Tuesday, November 3, 2026
Life is a process of emptying and moving into the oneness of life and death. It is living through dying.
—Sally Severino
Dr. Sally Severino writes of the process of aging as an opportunity to more fully experience union with God.
Human beings are meaning-making creatures. Our lives take on new meaning with age. As human longevity has increased, aging no longer means inevitable decline, deterioration, or disability. It is a time to become more authentically ourselves—to be more freely who we really are in the fullness of our ripening.
Spiritually, my childhood entailed baptism and confirmation—a time when I experienced God as parent. During mid-life my relationship with God became an understanding of God as partner. During senior life my relationship with God has taken the form of realizing the oneness of all life, including my journey toward oneness with God. This is consistent with what Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung described as the seven tasks of aging:
- accepting death as a part of life
- reflecting on one’s life
- limiting one’s time and energy
- letting go of ego dominance
- bringing opposites within us together into wholeness
- finding meaning in one’s life
- engaging our unused potentials in “dying with life”
In other words, we empty ourselves in imitation of Jesus. When we are totally empty and only God is within us, then we recover our true selves.
When we realize God as our true being, we realize our true selves. All we need to do is open our eyes to the goodness we have possessed all along. In seeing this goodness, we can die to “our” life and live the unique expression of God we were created to be. We can let God act in and through us.
Severino describes how, by fully welcoming our oneness with God, we can offer our lives to the world:
We are not only the recipients of divine love; we are also the dispensers of love in the world. When we are one with Christ, our hearts and souls are full of a compassion that then flows out into the world through Christ….
We are each given the mind of Christ and the ability to give this gift to others.All we need to do is become aware, be grateful, and share our uniqueness with the world around us. Christ encourages us to do as he did—to act freely, expressing our gift in each unrepeatable moment of our lives. The spirituality of aging is a process of becoming increasingly Christlike—of emptying ourselves until only God lives within us. Just as we are each a unique image of Christ in the world, so too is our ripening process unique. God is always knocking, wanting to enter our lives. All we need to do is open.
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the neuroscience of deep character change
(in a day of quick fixes)
| CHUCK DEGROAT NOV 1 |
It can be confusing to distill what real change looks like amidst the abundance of resources out there.
Should I add new spiritual practices?
Should I focus on my emotional health?
Should I try to change my everyday habits?
While all of these things are important, there is an underlying neuroscientific wisdom that holds much of it together—the body’s innate wisdom, which we can cooperate with for the sake of deep character change.
Here are five high-level principles that lay a foundation for deep change.
1. Regulation precedes maturation
Your nervous system profoundly influences how you perceive the world and respond relationally. And as I say in the new book, it’s almost impossible to change when your body is locked in threat mode.
Threat mode is a body in dysregulation, with little capacity to adapt or grow. It’s a survival orientation, where your internal resources are bound up in self-protection rather than connection and growth.
So, we need to create the conditions for growth by turning down your threat system and expanding your inner capacity for change. Otherwise, we may be inadvertently overwhelming your system with haphazard attempts at change.
The change process often begins here—by working on creating the relational and internal safety that allows for a body to inhabit a new way of being in the world.
2. Character is patterned
Neuroscience teaches us that what fires together, wires together. And repeated experiences strengthen neural pathways…the very pathways that shape your habitual ways of thinking, feeling, reacting, and relating, and which become your character.
I know it’s common today to see books on character engaging ancient virtues—and I appreciate that—but these can become abstract. Character is anything but abstract. It’s who you’ve become over time. This is why insight or behavioral modification alone doesn’t produce lasting change.
Your habits weren’t born overnight—and through the wisdom of neuroplasticity, you can slowly begin to reshape them. But this often requires more time and patience that we’re willing to invest amidst many other microwavable interventions.
3. Character is formed and re-formed in connection
Your nervous system developed within your closest relationships, and continues to develop over a lifetime in the context of relationship. Those habits—as I said, they didn’t emerge overnight. They evolved based on the relative safety and connection you experienced. Who you are didn’t happen yesterday—you’ve been ‘becoming’ for quite a long time!
So, character maturation isn’t an individual achievement nor is it gained through mere self-help effort. To change, you’ll need to experience safety, trust, vulnerability, and belonging—and where there has been significant moral failure or betrayal, significant accountability.
Creating the proper relational conditions is critical for real change.
4. There is a story your brain is telling you
Your brain is predictive. It actively interprets incoming data based on previous experiences. And in time, it forms a story.
“Keep your guard up. You never know what’s coming.”
“If you want something done right, do it yourself.”
“Never let them see you sweat.”
“Don’t get your hopes up.”
“If I’m not in control, everything will fall apart.”
These stories can feel like objective reality when they’re simply ways you’ve learned to inhabit your world—for some really good reasons, I’m sure. But these stories do not need to define your future.
Your body can learn a new way of being in the world and a new and better story to live within.
5. You become what you behold
Character change depends, in large part, on what you attend to. When you’ve lived for years in threat mode—within whatever story that requires you to inhabit—you attend to the world in a braced and vigilant way. Your attention narrows. You control what’s in front of you. You tend to fight or flee. And it’s almost impossible to hold space for beauty, goodness, and gratitude.
People are often surprised when I invite them to pay attention to what they’re paying attention to. But this simple act of intentional attention can begin to reshape reality. By doing this, you can make what has been invisible visible, bringing conscious attention to what has become habitual, engaging the prefrontal cortex, strengthening your capacity for self-awareness and emotional regulation, and increasing your sense of agency.
In time, you’ll behold a whole new reality.
In sum, character change is not about an exhausting attempt to reach for what feels like some unattainable and abstract virtue. It’s more about cultivating a capacity for deep change, through internal and relational safety and regulation, through intentional attention, through a growing awareness of your story and your state.
Deep change is possible—but it’s a much more satisfying process when it’s a process that cooperates with your nervous system rather than fighting against it, which is so often the case when we simply apply behavioral or spiritual interventions willy-nilly.
Character change, in the end, cooperates with your God-created, embodied wisdom. And it reveals that what you most deeply long for is possible, not least because God made this pathway of transformation possible in-and-through the unique way he designed you.
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Individual Reflection
Which of your scars is still doing the work of a wall?
Group Discussion — choose one
- Which of your patterns are ripening with age, and which are just hardening?
- Where has your spiritual practice been one more quick fix laid over a body still braced for threat?
- What have you been beholding lately, and what is it making you into?
