with David C. Wihry
In this chapter we consider something that seems, at first glance, to be beyond the boundaries of a discussion of men’s physical, mental and emotional, sexual, and social health. Yet understanding the importance of spiritual health and getting in touch with your spiritual self have the potential to positively impact all dimensions of your health and quality of life.1 Repeatedly, narrative studies and surveys of middle-aged and older men tell us that spirituality is a positive influence as men face the challenges of aging and illness and confront the existential distress of dealing with questions about life’s meaning or the uncertainty of an illness’s trajectory.2
Although attendance at church, synagogue, or mosque tends to fall off in later life (largely due to health and mobility limitations), private prayer is more frequent, faith is strengthened, and spirituality is deeper.3 The deepening sense of spirituality in later life, whether based in a religious tradition or not, is very likely because we become more contemplative or thoughtful.4 This has been described as gerotranscendence,5 and it reflects how men rely less on external definitions of themselves while their appreciation for connections across generations deepens. In the well-known Nun Study, researchers found that adults who aged well acquired deeper spirituality, a strong sense of community, and a high level of gratitude.6 They suffered less—even when faced with the death of friends or their own life-threatening illnesses. Hundreds of studies have documented the links between spirituality and lower rates of cancer, heart disease and heart attacks, alcoholism, and mental illness; high levels of healthy practices; and even lower mortality or death rates.7
The topic of spirituality can be difficult to discuss, even taboo in some people’s minds. Even so, it is important to consider spirituality in the context of men’s health and aging, without moralizing about what is good or bad and right or wrong. It has been suggested that growing older has the potential to energize your spiritual self.8 The opportunity to consider ourselves in relation to eternity, or thinking beyond the material and the present, presumably lends meaning and purpose to our existence and places us in the context of something larger and perhaps more lasting than our own mortality. This quest for meaning may or may not be associated with a particular religion or expressed in religious terms. Becoming in touch with our “inner soul” as we grow older may help reduce the fear and trepidation we often feel about dying and death, at the same time that it can reduce feelings of stress and improve our attitude when dealing with challenges associated with aging-related health problems and the experience of bereaving the loss of some aspects of our health.9 Some men may see their spiritual quest as a journey, with an existential quality to it. For them, a great deal of value is placed on direct experiences of a sacred nature, however personally defined. Experiences of this type can change how we view ourselves and the world in which we live.
The deeper we look into nature, the more we recognize that it is full of life, and the more profoundly we know that all life is a secret and that we are united with all life that is in nature. Man can no longer live his life for himself alone. We realize that all life is valuable and that we are united to all this life. From this knowledge comes our spiritual relationship with the universe.
—Albert Schweitzer
In its simplest terms, spirituality can be seen as the search for the “meaning and purpose of life.”10 Few of us would presume that having meaning and purpose in life isn’t a good thing. However, the concept inevitably grows more “fuzzy” as the relationship between spirituality and religion is considered. Spirituality means many things to any one man. Very similar to other “fuzzy” concepts—such as quality of life or love—spirituality is intrinsically personal. It is the very personal sense of “being”—being in the moment, being involved with more than your corporal self, being connected with an intangible other, being part of something much bigger. Spirituality can be rooted in (1) God-oriented spiritual experiences that are based in monotheistic Abrahamic theologies of the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim traditions; (2) world-oriented spiritual experiences that call attention to our interconnectedness with nature; or (3) people-oriented spiritual experiences that stress the human capacity to be intimately one with others.11 Spiritual experiences are those moments when we are struck by wonder, awe, blinding moments of clarity, deep-rooted compassion, and/or a near-primal sense of our insignificance. These moments can occur standing on a beach and watching the majestic power of the ocean, hiking across a hill loaded with spring wildflowers, being “touched” by a television news story about a man and his family’s suffering with unemployment, while praying, and being awed by a meteor shower or a waterfall. Many religions have institutionalized practices that are designed to try to promote spiritual experiences, from Catholics’ communion or the greeting of others in neighboring pews, to the Shinto tradition of talking with dead elders, to the Navajo’s community-witnessed purification rituals.
