看到书名，小宝很好奇地问了我两次“ How could Falling Upward?” 很违反常识的书名哈！
作者Richard Rohr是天主教的一位修士（Franciscan friar）。如果将人生分为上、下半场，这本书则澄清了不同半场所需要完成的主要任务及这上下半场之间的关系
What I hope to do in this small book is just to make the sequencing, the tasks and the direction of the two halves of life clear.
按照作者的说法，并不是所有的人都能在精神和灵性层面进入到人生下半场，进入人生下半场的也并不一定是岁数大的人，有的人因为经历特殊，会在还比较年轻的时候进入人生下半场。
前半生，我们自然而然地忙于建立自己的身份 – 往上攀爬，好好表现，做出成就等。然而，随着年岁渐长，在经历了很多的挑战、失误、失控、以及一些必要的苦难之后，却发现上半场追逐的那些东西并不能很好地满足我们的需求……In the first half of our life, we are naturally and rightlypreoccupied with establishing our identity – climbing, achieving, andperforming. But those concerns will not serve us as we grow older and begin toembark on a further journey, one that involves challenges, mistakes, loss ofcontrol, broader horizons and necessary suffering that actually shocks us outof our prior comfort zone.
书中关于灵魂soul、自我True Self有很多精辟的描述和比喻，也借用了一些禅、印度教中的理念，另外全书一直引用荷马史诗《奥德赛》进行诠释。作者想要告诉我们的是：进入人生下半场，摔倒（stumbling ）不仅是 不可避免而且是必要的；而从这些摔倒中站立起来，再次回归到孩童时期的简单（A return to simplicity after learned from all complexity） ， 回到家(home, True Self) ，则是下半场要完成的任务。这个时候的人，会更加包容（inclusive）,、平和。面对生活中的问题、困难，不是用负面的攻击、批评、强迫或者说服去“解决”，而是“坠”入更大的光明。“对于坏事最好的批评就是做得更好”，这正是Falling Upward的意思。
All of life’sproblems, dilemmas, and difficulties are now resolved not by negativity,attack, criticism, force or logical resolution, but always by falling into alarger brightness. This is the falling upward! “The best criticism of the badis the practice of the better”
个人觉得这本书不太适合意气风发的年轻人读，对于在下半场门口徘徊的人，倒是不可错过的一好书，不过读起来有点费劲，很多精辟的话要反复咀嚼好几遍。
或迟或早，我们都会经历一些无法解决困境，黔驴技穷，不得不摔倒。：一些事件、人、死亡、思想或者一段关系 。 Sooner or later, some event, person, death, idea orrelationship will enter your life that you simply cannot deal with, using yourpresent skill set. There must be atleast one situation in our lives that we cannot fix, control, explain or evenunderstand. You will be et to the edge of your own private resources,We must stumble and fall. It seems in spiritual world, we do not really findsomething until we first lose it, ignore it, miss it, long for it, choose it andpersonally find it again. Fairy talelike Cinderella, ugly duckling.
If you do not do the task of the first half of life well, you have almost no ability to rise up fromthe stumbling stone.
Introduction
Soul– I believe God gives us our soul, our deepestidentity, our True Self, ourunique blueprint, at our own “immaculateconception”.
The whole story is set in the matrix of seeking to find homeand then to return there, and thus refining and defining what home really is.
Home is both the beginning and the end. Home is not a sentimental conceptat all, but an inner compass and a North Star at the same time.It is a metaphor for the soul.
What is a normal goal to a young person becomes a neurotic hindrancein old age – Carl Jung
No wise person ever wanted to be younger – Native American Aphorism.
If you try to assert wisdom before people have themselveswalked it, be prepared for much resistance, denial, push-back and verbaldebate.
The task within the task – what we are really doing when weare doing what we are doing.
Purpose of this book-- What I hope to do in this small book is just to make thesequencing, the tasks and the direction of the two halves of life clear.
The opposite of rational is not always irrational, but it canalso be transrational or bigger than the rational mind can process; things likelove, death, suffering, God, and infinity are transrational experiences.
The whole story is set in the matrix of seeking to find homeand then to return there, and thus refining and defining what home really is.Home is both the beginning and the end. Home is not a sentimental concept atall, but an inner compass and a North Star at the same time. It is a metaphorfor the soul.
