 Welcome to Dare to Dream. This is Debbie Dashinger. This show has been nominated for two People's Choice podcast awards for a Webby award and was recently listed in Welp Magazine and we thank Welp for listing us as one of the top 20 best podcasts to listen to this year. This show has been around starting on radio and then parlayed into podcasts 14 years. So obviously I still love the conversation and I love that you guys still write to me and tell me how much the show means, the guest means, your takeaways. Keep doing it. I read it all. Believe me, we all need encouragement, whatever field we're in and so it is for me as well. So thanks for hanging with us low these 14 years. I would like to thank the sponsor for the show, Dr. Dane Here and Access Consciousness. They do brilliant energy work out in the world. If you want to be a facilitator, take a class anywhere. Go to drdanehere.com as well as accessconsciousness.com and I'm Debbie Dashinger. What I do out in the world is I teach speakers and healers and coaches and entrepreneurs the time effective steps to write a highly engaging page turner book. I do this through private sessions as well as through group writing class. If you are interested in either, you can reach out on my website, DebbieDashinger.com and just contact me there. And especially if you like to join the writing class, we have two new spots that just opened because two of our participant authors are publishing their fine, fine books. And so though one of those spots could be yours, if it is in your wheelhouse to write a book and you don't know how and you don't want to throw a lot of money and time at it, go to DebbieDashinger.com slash visible visionaries. You can learn more about the course there and it's D-E-B-B-I-D-A-C-H-I-N-G-E-R.com slash visible visionaries. This episode today is about the inner workings of age and basically we're going to be talking specifically about aging which if you are breathing, you just lost another second of your life. And so you are on this train as well as I and my guest who is Connie's WEG, PhD, who's a retired therapist and has contributed articles to Esquire magazine in the Los Angeles Times and holds a doctorate in depth psychology. Connie is the co-author of Meeting the Shadow and Romancing the Shadow, author of Meeting the Shadow of Spirituality and a novel, A Moth to the Flame, The Life of Sufi Poet Rumi. Her latest book is The Inner Work of Age Shifting from Role to Soul. It extends shadow work into late life and teaches aging as a spiritual practice. Connie's been doing contemplative practices for over 50 years. She's a wife, a grandmother and was initiated as an elder by Saging International in 2017. After investing in all these roles, she is practicing the role and the shift of role to soul. To learn more about her, go to her website, cognizweig.com. That's cognizweig. And with that, I welcome Connie to The Dare to Dream Show. It's so great to have you. Thank you so much. I love that intro. I appreciate it. Absolutely. There was a lot of great things alone in that bio. So I just got to start with the spirituality of aging. Thank you, first of all, because I don't think I've ever seen that. And second of all, if I can add, you and I both live in Southern California, which is not a place that honors aging. In fact, a contrer, right? There's a plastic surgery and the, you know, looking a certain way, there's a lot of pressure. So what is Connie, the spirituality of aging? Well, you're kind of starting at the top. Can I give that some context? Of course. So as you say, we're kind of surrounded by a just messages. There's a worship of youth in our culture, and a demeaning of older people. We see this kind of messaging in our healthcare system. We saw it during the pandemic. We see it in the media when older actors are patronized or put down. We see it in all of the institutions in the workplace when people are forced into retirement. So we absorb this messaging beginning very early in our lives as children. We absorb this, no positive models of elders, all this anti-ages messaging. And so all the research now shows that kids actually believe it's terrible to get old. And as we go through the lifespan then, we're carrying that internalized ageism with us, and it starts to affect how we feel about ourselves. Well, I hate the way my body looks and these wrinkles are terrible. And I don't want to work so hard. And so who am I now? The sound spiritual question returns. And I've coined this the late life identity crisis, because that's what happens, we start to ask these essential questions again. So, in every spiritual religious tradition all over the world, the teaching has been that later life is a time for contemplation. It's a time for looking at all of the knowledge and lessons we've learned through our lives and digesting them and passing them on to next generations. And it's a time for prayer or meditation or some kind of preparation for death. We've lost that teaching, we've lost that knowledge in our culture, which as we said worships youth, but also worships success and achievement and productivity. And so once we get past midlife, and some of that starts to change, who am I and this is what happened to me? Who am I if I retire as a therapist and I'm not the shadow expert anymore. So that's a spiritual question because it returns us to our essential nature. If I'm not the roles. If