, and life hasn’t turned out the way we envisioned it when we were young. Yet, he argues, this is where we can finally leave our ambitions and egos, embrace our humility, and begin our spiritual journey. His writing really moved me. When I think of the people in our age group, we are experiencing significant changes - physically, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually…it inspired me to create this class to explore this rich terrain we called midlife.
This is a list of writers who started writing in their 40s or later: Toni Morrison (age 40), Mark Twain (age 41), J.R.R. Tolkien (age 45), Annie Proulx (age 57), Laura Ingalls Wilder (age 65)...This is not to encourage more endless ambitions but rather to ask - if we could make peace with what life has brought us so far and soak in the wisdom from those experiences, what could we do with these life experiences and skills? If we could find a sense of clarity and purpose, how do we want to live the second half of our life? If we haven’t accomplished what is conventionally defined as success by modern Western society - career, money, relationship, kids - how do we find meaning in our life? How do we find our place in this universe?
Midlife can be a rich period when we confront our mortality and explore questions. My hope is that I can facilitate this exploration and you can find your own answers, and that we can come out of the class appreciating this extraordinary ordinary life.
Wishing you inner and outer adventures in February!
