About the Author: Barbara Lee Andersen Bolling
Barbara Lee Andersen Bolling is a lifelong spiritual seeker and the elder of her large extended family of husband Don, four children and nine grandchildren spread from New Hampshire to Florida. She attended Emma Willard School and The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, married in 1954, and moved in 1974 to live and study with Guru Sivananda-Valentina, who left the earth plane in 1983. Her spiritual awakening began when she first read Huston Smith's book on the world religions and continued through study of many spiritual texts and trainings to the present.
During my winter sojourn in Sarasota, while attending these 2 ½ hour weekly sessions led by Meredith Jordan, I (and 65 others) embarked on an inward-turned journey to discover our true inner being, to let our outer life of busyness in the world drain away, to learn from today's living spiritual elders so that we too could assume the role of "elder" in our own sphere of influence. "Becoming an elder is quite different from becoming elderly," Jordan says. "It is a time when we focus internally on qualities of character, leadership and integrity, growing and sharing those traits. Being an elder means using every opportunity to give others something of what life has led you to understand and embody."