I'm not the CEO, or the mother, or the teacher, or the salesperson or the nurse, who am I? Who am I underneath the roles or the masks or the or the doing. What's for each of us to answer on our own. I would say I don't know how old you are, Connie. But in your bio, it says that you are initiated as an elder, which is beautiful and researching you. You are very productive. So I want to be careful with that word because I don't mean what you were saying earlier. But what I mean is, even later in life, here you are, you're still writing books, you're producing beautiful work, you're honoring where you are in your life and using that as your modality to teach and offer wisdom. So can you talk about that? What kind of choices you've made so that you know what's next on your path? Well, that's such a beautiful question. So I have 72 years of life experience. And I really feel it's a privilege to have lived this long because not everybody gets to. But I had inner work to do to be able to feel that way to be able to get through my own internalized ageism and denial. And so what I teach in the book is that's the first step. The first step is breaking through our denial of age and where we truly are now and denial of the value of our age. Because we can't really find that. We can't find the treasures of this stage of life if we're in denial. So for me, you know, and just my personal story, I learned how to meditate when I was 19. So I've been doing contemplative practice for five decades now. And I've also been doing psychological work for that long. So my life has really been about my development and my service as a result of that development. My books, my activism and so forth. But in my late 60s, I noticed a kind of a shift. As I was tuning in to my self talk, my internal dialogue one day. I noticed that I was feeling disoriented and kind of restless and wondering as you said what's next for me and how I would find that. So I started reading widely in the aging literature, positive aging, conscious aging, successful aging. It has all these labels now. And what I discovered was that there was no material that included an orientation to the unconscious or the shadow, which is what I teach. I was talking about the impact of internalized ageism from the unconscious on our body minds on our psychologies in late life. And so I just kind of it took a few years, but I realized that there was another contribution for me to make. And what's interesting is, I went through that both the intention of it and the execution of it differently than I would have at age 40. So I was writing books in my 40s, but with a kind of a midlife heroic drama, right, a lot of attachment to success. Ego's agenda was running the show, like most people at that stage of life. I'm having a different experience now. It looks like I'm working hard and really busy. And in some way I am. But internally, I feel quiet. And I feel less driven and less attached to the outcome. Yeah. And more interested in how I can serve people and how this transmission will affect them, rather than the results for me. So there's a state of mind when we become an elder in which we do differently. It's not that we stopped doing. I'm not advocating, you know, I talk about shifting from doing to being, I'm not advocating not doing or not volunteering or not mentoring or not grandparent. I'm not advocating stopping. What I'm saying is that there's a quality of awareness that we can bring to our doing as an elder that we never could before. It's an internal experience. Have your friendships or your sense of community changed as you've aged. I've lost a number of very close friends. I lost three friends while I was writing the book, very close to me. And I write extensively about that in the book. I would say that, yes, it has changed. I would say that my marriage is fantastic and happier and more fulfilling than ever. My grandkids, I did not have children, but my grandkids through my husband are just the surprise of this stage of life for me. I have a few very close friends and lots and lots of acquaintances because I'm teaching so much now. And I'm in the conscious aging universe and the baby boomer universe, you know, and the Jungian universe where I meet a lot of people in the depth psychology world. I would say since the pandemic, and Neil and I have been kind of on our own a lot other than the grandkids, it has shifted. And that's okay with me. I think there's a difference between introverts and extroverts and how we age. We really get a lot of juice from going inside like I do. And extroverts got to get their juice from outside right from other people and from from their activities. So there's lots of opportunity for that for elders these days, especially online there's lots going on. People can ask me about that if they want to. But yeah, so for me, yes, these relationships have changed in a lot of different ways. Okay, very powerful and I relate to a lot of what you're saying. And I just want to harken back to something you said earlier about the differences between how we age male female and so forth. And as somebody who was a professional actress before I got into radio 1314 years ago, I was a professional actress and singer. And that was something that used to piss me off. It was very difficult for me to see fat balding men who became very famous playing all these amazing character roles. But it wasn't so