Because ideas about spirituality and religion are so diverse, it is useful to take a quick look at some statistical trends to get a general sense of how midlife and older men think of these matters. The Gallup Organization has done several nationally representative polls on the topic of religion and spirituality in America.12 They reported that half of Americans identified themselves as being religious, and a third stated they were spiritual without reference to God or a higher authority. Similar findings—where spirituality is expressed in nonreligious terms—were reported in a study of hundreds of older adults’ life reviews, despite the fact that it is the older generation that tends to equate spirituality with a religious culture.13
Men who call themselves spiritual may subscribe to various beliefs, philosophies, religions, and outlooks on life. Some men who perceive themselves as spiritual may have deep ties to an organized religion, while others may not. More of the men born after World War II tend to separate religion and spirituality and view spirituality as an “inner province,” whereas they see religion in terms of a denomination.14 The ideas and tenets of spirituality, such as beliefs about the interconnectedness of all things and the importance of overcoming the corporal self, have spanned centuries, even though the term spiritual might not have been attached to the experiences. To someone looking to further explore their spirituality, we provide a brief look at some of the perspectives on the following topics: the meaning of spirituality, how individuals start on the spiritual path, how some have established a spiritual practice, the challenges many face on that path to understanding their own spirituality, and how men struggle with spirituality.
A quest to understand meaning in life is one element of spirituality.15 Being on a spiritual quest is a way to (re)discover significance and purpose in our lives. As we go to work, find love, raise families, and live our lives, continuing to search for meaning can help add purpose to what we do and tie our experiences together into a meaningful and coherent whole. Author Ian Harris notes that spirituality lets us know that there may be significance to our lives that goes beyond our daily activities and challenges we face.16
One of the major aspects of spiritual experience involves a deep feeling of interconnectedness between all things. Robert Atchley, a scholar on aging and spirituality, commented, “As fully awakened spiritual beings, we feel our interconnectedness.”17 A spiritual understanding of interconnectedness can involve seeing our lives and the actions we take as being intimately caught up with the welfare of others. A realization of interconnectedness can also be an understanding of what our relationship is to the natural world.18 This consciousness of our connectedness to human society and/or the natural world can direct our actions and sense of how things happen and why.
The word transcendence is something that is often mentioned in conjunction with spirituality. It, too, is a fuzzy concept, one that involves the idea of moving beyond ourselves to something greater. Transcendence is closely related to interconnectedness. For example, when we realize an interconnectedness with the lives of others, the universe, or Mother Nature, we have, at least for a moment, reached a new level of consciousness—one in which we have gone beyond our own narrow concerns and sensed that we are part of something terrifically bigger.
Spiritual experiences are not easy to grasp through just thoughts alone. One way to better understand spiritual experience is in the context of the emotions and feelings that such experiences evoke. Atchley states, “Experiences labeled spiritual are usually described by respondents in terms of qualities like wonder, compassion, clarity, stillness, silence, or expansiveness.”19 Watching a birth or observing a lightning strike is an experience that really cannot be retold.
The concept of sacredness is another element of spirituality. There is no one definition of what is sacred, and that which is sacred can range from gods in various religions to sacredness in the natural world and beyond. Certainly, the word sacred often has a religious connotation in the sense that something might be sacred as opposed to being profane. However, what is sacred can be attached to places and things that we respect, revere, or embody with particular meaning. In this sense, things such as a vow, a picture of a lost loved one, or a friendship can also be sacred.
There is often a tendency to perceive spirituality as a practice that is completely focused on the self—our awe, journey, or clarity of perception. Although spirituality focuses on the inner world of the individual, it is not necessarily a selfish activity. Spiritual experiences, practices, and understanding can be transformative, helping a man become more compassionate and concerned about the welfare of his fellow human beings. This is one way in which the contemplative nature and inner peace of spirituality can help a man turn outward to help make the world a more just place.20
In the Spirit of Things
Spirituality has been argued to provide us with
• meaning to life;
• guideposts for individual values;
• an internal sense of wellness and identity;
• a sense of commonality with people, community, and the environment;
• and a defined relationship with someone/something beyond ourselves.
