Laura Dawn: I was watching the Living Beautifully retreat, that you co led with Pema Chodron, who’s also been such an inspiration in my life. And you shared about the Hopi prophecy, and

I’d love to hear the origin story of how this Aligned for you to start teaching about that particular prophecy.,

Meg Wheatley: So I first encountered this prophecy in 2000 when it was issued.

But, It’s when we were doing all this work on Y2K and preparing for massive system breakdowns with the change to a four digit year and a lot of people prepared and nothing really bad happened. And I let it go and then it came back to me as I was writing Perseverance. I kept seeing water image and in fact the book Perseverance.

which is just like a day to day guide of how to persevere. Um, it, it does now have water image along the whole bottom. Cause I kept seeing that. I went to visit a friend who was, uh, Hopi pipe carrier. She’s, is British and American in her eighties. And she had been initiated into the Hopi tribe and nation.

And, and she was. A pipe carrier, which means you have full authority and do rituals and you’re the carrier of the wisdom tradition. And her name was Ann Dozier. And I went to see Ann and she had just been to ceremony on the Macy’s in Arizona. And , I asked her, I said, so what did the elders say to you?

And they said. pay attention to the prophecy. And there have been many people before then who had said, well, it’s not authentic. Someone wrote me that, no, it’s, I wrote it and it has all these other parts and so it’s, origin was a little

unknown until Anne said the elders told us to work with the prophecy. And then I knew it was authentic and I knew that was the water image that I’ve been seeing for the book.

Laura Dawn: Hmm. Hmm. Hmm.

How often do they put out a prophecy like this?

Meg Wheatley: Depends on the, it depends on the nation, it depends on their, their, um, stewardship.

So the Hopi are responsible for the Earth, and so are the Kogi, I think. Mm

Laura Dawn: hmm.

Meg Wheatley: But each nation, indigenous nation, feels it has a particular stewardship. And many of them, I mean, there’s a long tradition of United Tribes going to the UN, not being allowed to speak.

Finally being given an opportunity to present their call to action, their view, their horror at what’s happening to the earth.

But, uh, it is a terrible history and just not listening to them. And, um, I was recently rereading a poem by a Canadian Indigenous academic who, the last line of her poem is that her teachers told her, when everything is lost, then they will listen. Um, but now there’s a great resurgence of Indigenous wisdom coming forth.

It’s too late. And that’s what the Kogi in their last film recognized. It’s too late. It tried to warn us early on.

So , the Hopi prophecy for me is so perfect. Because it describes our actions in the face of this unstoppable climate catastrophe that we’ve unleashed on ourselves, but is now irreversible. And the last line of the poem, before I read it, is, We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. That, in and of itself, has a beautiful lineage.

It’s the last line of a poem by the African American poet, Poet June Jordan, who wrote a longer poem in honor of the women of South Africa, who in 1956, I think it was, marched 40, 000 women and children on the capital of Pretorius. To oppose, stand up against the new banning laws, which were severely restrictive, just as apartheid was really gaming ground.

And somehow they communicated. There’s no internet, no phones, just literally word of mouth. And they all showed up that day. And it’s a seminal event in the history of South Africa. I think they still have it in front of their, uh, nation’s home page. But she ended that poem in tribute to the feminine spirit and the rising of the women and the feminine spirit.

She ended that poem with, we are the ones we’ve been waiting for. But she wrote that many years ago and then it was taken and used again. I mean, it’s a gorgeous poem. Important phrase, so yeah, Alice Walker has a whole book with that title and they’re beautiful songs with that phrase.

this poem is dedicated to my fellow swimmers.

And it comes from Oribe, the longest inhabited village in the U. S., and it’s on a mesa in Arizona. Here is a river flowing now very fast. It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid, who will try to hold on to the shore. They are being torn apart and will suffer greatly. Know that the river has its destination.

The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river and keep our heads above water. And I say, see who is there with you and celebrate. At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally, least of all ourselves. For the moment we do, our spiritual growth and journey comes to a halt.