much for women there was just so much pressure about how you looked. And then as you neared a certain age, which was 40, bing, bing, bing, you know, the alarm bells would go off in the USA. I want to be very clear when you're a woman, not so much as a man. It's not true almost in any other European country. They very much often honor the aging woman. And yes, it's just different. I've lived through this and just chose not to play the game at a certain level. And and definitely the extra version, that's very interesting about how well an introvert can go through a time like the pandemic. Yes. And really relish that time because that's your time. Right. Yes. And for those of us who thrive on connection and I'm definitely one of them, although I need my cave time now and then, but basically thriving on connection. Yes. Very difficult. Right. Yeah, a lot of loss. Right. I know. I hear you. Yes. So, you know, the ageism in the film industry has been so painful for so many people. A lot of women have called it out. Sometimes I think it's changing, you know, there are a lot of statistics about it through the Annenberg Center at University of Southern California where they study this. They study gender and age and they even came out with a study recently about Latinos in the film industry. So they look at the discriminant different kinds of discrimination and I thought it was kind of changing for a while but I think that it just kind of was a blip. So, the, the, that means a lot for actors in their careers but guess what else it means for the whole population. There are no models of elders in the media who are thriving and smart and enjoying themselves. I remember when I was growing up this TV show all in the family and Archie Bunker would be patronizing his wife Edith in the most terrible ageist ways, and that's what I grew up with. And so the media has this responsibility because it's, it's educating but it's also subliminally educating viewers. It's messaging even unconsciously what's beautiful, what's intelligent, what's valuable. And so there's a real, I think, ethical responsibility there which they are not keeping at this point. Oh, I like that. I like that you speak to that so much because that is very true. What we see, what we are delivered as to what is acceptable, whether it's the color of one's skin, the gender, the choices of sexuality, male versus female, all of that. Yeah, there's a big responsibility in media to really show the spectrum of who we are. Right. Yeah. Right. And yes, please. You mentioned gender differences. So I didn't focus on that in the book, but you know people have been asking me about that. So the book is organized around the inner obstacles that are unconscious in us about aging. So the first one I mentioned was denial, and I call that the inner agist. But there are these other shadows or unconscious inner obstacles. So think about how much men identify with being independent and strong and heroic providers. And what happens when that begins to diminish, or they get a serious illness and it just is taken away, and they become dependent and tired, you know, and unproductive. So that's what I call a shadow of age. And with women, it tends to focus more on self image and appearance. What happens when that starts to diminish with age, which inevitably it does. I mean my face is full of wrinkles now. It's genetic. There's nothing I can do about it. So what I can do about it is how I relate to it. How I feel about it, really accept myself and know that I am not my appearance. I am not how I look. And there's like this freedom for me from caring about how other people see me at this stage of life, which I know for people in the media is really hard because there's all this reinforcement about image right. So male dependency and female self image in our culture are really scary and full of charge. And some of the issues that I work with in the book about how to really move towards self acceptance. How to really move toward embracing what we're given in our circumstances. And I like to say age is our curriculum. So whatever it is we're given, there are tools for working with that and growing and learning about ourselves. Yeah. So you write in your book that age is a lens through which we can view other crises. Can you speak to that? What do you mean by that the lens through which we view other crises? Well, look at what happened during the pandemic. When ageism in the healthcare system became so visible, and people were openly saying, you know, those people are in their 80s, let them go. And doctors were having to make decisions about whether to save people in their 80s or people in their 40s. Age and healthcare are constantly interconnected in all kinds of ways that haven't really been visible to us and are becoming more so now. There are only about a thousand geriatricians in our country, people who specialize in old age. There are gerontologists, but they're not trained in psychology. So they're not trained to help people move from senior to elder, you know, like this book is offering. They don't have the tools to do that. So age and healthcare are intertwined. Age and mental health are intertwined. There's a large percentage of the baby boom population that is, has substance abuse problems. And even high rates of suicide and depression. Yeah. So mental health. Well, some of it is financial circumstances. Some of it is untreated