Spirituality is not always a comfortable practice. To be spiritual can mean confronting the ugly and deficient aspects of ourselves. Death and pain in all its forms, whether mental or physical, reside within us all. Looking at these deficiencies in ourselves, however, can sensitize us to the struggles of others and, in so doing, can help us to become more compassionate individuals.21
Like many things related to spirituality, the reasons why we may set out on a spiritual journey are diverse. As we age, men may have more time to look deeply at themselves, once the time-consuming demands of jobs and raising children become less pressing. Some men may also look to engage in searches for personal meaning as they work through the uncertainties in life.22 A major impetus for a spiritual journey—whether within the Ananda spiritual community traditions, a mainstream faith tradition, or a nonreligious quest—could be the acknowledgment of suffering or our mortality, or a decision to take a mini-retreat (or vacation) to refresh.
For some men, forgiveness may be at the heart of spirituality. Being able to forgive can benefit a man emotionally and physically, and in fact, as we grow older, forgiving frequently becomes easier. Working through the anger or distance that exists between you and a relative, a former friend, or a coworker can be a spiritual experience and can make you feel more whole and healthy. For men, in particular, forgiving someone often means giving up the desire to seek revenge. This appears to happen when we are able to give up long-standing views of what occurred between us and someone else and “imagine new and more hopeful endings” that allow us to focus on something greater than the original pain and hurt we felt.23
Spiritual experiences can be felt in different ways—through our bodies, through our minds, through our emotions, as well as beyond these means of perceiving the world. We might feel calm or peace. We may also have a spiritual experience when viewing a beautiful piece of art or hearing a piece of music that (temporarily) overwhelms us. Just being completely present in the activities in which we engage may also be spiritual. These experiences can come to us at any time. They can be found in many different contexts, even at work, in a conversation with others, or when engaged in community service. More than a few of us may well have discovered some aspect of our spiritual self while on a fishing trip, hunting in the forest, hiking up a mountain, or even exercising in the gym.
There have been some efforts to understand what happens in the bodies of individuals when they have a spiritual experience. Andrew Newberg, from the University of Pennsylvania, has been studying the relationship between brain activity and spiritual experiences using an imaging technique—single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT). He and his colleagues commented that the elusive nature of spiritual experience can be observed in the cardiovascular changes among Zen practitioners of meditation.24 Studying Tibetan Buddhists in deep meditation, Franciscan nuns immersed in prayer, and Pentecostal Christians speaking in tongues, they found markedly similar changes in brain activity during their most intensely religious moments. The researchers argue that “spiritual experience, at its very root, is intimately interwoven with human biology.”25
The SPECT scans showed the neurological effects of spiritual behavior. In an interview for Salon.com, Newberg stated, “We’ve hypothesized that when people meditate or pray—if they block the sensory information that gets into [the attention center of the brain]—they no longer get a sense of who they are in relation to the world. They may lose their sense of self, and they feel they become one with something greater—ultimate reality or God.”26 Of course, Newberg’s research does not prove whether spiritual or religious experiences are authentic or god-given, but (and this seems important) it does shed light on the impact of spiritual experiences on the body.
Establishing a Spiritual Practice
If you are drawn to a particular religion or are intrigued by the mysteries of the universe, consider exploring the mystical traditions and philosophies of the world.
Even if you are not part of a religion, meditation and contemplation can be a valuable way to cultivate your spirituality.
Engage in the activities that evoke awe and wonder in you, whether this is just being with loved ones, being outdoors, or learning about the world you live in.
Tell your story. Examining your life can help you in your search for meaning and significance.
Spirituality and service go hand and hand. Serving others is one way to cultivate your spirituality.
One recent review article on spirituality and mental health concluded that spirituality (as well as religiousness) was often a coping resource for individuals who were facing illness or other traumatic experiences.27 The review also reported that, with some exceptions, conditions such as anxiety, depression, or substance abuse were uncommon among those who were found to be more spiritual. Yet, questions remain about how generalizable these findings are to other Christian and non-Christian traditions.
