Aging and Saging

Our culture is bent on avoiding aging. There's a problem with Every one of us is aging every day. Of course, there are enormous gifts in growing older and wiser, and Angeles Arrien is working to help bring that awareness to our culture at large, to those of us who've passed the 50-year milestone - and also to those who are headed in that direction. She notes that as the years pass, "right now we have in this culture a kind of consensus that we can only look forward to death, decline, disease, and despair. The other possibility is a time of dreaming, a time of deserving, a time of devoting, and a time of deciding." Arrien identifies the opportunities we have in the second half of our lives to move beyond obligation and say yes to our natural rhythms and deepest desires. She points to the enormous possibilities for cultural change as the generation of the 60s comes into their wisdom years. Her words open a gateway to personal possibility as well, and an affirmation that we truly can look ahead to the best years of our lives. Angeles Arrien is an anthropologist, educator, and a consultant to the medical, academic, and corporate communities worldwide. She has taught at the University of California, California Institute of Integral Studies, the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, and the Alaya Institute, and is the founder of the Angeles Arrien Foundation for Cross-Cultural Education and Research. She is the author of numerous articles and books, including The Tarot Handbook (Arcus Publishers 1987), The Four-Fold Walking the Paths of the Warrior, Teacher, Healer, and Visionary (HarperSanFrancisco 1993), The Nine A Mythological Path to Creativity (Tarcher/Putnam 2000), and The Second Half of Opening the Eight Gates of Wisdom (Sounds True 2005).