emotional mental disorders. Some of it is isolation and loss. You know, losing the only person you care about living alone, having no help having not having the means to get help. Age segregation in our living situations. So the kids may be across the country. Yeah, they could be living in retirement communities or nursing homes where they're not happy. Even climate change, older people are more susceptible to the effects of climate just as we were with the pandemic or still are. We're more susceptible to heat and heat stroke, more susceptible to disability. So let's say there's there are floods like we just had with the hurricane. The older people can't don't have mobility. So there are links to every kind of issue that we're looking at now. The social safety net, you know, a report just came out about when social security is going to become insolvent. And all of the debate about Medicare and poverty, the poverty levels. All of the sort of social and political issues, we can look at them through the lens of age and there's a lot of research to do that now which I found interesting. But that's, you know, there are a lot of books about that. This book is not that book. This book is about aging from the inside out. It's our subjective experience of moving past midlife 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, our subjective inner world and how to wake up inside that world to who we can become now. Life is not over. If we stop working, or if we lose a friend, there's still tremendous potentiality for this stage of life and opportunities to be creative, to pick up a dream, a creative dream that we might have lost, you know, when we had to earn a living. That's why I always wanted to paint or I wanted to write that novel or I wanted to play an instrument. And so people are picking up these things now and exploring in this stage of life. So, and as I was saying, there's this freedom from our roles and responsibilities that allows us to be more authentic. Perhaps even become who we really are. Because these roles kind of held us in limited bandwidth, limited emotional bandwidth, limited creative bandwidth. Now, we have all this time with the new longevity, the longest time ever in human history between retirement and the end. It's the longest time unprecedented. So we need to ask ourselves, am I going to do with all this time? And who am I now? Who am I now? What do I really believe? What are my most important priorities? And how can I live those out now so that I'm fulfilled at the end so that I don't die with regret? I'm going to offer a quote from your book, Connie, which speaks to what you just said and then transition into how we can find the treasures. Because these are sobering, what you're saying and important. So here's a quote from Connie's book. Loss of mobility and chronic illness are widespread, particularly in older populations. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that two out of five Americans over age 65 have a mobility disability. One in five has diabetes, 40% are obese, and more than half take medication for hypertension. Among men, 70% will suffer in a large prostate by age 70. Among women, one in eight will develop invasive breast cancer during her lifetime. In addition, because women tend to live longer, they are more likely to experience life-threatening illness later in life. When it's harder to recover and sometimes also harder to pay for health care, very, very sobering. So if we have lost our guides, and this is the state, not everyone, clearly you and other conscious aging folks, which is beautiful are setting the stage for us. If the majority of people are aging without a map, how can we find these treasures at this stage of life? Well, so the picture that you just transmitted is kind of dark. Yeah, bleak, right? It's bleak. It's focusing on the decline, what we call the decline narrative, the idea that we're going downhill. However, there are millions of people now who are not experiencing the stage of life that way. They are healthy in their 70s, 80s, and even 90s, even athletic, creative, lucid, right? And in some cases productive. So there are these two visions that we have now of decline and possibilities. And they sort of, these two visions kind of butt up against each other. And so there are a few different levels of response I want to give you. One is for me, the bottom line, learn a spiritual practice, whether it's prayer, meditation, centering prayer, chanting, Zen, whatever it is from your tradition or beyond your tradition. And here's why. Because when you learn to calm yourself down and quiet your mind. When you enter yourself, you have a refuge inside. You have a life raft that you can go to whenever one of these challenges hits that you listed. You have a life raft, a quiet, still place where you can connect with yourself with your intuition, and you can be still. There you can act. Okay, the second thing is, there are many people with physical limitations who are still enjoying life. And I was astounded to read in the book called The Creative Age by Gene Cohen, which is all about creativity in late life. How many famous artists and musicians were in their 70s and 80s with physical handicaps when they created their genius works. So look at the title of your show, Dare to Dream. So what I'm suggesting is, let's not let things stop us from daring to dream about what's possible. My