The time of the lone wolf is over. Gather yourselves, banish the word struggle from your attitude and vocabulary. All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration, for we are the ones we have been waiting for.

Laura Dawn: I have,

Meg Wheatley: of course, worked with this prophecy and wanted us to know it, to identify ourselves as those brave ones who push off into the middle of the river and keep our heads above water. And that’s harder and harder as we’re confronted with all these overwhelmingly destructive, mean spirited and evil dynamics now that have destroyed possibilities, have destroyed human lives, the lives of thousands of species.

And the mother planet, so pushing off into the river, this prophecy also gives instructions. Gather yourselves, you know, the time of the lone wolf is over. We can’t do this alone. And the part that has been most challenging, confronting to me is banish the word struggle from your attitude and your vocabulary.

uh huh.

Meg Wheatley: All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration. So I keep reminding myself of how to be in this work of being a warrior for the human spirit, taking on this very noble historic role that is only ever a few people who step into it in order to preserve community, in order to be exemplars of the best of human possibility, our best qualities.

And, um, We can only do it together and then when it feels like struggle, I now know, let’s just stop and let’s get back into an attitude of pure gratitude that I can do this work, I can be in this work,

I can

Meg Wheatley: offer this work,

and the we here is, you know, everyone who chooses this very way. noble, important, hard, dangerous role of being a warrior for life, not a militant warrior, not an aggressive warrior, but only armed with two weapons of insight and compassion.

That takes a lot of work also to learn how to not be triggered, to learn how to not add to the fear and aggression that was just everywhere in setting. Yeah.

Laura Dawn: Um, Hmm. There’s so much there. When I heard you say earlier, it’s too late.

You know, we don’t want to fall into despair and we need hope. How do you navigate that in your own life?

Meg Wheatley: Well, um, my newest book, is called Restoring Sanity. And it speaks to the need for us to develop islands of sanity. And it gives a lot of practices. The most practical book I’ve ever written because the only reason we want to take on the role of warrior for the human spirit is so we can define where we can serve, not so we feel better, not so we don’t get pulled down by despair and depression and anger and powerlessness.

I have these experiences multiple times a week, multiple times a week, but. I know why I’m here and I know I want to serve and then I have to develop the skills to see clearly so I can act wisely and that takes training, that takes changing your ability to perceive what’s going on. It takes developing a stable mind so you don’t get overwhelmed by your triggers or by fear.

But It is a response to the despair and the cynicism and the hopelessness we feel

because

Meg Wheatley: we decide who do I want to be, right? And who I want to be is someone two, twofold. I want to be the embodiment of the best human qualities, which are hardly visible these which are hardly visible these days. in most places The subtitle of Restoring Insanity is Practices to Awaken Generosity, Creativity, and Kindness.

Um, those are basic human qualities when we are fully human. They’re not available when we’re caught in prison by fear and back in the reptilian primitive brain. It’s just not possible to be thoughtful, kind, compassionate. You’re only self protective and that’s what we see everywhere in the world now,

So what do I do with my despair? Where do I find hope? You don’t need hope. You need possibility. You need to see where you might be of usefulness, okay? We’re not changing the world. We’re not reversing anything that’s going on with planetary dynamics, laws of chemistry, biology, physics.

We created this mess, but we can’t undo it. It’s just impossible. But hope is of such a dangerous concept because it always comes with fear. I mean, it’s one word in Buddhist teachings, hope and fear. Because you can’t get one without the other. So you put all your energy into activism, into hoping for results.

And then when they don’t happen or something even worse happens, then you’re not only disappointed, but you can grow very cynical over time and you can grow very, um, angry and rage filled. So what I want is people to be able to develop clear seeing. Without our triggers, without our judgments, without our biases, and then to be able to look within their sphere of influence or their family or their community or a momentary situation and ask, so what’s needed here, not what I need, not what I want, but what’s needed here and then to Ask the second question, which is probably even more important.

Am I the one to serve that need at this time? You know, if you just ask what’s needed here, you will still be overwhelmed with crises and possibilities. But if you then ask, so am I the right one at this time? Am I stable enough? Am I grounded enough? Do I have support so that I can enter into this issue, mess, problem, chaos?

