Thomas Hübl: Welcome back to the Collective Healing Conference. My name is Thomas Hübl. I’m the convener of the conference and I’m very delighted and I’m really looking forward to the conversation with Michael Meade. Michael, very warm welcome here in our conference.
Michael Meade: Good to be with you. Thank you.
Thomas: Yeah, really, I’m looking forward to learn from you and to be inspired by your spirit. I always love to start where your work is the most exciting for you right now or what’s sparking your creativity? Where is your leading edge, if there is something like that? And what sparks your, where do you see your own work developing at the moment? And then maybe we’ll go a bit deeper into all the things that you do and share.
Michael: So the theme I’m most concentrated on now is transformation, and I’m trying to finish a book on the subject. And what I’m suggesting is that we are living in a time of transformation. Everybody kind of knows it, but it’s a radical period of transformation because unlike previous eras like this, nature and culture are both radically transforming at the same time so that there’s this double whammy or deeper dynamic involved. And that relates to mythology—which is of course my favorite subject—in the sense that I call creation myths, re-creation myths. So that contrary to popular belief creation is not something that happened back then and we’re in the aftermath. Creation is happening all the time, and the essence of creation is transformation. And so we are in the midst of a radical transformation that affects the entire earth and all the people on it. And so I’ve been speaking a lot and now writing a lot about the nature of transformation.
Thomas: I love that. I love also that you’re saying, because I very much believe that it’s true, that creation is, it’s not something that happened. We are being created all the time. I love that you’re saying this, the freshness of it. And let’s talk a little bit about if we are being created, why is there a need to transform anything? If it’s anyway fresh, why do we need to transform something or why do we get stuck sometimes in that seeming process? Or do we get stuck at all or is that just our interpretation? So maybe you can speak a little bit about what creates the need for transformation in the first place.
Michael: Well, transformation from my point of view is the dynamic of the cosmos. It’s the dynamic of the earth. Nature is transforming all the time. The word transform essentially means to move from one form to another. And so the classic is the butterfly that starts out as a worm-like larva or caterpillar, and then it utterly transforms and becomes a different being. The thing that was crawling along the leaf now is flying in the sky. And so nature, there’s an old idea that humans are much wiser when they learn how to read the script of nature and the script of nature is transformation. It’s the essence. So then connected to that is the idea that for the caterpillar to be born—I mean for the butterfly to be born, the caterpillar has to die. So the essence of transformation is death and rebirth. And so if you take creation as the ongoing process of the earth of the cosmos of each individual human being, then that means we’re in a process of life, death, and renewal all the time.
And that’s true at its own way, but it’s usually unconscious. Mostly it’s unconscious. But when we’re in a time where the entire world is transforming, we have to become more conscious of the nature of transformation in order to learn the lessons of transformation, one of which is let go. A lot of people can’t change and a lot of processes can’t change because we refuse to let go of that which is already dying or dead. That’s happening politically. Now that’s happening in terms of nature itself. Certain things we have to let go in order that the next phase might begin. And so one other thing I’ll say about transformation, in the study of caterpillars turning into butterflies, which has been amazing to human beings from the very beginning, it turns out that the cells of the caterpillar resist and attack the cells of the butterfly. So there is in nature a built-in resistance to change.
And that’s really helpful if you think about human psychology, we want to change human culture. We want it to be more inclusive. We want it to be consciously interconnected with all of the levels and phases of life. We want it to be more peaceful. We want it to be more joyous and more creative, and we want it to be less traumatic. But in order to do that, we have to learn this process of letting go in order to open to the unseen. So maybe one more twist. Typically, especially modern people, humans like to know what’s coming next or pretend to know or predict or project. We are in a stage now of not knowing. There is no way to know.The level of transformation is so deep and so universal at the same time that no one knows what’s coming next. So one of the tricks now is to let go of the idea that we know what’s happening and we know what to do, because not knowing is the only way to eventually know.