friend said to me this week, he's 73, he's published 25 books, and he said, I never wrote that novel that I always wanted to write because I couldn't afford to I had to pay the bills. Now I have to write it. And that novel is still there waiting for him inside of him, calling to him. And he knows if he doesn't do that, he's going to die with regret. So, you know, yes, we have challenges, yes, we have limitations. We may have pain, we may have loss. And what does that mean it's very individual for each person. There's a lot of trauma in my own life. I also took care of my father with Alzheimer's and watched him transition into a wheelchair and watch something else. He never complained. He never became a victim. He never failed to smile when I walked into the room. He really taught me about, you know, an attitude to have as an older person with illness. I got goosebumps when you said that. I'm caring for a mother with Alzheimer's right now in a facility in a wheelchair. So I very much relate and much to your very positive point about what's possible. The story of the famous artist Grandma Moses is that late in her 80s, she used to knit. That was her thing. And her fingers became so gnarled. I assume it was some kind of arthritis, but they didn't know what to call it back then, but she literally was incapacitated. She had to give up that which she loved the most. Nothing else to do. So she went out in the barn. She somehow stuck a paintbrush in these very gnarled hands that wouldn't cooperate and started painting. They put these paintings she had done up in a local coffee shop. And an art dealer was passing through this terribly small town. His rural town saw the paintings and said, who did that? They introduced him to Grandma Moses and the rest is history. Until she was 100 and something, she was painting. She was contributing. She was doing something amazing with her life. It didn't stop her. It redirected her path. Yes, it's not beautiful. It is really important, I think, for us to keep hearing these kind of stories. And so for you, someone who's been inducted, if you will, as a spiritual elder, how do you pass your wisdom on to people who are younger? How do you suggest that we do? Well, the book is my legacy, and it's really filled with all kinds of tools and practices for people who want to do the inner work of age. How to do a life review. How to do emotional repair in your relationships. How to do spiritual repair with the divine. You know, just all kinds of things in there, how to meditate. When I'm actually with my grandkids, here's what I found. They live in a very chaotic house. And my grandson at 10 years old is already anxious. You know, I can see this. So, and there's nothing I can do to interrupt the family dynamic. It's not my, my job, right. So what I do is I sit with him. And I imagine that I'm a big shade tree. And that he's sitting in the shade, and I'm still. He can absorb the stillness from my body. And he can feel a different energy and a different way of being just by sitting next to me. You know, everybody says join the kids on their devices and do the games and join their world and stuff. You know, and so we've played on YouTube and all that. But I think this is the most important thing that energetically. It's the experience of a body next to him. And so it's a nonverbal transmission. You know that I'm extremely hopeful about all the young climate activists who are taking on the climate crisis. Absolutely. And I'm in awe of them and what they're trying to do now. And how they're trying to really wake up the people, the baby boomers, the people in power who have the authority to do something. So there's intergenerational work going on around the climate crisis in this country and I think in other countries in Europe as well. There's intergenerational work going on around literacy. Mentoring of all kinds. So, you know, what I did is I kind of chose by writing a book about the shadow about the unconscious beliefs and images around age. I chose something that fit me and my skills and my interests at this stage in my life, because I educated myself as I did this. And so I think that's what I would suggest that everybody do find your expertise, your gift and leave it as your legacy. If it's a video memoir for your family about your life, you know, if it's a sculpture, if it's whatever it is, if it's a poem, you know, find a way to express yourself and express your love. It's really important to express your love and leave that with the family and if you have a larger community like a religious community, or a political community, find a way to participate where you have a voice because the moral voice of the elder is really needed now. It's really needed for perspective. You know, because in midlife we're sort of living in the moment in the circumstances of the moment. We have a long view now. And not just a long view of the past but of the future. So we're considering future generations now in a way that younger people, or midlife folks typically are not. Look at generations are now because the climate crisis woke them up to that. You know, their claim that they don't have a future is a big psychological shift in young generation. Yeah, we didn't think that when we were kids. So, um, so those are some ways to leave a legacy. Never underestimate the power of a grandparent. I'm here because of it for sure because I have beautiful