Welcome to The Inner Elder

The years actually refine us. They clarify and invite us to live from that part that’s most essential. It’s a process of getting rid of all the things we don’t need and learning how to use the very few things that are distilled out of our wonderful lives in ways that help ourselves and others.

Welcome, everyone, to The Inner Elder. I’m glad you’re here with us. This is the space where David Lowry helps us tune in to life’s quieter teachers — that inner wisdom some call conscience, the higher self, and some known as the Holy Spirit. Whatever name you give it, it’s that steady, ancient intelligence inside you that’s been guiding you longer than you realize.

And today on The Inner Elder, David is taking about a theme that feels both practical and deeply spiritual: how life itself is a distillation process. He’ll explain how the years clarify us, simplify us, and reveal what’s essential.

So, David, before we go any further… when you say ‘distillation,’ what do you mean?”

What Distillation Means: Refining Into the Essential

In its simplest form, distillation is a refining process. In its simplest form, heat is applied and a vapor arises out of the liquid that you have. Impurities fall away. And what remains is more concentrated, more potent, more essential.

I like the gold illustration where all the various metals are put together in a crucible and fire, begins but slowly the impurities are sifted out until you have pure gold. Our lives can be like that. The life of an elder is like a small vial of essential oil that carries the entire fragrance of an entire field of flowers, and a little bit can go a long way.

 Aging works like that. I don’t think that the years diminish us. I think it concentrates us. Over the years. Stop and think what’s working. And what’s not and have the courage to start getting rid of some of the things that aren’t working you might be surprised at how this life distillation makes you such an effective person.

David, I like how you remind us that distillation isn’t a loss but a refinement. Just as heat purifies gold, the years can purify us—revealing what is most essential. But what are some ordinary ways we might begin the distillation process?

Declutter Your Space: Giving Away What You Don’t Need

It used to be that I had all kinds of things in the house that I hadn’t used in years, but more and more I find myself having the joy of just giving them away to people. I take old coats I don’t wear anymore, that I know somebody could use, and put it in a blessing box. I take an appliance I’m not using and give it to somebody who would use it.

It is not that they’re not valuable, and it’s not that I might not ever use it ever again. It’s just that I use it so infrequently. Wouldn’t it just be better to get that out of my life and give it to somebody else? We can make our house a collection of things that mean the most to us, by distilling out all the things that we really don’t need. Cull your clothes. Cull your kitchen appliances. Cull your pantry. find things you don’t need and distill it.

Years ago, I discovered that I really don’t enjoy fake flowers. I got rid of them all. But I do enjoy nice flowers. I want more of those. Distill what works for you. Create your house by getting rid of the things you don’t use or need and give them to somebody who will use them.

I agree with you. Sometimes wisdom begins with simply letting go of what we no longer use. But more importantly, I think we need to distill our values, beliefs, and even our willingness to be outspoken. We need to distill these too!

Distill Your Values & Daily Habits (Including Exercise)

Find the things most important to you. Maybe it’s faith, family, and friends, or maybe it’s something else. Even in your exercise, and you have to find one that works for you. I’ve distilled it down to what works for me. Strength, balance, flexibility and breath. Those are the four things that I look for in my exercise now. 

David, I love how you name strength, balance, flexibility, and breath as your essentials.  You’re reminding us that distillation isn’t only about things—it’s about values, beliefs, and the practices that sustain us as well. Does the distillation process also include the way we process our emotions?

Distill Away Anger & Drama: Let Your Inner Elder Guide You

Distillation is a refining process, and each day we should look around and say, Do I really need this in my life anymore? Are you dealing with anger? Is there a way you can distill that down where you don’t have that in your life anymore. Do you have drama in your life? Is there a way you can distill your life that will make your life drama free? I believe there is, but you’re going to have to discover it for yourself. And of course, my philosophy is your inner elder will tell you what to do to find the distillation process you need.

Before we can distill anything, we first have to gather it. David reflects on the expansion years—the striving, the proving, the building—that give us something meaningful to refine later.

The Expansion Years: Building Identity Before Refining It

Let’s look at the expansion years as we go through this distillation process.

When you were much younger, you built your identity, you pursued your education, you had a career, you were striving to prove yourself, and you had all kinds of insecurities and ambitions. You had love and ego and passion, and courage and fear. All those things were going on inside of your life. You’re trying to prove yourself or maybe you were just trying to survive and keep your head above water. So many things happen in those identity years.

I remember my early years as a professor working hard to demonstrate competence and seeking recognition and wanting people to know about my work. There was real energy in that striving, and hours spent, some of them paid off and many of them did not. And it was all necessary at the time, wasn’t it? Because without those years of expansion, there would be nothing to refine. You have to gather a lot of things together and let them ferment before you can distill something.

And then comes the heat of midlife. The friction, the disappointments, the unexpected turns. As David shares, this heat doesn’t destroy us—it clarifies us.

Midlife Heat: Friction, Disillusionment, and What It Reveals

And then the midlife comes where the heat begins to be applied and that can bring midlife friction.