Chap1 The two halves of life
The 1sthalf is to create a proper container, the2ndhalf is to find the actual contents.
God only has nograndchildren, God only has children. Each generation has to make its owndiscoveries of Spirit for itself
The two halvesare all necessary. We all need somesuccesses, response, and positive feedback early in life; or we will spend therest of our lives demanding it, or bemoaning its lack, from others. –narcissism.
In the 1sthalf of life, success, security and containment – looking good to ourselves andto others , are almost the only questions.
Steps and Stages
First ofall, you can only see and understand the earlier stages from the widerperspective of the later stages. If youhave, in fact deepened and grown” in wisdom” age and grace, you are able to bepatient, inclusive and understanding of all the previous stages. This is theinfallible sign that you are enlightened, psychologically mature or truly adultbeliever.
The second insight about steps and stages isthat from your own level of development, you can only stretch yourself tocomprehend people just a bit beyond yourself. We can save ourselves a lot ofdistress and accusation by knowing when, where to whom and how to talk aboutspiritually mature things.
Chap 3 The first half of life
You learn how to recover from falling by falling!
Conditional and unconditional love– Eric Fromm, The Art of Love, the healthiest people he hasknown, and those who very often grow up in the most natural way, are those who,, between their two parents and early authority figures, experienceda combinationof unconditional love along with very conditional and demanding love!
It has been acceptable for some time in Americato remain “wound identified” (that is, using one’s victimhood as one’sidentify, one’s ticket to sympathy and one’s excuse for not serving)
But very few Christians have been taught tolive both law and freedom at the same time.
1sthalf done poorly –When some have not been able to do the task of the first halfof life well, they go back and try to do it again – and then often over do it!
Discharging your loyal soldier
The Japanese communities created a communalritual whereby a soldier was publicly thanked and praised for his service tohis people, then declared “ the War is over now”, “ The communities need you tolet go of what has served you and served us well up to now. The community needsyou to return as a man, a citizen and something beyond a soldier!
The voice of the loyal solder get us throughthe first half of like safely. The loyal soldier is largely the same thing thatFreud was describing with his concept of the superego.
Psychological wholeness and spiritual holinessnever exclude the problem from the solution. If it is wholeness, then it itsalways paradoxical, and holds both the dark and light sides of things.
Bill Plotkin – move from “ego centric”worldview to “soul centric”worldview.
Chap 4 – The Tragic Sense of Life
Life as the biblical tradition makes clear, isboth loss and renewal, death and resurrection, chaos and healing at the same time; life seems to be a collision ofopposites.
Truth is not always about pragmatic problemsolving and making things “work”, but about reconcilingcontradictions. Just because something might have some dire effects does notmean it is not true or even good. Just because something pleases people doesnot make it true either.
The Gospel was able to accept that life istragic, but then graciously added that we can survive and will even grow fromthis tragedy.Jesus is never upset at sinners he is only upset with peoplewho do not think they are sinners.
Chap5 – Stumbling over the Stumbling stone
Sooner or later, some event, person,death,ideaor relationship will enter your life that you simply cannot deal with, usingyour present skill set. There must be atleast one situation in our lives that we cannot fix ,control, explain or even understand. Youwill be et to the edge of your own private resources,.We must stumble and
fall. It seems in spiritual world, we do not really find something until wefirst lose it, ignore it, miss it, long for it, choose it and personally findit again. Fairy tale like Cinderella,ugly duckling.
If you do not do the task of the first half of life well, youhave almost no ability to rise up from the stumbling stone.
Chap 6 – Necessary Suffering
Hating family – It takes a huge push, muchself-doubt, and some degree of separation for people to find their own soul andtheir own destiny apart from what Mom and Dad always wanted them to be.
Your True Self iswho you objectively are from the beginning in the mind andheart of God, “the face you had before you were born”. as the Zen master said,it is your substantial self, your absolute identity, which can be neithergained nor lost by any technique, group affiliation, morality or formulawhatsoever.
Chap7Home and homesickness
Somehow the end is in the beginning and thebeginning points toward the end. It also feels like grace from such eternallydeep time. Wouldn’t it make sense that God would planta desire for what God already wants to give us.