And be the presence of insight and compassion.

Laura Dawn: When you talk about hope and fear, it makes me think of a reframe around trust, that we’re not trusting that it’s all going to be rosy dandy in the end. You know, that we’re actually trusting that life is reflecting back to us as a consequence of our own actions and that we have the capacity to show up and face whatever is we’re being met with in the present moment, and I think that that’s a big reframe around trust

Meg Wheatley: Two things together that I’d like to separate for a moment. When we say we trust life or we trust the universe, very common phrase. Often that’s just a disguised form of hope. Like I trust it’s all going to work out because I get this played back to me since I wrote so much about chaos theory. Life makes order out of chaos.

Well, not in most cases, actually, you know, life makes her own order, which in this case is uninhabitable earth as we, we destroyed the conditions for life.

You don’t make the oceans cooler. You don’t make the air cleaner. You don’t make the, Um, many things going on in the atmosphere not happen like aerosol masking effect, which creates greater heat. You don’t turn down the temperature of an overheating planet just by stopping what you’re doing. And of course, we’re not stopping what we’re doing, we’re increasing.

Our consumption and use of hydrocarbons and now the oil companies just announced a few days ago, we’re going to drill 8 percent more than we did this year. They’re destroying the planet through their own willful greed, but that’s, that’s human catastrophe, but the planet has its own laws.

We overreached. We. overused. We cannot change now. We could have changed maybe in the eighties when the information was there. And still leadership nation states are just caught in their own intense protection through military might, through the most modern weapons. So we’re not coming together. And I would just say Michael Dowd’s website, Post Doom, lays it out in brilliant, but Understandable and acceptable terms, coming to terms with overshoot. So, to mess with mother nature, period.

Laura Dawn: So there were two things about the trust piece, and you said the first one that it’s masked, hope, and the second one.

Meg Wheatley: And the second one is, we could trust ourselves. To be decent, kind, compassionate, smart people, humans, being fully human is the phrase I’m now using. We could trust ourselves that those qualities are still available. They’ve never left us, they’ve just been covered over with the pressures, strains, and fears of this time, which push us out of our frontal lobes, our human brains.

best selves and make it impossible to be thoughtful or to even think about other people. So we can trust our basic spiritual natures, which are fundamentally intelligent and generous and compassionate, but how we get to those and then rely on them. is what takes, takes work. It takes training.

Laura Dawn: When you say clear seeing, is that synonymous with insight for you?

Meg Wheatley: Clear seeing is a deliberate practice of seeing, getting rid of my filters, getting rid of my biases, my judgments, my first impressions. You know, we all see, the minute we see somebody, we make up a story about them unconsciously or they trigger a past bad or good experience and we instantly like or dislike them.

This is just how human perception works. You can learn to move past that first perception and get curious about a person. And easiest way to do that, which is well known now, is ask someone for their story. And the minute you hear this story, you will no longer be locked into your own biases and prejudices about them.

It’s always a wonderful, wondrous experience. So we can develop much greater perceptual ability. But insight is different. Insight, I believe, comes from, I know it comes from, dwelling mind, not analytic mind, these are the two minds that were, that Heidegger described and I use them a lot. When you’re in contemplative mind, you’re not trying to figure things out, you’re not trying to dissect or analyze, you’re just letting your mind be open and from there comes insights, which I know from my own experience are also not just the work of my mind, but were given to me also.

Laura Dawn: It makes me think of the line in the prophecy that we are to take nothing personally, least of all ourselves, and yet everything is so through our lens, and we forget about it, and moment to moment, and I mean that’s what the latest research in neuroscience is showing in terms of, you know, our past recreates our future, we’re constantly lugging the past around with us, and Everyone is so hyper reactive, it’s like we’re taking things personally at an all time high, which is the irony.

Meg Wheatley: Exactly, exactly, Laura. Yeah, you know, it’s not just neuroscience that I mean neuroscience is finally catching up a little bit with spiritual wisdom, which is if you are living in your past, which means your habits and your reactions and still keeping alive in your memory or your anger or whatever, something that happened in the past.

