Paramahansa Yogananda, a 20th Century spiritual teacher who combined Eastern and Western religious philosophy, believed that the first half of our life is not nearly as important as the second half. What really matters, he said, is who we are when we leave this world.
“It used to be that by the time you were 50 years old, you had pretty much become who you were going to be,” says Rev. Ed Townley, pastor of Unity Church in Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood. “And after 60, you were just expected to coast. But to expect that of today’s seniors is absurd.”
Faced with the luxury of time, good health and financial security, many aging Baby Boomers are finding themselves exploring questions of life, death and spirituality in a way that perhaps was not possible when they were busy working, raising children, paying bills and planning retirement.
An international “spirit-centered” travel company, Power Place Tours and Conferences, estimates that 35 to 40 percent of their customers are “seniors,” though people hesitate to use the word, because, as Townley says, “How do you define a senior today?”
Power Place Tours, founded by Toby Weiss, PhD, and his wife, Theresa, more than 20 years ago, specializes in travel to places that have, traditionally or historically, been considered healing sites–or “power places,” as the Weisses refer to them. These include the pyramids of Egypt and Machu Picchu in Peru, as well as sites in Tibet, India, Ireland, England and Greece. The trips offer seminars and discussions by “people like you would see on Oprah every day,” says Tony Swanick, the company’s communications director. Marianne Williamson, Chicago’s Carolyn Myss, Deepak Chopra and Oliver Sacks, the physician and author portrayed by Robin Williams in the movie “Awakenings,” are among the people who’ve offered their spiritual teachings on these trips.
Swanick says some people come back from these sojourns overwhelmed by the experience. “We get letters that describe the trips as life-changing, life-affirming, that they helped people get past divorce, or bitterness, by helping them focus on positive things,” he says.
Retired teacher and organization-development consultant Mary Molly Kurtz, 68, has been exploring spiritual matters for more than 15 years. “I study ancient wisdom and esoteric studies for their different perspectives, then try to sew the thread through it,” she says.
Kurtz went to England, Egypt and Tibet with Power Place Tours. “You don’t just forget it,” she says. “You come back, you think, you write. At least I do.”
These spiritual excursions are not inexpensive, ranging anywhere from $2,500 to $3,000 for one week, and usually offering the option of an extended stay at additional cost. Price and time may help account for the number of seniors taking the trips. “Younger people may not have the time and resources that some seniors do,” Swanick says. Of course, some seniors may not have the physical conditioning of younger people, and Swanick says the company makes sure it is fully aware of medical and physical conditions and dietary or any other special requirements these older adults might have.
Kurtz, who also has traveled to India and France, has walked in crop circles in southern England, visited Stonehenge and climbed inside a pyramid in Egypt at 2 a.m. Each trip, she says, brings different experiences and lessons. The trip to Tibet was physically challenging, for example, but spiritually profound. The trip to England and the visit to Stonehenge were “all about the mystery, the unexplained, the invisible connection between the heavens and the earth.” The trip to Egypt taught her to trust. “I was climbing this ladder in the dark and I was terrified,” she says. “Should I stumble, I would fall on the person behind me.” Climbing the ladder, she says, became a metaphor for life. “You only take one step at a time and you concentrate on that step only.”
Next month, Kurtz plans to explore her spiritual interests a little closer to home. She will attend the “Science and Consciousness” conference in Albuquerque, N.M., sponsored by the Institute of Noetic Sciences, the Petaluma, Calif.-based organization founded by Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell, the sixth man to walk on the moon.
Spiritual exploration gives meaning to her life, Kurtz says. “I cannot imagine my life without it. Also, I think, it keeps you eternally young. It’s ageless.”
Unlike organized religion, “spirituality” casts a wider net. The inspiration people have traditionally sought from Sunday church services, many now say they get from daily life, from interactions with others, or, as Marshall Marcus says, from simply paying attention. After 40 years in the packaging business, Marcus retired a year and a half ago. He and his wife recently spent two weeks bicycling through Vietnam.
“When you’re working,” he says, “and Saturday comes around, you run around like a maniac. You get all these things done, but at the end of the day, you didn’t really do anything. You didn’t even notice the weather. When you’re retired, you find spirituality everywhere, because you’re not running around like a maniac.”
At 62, the only “running around” Marcus does anymore is on his bicycle, to the gym and to his twice-weekly yoga classes. Life was not always so for Marcus. In fact, he says, he was so heavily invested in his work and so attached to the company that he had trouble separating himself from his business. Eventually he decided to see a counselor. The psychological examination, he says, helped him to realize that the business he was so attached to was “just a bunch of bricks. And if you came to work one day, and it was all gone, it wouldn’t matter.”