Maybe your relationships aren’t working and it’s no wonder because when you’re young, you really don’t know yourself very well. And you’re mixed in with a lot of people that don’t know themselves very well, and all of you are working and fighting and having friction together, and that’s the heat and it brings disappointments.

Maybe you learned that the job that you have been doing for years really isn’t the job that you should be doing. You don’t get those promotions that you wanted, or maybe you determine that, well, this isn’t the job for you. You’ve gotta start over again. Or maybe your investments didn’t work out. You suffer some losses.

Maybe you discover that some systems, maybe it’s our government, or churches, or an organization you belong to and you discover that it’s not working like you thought it would. You come to the sobering realization that you just can’t fix everything.

I recall moments during my years as a dean when I understood, sometimes pretty painfully, that just because I was a leader didn’t mean that I was going to control the outcomes. There’s the job you think you’re going to do, and then there’s the job that you get to do. Problems persist. People get hurt, and systems resist change despite your most honest and intense efforts.

The heat of midlife can be very disillusioning and disappointing. Sometimes you feel diminished by it all. But here’s the thing, heat clarifies things. It reveals areas where you were over attached. It exposes where control was an illusion and teaches us what truly matters, and that’s the important thing.

If we learn from all of those things that we did, then all is well. Did you learn from your divorce? Are you a better person? Did you learn from a promotion you didn’t get? Did you learn something from a friendship that didn’t work out?

The heat of midlife is a great time to see what’s working and not working. It begins to clarify things more in your head.

David, what you’ve just described is something so many of us recognize — that season when the heat of midlife starts to rise. Relationships strain because none of us really knew ourselves yet. Careers that once felt promising begin to feel misaligned. Systems we trusted reveal their limits. And even our best efforts, as you shared from your years as a dean, don’t always shape the outcomes we hoped for.

It’s a disorienting time, but as you remind us, the heat clarifies. It shows us where we were over attached, where control was only an illusion, and where life is inviting us to learn rather than cling.

Now as we continue, David explores the gentle art of release—letting old ambitions, comparisons, and outdated identities evaporate so something truer can remain.”

Letting Go: Releasing Recognition, Comparison, and Old Baggage

Well, we move on to the next part of the distillation process, and that’s letting those vapors rise

As the years pass there’s some things that began to release. Maybe you’ve been involved in a project and years later you realize it really wasn’t as important as I thought it was. We loosen our grip on recognition, always having to be where the decisions are made, or in the room that makes the decisions. Or we let go of comparison.

So many people over the years I have criticized and thought, oh, if I were doing that job, I would do it much different. I would be so much better. Comparing, right? Comparing, saying that we would be better than others. But then we discover when we have those opportunities that it’s a little bit harder than we thought. That sometimes there are constraints we didn’t know about. And sometimes we’re just not as good as we think we were. If we accept the limitations of our bodies and the unfinished nature of our lives, we discover that we don’t have to be central to everything going on about us. It’s like cleaning out a closet that you’ve filled for decades. You discover the old sweaters that you can’t fit into anymore, or the shirts that have holes in them. Even if they were something that you really like, you really don’t need those anymore. And you begin to ask, why am I holding on to all this stuff? Do I still need it? Many of you have probably gone up to the attic and seen tubs of papers that you have for your children when they were in first or fourth grade, and they’re like 10 of those tubs up in your attic and you say, They don’t seem to care about it, why am I holding on to all of this?

It’s time to let that stuff go. Sometimes as things evaporate, urgency and resentments and the needs to impress, we discover that those things can begin to be burned away, and what remains begins to condense into a better distillation of who we are and who we’re meant to be.

You see, we weren’t meant to hold on to all of those experiences. We were meant to experience them, and to learn from them, but we weren’t supposed to hold on to them.

David, what you’re describing here feels so familiar — that season when the years themselves start loosening our grip. Projects we once poured ourselves into don’t seem as important anymore. The need to be in the room where decisions are made softens. And even those old comparisons — the ones where we imagined we’d do it better — begin to fall away once life shows us how complex things really are.

You paint such a vivid picture of it… like opening a closet that’s been packed for decades or climbing into the attic and finding boxes no one needs anymore. It’s the moment we realize we don’t have to carry everything we once held onto — not the roles, not the resentments, not the need to impress.

What Remains: Clarity, Presence, and the 10-Foot Rule

So what’s left after decades of living and loving and losing and learning? Ah, it’s clarity. That’s what you get.

You begin to know what matters and what does not. And this clarity saves you emotional energy, enormous amounts of it. And it gives you a gentleness that is very strong. You become a well distilled life, a smoother life, yet more potent. Maybe you speak fewer words, but they can carry greater weight.

You have an economy about you. You don’t need to buy things at every place you visit anymore. You don’t need those things in your home. You don’t have to hold on to all the things you once had. You don’t waste outrage on people who don’t care. You choose where to invest your energy, even in your own families, and you learn the vital importance of presence. The presence of good friends. and your presence to them.

You’re freed from a need to perform, and you can truly be with others. You see, people don’t often seek us out for answers, but for steadiness, for the calm that comes from sitting with someone who’s no longer trying to prove anything, just to be a presence.