Thomas: That’s so interesting. I mean, I have so many questions when I listen to you. So let’s start with the first one that I had. When you say let go and there’s a resistance to change. Can you speak a little bit about what’s the part in our nature and human nature that is resisting change? Why are we resisting change in the first place when transforming seems natural? Why is there a built in resistance to transform, or why are we holding on? What’s actually the process of holding onto things that need to go? What is that? And maybe how can we explore in ourselves more what are we holding on or resisting right now so that everybody who’s listening right now maybe can get a sense of, okay, at least I can explore if I’m resisting something. Maybe you can speak a bit to that part.
Michael: So first of all, I want to repeat from the level of forgiveness, forgiving ourselves. In nature, there is a resistance to transformation. It’s natural. So our resistance is natural. And then the easiest way to get at it these days is psychology. In psychology, if you say there’s an ego or a persona or I call it the little self, but there’s a deeper self, there’s a deeper soul. The deeper self and soul knows why we each came here according to all the old stories. And I’m sticking with old stories according to all the old stories, everyone who is born is gifted and aimed. We came here to live out a dream that is supposed to unfold into life for the betterment of ourselves, but also other people. But the little self forms early on in the process of growth and it forms as a reaction.
Well, the way I would put it is this, there’s a moment in the growth of the infant when it wants to beatific vision of the mother or whoever’s mothering the child, the way the mother can look at the child. And the glance says you’re beautiful, you’re wonderful, you’re unique, and we’re glad you’re here. And the infant wants that glance and mother is gone or she’s busy or she has other children or she has two jobs and she doesn’t look at the child in that moment when it wants to be confirmed and recognized. And that’s the moment when the ego is born and it’s born to never feel the possibility of annihilation again. So inside the little self, the ego is the fear that change will lead to annihilation. So the ego which is afraid of everything, only pretending it’s in charge, is afraid to let go because it might mean the end.
And so the same thing with the caterpillar, which won’t let go because it is the end of the caterpillar when the butterfly shows up. And so we are in that dynamic. It is natural, it’s cosmological, and so we have to be forgiving about the part of ourselves that won’t let go. But on a psychological level, I think the idea would be the ego or the little self has to be educated that there’s a bigger, greater, deeper self that knows why we are here and knows what we have to contribute to the world. And so the first step is for the little self to realize there’s a deeper self. And people usually have that experience by being overwhelmed by a great loss, or a tragedy, or a great challenge. And what happens is the little self goes, I can’t handle this. I have a little voice inside me that will say, I can’t handle this. I know it’s the ego. And so the ego lets go out of fear, out of being overwhelmed. And then if we allow ourselves to be present in that moment, the deep self or soul manifests. And that manifestation is both the presence of and the growth of the deeper self that has the dream of our life or the deepest soul that brought us to life to begin with.
Thomas: Yeah, it’s beautiful when you speak about the fear of annihilation and I think the forming of that structure of the small self and the possibility of realizing, being able to witness that small self. So that seems to me like when I listen to you as something that can happen maybe through crisis, and maybe also can that happen through practice, can we come in touch with the deeper self? And if so, what helps? If I’m identified now with that small self, is there a way for me to realize that there is a bigger self or soul that has a deeper wisdom or knowledge about life than I have in my identification?
Michael: People usually stumble into it. Falling in love is usually a dissolution of the little self and falling into the sea of lov, and the deep self can swim in that sea. The little self, every time it comes back, will drown in a new way. And so falling in love is a beautiful way to go. Finding a calling in life is another way to go. When a person realizes, no, I’m called to do this. This is bigger than me. As soon as they’re thinking it’s bigger than me, the ego is slipping away. It’s going, okay, I’ll let go. And then the other thing is a great loss. When you have a great loss in ancient India, they would refer to the bardo realm. The bardo would be the space between after you die and before you’re reborn, because they were working on reincarnation, but the little self dies all the time or it’s supposed to.
And so it’s life, death, renewal. And in psychological terms, it’s the death of the ego repeatedly and the ego gets used to letting go and that gives the deeper self, the room to expand. And we are here to grow our identity. We are here to eventually inhabit the story that brought us to life. And I just want to add one other thing. Problem for modern people, traditional people all around the world would have a rite of passage or more than one rite of passage. And the first one would be at the end of childhood. And so at the end of childhood, you would be taken into a serious ritual sequence, which would be separation. The middle part is called ordeal or liminality, and then a return to the community as a different person. And you’d have a community waiting for you, which is not normal nowadays or not easy to find these days.
