Book 1 - Richard Rohr "Falling Upward" Audio of talk from first week can be found here - click and then scroll down to read notes as Simon spoke
published SPCK 2011

The below are simply quotes from the book which I will be speaking from during the course.

First half of life is a time for establishing our homes, families, work, identity
Second half of life can be a much richer time when we go deeper into ourselves and discover who we are, when we learn to savour life, when we learn to come to terms with our spirituality and when we can grow spiritually.

However our culture is a "first half of life culture", writes Rohr

We are a "first half of life culture" largely concerned about surviving successfully. Probably most cultures and individuals across history have been situated in the first half of their development up to now, because it is all they had time for. We all try to do what seems like the task that life first hands us: establishing our identity, a home, relationships, friends, community, security and building a proper platform for our only life.
But it takes much longer to discover "the task within the task" as I like to call it: what we are really doing when we are doing what we are doing. Two people can have the same job description and one is holding a subtle or not-so-subtle life energy (eros)  in doing his or her job, while another is holding a subtle or not-so-subtle negative energy (thenatos)  while doing the same job.
It is when we begin to pay attention and seek integrity precisely in the task within the task that we begin to move from the first half to the second half of our own lives. Integrity largely has to do with purifying our intentions and a growing honesty about our actual motives. It is hard work. Most often we don't attention to that inner task until we have had some sort of fall or failure in our outer tasks. This pattern is invariably true for reasons I have yet to fathom."

In other words our fall or breakdown or mid life crisis can stop us living on the surface of life and can make us look inside ourselves and can lead to an enrichening experience.

"Thomas Merton, the American monk, pointed out that we may spend our whole life climbing the ladder of success, only to find when we get to the top that our ladder is leaning against the wrong wall."

"So many, if not most, of us, settle for the brick and mortar of first-stage survival, an dnever get to what I will be calling "the unified field" of life itself. As Bill Plotkin, a wise guide, puts it, many of us learn to do our "survival dance" but we never get to our actual "sacred dance".

Loss leads to renewal

"In legends and literature, sacrifice of something to achieve something else is almost the only pattern. Dr Faust has to sell his soul to the devil to achieve power and knowledge; Sleeping Beauty must sleep for a hundred years before she can receive the prince's kiss. In Scripture we see that the wrestling and wounding of Jacob are necessary for Jacob to become Israel (Genesis 32.26-32) and the death and resurrection of Jesus are necessary to create Christianity. The loss and renewal pattern is so constant and ubiquitous that it should hardly be a secret at all." p.xix

Falling, becoming vulnerable, can lead you to great depths but these in turn will take you to great height. It takes faith to fall like this:

"This is probably why Jesus praised faith and trust even more than love. It takes a foundational trust to fall or to fail - and not to fall apart. Faith alone holds you while you stand waiting and hoping and trusting. Then, and only then, will deeper love happen. It's no surprise all all that in English (and I am told in other languages as well) we speak of "falling" in love. I think it is the only way to get there. None would go freely, if we knew ahead of time what love is going to ask of us. Very human faith lays the utterly needed foundation for the ongoing discovery of love. Have no doubt though; great love is always a discovery, a revelation, a wonderful suprise, a falling into "something" much bigger and deeper that is literally beyond us and larger than us" xxviii

A lot of organised religion is focussed on "first half of life issues"
"All we can conclude is that much of organised religion is itself living inside of first-half-of-life issues, which usually coincides with where most people are in any culture. We all receive and pass on what our people are prepared to hear, and most people are not "early adopters".

Analogy to the burning bush - True God experience does not destroy you but it may burn you

"You see, authentic God experience always "burns" you yet does not destroy you (Exodus 3.2-3), just as the burning bush did to Moses. But most of us are not prepared for such burning, nor even told to expect it. By definition, authentic God experience is always "too much"! It consoles our True Self only after it has devastated our false self. We must begin to be honest about this instead of dishing out fast-food religion." p.13

Breakdown leads to spiritual renewal

"He or she "falls through" what is merely his or her life situation to discover his or her Real Life, which is always a much deeper river, hidden beneath the appearances." p.19

People who have not fallen are off balance often and difficult to live with p.28

Some people try and live the first half of life again when they have not lived it well, and then they overdo it. p.40

