Book Summary
The Making of an Old Soul: Aging as the Fulfillment of Life’s Promise is the healing vision of a woman who is a scholar in the fields of adult and spiritual development as well as a lifelong seeker. Based on a mystical experience that sheds light on the entire arc of life, Orsborn’s latest work revisions age not as diminishment but as the fulfillment of life’s promise. Bursting through the stereotypes into a world of old souls, Orsborn shows you how to embrace the luminous spirit within that beats steadily beyond the wounds of childhood, beyond the unintended consequences of your best-intentions, beyond the twists and turns of fate over which even at the peak of the developmental pyramid you have no control. This gem of a book affirms that hope is merited and that seekers of all ages and circumstances have what it takes to grow not just old, but old souls.
Press Release: The Making of an Old Soul: A Mystical Revisioning of the Cycle of Life
By noted author and scholar Carol Orsborn, Ph.D.
Publisher: White River Press, Amherst, Mass. Pub date: October 1, 2021. Paperback edition available now on Amazon. To Order, Click HERE.
Growing older in the best of times is challenging. But when aging coincides with perilous times, there is an intensity that can break us free from the limitations of the past and into a future far more precious than we’d ever imagined for ourselves.
So writes author and scholar Carol Orsborn, Ph.D. in the latest of her over 30 books for and about the Boomer generation The Making of an Old Soul: Aging as the Fulfillment of Life’s Promise. Capping her career as an expert in the field of adult development with a mystical experience, Orsborn’s work of spiritual non-fiction has received advanced praise from authors James Hollis, Andy Achenbaum and Rabbi Rami Shapiro, among others, who writes that: “Carol Orsborn’s Making of an Old Soul offers both a vision of what aging has to offer and a roadmap for getting there.”
Orsborn’s breakthrough moment occurred while walking in a cemetery near her home in Tennessee several months into the Covid Pandemic, and was captured in words over the course of her year sequestering in place. What Orsborn suddenly realized is that the classic models of adult development which she encountered during her doctoral studies at Vanderbilt University had gotten key aspects of the life stage progression “pretty much upside down.”
While most models place the peak of the life cycle at or before midlife, Orsborn argues that when viewed through a spiritual lens, it is aging that represents the fulfillment of life’s promise. In her own case, the isolation and confrontation with mortality Covid brought in its wake bore the unexpected consequences of a spiritual quickening. When Orsborn began sharing her insights with her peers, she discovered she wasn’t alone.
“There’s good reason that aging Boomers are what sociologist Wade Clark Roof once termed ‘a generation of seekers.’ Many of us have been searching all of our lives for meaning and purpose: a sense of an arrival that despite our best efforts had somehow eluded us. Then, in the most unanticipated of times and places, we were finding what we’d been looking for. No longer were we just old. We had become old souls,” she writes.
The Making of an Old Soul is distilled into just over 100 pages and is divided into two parts. Part One “The Portal Opens” tells the story of Orsborn’s discovery of the limitations and societal implications of classic life stage theory and her encounter with an enhanced understanding of the arc of life that views aging through a spiritual lens. Part Two “The Arc of Life” shares a new understanding of the progression through 11 life stages leading to old age as culmination.
“The social scientists got us this far in life, and now it is time for the mystics, the sages, spiritual and recovery practices and the conscious aging movement to join in. We also need the stories of old souls—those hearty adventurers who have walked close to the edge and lived to tell the tale. Wayshowers like Florida Scott-Maxwell, Joan Chittister, Ram Dass, Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and many more light the way. Taken together, neither do the scientists and mystics abrogate one another but rather, they connect, complement and complete a new understanding of the progression through life stages leading to old age as fulfillment.”
The Making of an Old Soul will be published in both paperback and eBook format by White River Press October 1, 2021 and will be available through major bookstores both in-person and online. The website for the book, with discussion questions for book clubs, excerpts, ordering links and more, is CarolOrsborn.com.
