Finding Your Wisdom: The Inner Elder

By Roger Cox, M.Ed.

When I was a child I intuitively knew that there was a source of truth in me. As I grew, I relied more on scientific and logical proof to answer my questions and abandoned my childlike trust in my spirit. I began to allow other life circumstances to define who I was and what I believed; I spent most of my time and energy concerned with being safe and secure on the surface of things because I feared what feelings and pain I might uncover if I went too far within. It was easier for me to fix things as they arose and move, rather than struggle with real personal transformation.

Throughout this period, however, some questions nagged at me: Why am I here? Where do I fit in? What do I love? What gift do I offer? What is my truth? In recent years, as I have begun to practice the principles of Spiritual Eldering, I have rekindled my childlike interest and trust in an inner source of wisdom.

The development of the inner elder concept of Spiritual Eldering was influenced by the work of psychologist Carl Jung, who noted that we are granted an extended life span for a reason. He urged us to use this period of our lives to honor and develop parts of ourselves that we may have neglected because of the demands of career and family, to honor what lies hidden in our souls, to develop what he called psycho-spiritual wholeness. To assist us in the endeavor, Jung developed the archetype or “ancient images” we carry around in our unconscious.

Reb Zalman, founder of the Spiritual Eldering Institute, defines archetypes as: “Patterns we have been given which influence how we experience the timeless constants of human nature, such as birth, death, love, marriage, parenthood, and the predictable changes of the life cycle.” Archetypal images include the good mother, the good father, the heroine, the wild man, the crone, the warrior, the princess and the goddess. Images such as these have for millennia been in the myths and literature of many cultures and have served mankind as models for coping with the unpredictable as well as the predictable changes of the life cycle.

The inner elder is one such archetype used as part of Spiritual Eldering practice. A similar archetype is also found in cultural traditions from the Greeks to the Hindus to the tribal societies of Africa , Asia and South America . In each tradition, the inner elder represents the wisdom of the ages. Many different words or phrases are used to describe the inner elder: the wisdom of the ages, the Ancient of Days, Wise Old Woman, Wise Old Man, Mzee, the inner voice, the inner mentor, and the realized self.

Our Inner Elder says, “Been there, done that.” It has been tested in the crucible of life by death, birth, marriage, paradigm shifts, career changes, assorted crises, and life-threatening illness, among other things. Reb Zalman describes our Inner Elder as our enlightened self who has completed life's journey to seld-knowledge. Rabbi Shaya Isenberg, SEI Faculty Emeritus, says “The Ancient Days is the part of awareness that is close to God, a soul-centered spiritual reference point, a place beyond the ego intimately connected to our intuition, Our Inner Elder, our Ancient of Days, has already done the work, knows us through and through, and is accessible to us at any time. It is within us as pure consciousness filled with wisdom guiding us.”

Wayne Muller, author of How Then Shall We Live? presents the Inner Elder as our essential nature. Muller says our essential nature is that part of us which is whole and unbroken and is a source of wisdom and courage. It is that part of us which remains unbroken even during times when the rest of our lives seems to be scattered and broken Our essential nature is simply there waiting to be listened to, waiting to be uncovered.

Another word we can use is intuition – a spark of consciousness from which our awareness derives a wider source of knowledge than we ordinarily aren't aware of. Perhaps the Inner Elder is the container in which intuition resides. Muller says, “I carry a deep fundamental identity. It is unique and unchanging. It is my own particular spiritual essence. It is trustworthy, whole, wise, and a source of true safety. It is home.” This is the inner elder.

The Inner Elder is as we need him, her or it to be: any race, any religion, any culture, any shape, any size, any age or any form. The Inner Elder we encounter maybe from our past, recent or far, or completely new to us.

We can access our Inner Elder wisdom through the manner in which we live each day, the way we walk upon the earth, and the way we care of ourselves and others. When we are fully aware and awake to what we are experiencing each moment, this mindfulness often draws us to people and situation which enable us to sow seeds of growth, seeds within us that are ready for planting.

This occurred to me while I was a student at Manchester College . One of my fellow students was a young man from Nigeria , Hyedima Bwala. Up to this point in my life, the farthest west I had been was Chicago . I was born in South Bend to a Hungarian family. There were no people of color in my elementary school or in my neighborhood community. I was not comfortable relating to people who were different from me, and now here was this dark0skinned fellow from Africa . But a small voice within me kept urging me to get to know this fellow, to stretch myself and my beliefs, to wake up to what was around me, to open to someone entirely different and new, to trust and take a step along an untraveled pathway for once in my life. Fortunately, I listened to that voice, and Hyedima and I became friends.

Even though Hyedima stood only up to my shoulder, he took me under his wing and shared with me the story of his people and his culture. Each Saturday morning he even attempted to teach the sport of soccer to this clumsy Midwestern giant. He taught me that there is much need in this world and that each of us has an opportunity to respond. Hyedima urges me to look beyond my Midwestern upbringing to encompass the concerns of a larger worldview. He gave me the inspiration and courage to travel to West Africa as a Peace Corp volunteer. I have not been the same since.

By mindfully responding to what my spirit had brought to me, I moved beyond the constraints of my ego and tuned into what my soul was saying. In doing so, I opened myself to my wisdom and to a pathway of joy, peace, strength, and self-discovery.

Roger Cox is a faculty member with the Memorial SAGE-ing Center in South Bend, Indiana. He also serves as mentor in the Certified Sage-ing Leader training program and has completed the Sage-ing Circle Facilitator training, One of his areas of inters in Spiritual Eldering work is the development of the intuitive brain.