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The Second Half of Life: Opening the Eight Gates of Wisdom
To practice is to take daily action that supports change and provides a discipline for incorporating and strengthening new values, skills, and character qualities. Both reflection and practice are essential to cultivating and embodying wisdom in your later years.
from The Second Half of Life: Opening the Eight Gates of Wisdom by Angeles Arrien
We need to stop seeking the acceptance and approval of others, thereby abandoning our true nature. And we must stop performing, pretending, and hiding to sustain our false identities and cultivated masks.
from The Second Half of Life: Opening the Eight Gates of Wisdom by Angeles Arrien
In all faces the Face of faces is veiled as a riddle.
from The Second Half of Life: Opening the Eight Gates of Wisdom by Angeles Arrien
The essential task is to allow all sides of an issue, or pairs of opposites, to exist in equal dignity and worth until their hidden unity is revealed.
from The Second Half of Life: Opening the Eight Gates of Wisdom by Angeles Arrien
Is it possible, I asked myself, that I’m being summoned from some deep and holy place within? Am I being asked to enter a passage in the spiritual life—the journey from false self to true self? Am I being asked to dismantle old masks and patterns and unfold a deeper, more authentic self—the one God created me to be? Am I being compelled to disturb
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This gate reveals our changing identities and social masks.
from The Second Half of Life: Opening the Eight Gates of Wisdom by Angeles Arrien
In tracking, we focus attention, maintaining curiosity and equanimity as we look at whatever is surfacing in our minds in the moment. This cultivates balance, objectivity, and discernment, allowing us to see courses of action that create positive change for ourselves and others. And by tracking our experience, we can integrate it within ourselves.
from The Second Half of Life: Opening the Eight Gates of Wisdom by Angeles Arrien
We can no longer flirt with the blind faith or lack of discernment that closes the door to outer mastery, nor can we indulge in the chronic cynicism or hopelessness that cuts us off from inner mastery.
from The Second Half of Life: Opening the Eight Gates of Wisdom by Angeles Arrien
From defeat to defeat. Until looking backward or ahead, we see that Victory lies not at some high place along the way, But in having made the Journey, stage by stage.
from The Second Half of Life: Opening the Eight Gates of Wisdom by Angeles Arrien
Throughout our lives, transitions require that we ask for help and allow ourselves to yield to forces stronger than our wills or our egos’ desires. As transitions take place during our later years, a fundamental and primal shift from ambition to meaning occurs.
from The Second Half of Life: Opening the Eight Gates of Wisdom by Angeles Arrien