One way of talking about the problems of our culture is that there are no elders.

—Barry Williams

These can be puzzling times of polarity, misinformation and extreme behaviors. As stories pile on top of stories, one could easily ask, “Where did all the grown-ups go?”

Join Mara’ akame (traditional Huichol healer), Master of Divinity, Doctor of Psychology and Diplomate Jungian Analyst Barry Williams as he explores elderhood—its necessary role and the gifts it brings to human societies. Barry will share personal stories from his 40+ year journey to healing, found in relationship with elders from the four corners of the world.

In this 90-minute online presentation, Barry will share examples of:

• What distinguishes an “elder” from an “older” person
• What kinds of wisdom, knowledge and experience shape an elder
• How elders relate to the realm of spirit
• The role sacrifice plays in becoming an elder
• What one can do to seek out a path to elderhood

Barry will share teachable moments of his time spent with elders living and passed from the Lakota, Anishinaabe, Hopi, Mauri, Zapotec, and Piaroa traditions.

Through these relationships and their gifts of insight and experience, Barry found important openings into the otherwise inaccessible world of his late son Raef (also a mara’ akame). He also credits the wisdom he received through these relationships with helping him become a better healer in the Huichol tradition and better psychotherapist and Jungian analyst.

We have no way of creating elders. We’re sort of left on our own to seek that out. The archetypal realm of spirit can either contact you, or you can move into contact with it. There’s no manual for this. Sometimes events will initiate us, but (typically) we have to become initiated either by other people, by ceremony, by life, by path work. An illness can initiate you, a good psychoanalysis can initiate you. Sometimes parenting can do that, or the death of others in your life can be initiatory.

An elder is not just an old person who tells stories that are boring about the way things used to be. An elder is someone who has wisdom and knowledge of how it is out there.

—Barry Williams