Observing the consequences of human behavior shows that both actions and inactions inevitably have both positive and negative results, and outcomes are often not predictable in advance. Psychologists generally agree that aging is accompanied by an increase in introspection or reflection. Learning to accept the self with all its frailties requires rising above personal desires and standards to a more transcendent viewpoint, and learning to witness the self without evaluating it is a skill that most definitely supports spiritual development. Numerous scholars have observed that adult development is an incremental process involving mastery of increasingly transcendent aspects of inner life. 9 Andrew Achenbaum and Lucinda Orwoll 10 tied the development of wisdom to an increasingly transcendent attitude toward oneself, toward relationships with others, and toward worldly aims.
Transcendence is a vital dimension of learning to BE as one is.
And aging provides the opportunity to develop the base of psychological and social skills from which one can exercise the freedom to reside in a state of nonpersonal consciousness. To let go of attachments to physical, psychological and social attributes requires being fully functional in these areas. Detachment requires a body and mind that can take care of basic needs with only minimal intervention and monitoring by the calculative mind. Social aging is mainly a process in which society loses interest in the participation of aging people. Society willingly, even eagerly, lets aging people go.