grandparents who in their way gave me what I could not get at home and was very close to them. So kudos to you for, you know, it's always that ripple effect. You don't know even that one beautiful life of your grandson, how that will create change. That's right. Him out in the world. So I applaud you for that. And the book piece, you know, this is why I do what I do. Never die with a book inside of you. It is many people's dream, like your friend who's this gentleman who's 73 who said I never wrote that book. And it's still there. It's still calling. It doesn't go away. Yeah, so important to do. And so we talked about these aging limitations that are impelled on us, right, society, pictures, lineage, media were blasted with this. How can we release these getting older images and information, everything about the body decline, the mind decline, you know, what your lifestyle is going to be like what you can and can't do and so forth. What if instead we want to be very pro choice, very pro aging, and creating much like you were talking about the people are active the people who travel the people are contributing and dreaming and creating. How can we step into that to release the other we've been shown. Well the first step is becoming aware of it. Becoming aware that we've internalized ageism as a figure in the unconscious. And then beginning to work with that figure in my method which is called shadow work. So that's really what the book is about how we work with these internal figures. So, one of my clients called her kind of inability to slow down the driver. So she was a lawyer she was burned out. She couldn't stop she couldn't rest. She couldn't take care of herself she never had a relationship. She was possessed by this driver figure in her unconscious for lots of valid reasons, actually in her family, but there was a point at which it didn't work anymore. So we did shadow work with this figure of the driver, and as she became more and more conscious of it and saw the consequences of actually allowing it to control her. She was able to change gears. There are a lot of examples of that in the book about how to identify that part of you, how to work with it, and how to let it go. So that, yeah, I want to know how she's doing. She did not retire. She changed to a small law firm that's nonprofit and working for the community where she can work lesser hours and spend a long time taking care of herself so she's practicing yoga and meditation now. She had never done. And the last I spoke to her she was dating someone which is really new. So it's, you know, it's not about how it looks on the outside. It's about the fact that on the inside, the driver wasn't running her life anymore. Yeah. That's beautiful. What's possible. Yeah, that's right. What's possible if we dare to dream. And so as somebody who's written a book for elders, elderly, etc., and here you are an elder in a spiritual sense, are there practices from your book that you can give examples of any developmental tasks that we can use to become a positive elder? Well, I would say that doing a life review is a really fabulous process. And I kind of walk through it step by step in the book. So there's the traditional life review about the things we've lived out. And then there's a review of the unlived life. What has not been lived out? What has been repressed into the shadow? And what do we want to reclaim now, like my friend's novel? What do we want to live out now that we didn't get a chance to do when we were empire building? Emotional repair. In who, who is in our lives in which with with whom we need to give or receive forgiveness? It's available to do that now. What are our spiritual beliefs that may keep us afraid of death? So facing mortality is actually a big task, right? But what are our spiritual beliefs about it? So I was working in my practice with the man who was doing Buddhist meditation for many years. And as he kind of excavated underneath it, he was still afraid of going to hell from his Catholic childhood. And as he entered his late 60s, it was freaking him out. So what are the spiritual beliefs that we may want to revisit now? And what are our images of the divine that are hidden in those beliefs? There's so many practices. I don't know. You know, I think there's a chapter on spiritual practices that gives the advice of how to find one that fits for you. How to find one that's right for who you are now. Not maybe you meditated in your 20s or 30s. Not back then, but who you are now and what you're looking for now. And how to recognize the resonance with that practice or that teacher or that community because some people want to do it in a community. So how to watch out for the shadow issues that come up in religious communities. So there are a number of tasks to become an elder. And there I'm sure there are more than I wrote about in the book. There's a way to kind of sit with each chapter and kind of digest your own life material and uncover what you've learned from it and really look at how you want to pass it on. Wow. So good. Cleaning that space, like all this cleaning and adjustment and redirection. These like honestly at any point in one's life. This is a game changer. Yes. That's right. And you know, Carl Jung who was one of my teachers as a depth psychologist said that the meaning and purpose of the afternoon of life is different from the morning. If we continue to