But can we simply say that men facing chronic illness should rely on their spiritual self to cope, and that men with a spiritual self are less likely to have mental health troubles? Healthy skepticism is invaluable when evaluating studies of religion, spirituality, and health. First is the chicken-and-egg analogy: does spirituality (or religiousness) protect midlife and older men from mental health troubles, or were depressed or alcohol-dependent men less engaged in their spiritual self to begin with? As also discussed earlier, there may be a close relationship between spirituality and religion in some men’s lives, but spirituality and religion are not the same. Scientific studies may use religious affiliation or how often a person prays as evidence of spirituality. But neither affiliation with a religious culture nor prayer clarifies what it means to be spiritual, nor are they necessarily accurate measures of spirituality.
One article from a 1999 issue of the Lancet urged physicians to even rethink the religious affiliation–health connection.28 The problematic aspect of interpreting the effect of religious involvement on health is that activities such as attending religious services or participating in prayer may not be spiritual. Rather, social contact may be the key factor in the maintenance of good health, and this is something that can be had by anyone, regardless of whether they are spiritual or not. The issues mentioned above may keep us from knowing exactly what aspects of a spiritual self have a positive influence on health. Despite the robust research literature that assures us that a spiritual self is associated with better health, this relationship is still not fully understood.
Aside from the persuasive evidence that spirituality (or religiousness) is positively associated with better physical health and quality of life, there are other benefits of being engaged in either spiritual practices or a faith community. For example, one study that looked at the life reviews of older adults discovered that when people compared themselves to their younger years, they had a greater store of confidence in themselves and had come to terms with the twists and turns along the way.29 The study also found that an important element of spirituality was a willingness to view life and its challenges with humor. The strengths that these elders gained throughout their lives also allowed them to feel freer in the actions they were taking and the directions they were choosing for their lives.
Spirituality is often discussed without reference to gender. However, there have been attempts to examine the spiritual concerns of men in terms of why we may, in particular, be reluctant to be open about our spirituality. Why have men shied away from showing their spiritual self? Various explanations have been suggested. One group of analysts has argued that men’s “natural” yearning for spirituality is often pushed away while growing up and becomes hidden. They believe that men conceal the emotions that spiritual experiences evoke because men have been taught that people are not receptive to such displays from men. It almost seems as if being inexpressive is going to be accepted more readily than any display of behavior that appears to portray a man as passive, gentle, or “wimpish.” It is true that, in our culture, men are still expected to mask their emotions, whether positive or negative.30 To intervene, distinctive men’s groups and philosophies have emerged to assist men whose quest is to get in touch with their “inner essence.”31
Establishing a spiritual practice is a deeply personal undertaking. The form of this spiritual practice will be largely based on the beliefs you hold and what feels most comfortable for you to engage in. If you are not religious, you may be more interested in practices such as meditation or yoga. Neither practice has an explicit spiritual context, yet engaging in these activities may help you see your connectedness with others and bring a sense of awe and wonder.
For those who identify with a particular religious tradition or spiritual philosophy, the contemplative practices associated with these faiths provide one avenue for starting a spiritual practice. Prayer, meditation, the reading of scripture, and similar practices have a long history within many of the world’s religions. Mystical traditions are also elements of many of the world’s religions and indigenous belief systems, although the exact nature of mysticism differs among them. Mysticism is the personal experience of spiritual or religious truths or understanding of reality that goes beyond our common perceptions. Mystical events are temporary, and because they must be experienced, they are difficult to convey to others.32 Many of the world’s religions and philosophies have writers who claimed to have mystical experiences, and to the extent possible, these writers have tried to convey in words what these experiences were like. These writers are a great resource for those who are interested in different spiritual practices. Mysticism is something that nonreligious individuals might want to explore as well, as there have been attempts to describe mysticism in naturalistic terms without any reference to the supernatural.