Marcus says his three years in counseling freed him of his anxiety of leaving work and all that responsibility behind. “So many people keep going so hard,” he says. “Working that hard, people are killing themselves, not realizing what they’re doing. Some people just do love their work, but you have to watch that it’s not an addiction.”
After he left his company, Marcus says he never looked back.
Born and raised in Chicago, Marcus has lived in Old Town for more than 40 years. He says he loves the city and meeting people that he would never have met when he was so busy working. Though he prescribes to no religious school of thought, his philosophy on life after retirement has echoes of Buddhism. “I live one day at a time now. I have no goals. . . . The idea of being in the moment is the easiest thing to talk about,” he adds, “but it’s the hardest to do.”
Retirement today, is in fact, “training,” says Marcia Bregman, a nurse for more than 30 years, who lives with her husband, a retired rabbi, in Highland Park. Bregman, 59, spent part of her nursing career as a consultant for attorneys handling malpractice insurance cases. Eventually she became so disillusioned with the health-care industry that she left hospital nursing and turned to an unusual form of healing.
Through a class she took, Bregman was introduced to the techniques of Healing Touch Therapy. She became certified in the program and, three years ago, started teaching it. According to Bregman, the therapy can help manage pain, relieve stress, and aid in recovering from injury, illness or surgery.
“Discovering this form of healing changed my life drastically,” she says. “I entered the program being scientifically oriented, self-sufficient, independent, a control freak and atheist. As I got more and more involved, and realized I could no longer prove and measure everything scientifically, I had to trust more, and then trust more than that. I found I couldn’t use just my own energy because I would become depleted.” Instead, Bregman says, she had to learn to trust that “something greater existed, an energy field that we can all tap into,” she explains. “I became more calm, peaceful, gentle, trusting, and much more insightful than I had ever been.”
The more control she gave up, the more aware she became of her feelings. “I dropped a lot of baggage,” she says. “I became aware of years and years of anger and disappointments.”
Initially, Bregman says, when she would talk about the work she was involved in with other health care professionals, “people would walk away. But now, it’s not so.” Bregman teaches Healing Touch Therapy through community programs, but ultimately she would like to teach it in hospitals, because, she says, “that’s where it really belongs.”
Becoming involved with this work has not only given Bregman a new vocation, it has also greatly improved her relationship with her family. And she adds, “my children say I’m the only person they know who is getting younger without Estee Lauder.”
But the work is far deeper than cosmetic, Bregman says. It is her spiritual practice. “I suppose it is a service,” she says, “a way of saying thanks. I have a blessed life, three great adult children, five grandchildren, a husband who really adores me. I am blessed.”
Joy Goldsmith, 63, says the trend among seniors exploring spirituality indicates “we are moving into a different era. The population is aging. We’re all looking at the fact that we’re not going to be here forever.”
Goldsmith faced that fact in a far more personal and dramatic way than most. A retired floral designer, she says she developed an interest in spiritual matters 20 years ago, but a violent incident in her life four years ago intensified the pursuit. Goldsmith’s partner of 15 years was raped and murdered, and Goldsmith was left for dead. With a serious injury resulting from a blow to her head, she somehow survived for 10 hours, until she and her partner were found. She remembers very little of that day, and has reconstructed it mostly on the testimony of others. “I have put it together in a spiritual package,” she says. “We all have to put it someplace and that works for me.”
Goldsmith believes that she “went over to the other side,” but that it was not her time to go, and so she lived. She became deeply interested in reading about past lives, and so-called “channeled material.” Goldsmith credits her therapist, whom she describes as “spiritually oriented,” as being primary in her recovery.
Judging by the turnouts at the Unity Church’s Sunday morning services, Townley, or Rev. Ed as his parishioners call him, is inspiring many with his brand of spirituality. “Unity is rarely the religion of birth,” he says, “but rather a religion of choice.” It’s a path based on life experience, and it encourages spiritual exploration, he says. It is based on the teachings of Jesus Christ, but draws people from all backgrounds.
Townley estimates that 40 to 50 percent of his parishioners are “seniors,” though he hesitates to use the word because he believes it is becoming more and more difficult to peg a senior. And while there has always been a tradition of elders serving in churches, the trend Townley sees among the elderly is an increase in “questing” and inter-generational participation.
“Older people don’t want to just be with other older people,” he says. “We don’t have a seniors group at Unity. I don’t think they would even be interested.”
He cites as an example a class he conducted last year, The Metaphysics of Harry Potter. “We had people from the ages of 12 to 80, and everyone had read the book and brought their own perspective to it.”
“The idea that we just coast after we hit 60 is absurd anymore,” Townley says. “It was true in my parent’s generation, but it’s not true for the Baby Boomers. Now people are looking for places and experiences to make them grow, adding new dimensions to their life, beginning a whole new sense of self. That’s exciting.”