live as if we're in the morning of life, then there's damage to the soul. So there's a lot of letting go that needs to happen with this transition we spoke about letting go of old roles and identities. Letting go of some values and beliefs. Letting go of relationships that no longer serve us. Right. So there's a lot of kind of letting go and tuning into your own, I call it soul but whatever you call it. A tuning to yourself so that you can get the messages from within about what you're longing for. What you really need now and you can feel fulfillment then at the end of your life. You can feel fulfilled. That's the promise. And complete. That's what I got. And complete. And complete. There's a chapter on life completion. What does that mean for you as an individual? It's a really important question. Absolutely. Yeah. I love what you said. Next week I'm featuring Dr. Tony Nader who is the head of the TM organization. Yes. And it's actually prerecorded but it'll be released next week. I used to practice TM for years and then I couldn't even tell you when everything shifted but it did. And other choices got made and then it wasn't two times a day. It was once a day. And then the once a day became a bargaining. Should I do my to do list or this and before you knew it I was so deeply into the not meditation that the best I could do each afternoon was lay down for a 20 minute nap. Literally. I'm conscious. Yes, that's right. And although that was beautiful for my body to have that nap. I was really aware that I was missing out on something spectacular because I think once you've immersed with consciousness and the all you know that experience. So just listening to him and he was certainly not speaking to me but he was speaking to me. And I really heard and I thought at you know at this point in my life how could I not and somebody who's just gone through two stem cell surgeries on her body and and I am in the process of continually learning how to be more calm and relaxed and and to give my body the space and capacity to fully heal and I really got meditation plays this huge part how could I not. So I have been I put it on my to do list because I'll do it but that's how it's got to start for me like that I see the words and then I'm like oh yes okay at this point I disengage and I go meditate and I'm grateful for your reminders of this the importance of this and I hope that folks are listening to you really also hear the part about the emotional cleaning the where do you need to make your men's because I can tell you this is a life changer I've done it and many times doesn't mean it's comfortable or easy or we all want to look at this stuff but when we do unabashedly it will change every dynamic and the load we carry around energetically dissipates that's right that's so true everything I really deeply agree with everything you're saying I didn't know you've been ill I'm sad to hear that I know that I also started with TM in the late 60s and ended up having my issues with it and moving on but I feel so grateful that it started me on the path and as it did for millions of people. And I think that what you're describing about kind of losing contact with your meditation practice more and more until it's gone is a very common experience because our culture it's a workaholic culture we live in and we get so caught up in the doing right so and we get identified with the doing. So in as we recognize that the time horizon is limited. And there's a kind of an urgency as we become more and more aware of our mortality. We need to pick up what's most important to us and if that's your spirituality then it's important to find a practice that really takes you deeply inside and allows you to begin to shift from role to soul. Connie so may I ask you then when you call the practice you have now contemplative. Can you explain what that means or what that is like. Well, my lineages Vedanta which is the same as the TM lineage it comes out of India it's particular part of Hinduism. But I've had other teachers now and received other initiations and other practices. It's not that my practices contemplative I guess I could say that usually contemplation contemplation means thinking about something. That's not what meditation is about for me. It's not about the contents of awareness. It's about pure awareness sitting in awareness without contents just in the silence. So I can I can go from a very very busy day now and sit and cross my legs and just draw into a vast silence because I'm a practice meditator I mean I've been doing it right I've been doing my homework. So from that silence I have other practices that I do. But when I say contemplative it's mostly in contrast to doing. So we're not physically active and we're not goal oriented. We're basically just still and people can do different kind of practices in that stillness. Some people might do prayer some might chant you know bother Tom you know I did a lot of interviews for the book with spiritual teachers from Buddhist teachers Christian Jewish. Can Wilbur and they all describe the practices they do now in late life and it was really interesting to me to hear how their practices have changed over their lives as mine have and and why they're doing what they're doing now. So there is a contemplative lineage in every tradition, even though sometimes it's hidden like in Judaism it's hidden. In Christianity it was hidden until