a wide ranging interview with a guy I've wanted to interview for almost ten years-- a big picture visionary who weaves myth, anthropology, story and etymology so we see our world in new, deeper, more meaningful ways.

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I first encountered the genius of Michael Meade at the founding mythic Journeys conference. I've been wanting to  interview him ever since.

Michael Meade BIO

Michael Meade is a renowned storyteller, author, and scholar of mythology, anthropology, and psychology. He combines hypnotic storytelling, street-savvy perceptiveness, and spellbinding interpretations of ancient myths with a deep knowledge of cross-cultural rituals. He has an unusual ability to distill and synthesize these disciplines, tapping into ancestral sources of wisdom and connecting them to the stories we are living today.

 He is the author of Why The World Doesn't End,  Fate and Destiny: The Two Agreements of The Soul, The World Behind the World, The Water of Life: Initiation and the Tempering of the Soul; editor, with James Hillman and Robert Bly, of Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart; and editor of Crossroads: A Quest for Contemporary Rites of Passage. Meade is founder of Mosaic Voices Multicultural Foundation  a nonprofit network of artists, activists, and community builders that encourages greater understanding between diverse peoples.

Endorsement blurbs for Michael Meade:

"Michael Meade is magic. Unlike anyone else is likely to encounter, Michael Meade is one of the greatest living teachers of our time." --Alice Walker

"Michael Meade is a master-storyteller and story-teacher of the soul's unfolding. He addresses the mess we're in and helps us each discover the unique threads, the poetic DNA we must live out. As interpreter and mythic guide, he is the best there is." --Coleman Barks Rumi: Bridge to the Soul

"'Our job isn't to comprehend everything, but to learn which story we are in.' So advises Michael Meade in this thoughtful and subtle book, abundant with stories and ideas about this wold and the otherworld. A rich, rewarding and knowing book." --Robert Bly

He's doing two workshops in Columbia Maryland,  May 10, 11, 

Why the World Doesn't End 

and

Finding Genius 

Very rough interview notes -- mostly questions and quickly written during the interview-- not edited.  These are a teaser, so you'll listen to the interview. A transcript will come soon. 

What do you do, who are you?

What's your website?

What are your goals?

What is important in this world?

What are the major patterns that you see in the world?

What are the most important challenges people face?

What can we do to meaningfully make a difference?

Who are your heroes?

What is the most important story?

What story do you have for people who are seriously engaged in attempting to make the world a better place?

What is the most important story?

Always two big stories going on-  Why are they significant?

We've lost touch with the old stories" which showed how things were interconnected. 

Accidental being?   

What do you mean by inner story?

What is genius?

Comes from older word, Geni-- the spirit that's already there.

Talent, purpose". unique style-- old idea-- inscribed in each of us is a style-- a personal style which is unique to a person. 

A more awakened inspirited life. 

Interior of a person's life is a combination of spirit and soul" 

Who are your hero's-- living-- 

Joseph Campbell, Mircea Eliade , WIlliam Blake, Goethe, Yeats, Carl Jung, James Hillman, Robert Bly, 

Nelson Mandela, activists 

People who learn how to stand in their own depth. 

What are you referring to when to talk about fire, water, earth and air

Cosmology vs. chaos 

chaos means gaping maw or dark hole.

This is connection you are talking about. Can you talk about connection. 

We're transitioning from an information era to an age of connection.

community-- has unity-- connected. 

Social media and internet are not full connected-- most connected have soulful connection. 

So how do people get deep connection and soulful connectivity.

A person is a body wrapped around a soul that is wrapped around a story. 

The purpose of culture is to cultivate-- to bring out of each boy and girl what is already in there.

The only meaningful revolution is from the inside out. Revolutions from the outside" turn into their opposite.

Healing is a revolutionary act. 

Nature is just spirit with clothes on-- old African idea.

Favorite story to tell when George Bush was in office

       Story from southern Mexico and Guatemala, at it's roots a Mayan story. 

The original meaning of pilgrimage"

Ideology-- a limited system of thought that's used to replace the natural imagination and inner story of a person. 

If young people are not brought into the culture, they will burn the village down. 

Nihilism is at the center of terrorism. 

What is nihilism?

Why the World Doesn't End

Creation is ongoing

Creation starts over again when things get difficult or go awry

turning at the end of one era and beginning of another era.

We are in the end beginning. 

the word end doesn't mean it's all over. threads or remnants of what's left are what the beginnings of what's next are made from. 

What is story?

Each story is a storehouse. 

Story is our ".. of narrative intelligence. 

What is the story of the world?

Words have stories inside them--- end means lose end or tail end-- the remnants of what

You speak of apocalypsis-- betwixt and between where the veil lifts to reveal what's been hidden. 

There are so many movies about apocalypse, a TV channel dedicated to Preppers who believe society is about to collapse.

Apocalypse doesn't mean the end-- a big fiery end-- it means the lifting of a veil. 

Two sides to revelation.

extracting light from darkness-- extracting creative energy from the troubles of our own lives.

You say, we are "Living in the shadow of democracy"

"You could say that we are living on the shadow side of democracy. You can see that shadow in the rise of fundamentalism, where narrowly constructed beliefs take the place of genuine imagination. And without imagination, there is no real freedom. There is a collapse of imagination, leaving simple ideological oppositions.

Ideologies are, by my definition, small, one-sided, and mean-spirited ideas."

Creation often begins with conflict and polar opposites. 

I mention my interview with Daniel Quinn, discussion about civilization--- 

Civilizations rise on the basis of a particular story-- in America, Freedom-- not the experience of freedom, but the idea of Freedom. 

Rubble doesn't necessarily mean fallen buildings. It could mean the end of too-big-to-fail banks and multinational corporations. 

Authors Bio:

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.

Check out his platform at RobKall.com

He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity

He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com

more detailed bio:

Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.

Rob Kall Wikipedia Page

Rob Kall's Bottom Up Radio Show: Over 400 podcasts are archived for downloading here, or can be accessed from iTunes. Or check out my Youtube Channel

Rob Kall/OpEdNews Bottom Up YouTube video channel

Rob was published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com for several years.

Rob is, with Opednews.com the first media winner of the Pillar Award for supporting Whistleblowers and the first amendment.

To learn more about Rob and OpEdNews.com, check out A Voice For Truth - ROB KALL | OM Times Magazine and this article.

For Rob's work in non-political realms mostly before 2000, see his C.V.. and here's an article on the Storycon Summit Meeting he founded and organized for eight years.

Press coverage in the Wall Street Journal: Party's Left Pushes for a Seat at the Table

Talk Nation Radio interview by David Swanson: Rob Kall on Bottom-Up Governance June, 2017

Here is a one hour radio interview where Rob was a guest- on Envision This, and here is the transcript..

To watch Rob having a lively conversation with John Conyers, then Chair of the House Judiciary committee, click here. Watch Rob speaking on Bottom up economics at the Occupy G8 Economic Summit, here.

Follow Rob on Twitter & Facebook.

His quotes are here

Rob's articles express his personal opinion, not the opinion of this website.

Join the conversation:

On facebook at Rob Kall's Bottom-up The Connection Revolution

and at Google Groups listserve Bottom-up Top-down conversation