Telling a Life Story
Contemplating the course of a person’s life is one spiritual practice. Simply finding a quiet place where a person can write or think about their life is an activity that can be used to engage in the search for meaning that is a key part of spirituality. Looking at the milestones in your own life, as well as the insights you have gained from those experiences, is one way to help yourself understand your own spirituality.
People who do not associate with a particular religion or philosophy can also benefit from spiritual practices. One practice, in particular, involves looking at our lives, whether through telling our story on paper or simply reflecting. This is, in essence, a search for meaning—a fundamental aspect of spirituality.33 Meditation is a similar spiritual practice that is available to men who describe themselves as nonreligious. People meditate for various reasons: to promote feelings of peace or calm, to discipline the mind, and even to gain perceived health benefits. Many employer-based health coverage plans include wellness centers that teach meditation, to get you started. Meditation can take various forms, but there are some commonalities between meditation practices. They involve focusing on various aspects of the body and mind. Some meditation practices involve following one’s breath as it enters or leaves the body, or focusing on the sensations that the body experiences. Often, the goal is not to hold on to sensations and thoughts that arise in meditation, but rather to let go of them as they arise and to bring the mind back to the original object of meditation. Meditation is most often done in a place that is quiet, which will aid in focusing on the object of meditation.34
Meditation
Meditation is one way to cultivate spirituality. It is useful for those looking to develop peace and calm, as well as for those looking to discipline the mind. Look for meditation groups in your area. Meditation is becoming increasingly common, and meditating with a group can help to provide a supportive, like-minded community to help sustain your own spiritual practice.
If you are drawn to a particular spiritual tradition, you might want to look at the meditative and contemplative aspects of that tradition.
It can be useful to look toward experienced meditators for guidance. Many books from various religious traditions, as well as with no connection to religion, provide techniques and instructions for meditation.
The National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) has researched the role of meditation for the maintenance of good health. According to the NCCAM, it is theorized that meditation can impact portions of the autonomic nervous system to cause a decrease in your heartbeat and breaths per minute. In terms of safety, the NCCAM suggests that overall “meditation is considered to be safe for healthy people.”35 However, the NCCAM notes that meditation should not be used in place of conventional medicine.
The idea of leaving a legacy for future generations has spiritual relevance and is a concrete way in which to share your philosophy of life and your view of the relationship you have with the world with family members and other significant persons in your life. It is a way to identify what you see as important and, in turn, to share it with those around you, without moralizing that your values are best. It can be an important part of a man’s life planning and help you decide how you want to spend your time, energy, and money as you grow older. For example, have you geographically moved from where your parents and grandparents grew up and wanted to reconnect? Would you be interested in visiting their local newspaper’s archives for photos of the way things used to be? Doing “legacy work”—whether looking backward in time or preparing a life narrative for your grandchildren—can be a powerful way for you to create meaning throughout the second half of your life and feel vital and healthy as you are aging. It can be a very effective way to heal or deepen relationships with those you love or care deeply about.
Meg Newhouse, founder of the Life Planning Network in New England, reminds us that a legacy can be as public as an architectural monument and as private as a letter written to your children or grandchildren.36 It can also be a seemingly casual word of advice. Writing in Social Work Today, she argued that legacies intentionally left to the next generation are a way to reflect what you feel in your heart or soul. These “legacies of the heart” will probably be a testament to your spiritual view of life. The developmental “push” after midlife to find meaning or purpose can fuel the desire to leave a legacy, which may intensify with age or proximity to death.
Ways to Shape Your Own Legacy
• Think about what your passions, values, and dreams are as a way of helping to point to your purpose or calling in life.
• Try to visualize the legacies you would like to leave the world and who you might want to leave them with.
• Write your own obituary or epitaph.
• Share more fully in conversations with those you love in order to identify a legacy that defines who you really are.
• Write an ethical will (sometimes called a legacy letter), as a way to bequeath your inner wealth, which can include your important values, philosophies of life or life lessons, experiences, and specific messages to loved ones.
