Personal Message from Carol Orsborn

...And this Week's Study guide: Shadow and Light

Dear Members of the Spiritual Aging Community,

We old souls already know that reading inspirational books like mine, doing the weekly study guides and interacting with each other online and in person is a spiritual practice… But what are we practicing for? I found out two weeks ago that while ordinary joy is always welcome, we practice, too, for extraordinary times. Times like Memorial Day when I began the week celebrating that my book Spiritual Aging had just won gold in the 2025 Nautilus Book Awards in the category of daily inspiration and ended the week in the ER facing simultaneously life-saving and life-threatening surgery.

When the moment came for me to say goodbye to my family , the medical team rolling me into the OR, I realized that all the time I have dedicated to spiritual practice has afforded me something akin to muscle memory durable enough to kick in under the most extreme circumstances. The surgery was a success and I will be fully restored, but the most important thing I learned about why we do this spiritual work week by week is this: I would’ve been OK no matter what.

Either your faith is genuine, justified and unconditional—or it is not. But even this is not something you will do perfectly .Embracing the shadow as well as the light of not only our circumstances but ourselves is a key part of spiritual practice. So it is that I will be grateful forever to night nurse Laura Crosby of NYU Langone who sat with me in the wee hours before surgery while I was questioning everything.

“Here’s what I am hearing,” she offered in a pause. “You remind me of how my grandmother liked to describe herself: ‘I am a woman of deep faith sometimes.’” When we both laughed, it was an act of grace and when they came to get me, I was ready.

Of the many spiritual affirmations that lit the path forward through this transformative journey, the most recent was when I returned home today just in time to post this week’s study guide myself. I didn’t skip a beat. Just as affirming that I am doing my life’s work is that the reflection below—written well before Memorial Day to run on this date—happened to say what I would have wanted to tell you about my experience transiting through the shadows and light back to the sweetness of life.

I know I have been changed for the good by this and my heart overflowing with gratitude, I will continue to share my spiritual aging practice with you here week by week through the entire two-year cycle of weekly reflections, engaging faithfully with you, my fellow travelers who share my devotion to this work. We are blessed.

And so, without further ado, I present this week’s study guide and many more to come.

With my deepest appreciation and respect,

Carol Orsborn

_____________________

THIRD WEEK OF JUNE STUDY GUIDE: SHADOW AND LIGHT

This Week’s Excerpt

This week, can you recall a time when you felt like you had fallen off the face of the earth into an endless, bottomless void? A place that feels hopeless without end? Are you in such a place now?

While it is true that there are moments when you know that your soul is at home in the world, when the universe seems luminous with never-ending peace and joy, it is also true that you have discovered something you had not anticipated. Spirituality, lived in truth, is not always an ascension, but sometimes a descent.

It is in the void that you are stripped bare of your illusions, where the life you constructed but have now outgrown has the least grip on you and therefore where you are most able to let go of the past and make room for changes. It’s frightening to be so exposed, but because this place has become familiar to you, you no longer run from pain, from uncertainty, from fear.

You allow the breaking of denial to take with it the aspects of the status quo acquired over a lifetime that have become deadening to your spirit. And what’s more, don’t be shocked to discover that you do not just descend into the void once and then it's over. Masks that have taken decades to build will need to be disassembled layer by layer, year after year.

But over time, emerging out of the debris of your outgrown constructions, the truth and beauty of who you truly are grow stronger. When you recognize what has been lost, you will grieve more fully. In this state, when you open to the truth of your life, more will be revealed to you. Over time, the pieces of a new reality more consistent with who you really are will fall into place. You will find yourself enabled to look into your heart and recognize an expanded capacity for compassion, for kindness, for courage. And there is only one way to discover this renewed passion for life that does not involve falling into the void. That is to descend willingly.

“Instead of transcending the suffering…we move toward the turbulence and doubt. We jump into it. We slide into it. We tiptoe into it. We move toward it however we can. We explore the reality and unpredictability of insecurity and pain, and we try not to push it away,” writes Pema Chodron.

This is the price to be paid for being fully alive. And this is a price you must be willing to pay. Not just this week, but whenever you are courageous enough to answer spirituality’s summons to grow.

–Excerpt from Spiritual Aging: Weekly Reflections for Embracing Life

Questions for Journaling and Discussion

1.) Are you familiar with a place referred to here as “the void”? Do you or does your religious or spiritual path have a different name for this experience, such as “The Dark Night of the Soul?” or “Bardos”?

2.) Why do you think so many belief systems think of their version of the void as sacred space?

3.) Over time, has the way you hold finding yourself in a void evolved in any way?

4.) Regardless of how you now relate to being in a void, are you surprised or even shocked that even at this advanced age and stage in life, you can still or even especially fall back in from time to time?

5.) In what ways has transiting voids transformed you for the good?

6.) What then is there to fear?

Spiritual Exercise

Describe a time when transiting a void led to something unexpected—a new direction, a fresh beginning, an unanticipated solution?

Now make a map of your journey, starting just before the darkness descended all the way through emergence back into the light. Indicate all the signposts that lit the path forward including inspirational encounters, meaningful signs and divine guidance?

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