The voice of the "loyal soldier" is the voice of our early authority figures. A voice that protects us, but may not necessarily be the voice of God.
"If this inner and critical voice has kept you safe for many years as your inner voice of authority, you may end up not being  able to hear the real voice of God." p46


First battles of life verses second battles of life
"The first battles solidify the ego and create a stalwart loyal soldier; the second battles defeat the ego because God always wins." p.47

"There is a deeper voice of God, which you must learn to hear and obey in the second half of life. It will sound an awful lot like the voices of risk, of trust, of surrender, of soul, of "common sense", of destiny, of love, of an intimate stranger, of your deepest self, of soulful "Beatrice". The true faith journey only begins at this point. Up to now everything is mere preparation. Finally, we have a container strong enough to hold the contents of our real life, which is always filled with contradictions and adventures and immense challenges. Psychological wholeness and spiritual holiness never exclude the problem from the solution. If it is wholeness, then it is always paradoxical, and holds both the dark and the light sides of things. Wholeness and holiness will always stretch us beyond our small comfort zone. How could they not?
So God, life, and destiny have to loosen the loyal solder's grasp on your soul, which up to now has felt like the only "you" that you know and the only authority that there is. Our loyal soldier normally begins to be discharged somewhere between the ages of thirty-five and fifty-five, if it happens at all; before that it is usually mere rebellion or iconoclasm.
To let go of the loyal solder will be a severe death, and an exile from your first base. You will feel similar to Isaiah before he was sent into exile in Babylon. "In the noontime of my life, I was told to depart for the gates of Hades. Surely I am deprived of the rest of my years." (38.10) Discharging your loyal soldier will be necessary to finding authentic inner authority, or what Jeremiah promised as the "law written in your heart" (31.33). First-half-of-life folks will seldom have the courage to go forward at this point unless they have a guide, a friend, a Virgil, a Teiresias, a Beatrice, a soul friend, or a stumbling block to guide them toward the goal." p.49

God is often at work in ways we cannot understand - and just as well because if we did we would not allow it.

"St John of the Cross taught that God has to work in the soul in secret and in darkness, because if we fully knew what was happening and what Mystery/transformation/God/ grace will eventually ask of us, we would either try to take charge or stop the whole process. No one oversees his or her own demise willingly, even when it is the false self that is dying." p.51

Failure and suffering the only way into the deeper awareness of what God is doing
"Sooner or later, if you are on any classic "spiritual schdeule", some event, person, death, idea or relationship will enter your life that you simply cannot deal wth, using your present skill set, your acquired knowledge, or your strong willpower. Spiritually speaking, you will be, you must be, led to the edge of your own private resources. At this point you will stumble over a necessary stumbling stone, as Isaiah calls it; or to state it in our language here, you will and you must "lose" at something. This is the only way that Life-Fate-God-Grace-Mystery can get you to change, let go of your ego centric preoccupations, and go on the further and larger journey. I wish I could say this was not true, but it is darn near absolute in the spiritual literature of the world." p.66

Through this we discover our "new self"

"In the end we do not so much reclaim what we have lost as discover a significantly new self in and through the process. Until we are led to the limits of our present game plan, and find it to be insufficient, we will not search out or find the real source, the deep well, or the constantly flowing stream. Alcoholics Anonymous calls it the Higher Power, Jesus calls this Ultimate Source the "living water" at the bottom of the well, to the woman who keeps filling and refilling her bucket (John 4.10-14)

Rohr writes about "necessary suffering"

"Carl Jung said that so much unnecessary suffering comes into the world because people will not accept the "legitimate suffering" that comes from being human. In fact, he said nuerotic behaviour is usually the result of refusing that legitimate suffering! Ironically this refusal of the necessary pain of being human brings to the person ten times more suffering in the long run." p.73

The need to die to self and come alive to Christ

"If your spiritual guides do not talk to you about dying, they are not good spiritual guides! Your True Self is who you objectively are from the beginning in the mind and heart of God. It is your substantial self, your absolute identity, which can be neither gained nor lost by any technique, group affiliation, morality or formula whatsoever. The surrendering of our false self, which we have usually taken for our absolute identity, yet is merely a relative idenity, is the necessary suffering needed to find "the pearl of great price" that is always hideen inside this lovely but passing shell." p.86