• Write, tape, illustrate, or assemble photographs in a scrapbook to document your personal reflections about life experiences, themes, lessons, and family history.
• List the tangible treasures that you wish to pass on with the story of their histories and the personal importance attached to them.
• Take on a public legacy project, individually or collectively, such as community volunteer activities, coaching, or mentoring, which allows you to share your ideas and resources with others.
Legacies can be private or collective, tangible or intangible. Examples of private, tangible legacies include family heirlooms and other family treasures, such as recipes and letters, arts and crafts creations, written or audio-visual recordings, family histories, memoirs, ethical wills, money, and real property. Private, intangible legacies include individual actions on your part such as mentoring, teaching, coaching, counseling, informal conversations, and caregiving. Collective or group legacies include volunteering, community engagement, political action, social entrepreneurship, and specifically formed groups for making charitable contributions.
In many cases, thinking spiritually requires that we change our mind-set from “doing” to “being.” This can be really difficult because, as men, we live in a world that emphasizes being active and involved. Successful physical aging tends to focus on the overriding importance of “using it or losing it” and remaining active. How then can you live a contemplative life as you grow older? For Anne Basting, the creator of the TimeSlips Program, it means getting involved in creative storytelling, which emphasizes the value of using your imagination when it comes to constructing your own life stories rather than fixating on remembering all the specific details of past experiences.37 For Rabbi Zalman Schacter-Shalomi, who developed the term “sage-ing” to replace aging, it means a belief that older adults hold a special, even sacred, place in society as mentors and bearers of culture, and that getting older can be a time of great discovery.38 Sage-ing is a nondenominational process of spiritual development that aims to deepen self-awareness, enhance interpersonal relationships, hone communication skills, and cultivate a valuation of elders as mentors and wise counsel in our community. For Robert Greenleaf and more recently Richard Leider and Larry Spears, it is the idea of “elder servant leadership,” whereby elders teach by story, by example, and by caring about those who follow in their footsteps.39 Elder servant leaders find deep satisfaction in giving all that they have to offer in ways that serve others rather than just themselves, and they embrace this as a critical responsibility of their elderhood. For them, the new elder spirit is one of “giving it away” because, they argue, elders know that people are strong not in proportion to what they can hold on to, but rather according to what they can give away.
For each man, the process of spiritual awakening is a gradual descent to find buried feelings, to discover his inner world, where he can pick up the threads of his personal story. It is necessary for men to find their myth and live it.
Source: Bolen, J. S. (1989). Gods in every man. New York: Harper & Row.
This chapter may have raised more questions than answers, and that is all right. Spirituality is a deeply personal issue, and the ways it can be approached are varied, which means that your understanding of spirituality and spiritual practice may be very different than those of someone else, or even the presentation in this chapter. To one person, being spiritual may mean seeing the truth in a particular religion or philosophy and immersing themselves in this truth. To another, spirituality may mean experiencing the awe of Mother Nature and living in our universe, even if that does not include believing in a higher power. Yet another may disagree with the concept of spirituality or find the practice of spirituality unhelpful in their own lives. And that is all right as well.
If you are interested, there are practices that you can use to develop spiritual insight. For those who are drawn to a particular religion, many of the world’s faiths have strong mystical traditions, which can be a source of guidance for spirituality and spiritual practice. Reading scripture, prayer, contemplation, and other activities associated with a religion may be beneficial as well.
For those who do not or choose not to identify with a particular religion, there are other ways to establish a spiritual practice, such as reflecting on your life through writing, or just enjoying activities that give you a sense of wonder and interconnectedness. Meditation, taking a quiet walk, and other relaxation techniques can be used to further develop a spiritual practice. There are also conceptions of mysticism that don’t involve supernatural elements which can be examined.
However you choose to think about the practice of spirituality, it is important that it not just be an inward, selfish activity. The sense of wonder, awe, and interconnectedness will help you to move beyond yourself. We can be transformed by these spiritual experiences and the peace that they bring us, and we can emerge with a more compassionate outlook on life, an outlook that allows us to better see the interconnections between all people and act on this insight.