Father Thomas Keating came out with contemplative prayer. In Islam you know it's mostly Sufi practice, but there are mystical and contemplative practices in every tradition. And then the magical thing about this time we live in is those are all available. There's nothing hidden anymore. All these practices are available they're out there people are teaching them. And so it's and so my suggestion is just that you look at what you're drawn to read and explore talk to people and explore, you know, and see what feels like a fit for you. You know, okay, this is what I need now. And when you feel that and when you hear that, stay with it for a while give the practice a chance give it some time to cultivate that silent awareness, and then you'll find that you want to meditate. You'll find that it actually calls to you it's attractive, rather than a nuisance, or an interruption. It's not an interruption for me. I actually really look for like I had four interviews today. So I really look forward to my meditation. Now, it will shift my whole state, so that my evening is, you know, stress free. And I'm so grateful for that. I'm really grateful for that. I'm grateful I have a husband who meditates with me too. Oh, that's yummy. That's really cool. Yes, unique. And so you were speaking about all of the mysticism that's available to us and earlier you had made mention that there are online opportunities for elders. Can you speak to that a little bit? Well, Saging International SAGE-ING, Saging.org is a beautiful community of elders with all kinds of webinars, and a lot of them have spiritual teachers offering practices. They're also holding a big online conference next month at the end of October. Elder's Action Network is more for the extroverts, the folks who are interested in social activism and service, and they're engaging in voting rights, in racism, in climate. All kinds of things, and there's a beautiful community of people there, and they're all over the country and you can work with them online. So those are two examples of communities that are elder-oriented. I also saw this week that, you know, Jane Fonda, who's 83, is launching a new organization for elders who want to fight climate change, and it's called Third Act. And she's hooked up with Greta Thunberg, the young Swedish activist, and Bill McKibben, who founded 350.org. And the three of them are forming this organization for elders around climate change. So there's a lot going on and it's not difficult to find if you just Google around. That's awesome. That's great because there's a lot of voting power in trifecta you're talking about, so that makes me very happy to hear. And Connie, this is Dare to Dream. So what do you next dare to dream? What are your future dreams and goals? Well, right now I'm kind of surfing a tidal wave on this book. And so I'm not really focused on the future at the moment. I'm just kind of here one step at a time. We moved recently. We moved from the mountains to the water. And so our intention when my book kind of settles down is to start getting into the water more with kayaking and maybe some catamarans. We have saltwater pool here and I'm going to learn how to swim again. My husband's already doing it and get exercise that way. And I'll probably start dancing again, which I was doing last year before the pandemic. Yeah. So, you know, there's a lot of kind of creative outlets waiting for me. My husband is a bass player in a rock band now. And at the same time, I know that for me, I'm going to be doing more meditation. So it's kind of a mix of different things. Outward and inward. Yes. Beautiful. And congratulations on the book. How can people get ahold of you? How can they find out more and get your book? Well, the book is available everywhere on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, indie books, if you like indie books. I'm teaching at East West Books and Boulder Books. So it's available in those independent stores. And they can also go to connieswag.com. There are lots of links there. I'm teaching a lot of workshops over the next three months. So if you're interested in online workshops, you can find those on my website. connieswag.com and on my Facebook page, which is Dr. Connie's Wig. And on LinkedIn, you can find the webinar links everywhere. Z-W-E-I-G for folks who are interested. And Connie, thank you so much for the work you're doing and for coming on the show today. I'm so glad to have met you. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity. Yeah, honor. And I end today's show with these quotes first from Louise Hay. Know that you are the perfect age. Each year is special and precious, for you shall only live at once. Be comfortable with growing older. And then from Helen Mirren, your 40s are good. Your 50s are great. Your 60s are fab. And 70 is fucking awesome. Subscribe to the Dare to Dream podcast so you can hear this weekly number one transformation conversation. Next week, I am featuring Dr. Tony Nader. He's the CEO of the global transcendental meditation organization appointed by the Maharishi himself. If you love the podcast and you like to see myself and the guests and I urge you to do so, go check us out on YouTube. Subscribe there. YouTube.com slash Debbie Daschinger. And remember, don't just dare to dream. Dare to make all your older, aging, elder, beautiful, wise choices into your reality. Thanks for joining us today.