Do you have a friend who’s hurting maybe in the hospital? Go be a presence to that person. Don’t feel like you have to say anything important. Just go be there. Do you have someone who could use a friendly voice? Go be that steady presence. That’s all it takes.

I have what I call the 10-foot rule. Just be a presence to the people within 10 feet of you, wherever you are during the day. No need to perform. Just truly be with others. Be that steady person.

David, I love how you describe this part of the journey — that after all the living and loving and losing and learning, what finally rises to the surface is clarity. Not the sharp kind that cuts, but the kind that softens us. The kind that helps us see what matters and what doesn’t and frees us from wasting energy on things that never deserved our outrage in the first place.

You paint such a vivid picture of this distilled life… fewer words, but deeper ones. Less clutter, inside and out. A quieter strength that shows up not through performance, but through presence. And I appreciate how you remind us that people don’t come to us for answers — they come for steadiness. For the calm of someone who’s no longer trying to prove anything.

And that leads beautifully into your 10‑foot rule — this simple, powerful invitation to be a steady presence to the people right around us, wherever we are.

Becoming the Elder: Integrating Experience into Wisdom

And finally, all of this condenses and you discover you are a different person than you were years ago. You’re the elder. The inner elder isn’t defined by age alone. It’s formed through experience that’s been faced honestly and integrated with care.

So, you look back on your life, all of those parts that embarrass you, your mistakes, the things that you wish you could take back, the things you did that you wouldn’t do today. All of those things are integrated in a knowledge way. It becomes a part of you that knows how to pause before reacting. It’s the part that recognizes what’s really essential. It’s the part that holds complexity and doesn’t panic.

So, if you’ve ever noticed the rings on the inside of a tree trunk, you know that years can add depth, not just height to a tree.

The inner elder is the sum of all of those rings, a record of the seasons that you survived and integrated it all. That inner elder is the voice that remains when all of those things that you thought were so important falls away and is revealed to you for what they were meant to be.

David, this is such a tender part of the journey — the moment when all the refining, all the releasing, all the learning finally settles, and we realize we’re not who we once were. Something in us has condensed. We’ve become the elder, not because of age alone, but because experience has been faced honestly and woven into wisdom.

I love how even the embarrassing parts, the mistakes, the things we wish we could take back, all become part of a deeper knowing. The part of us that pauses before reacting. The part that recognizes what’s essential. The part that can hold complexity without panic.

And that image of the tree rings — it’s a reminder that the inner elder is the voice that remains when everything unnecessary falls away

A Weekly Practice: The “Distillation Question”

Here’s a simple practice you might try this week. I call it the distillation question. At the end of the day, take a moment and ask yourself a simple question, what mattered today and what was really essential about the things you did? This is different from other things that you may have been taught to do over the years, such as look at your day and write down the things you did and contemplate some of those things. This is saying what really mattered today.

If you think about all the things you did, all the people you saw, the people you spoke to, what really mattered the most? Was it all the errands that you took care of? Was it the paying of the bills? Was it cooking the food? Or was it maybe 30 seconds of time out of your day that you took to pause and talk to somebody and offer an encouraging word? Maybe that was the thing that mattered most of the day.

What mattered today? What didn’t matter? So many of us have plans for the day. I think it’s a good idea to plan your day. Wouldn’t take you away from that. But it may well be that the plans you make are not the things that are going to matter the most that day. What can you release from the things you’ve been doing that don’t matter anymore? If you do this over time, you’ll probably notice a pattern and a clarity that emerges from paying light attention to the things that matter.

At the end of it all, your legacy, whatever that’s going to be, isn’t going to be how much stuff you got done and how well you did your to-do list, but it’ll probably be more about how you made people feel, how generous you were, your willingness to help, and your willingness to be a service to other people.

David, I really appreciate how practical this next part is. You bring it right down into the rhythm of an ordinary day by inviting us to pause at day’s end and ask a simple but revealing question: What actually mattered today? Not what we accomplished, not what we checked off the list, but what was essential?

And I love how you name the small things — the brief conversation, the encouraging word, the moment of presence — as the places where meaning often hides. It’s a gentle reminder that our plans aren’t always the things that end up mattering most, and that noticing this over time can bring a surprising clarity.

You also remind us that legacy won’t be measured by how much we got done, but by how we made people feel, how generous we were, and how willing we were to serve.

Closing Reflections + Share the Episode

As we grow old, the world often tells us that we’re fading, but I think something better is happening. I think you’re being distilled. I think you’re being clarified by experience. You’re being softened by loss and strengthened by love, and made more present to what truly, truly matters.

The inner elder is not waiting at the end of life. It’s already here. It’s within you. It’s shaped by every joy, every sorrow, every moment that you choose to keep your heart open. So, this week, notice what’s essential, what can be released, and listen for the quiet wisdom that’s been forming all along within you. So until next time, live with curiosity, walk with gentleness, and trust the inner elder you’re becoming.

  David and I thank you for listening to the Inner Elder. We encourage you to try today’s practices and see if anything shifts in your life. If you enjoyed the show, please like and share so others can find it too. And as you move through your days, remember to listen to your inner elder, the gentle, steady voice that remembers who you truly are. Thank you for listening. We’ll talk to you again real soon.