Continuity between now and the future on the subject of heaven

"A person who has found his or her True Self has learned how to live in the big picture, as part of adeep time and all of history. This change of frame and venue is called living "in the Kingdom of God" by Jesus, and it is indeed a major about-face. This necessitates, of course, that we let go of our own smaller kingdoms, which we normally do not care to do. Life is all about practising for heaven. We practise by choosing union freely - ahead of time - and now. Heaven is the state of union both here and later. As now, so will it be then. No one is in heaven unless he or she wants to be, and all are in heaven as soon as they live in union. Everyone is in heaven unwhen he or she has plenty of room for communion and no need for exclusion. The more room you have to include, the bigger your heaven will be.
Perhaps this is what Jesus means by there being "many rooms in my Father's house" (John 14.2). IF you go to heaven alone, wrapped in your private worthiness, it is by definition not heaven. If your notion of heaven is based on exclusion of anybody else, then it is by definition not heaven. The more you exclude, the more hellish and lonely your existence is. How could anyone enjoy the "perfect happiness" of any heaven if she knew her loved ones were not there, or were being tortured for all eternity? It would be impossible. Remember our Christian prayers "on earth as it is in heaven". As now, so then. As here, so there. Will we all get exactly what we want and ask for. You can't beat that." p 102

"If you accept a punitive notion of God who punishes or even eternally tortures those who do not love him, than you have an absurd universe where most people on this earth end up being more loving than God! God excludes no one from union, but must allow us to exclude ourselves in order for us to maintain our freedom. Our word for that exclusion is hell, and it must be maintained as a logical possibility. There must be the logical possibility of excluding oneself from union and to choose separation or superiority over community and love. No one is in hell unless that individual himself or herself chooses a final aloneness and separation....Jesus touched and healed anybody who desired it and asked for it, and there were no other prerequisites for his healings. Check it out yourself. Why would Jesus' love be so unconditional while he was in the world, and suddenly become totally conditional after death? Is it the same Jesus? Or does Jesus change his policy after the resurrection? The belief in heaven and hell is meant to maintain freedom on all sides, with God being the most free of all, to forgive and include, to heal and to bless even God's seeming "enemies". How could Jesus ask us to bless, forgive and heal our enemies, which he clearly does (Matthew 5.43-48) unless God is doing it first and always?" p.102-103

The mid life crisis creates a new coherence

"This new coherence, a unified field inclusive of the paradoxes, is precisely what gradually characterizes a second-half-of-life person. It feels like a return to simplicity after having learned from all the complexity. Finally, at last, one has lived long enough  to see that "everything belongs" , even the sad, absurd and futile parts." p 114

The danger of being trapped in a false persona

"The more you have cultivated and protected a chosen persona, the more shadow work you will need to do. Be especially careful therefore of any idealised role or self-image, like that of a minister, mother, doctor, nice person, professor, moral believer or president of this or that. There are huge personas to live up to and they trap many people in lifelong delusion. The more you are attached to and unaware of such a protected self-image, the more shadow self you will very likely have. Conversely, the more you live out of your shadow self, the less capable you are of recognising the persona you are trying to protect and project. It is like a double blindness keeping you from seeing - and being - your best and deepest self. As Jesus put it, "If the lamp within you is in fact darkness, what darkness will there be. "(Matthew 6.23)" p,128

Shadow work is painful and we need to find frank but fair judges who will help us with it:

"Your persona is what most people want from you and reward you for, and what you choose to identify with, for some reason. As you do your inner work, you will begin to know that your self-image is nothing more than just that, and not worth protecting, promoting or denying. As Jesus says in the passage above, if you can begin to "make friends" with those who have a challenging message for you, you will usually begin to see some of your own shadow. If you don't you will miss out on much-needed wisdom and end up "imprisoned" within yourself or taken to "court" by others and you will undoubtedly have to "pay the last penny" to reorder your life and relationships." p.129

"I am afrid that the closer you get to the Light, the more of your shadow you see. Thus truly holy people are always humble people. " p 132

"The bottom line of the Gospel is that most of us have to hit some kind of bottom before we even start the spiritual journey" p 138

One of the great cures for loneliness is solitude