We live in a time and society in which we warehouse wisdom in nursing homes and retirement communities. We’ve lost any sense of community ritual to help share the wisdom. As African author Malidoma Patrice Some suggested, “Where ritual is absent, the young are restless or violent, there are no real elders, and the grown-ups are bewildered. The future is dim.”
I enjoy listening to Michael Meade’s podcast “Living Myth” and was pleasantly surprised to see he published this episode a week ago, “A Lack of Elders, a Loss of Wisdom,” partly because a week from now, Michael joins me in our online Emerging Elders Masterclass (and again in person with me in Santa Fe in a workshop called “Decode Your Mythology, Shape Your Future”).
He highlights the Rumi poem (below) which reminds us that formal education can lead to worldly success, but it can also be shallow. In contrast, the second type of intelligence is an innate, fluid force that originates from within. It is not dependent on external learning but rather flows naturally from the individual’s own being. This inner intelligence is alive, dynamic, and constantly evolving, representing a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of the world. Acquired intelligence is valuable for practical purposes, but it is the innate, intuitive intelligence that truly defines an individual’s intellectual and spiritual growth.
How are you investing in your inner intelligence, your inner elder? Here’s a translated poem from Rumi that’s very relevant to this topic:
Two Kinds of Intelligence
There are two kinds of intelligence: one acquired,
as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts
from books and from what the teacher says,
collecting information from the traditional sciences
as well as from the new sciences.
With such intelligence you rise in the world.
You get ranked ahead or behind others
in regard to your competence in retaining
information. You stroll with this intelligence
in and out of fields of knowledge, getting always more
marks on your preserving tablets.
There is another kind of tablet, one
already completed and preserved inside you.
A spring overflowing its springbox. A freshness
in the center of the chest. This other intelligence
does not turn yellow or stagnate. It’s fluid,
and it doesn’t move from outside to inside
through conduits of plumbing-learning.
This second knowing is a fountainhead
from within you, moving out.
-Chip