The most a bishop or sacrament can do is to “fan” [this awareness ] into flame”. But sometimes great love and great sufferingare even bigger fans for this much-needed flame.
The Holy Spirit is alwaysentirely for us, more than we are for ourselves. She speaks in our favor against the negative voice that judge and condemn us.
We are created with an inner drive andnecessity that sends all of us looking for our True Self, whether we know it ornot. This journey is aspiral and never a straight line.
We are created with an inner restlessness andthat call urges us to the risks and promises of a second half to our life.There isa God-size holein all of us, waiting to be filled. God createsthe very dissatisfaction that only grace and finally divine love can satisfy.
We will move from the starter kit of “belief”
to an actual inner knowing. This is most especially true if we have ever 1） loved deeply， 2） accompanied someone through the mystery of dying 3) stood ingenuine life-changing awe before mystery, time, or beauty.
Chap8 – Amnesia and The big picture
Inclusiveness– Jesus touched and healedanybody who desired it and asked for it, and there were no other prerequisitesfor his healings.
Heaven and hellwere primarily et eternalstates of consciousness more than geographical places of later reward andpunishments.
Chap 9 – A second simplicity
Beyond rational and critical thinking, we needto be called again. This can lead to the discovery of a “second naivete”, whichisa return to the joy of our first naivete”, but now totally new,inclusive, and mature thinking.
A kind ofsecond simplicity is the very goal
of mature adulthood and mature religion.
I don’t need to push he river as much now, orown the river, or get everybody in my precise river;nor do others have to namethe river the way I do in order for me to trust them or their goodwill. Ittakes lots of drowning in your own too tiny river to get to this big and goodplace.
Poem by T.S. Eliot
We had the experience but missed the meaning,
And approach to the meaning restores theexperience.
In a different form, beyond any meaning
We can assign to happiness
As the body can not live without food, so thesoul cannot live without meaning.
Areturn to simplicity after learned fromall complexity.
Chap 10 – A bright sadness
Their God is no longer small, punitive, ortribal. They once worshiped their raft; now they love the shore where it hastaken them. They once defended signpost; now they have arrived where the signspointed.
All of life’s problems, dilemmas, anddifficulties are now resolved not by negativity, attack, criticism, force orlogical resolution, but always by falling into a larger brightness. This is thefalling upward!
“The best criticism of the bad is the practiceof the better”
Chap11 – The Shadowlands
Shadow self – not so bright persona (stagemask), which was constructed in the first of half of life. It is manufacturedand sustained unconsciously by your mind; but it can and will die.
Persona and shadow are correlative terms. Yourshadow is what you refuse to see about yourself, and what you do not wantothers to see. The more you have cultivated and protected a chosen persona, themore shadow work you will need to do. Be especially careful of any idealizedrole or self image , like that ofminister, mother, doctor, nice person, professor, moral believer. These arehuge personas to live up to, and they trap many people in lifelongdelusion. The more you are attached toand unaware of such a protected self-image, the more shadow self you willlikely have.
Shadow work is humiliating work, if you do not“eat”such humiliations with regularity and make friends with thejudges, the courtrooms, and the officers(that is all those who reveal to you anconvict you of your own denied faults) who come to you in life.
Invariably when something upsets you, and youhave a strong emotional reaction out of proportion to the moment, your shadowself has just been exposed.
Chap12 New Problems and New Directions
In your second half of life, you can actuallybless others in what they feel they must do, allow them to do what they mustdo, challenge them if they are hurting themselves or others – but you can nolonger join them in the fist half of life.
We all go toward the very places we avoided forthe last forty years.
Whole people see and create wholeness whereverthey go; Split people see and created splits in everything and everybody.
In the second half of life, people have lesspower to infatuate you, but they also have much less power to control or hurtyou.
Just remember this : no one can keep you fromthe second half of your own life except yourself. Some falling apart of thefirst journey is necessary for this to happen, so do not waste a moment of timelamenting poor parenting, lost job, failed relationship…. Pain is part of thedeal. If you don’t walk into the second half of your own life, it is you who donot want it.
All the emptying out is only for the sake of aGreat Outpouring.