If you’re bringing the past into the present, it absolutely predicts your future. Now that’s Spiritualism. I read a lot of neuroscience, but let’s give credit where credit is due here.

Laura Dawn: Absolutely. In

Meg Wheatley: spiritual traditions, this has all been clear forever, that, we create our own experience, and then we hang on to it, even though it’s not real anymore, and it’s not the present moment.

Mm

hmm.

Meg Wheatley: That’s why so much work now that we’re benefiting from is around meditation and developing our consciousness so that we’re not imprisoned by these past reactions, these past habitual patterns.

Laura Dawn: Would you say that meditation is one of the best practices for pushing off the shore?

Meg Wheatley: I would say it’s the necessary practice.

I don’t know how anyone can truly be present and open and unencumbered by their own thoughts. Mind their own filters without learning to watch your mind in meditation, not to obtain peace of mind, but to be able to notice when your emotions shift, to be able to notice when you’re feeling fine and all of a sudden there’s anxiety in your body.

Just catching yourself, but more and more quickly because in meditation you learn to watch thoughts and notice when you follow them and then come back to being present. So for me, it’s, it’s the lifeboat, I guess, if I want to keep going with the river image at all.

Laura Dawn: Do you feel like the teachings of groundlessness are really helpful for people right now? Oh gosh, yes.

Meg Wheatley: Well, I think the problem is groundlessness or seeking ground holding onto the shore.

Mm-Hmm. . And so the teachings. You know, the essence of Buddhism is. Change is all there is. How to live a good life, be in compassionate relationships, uh, whatever is happening. I mean, that’s the essence of Buddhism is a path. And um, it’s all about, Expecting change and noticing when you’re grasping on, looking for some level of certainty or grasping onto hope or grasping onto a relationship that’s run its course or grasping on anything like that.

Um, but there is ground here and there’s a ground in, in the inner confidence of

not being disturbed when things don’t go your way, not being focused or that this is what I expected. And then this is what happened. I mean, there’s a way of really being in the river. Um, It is different than being, it’s a kind of grounding, but it sounds a little paradoxical, but Right. Go the flow. Well, not quite, but have enough confidence in yourself that you will not reach for certainty.

Mm-Hmm. , you’ll take in what’s happening, you’ll assess what’s needed, how you could be useful, and that gives you a sense of groundedness.

Laura Dawn: Mm-Hmm.

The paradox of seeking ground, but yet it’s, it’s really about finding that ground within our own being and how we stay with that,

Meg Wheatley: Life and to spirit, which is going back to indigenous ways of understanding.

Yeah. We don’t have to figure it out on our own. We don’t have to. Just go with the flow, you know, we are well accompanied in these other realms. So that’s lately become very important for me to state to any, any group I’m speaking to, um, and that is the impact of indigenous ways. But also Asian spirituality ways.

So

Laura Dawn: Mm hmm. I’m curious if you could share some examples of what.

What does clinging to the shore look like , and why are people getting torn apart for clinging to the shore?

Meg Wheatley: Well, anyone who’s denying reality is clinging to the shore. Anyone who insists on doing it the way it’s always been done, whether it’s the way you clean your house, or the way you plan for something, or negotiate something, if you’re using old methods, you’re clinging to the shore.

And, , anything that we’re using to deny reality, or to find grasp for certainty, Like, yeah, this still works. Yeah, we could, we could still do it this way. That’s clinging to the shore. And of course you will be torn apart. You’ll be torn away. You’ll suffer greatly because life insists. It’s always changing and we really have to notice.

And work with reality, not with our fantasies or our past ways that worked, you know.

Laura Dawn: How do you define reality?

Meg Wheatley: I just came across this wonderful definition. Reality is what is still there when you stop believing in it.

Okay.

There is reality. It’s all around us. It’s called life. It’s called living systems. It’s called a plant. It’s called a cosmos. But reality is cause and effect. Reality is if you do something to a living system, you can expect certain results because there are laws working there. And, you know, in indigenous ways, reality is not questioned, right?