But that process seen psychologically was letting go of the ego that developed during childhood, letting go of that phase in order to step into the unknown. And all of the rites of passage would happen in nature so that the child would move from the lap of their mother to the lap of mother nature. It would be a move out of family into cosmos. It would be move a move out of childlike things into sacred like things. And then there would be a return to the community where people say, “I see you. I see what you went through. We see you now.” And so a person would be confirmed at the level of the deep self. They’d be confirmed at the level of their unique soul. And we are missing most of that. Most people go through separation. Often it waits until midlife and it’s a divorce, or any kind of thing—a loss of a loved one causes separation. You feel all alone. You feel in the face of death too. So people go through it, but it’s not seen as a transformation process or a rite of passage. And if it is seen at the rite of passage, you arrive at the end and the community is not waiting for you because they’re all on their personal devices trying to pretend that the internet is going to solve the problem.
Thomas: They find you on Instagram when you post a photo from nature, right?
Michael: Yeah. So we’re missing essential human things like an experience of life, death, and renewal that tells us about the nature of life and the nature of death. We’re missing it, and yet we need to transform. And it’s as if the cosmos says, well you guys forgot so much stuff that now we’re all going to have to transform together. We’re all going to have to go through this and learn the steps as we experience it. That’s at least one way to look at it.
Thomas: That’s beautiful. So I have so many questions, so many things spark my creativity when I listen to you here. Let’s stay a little bit here, and then I want to go back to the small self for a moment. But let’s say there is this rite of passage, which I think is a beautiful description, separation, liminality, and then the return. And it also feels very good when I listen to you and I feel the community waiting to see you in your uniqueness, but you’re being initiated into a new life in that community than when you were in your family. That sounds really beautiful. And I will talk in a moment about the community aspect. But the liminality, maybe can you speak a little bit about this liminal phase where there’s separation and then we are in this intermediate phase? Can you speak, what are the qualities of that space?
Michael: So often what I say to an audience nowadays, to be alive at this time is to be in the liminal phase of a collective rite of passage. We are in the liminal phase, and liminal comes from līmen, which is the old Latin word for the bottom of a threshold. And so the liminal space is a threshold space. And what happens on a threshold, practically speaking, is you leave the space behind you and you enter a new space. And so that is already showing that the first move is letting go of the space behind. And so the liminal also means the dissolution of the ego, or at least the relaxing and maybe opening up of the ego because it’s the ego that insisted it knows who we are, that it knows what’s going on and it really doesn’t know. And as a matter of fact, it’s in denial about what’s really inside.
So the liminal is the place of change. It’s also the place of healing. Healing involves the opening of a wound. You have to open it and cleanse it before you can heal it and close it. And so liminality is also the opening of all the wounds, the personal wounds and the traumas that associate with them. So a proper rite of passage would do two major things, and it would do it during the liminal phase. That is to say it would reveal the genius of that person, the natural gifts that they have, and it would heal the wounds that they also have. And the idea is everyone is wounded. Every human is wounded. Entering the world is actually entering through a wound of time. If you go back to old stories, people come from the eternal world into the time bound world. That’s the first wound.
And then the rest of the wounds start happening inside the family and all that kind of stuff. So rites of passage understood at a deep level would be separating from everything that’s happened and entering liminality. And liminality also means dissolution of forms. So in the liminal phase, everyone is equal. There’s not the higher ups and the down belows. And typically this is happening in nature. And in nature there is a lot of that sense of things being equally valuable. Some animals are bigger, some are small, but they’re all holding the web of life together. And so we enter into that space. And so it would be in that space that a person finds visions, gets their initial vision of what their life path might be. And the liminal space is often associated with silence and depth. And so it has to do with descent. And so the old idea was in order to leave childhood and become a grown person, you have to go down before you go up. You have to descend down and touch the roots of being, and on the way down you happen to also touch the wounds in the soul. And then the ritual would be built, if it was being done with wisdom, it would be built to heal the wounds, awaken the gifts, and bless the initiate. And all of that would happen inside liminality. Liminality is the essence of the whole process of rights of passage or human process of transforming.
