I'd like to recommend Jung and Aging - Possibilities and Potentials for the Second Half of Life (amazon.com) edited by Leslie Sawin, Lionel Corbett, and Michael Carbine (2014, Spring Journal Books).
It is a collection of essays and addresses delivered at a conference held in Washington D.C. in March of 2012, jointly sponsored by the C. G. Jung Society of Washington D.C., the Library of Congress, and AARP Foundation.
I have not even finished reading all the contributions, and it is already one of the best books about "the aging process," and the larger "spiritual" implications of Jung's work, that I have yet encountered.
You may be thinking as I do that "spiritual" is a shop-worn word; unfortunately no adequate alternative words or phrases have yet been discovered to replace it. However, since it's all we have, and since it still manages to function as a generic, trans-denominational/trans-cultural word pointing at deep, non-material truth, it seems to me that I have no choice but to go on using it here.
At the heart of Jung's work there is an understanding that the "collective unconscious," (Jung also called it the "objective psyche") is structured and energized by an archetypal longing to create/ discover transcendent, spiritual, meaning in all the experiences of our waking lives.
In later life, this archetypal drive for a deeper sense of meaning and significant purpose comes increasingly to conscious awareness as we find we have fewer years left ahead of us. That being said I do believe that the need/desire has always been there, continuously crying out of our dark unconscious depths for language to express it, even in the dreams of children.
For this reason, the comments made by many of the contributors to this brilliant, carefully researched anthology regarding the evolving psycho-spiritual landscape of old age, also apply very clearly to the interior life of humans at all stages of development, both individual and collective, and in all cultures.
One of the most interesting implications of these essays is that becoming increasingly aware of this unconscious longing for meaning and spiritual significance has the capability of transcending even the prospect of our own individual deaths. It brings us face-to-face with the paradox of being alive yet needing to look steadily at what is coming with open heart and mind.
One of the most intellectually confounding of these paradoxes is the tangle made by the archetypal pattern of the "Trickster" - that life and death are inseparable. One of the contributors, Melanie Starr Costello, suggests in her essay, "Conscious Aging as a Spiritual Path," (pp. 151 - 177):
"...In this metaphoric death, one's known self-image is sacrificed in exchange for what the poet Derek Walcott calls "the stranger who has loved you all your life... who knows you by heart."
What becomes inescapable as we age is the necessity to let go of the habitual opinionated ego-self in order to release life energy for the expression of our deeper, authentic character. No matter what particular form it takes, this is an archetypal "Willing Sacrifice" that our dreams are always inviting the waking mind to participate in.
In old age, it becomes clear that we have no choice but to participate in this archetypal drama, and that the option to do this has been offered in our dreams our entire lives, (and even partially accepted - if only to the extent that those dreams have been remembered.)
In this book the authors speak candidly and directly about matters of spiritual meaning as we age and point to the time-urgent need to value what lies before us in the second half of life. Even if you are not in that period of your life, what they have to say is relevant to all our spiritual searching, no matter what age we are.
-Jeremy