But our role in it is what is so profoundly different. We are a member of a vast number of species. We are part of the tree of life. We are not the tree. We are part of the circle of life, not the circle. And Indigenous peoples have always had to know that they were partnering with life. They had to learn how life works.

So they could survive and they developed deep place based knowledge. They developed rituals. They developed openness. They work with multiple dimensions, all of which are real. And then we come along in Western culture. We have to be the most ignorant of any culture, sophisticated culture that I’ve ever encountered and say, no, no, we can make up our own laws.

Top of the hill, king of the universe, . We’ll make it work for our satisfaction and our pleasure. And meanwhile, life goes on and that’s why we’re here.

Laura Dawn: I’ve heard you speak, though, about other civilizations and the,, the cycle of civilizations that have collapsed before us.

And I’ve heard Daniel Schmachtenberger talk about this. I don’t know if you’re familiar with his work, but he’s a brilliant mind. And he talks about it too, that we in the past have had this really unfortunate tendency of using all of the resources in our immediate environment and then basically having to start again.

Meg Wheatley: Now my Lakota Sioux friend, Wahinpe Topa, Four Arrows, should probably interview. He’s the one who’s been with the Cokie also, but he’s a great, great, um, scholar as well, and he has described, there are two major paradigms, and there’s the indigenous and the individualist, mechanic, mechanical, Now, all at Western, but it’s global, two ways of being on, with the earth.

He’s written a book with, um, a wonderful coauthor called, um, Restoring the Kinship Worldview, in which he goes through these major precepts of difference. So what Daniel describes, what I describe, I rely on the work of historians, of civilizations, Is we’re guaranteed to organize in a certain way, to move toward materialism and commerce, and then to move to more and more comfort and a sense of entitlement, which then, I mean, we’re plagued by narcissism.

It always happens. We’re plagued by people demanding entitlements, but not willing to take responsibility for everything. It always happens, um, there is a pattern to human civilizations, but it’s different than that of indigenous people who stewarded the land they were on and stayed there for thousands of years.

But the minute we go to place based, complex civilizations, the pattern was the same. Always the same, and it includes environmental degradation using too much water or, uh, I’ve always been fascinated that Sumerian civilization fell because they created these irrigation streams that just then brought in salty water and salinized the earth, made it untouchable.

Unusable. So this is who we are now. What, what I found, because I write about this in detail on who do we choose to be is once you realize the pattern, you stop. Being so angry at your current leadership, you understand everything that is happening has happened before. And for me, it’s not about forgiving or allowing these bad behaviors, but they’re in a wider context.

And the wider context includes where this is headed. So there are stages in collapse, and it’s just become so powerfully evident to you that it’s just our turn to be in the last stage of collapse, and we can expect the same behaviors and the same terrible leadership and the same infighting, the same elites taking everything for themselves.

and not giving a damn about consequences for people. One of the most interesting little, it’s actually becoming pretty evident now is that in the last stage of decadence, people worship, uh, celebrities, they worship sports heroes, they worship musicians and actors, and with all the Taylor Swift and Beyonce.

actually affecting GDP in , different places and different nation states because of, uh, what income they produce through their concerts. I, I think Taylor Swift is doing a great job with young girls, but it’s the rise of celebrities and the worshiping of them so much so that I recently saw in Rio de Janeiro, the welcoming of Taylor Swift was someone had.

Projected onto Christ a welcome for Taylor Swift. Yeah. I circulated that one as proof positive that we end up worshipping celebrities, not divinities. It was quite remarkable. Wow. And people said, well, she’s earned it, you know, she’s so wonderful. So the point of knowing what pattern you’re in is then you can choose meaningful actions. So rather than go down in despair, which is, as I said, I still feel the atrocities and the human suffering being created and where the climate is creating catastrophes, I’m filled with despair and I cry a lot, but I know that my work is to be a source of comfort. and possibility for people that I’m with or within my sphere of influence .

Now I happen to have a global sphere of influence, but we don’t. What I’m working with people on is, what is your sphere of influence? Where can you make a contribution? We cannot save the world. We can open to this world as it is, and then we will find many ways to be a great value. But it’s a huge disappointment for us Westerners who thought we could save the world.