WHAT THE REVIEWERS ARE SAYING:
Carol Orsborn’s new book is a tour de force—heartfelt, honest, helpful, and healing.
—Andy Achenbaum, Old Age in the New Land: The American Experience since 1790
What is an “old soul,” but someone who has observed, explored, reflected, and seen the deeper patterns beneath the surfaces of life. In The Making of an Old SoulCarol Orsborn shares her story of continuity amid change, and depth amid the daily detritus. Her shared insights will stir the reader to similarly reflect on what abides amid changes, and what brings depth and dignity to our life.
—James Hollis, Living Between Worlds and Prisms: Reflections on this Journey We Call Life.
Bursting with revelations, Carol’s amazing book has set my mind spinning from insight overload! Healing and full of the fierce grace of enlightened aging, it may even help your grown children understand their parents’ new and joyous weirdness. Dive in and discover the sacred mystery of your own life. This book will change you.
—John C. Robinson, The Divine Human
At 76 years old, I found this book to be a gift that I will treasure for as long as I live.
It was the poet John Keats who spoke of our life as “the vale of soul-making.” Alas, Keats knew nothing of old age, since he died at the age of 25. But his phrase is exactly what Carol Orsborn’s book offers us: a passionate belief that later life can be a time of discovery, creation, and unfolding—becoming the person we were meant to be
—Harry (Rick) Moody, retired Vice President for Academic Affairs, AARP
Carol Orsborn has written a stirring book to guide readers along a journey to “something more”— an intense, liberating spiritual merger with the divine. The Making of an Old Soulleads readers toward this final spiritual awakening, thus rewarding the struggles and lessons accumulated through a long life. This book wisely teaches why and how.
—Brent Green, Questions of the Spirit: the Quest for Understanding at a Time of Loss
Carol Orsborn’s book pulsates with the life and wisdom of an old soul. Through personal revelation, she encourages us to live our own lives hopefully, through both shadow and light, trusting that there is “something more” than we might see in the moment.Upon concluding her book, I wept, as I appreciated how remarkable this being human is. Carol and her book are gifts to the world, gifts that will gestate more life in us to be tasted and savored each day.
—Robert L. Weber, The Spirituality of Age
Age and wisdom are not synonymous. Age and liberation are not synonymous. But they could be, and Carol Orsborn’s Making of an Old Soul shows you how. This book offers both a vision of what aging has to offer and a roadmap for getting there.
—Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Surrendered: Shattering the Illusion of Control and Falling Into Grace with 12-Step Spirituality.
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Excerpt from Carol Orsborn’s “Making of an Old Soul: Aging as the Fulfillment of Life’s Promise”
THE PORTAL OPENS
We who are growing old may well appear to have been diminished by time. But if you think so, you would be wrong. There are some amongst us not dulled but burnished by long lives, twists of fate, impossible choices, and grace into something most unexpected. We have not just become old. We have become old souls.
Burning with invisible passion and purpose, we live largely backstage in an alternate universe both wondrous and dangerous. We are at once inspired, beleaguered, and brave. This is the secret world of aging inhabited by the handful of hardy old souls who have found what we were looking for all our lives in the most unanticipated of times and places.
What we discovered is nothing at all like what we’d anticipated but more than we’d hoped for. It is a state both small and humble and, at the same time, the peak of spiritual development. In this parallel universe, we gain access to the inner workings of the entire arc of life. At last, everything makes sense, and we come to understand that nothing of what we’ve been through from the moment we were conceived to the present was ever wasted. We have, in fact, burst through age to freedom.
The portal to this hidden dimension is hard to find under normal circumstances. Rather, it’s a place that finds you, but only when you have given up trying to find it on your own. Do you have a sense of what I’m talking about? Do you persist in believing, despite the negative stereotypes of aging, that however old you are, there is enough time to get what you came here for? Then be affirmed that your hope is merited and that you are a candidate for the fulfillment of life’s promise. But be forewarned. It will take more than you’ve got, but in the end, you wouldn’t have had it any other way.
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