While the book was written in 2018, it begins with a prescient introduction entitled “A World Upside Down”:
“The great moments in life, whether in the life of an individual or an entire culture are existential crises – moments that challenge all aspects of society and all levels of human awareness. We have entered such an extended moment of radical change and alteration, one that is life-defining as well as life-changing. When the troubles become worldwide, affecting both nature and culture, it is time to face up to what has been building up for a long time. Because all things are ultimately interconnected, the challenges we face and the changes underway signal a genuine transformation of the world.”
In many ways, this book mirrors for society what Carl Jung wrote about with respect to the individual. Jung suggested that around midlife, our primary operating system moves from the ego to the soul and, often, it’s some trauma or bad news that forces us there. Meade seems to be suggesting society is having a midlife crisis with a need to shift from “one level to another.” But, this is still a very personal book – not just about society. It’s a book about inner meanings, about finding purpose when all seems pointless. He suggests we move from being self-conscious to becoming soul-conscious.
What makes this particularly relevant to our MEA curriculum is how often he cites the importance of a new kind of elder in this topsy-turvy world:
“A genuine elder stands at least partially outside the social order and beyond the lines of civil authority. In that sense, there is a revelation that genuine elders are not simply the keepers of “law and order.” Rather, the role of elders involves turning to higher laws and deeper truths in order to better see where the common laws and customs have abandoned those who the laws are intended to protect.”
He goes on to suggest that “to heal” is “to make whole” and that elders are particularly suited to lead this way because they’re more comfortable taking the inner journey:
“Once again, the solution to life’s outer dilemmas comes from an inward experience of one’s own soul. Even if ceremonies for converting older people to elders did exist, the actual change must occur inside the souls of those involved. If there is no change at the level of the soul, there will be no change at the level of collective culture.”
I’ll finish with a couple of quotes that speak to why a midlife wisdom school or what Meade might call an “elder prep school” is so essential today, yet society is without such schools and tools for those graduating from adulthood and entering elderhood:
“Although an infant becomes a child simply by aging, a person cannot become an elder by simply becoming older. Elders fall into the category of things that are made, not born. Becoming an elder is not a “natural occurrence;” the qualities needed don’t simply develop from physical changes brought on by aging. Rather, there is something meta-physical involved; something philosophical and spiritual that is required. Old age alone doesn’t make the elder.”
“The elder is not a person, but like youth, it is a state of mind or soul, and in a way everyone has an inner sage or an elder in their soul, and so it doesn’t require that people become older to become wiser, it just requires that all of us, at whatever age we might be wake up to the wisdom inside, to the inner sage and the visionary elder waiting to be recognized within.”
Sounds like we should invite him to teach at MEA, right? In fact, a book he co-wrote and edited is “Crossroads: The Quest for Contemporary Rites of Passage.”