Very intrigued personally about where that phrase entered human consciousness. I don’t think anyone on, up until sometime in the 20th century, and it may even be the last half of it, used this phrase, okay, our actions are going to save the world. I mean, it’s a bizarre thought when you think about it. Um, but, um, for us, for me, it was a great disappointment to realize I can’t save the world, but I can find meaningful work.

But it’s much more similar to the work that people do in terrible situations in war, or harboring Jews in Nazi Germany, or protecting people from a marauding tribe, or whatever. There are these warrior roles throughout history, but for us it’s like, no, no, no, I want to still save the world. Anything less.

Then that is just not satisfying. We have to find more and more. We have to develop satisfaction and meaning within our relationships. Again, every spirituality speaks about this. And it was just recently in the US, these things sort of drive me crazy, but there’s a new report out from, uh, National Health Institutes.

That the best way to guarantee a long life is that you have healthy relationships,

Laura Dawn: right? And we know that we’re a social species.

Meg Wheatley: Of course, we know that people get ambushed or By thinking, no, you just have to have a healthy diet, or you just have to have low cholesterol, or you just have to have this, you just have to have, no, you have to have a healthy set of relationships.

And then, of course, the federal government here in the U. S. Gave tips on how to have healthy relationships.

Laura Dawn: I feel like I just. I keep wanting to like dig deeper into this if it’s all kind of going down destructively, how do I show up to find meaning in meaningful work when it’s Hey,

Meg Wheatley: answer that question. Answer that question. What is meaningful for you in your life? Always.

Laura Dawn: Mm. My connection to my environment and living in a good way on this land and my partnership with my family.

Beloved and inspiring people. I mean, I’ve been a curriculum creator for many, many years and teaching programs, you know, similar to yours, but in a different way, weaving in psychedelics as well. And I find that deeply meaningful.

Thanks.

Meg Wheatley: So, what’s the problem, then? You already know what is meaningful.

Mm hmm.

Meg Wheatley: And what I think is the problem, because I’m going to generalize now, is We always thought we could do more than we could do now. We always thought that if you train yourself, you go through these terrible experiences, but you learn and then you offer yourself to the world.

I mean, that’s a beautiful life, but somehow it comes up as well. It’s not enough, unless, and then it’s the unless is the part of the equation we have to fill in. Unless I help two million people, or unless I have, I really see change in how people relate at work, or whatever. We’ve just had, Everything you said for me is generalizably meaningful to people.

Why wouldn’t it be, right? Relationships, overcoming, coming out of the darkness with greater capacity and strength, and opening your heart to want to serve others, and noticing how much joy there is when you realize you’re growing and developing. That’s a good line. The context for that is what has shifted so dramatically.

So I just want all of us to understand what is meaningful and find work within a much more restricted context. Everything for me now has to be local. Um, we just got really deceived by, by our cultures imprinting us with ideas of success. If it wasn’t financial and personal, it was making a wonderful contribution to save the world, to turn things around, to be activists because we saw what is wrong, and we even knew about.

Fundamental causes, root causes, we knew how to change systems and then they didn’t change and it didn’t change because we didn’t have an inclusive understanding of other dynamics such as greed and power, which are the biggies, right? Um, but we also didn’t understand that there are cycles to civilizations.

And we thought we could. Just ignore all of that. So I’m just asking all of us to notice what is meaningful and from that you can find great joy in smaller, more limited, more local offerings. Yeah, we’re just coming out of this great deception that we could have made. Fabulous levels of change.

So we’re speaking now about. Along this, uh, long spectrum of people, you know, some of us who see clearly and want to use this moment to be the best human beings we can be.

And then people who are still locked into not only the progress myth, but the techno myth. Um, and just even if they perceive what’s going on, they believe there will be a solution to it. So they’re still completely out of touch with reality. But they got a lot of money now and they’re putting it into it, um, going to Mars, going to the moon, leaving Earth, finding another habitable place.

