Quotes by Michael Meade

Something ancient in us bends us toward the origins of the whole thing. We either drown in the splits and confusions of our lives, or we surrender to something greater than ourselves. The water of our deepest troubles is also the water of our own solution. In surrender, we descend down to the bottom of it and back to the beginning of it; down into what is divided in order to get back to the wholeness before the split. Healing, health, wealth, wholeness: all hail from the same roots. To heal is to make whole again; wholeness is what all healing seeks and what alone can truly unify our spirit.

There will always be the facts of life to contend with, and there are times when the facts can become overwhelming. Yet, there is a poem at the heart of things and a mythic story in the heart of each of us. At certain times it is the poetry of life and the mythic imagination of the soul that become necessary in order to heal the wounds inflicted by an excess of reason or an overuse of force. When we unfold the story wound within our souls and untie the knots within us, we add presence to the world and contribute to the spirit of life in a specific and authentic way.

The only choice once your world has been torn apart is to find your genius and live with that. ‘Normal’ is out of the question. The healing for veterans, or anyone going through great tragedy, is finding your natural spirit and your genius that was waiting to be found. That can now become the cohering principle in your life. The idea of patching someone up and back into normal when they’ve had extremely abnormal experiences is a misunderstanding.

Human beings long for connection, and our sense of usefulness derives from the feeling of connectedness. When we are connected — to our own purpose, to the community around us, and to our spiritual wisdom — we are able to live and act with authentic effectiveness.

When we place our immediate conflicts in the territory of an archetypal story we can better see the nature of our problems and find solutions that bring creative imagination to bear in the realm of hard facts and hardening dilemmas.

Hearing a story awakens the mythic story living in each of us. It places us in a “mythic condition” that reconnects us to the core imagination and living story at the center of our soul. Being touched by myth carries us to the center where the world is always ending and always beginning again.

A community best serves itself when it truly serves the awakening of the unique story trying to come to life through each person born.

What’s secretly in the water of modern culture is that people enter the world empty. That’s a very dangerous idea,because if everybody’s empty than other people can get us to do whatever they want because there’s nothing in us to stand against it. But if we came to do something that’s meaningful, that involves giving and making the world a more beautiful, healthy, lively place, then you become a difficult person to move around and manipulate.

Something deep in the human soul awakens as things fall apart. Something in the soul knows that everything in this world can become lost. And something in the soul knows how to survive periods of devastation, disorientation and loss. Descent and falling is the way of the soul from its beginning. We each fell from the womb of life when the waters of the inner sea broke and it came time for us to breathe on our own.

Run towards the roar,’ the old people used to tell the young ones. When faced with great danger and when people panic and seek a false sense of safety, run towards the roaring and go where you fear to go. For only in facing your fears can you find some safety and a way through. When the world rattles and the end seems near, go towards the roar.

An old Celtic proverb boldly places death right at the center of life. ‘Death is the middle of a long life,’ they used to say. Ancient people did things like that; they put death at the center instead of casting it out of sight and leaving such an important subject until the last possible moment. Of course, they lived close to nature and couldn’t help but see how the forest grew from fallen trees and how death seemed to replenish life from fallen members. Only the unwise and the overly fearful think that death is the blind enemy of life.

Our deepest longings and the question of who we are intended to be cuts us in half, dividing us within ourselves. At critical stages and significant moments in the course of life, we sink with the weight of our own questions; we drown in our own psyche in order to reach a subtle ground that secretly sustains our every breath. In that sense, all separations, splits, and conflicts are evidence of a unity we long to find, both individually and collectively.

Amidst the rush and confusion of modern life something old and wise is trying to catch up with us. Whereas simple knowledge tends to divide things, genuine wisdom tends to make meaningful unity possible.

To awaken to the living dream within one’s life and remain awake in a world trying to lull everyone to sleep involves repeated struggle, yet also presents something truly worth fighting for.

There is a greater will, a greater need and purpose hidden within each life, and there is an inner law that knows best how each must live and that is worth stealing for; it’s worth dying for, and worth living for as well.

When a person becomes aware of their genius and they live it and they give generously from it, they change the world, they affect the world. And when they depart everyone knows something is missing.

The purpose of conflict is to create.

When a situation feels like a matter of life and death the deep self is close at hand and it already carries inner medicine and its own life remedy.

The second adventure involves the divine spark hidden in each soul and the dark times require that the inner light of soul be found again. Perhaps there is no greater time to awaken to the adventure the soul would have us live and become agents of the divine in this world.

Myth offers a third place to stand or a third way to see when we find ourselves caught between opposing ideas and hardening ideologies.