It’s crazy, but it’s, it’s the ultimate denial or acceptance of responsibility. So I want to, what I just said, I feel extraordinary levels of compassion for all of us right now, because we’re trying to come to terms with what it means to be part of life and not. All of us are going to accept that because the old myths were really lovely and wonderful, and promised so much.

Um,

and in one of my early books, A Simpler Way, we used a roomy quote that some come first and some go last. But each one moves along the path and is ultimately fulfilled spiritually. You know, I think God blesses all on the path and nurtures all. Well, , I don’t have that theology.

But I do believe that those of us who see clearly can be of great and a resource to those who are just locked into denial.

The United States is on the verge of intense collapse. So what, what happens in a complex system, and this is not sociology, this is just what happens with complex systems, They implode from their own weight.

They can no longer serve the causes that were, they were created for. Where is there a functioning, healthy system of education? Where is there a healthy democracy? Where is there a healthy military? Where is there a healthy healthcare system? If you look in the developed world, You do not find examples of well functioning systems any longer.

So this collapse is well underway. But the nature of collapse in a system is there are all these little breakages and then all of a sudden it implodes quite dramatically. So when we start to have food shortages, when we start to have civil wars in the U. S., which is a real possibility in some places, Um, when we realize that our children are, we’re losing our children for mental illness, uh, people don’t have nutrition, even if they have food, with losing the soil, all of these things are about to coalesce in what will appear to be sudden and surprising.

But if you’re tracking it, it’s like the Berlin Wall falling, there were many causes and conditions that led to that one evening event. And that was done. my question with my colleagues and friends is How do you want to be when people come after you for the food that you’ve kept or what do you do with your money?

Do you put it into self protection or do you just give it all away? Um, you know, these are big questions, existential questions. I just want to leave in an act of compassion. I mean, I’m not at all worried about dying at all, but I want to go out well.

Laura Dawn: When you were talking about the little breakages, I was thinking about a friend, Samantha, who’s friends with Daniel Schmackenberger, and she says, , the collapse is non evenly distributed. So it happens in different pockets and different places.

Meg Wheatley: Well, we’re seeing in a lot of countries, Venezuela collapsed, four million Venezuelans have fled the country because their whole income, I mean, they were a good middle class society, it’s gone. Um, Sudan, Somalia, all along the middle rim of Africa, those are all nation states in collapse. I think we could say, Quite sadly, that in the Middle East is in a state of collapse.

Ukraine and Russian war is in a state of collapse. You don’t recover from these things. They’re permanently destructive of the future. And, , I mean, China is struggling and will take a long time, but there aren’t places that I know of where resiliency, strength, And possibility are being created. So yes, it is distributed quite unequally, but the pattern is the same. So. Yes.

Laura Dawn: It’s interesting, the Kogi prophecy says that the ending will fall into the new beginning in 2026.

I don’t know if you’ve heard that. I

Meg Wheatley: haven’t heard. I’ve heard so many different dates. I’ve also heard from, uh, well, something very dramatic is probably going to happen by 2030. That’s in a lot of astrology. It’s a lot of prophecies. But what that means, it could just be the total intensification and destruction of habitations by rising temperatures and poisoned oceans, or it could mean that some people will vanish into light bodies or, but\

so I’m not going to deny that. But what, what the hell is going on? And what are we supposed to do? You know?

Laura Dawn: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I want to read a quote, , from your book, Leadership in the New Science.

You wrote, whatever your personal beliefs and experiences, I invite you to consider that we need a new worldview to navigate this chaotic time. We cannot hope to make sense using our old maps. It won’t help to dust them off or reprint them in bold colors. The more we rely on them, the more disoriented we become.

They cause us to focus on the wrong things and blind us to what’s significant using them. We will journey only to greater chaos. And I feel like that’s what we’ve really been talking about and I’m curious how would you define a better map, a new map for navigating our time that we’re living through right now for people?

Meg Wheatley: Well, I think that’s been the basis of all my books until this new one, Restoring Insanity, which is all about finding our way back to human potential and the human spirit.

But there’s a map of collapse, there’s a map of how to create, this is about understanding where we are locating ourselves on the map of the cycle of civilizations. And locating ourselves on the map of what are human beings capable of?

So I like your question because I’ve never thought of it that way. But it’s always maps. It’s maps. There’s spiritual practice path. That’s a kind of map.

Spiritual warriors. Mm

Laura Dawn: Hmm. Beautiful.

Going through some like really intense upheavals in my own life, the 2018 volcanic eruption on the big island of Hawaii, where my whole life changed in the blink of an eye, going through a divorce after a 10 year long marriage.

And the story I’ve told myself is those were really big initiations helping me to prepare for supporting other people through the river, crossing the river.

Meg Wheatley: I believe, I mean, I know that to be true. If you accept the learnings and position yourself within the context of these radical shifts, changes, and you’ve gone through them, You’ve gone through several of them, and you chose to give certain meaning to those that is of great benefit to others. Well, for me, that’s perfect.

That’s perfect. That’s how we live our lives, what we are able to

mean, develop the meaning for ourselves. And then make conscious choices going forward. That’s for me what life is. It’s right there.

Laura Dawn: Yeah. And I think about it in terms of these times too, because , through the eruption, that was a really hard time. And I had trained for many years, you know, through the teachings of Chogom and Pema Chodron and reading your books as well and sitting in meditation and many, many psychedelic journeys , which I feel like Sacred plant medicines are their own kind of training ground for these times.

And through that, you know, I was able to conduct myself with a strong back open front, despite the horror, despite the trauma. And and it’s sort of like. that now. It’s like, okay, so you can conduct yourself accordingly with a certain level of maturity on this planet, or you can be a child and have a temper tantrum and act out in rage, which is a lot of what we’re seeing.

And that’s why, this title of your latest book really speaks to me because , who are we choosing to become through this? And so we could sit here and debate , you know, are humans going to survive this next cataclysm , are we going to, , bring ourselves to extinction?

. And yet through it all, it’s, we’re just here right now. And who do we want to be?

Meg Wheatley: Exactly. If you accept the cyclical view of life, the endings fall into new beginnings. That is a truth about cycles, and yet in different spiritual traditions, the length of the cycles, like the yugas in,

in Hinduism are beyond comprehension in length. Um, whether, humans survive, we always think, okay, well, there’ll just be a new beginning. Let’s get rid of this old system. It’s so bad and corrupt anyway. Doesn’t work that way. I mean, life has its cycles, and whether we’re included or not is, um, yeah. But I’m at what you just said.

Because for me, that is it. And it’s Instead of being angry at our loss of a positive future let’s just get real. I mean that literally. And see what’s, what, where we can be of value,

you

Meg Wheatley: know. And, and if we had not been raised in this Western mind of, It’s now global.

Uh, yeah, you can save the world. You could do great work. You have to do great work because look how bad it is. No, let’s just be in the reality of relationships.

Help, um, participate fully with life in its current form. For as long as we can, I think that’s a very satisfying life,

Laura Dawn: right?

When we think about time scales and when we zoom out and what physics knows is that the earth is going to be swallowed by the heat of the sun So it’s like, what a miracle that Sentient, conscious human beings are here having this experience right now.

And that’s also makes me think of the prophecy of, everything should be done in a sacred manner. We are a living miracle. And do we want to be just totally caught in the hamster wheel of, , illusion and delusion? Or do we want to wake up and be kind and celebrate the life? That we’re given and celebrate with people around us.

Meg Wheatley: I love your wisdom, Laura. It’s well earned. It’s hard earned, but it’s really there for you and for what you offer to all of us. So thank you.

Hey, I’m going to have to go. Okay. This has been delightful and I fully support what you’re doing and your level of awareness and white how you’re transforming your own experience, all of them, good and bad and painful and not.

Laura Dawn: Thank you.

Meg Wheatley: That’s pure warrior work for me.

Laura Dawn: Thank you. I appreciate it.

Meg Wheatley: Wonderful.

Laura Dawn: Okay. Thank you. Go well,

Meg Wheatley: Laura.

Laura Dawn: Bye.