Thomas: And how would that liminality be set up in let’s say traditions that kept the wisdom of these rites of passage? Is that a more kind of standardized space or is that a more specific space to the one who is being initiated and are there guardians or threshold guardians of this space of liminality, or are people just on their own in nature, or how does that process work? If we look into is this a more facilitated space, is this a space that you go through in your own own inner world that shows up in different natural environments? Maybe you can speak a little bit to that for us.
Michael: Yeah, my answer would be yes, it’s all of those things. So it’s archetypal, right? The useful term is archetypal, from the beginning. Arche- means from the beginning, and it’s -typal, it’s typical, it’s the root type of thing that you can do that’s connected to the beginning. And so it’s also the first education in death. In traditional cultures, every grown person would know about death, not just death because they saw animals die or something like that. They would have that too. They’re living close to nature, and so they’re seeing death all the time. But they would have the education of death. Death used to be called the first teacher because death teaches us that we’re temporary, we’re all on the road to the same door, and it’s the door of death, at least so far. That’s what happened. And so then the shape of things to create the liminal amplifies the separation, and then it puts the initiate into really unusual circumstances that would be crafted by those that are guiding the process.
So there’s so many versions of it. Maybe it’s endless, I don’t know, but I’ll take a couple of them. So one would be like a hut, a simple dark hut or a pit. In many cultures there would be a hole and you would be in the earth, you would go down as if you were being buried. And traditional people do psychology overtly. They act out the psychology, instead of waiting later and going to the psychologist’s office, they act it out. So the idea if you’re going to die and be reborn, you’d be put into the earth and then while you’re in the earth. And so I happen to have done this with some in tribal traditions, you would be buried up to your neck and then you would be there for 24 hours, which is really intense and no one can talk to you. There’s someone who sits over there that is the witness, and if there’s trouble, they interfere, but they can’t say a word.
And so then here you are in the earth and you have these radical experiences. The earth is a living essence. Not only that, it’s moving through the galaxy at a rate of 180,000 miles per minute. I can’t do numbers. So it, it’s going fast. So once you’re in the earth, you’re no longer feeling gravity. And if you’re there for a few hours, you realize, I’m zooming—real zooming—I’m zooming. The earth is carrying us. You realize you’re flying through the cosmos. It’s like psychedelics just by being in the earth. And then I’ll just mention other things that happened. The earth speaks to you, it turns out. And so you can learn things directly from the earth. So that would be one kind of thing, a different thing that has a great significance. Also, and I’m thinking now of certain tribes in Africa, they would have a tree, a sacred tree, but it wasn’t a living tree.
It had been a living tree. Now it’s a tree trunk and there’s an opening in it. And typically this would be the initiation of girls becoming women and the girl, because she begins her initiation when she has her first menses. And that’s different, the boys don’t have that, so they do it in groups. Anyway, the girl would be put in the same tree that all her mother and grandmother and everybody had been in, and she’s inside the trunk of a tree, which is like another form of being in nature or in earth or being dead, and there’s not any room in there. So she has to be fed by people from the outside. The women of the tribe come and feed her as if she’s a fetus, as if she’s inside the womb of the tree, the womb of the nature. They’re acting it out.
And so then you have whatever experiences you have, and that is what becomes personal and unique. You have your own visions. So the other thing I’ll mention is because people are familiar with vision quest and vision quest is you go out into nature, there’s a guide to begin with and there’s people waiting for you, but there you are on your own. And the idea amongst traditional people, like in North America is some spirit will come to you, an eagle, a bear, an insect, all of them have meaning, and that becomes your connection then to nature. You have a unique personal connection to nature, and each of those animals is visionary in its own way. And then the elders are the ones who know the story and know the process. So you asked about that. Yes, there would be those who are already initiated, who are the guides.
Again, the problem we have now is even when we conceive of the idea, we need to do some rites of passage, where the heck are the elders? And so we’re in a very strange condition, but we have to reimagine the process. We have to reinvent the notion of elders, and we have to kind of develop a different dynamic in terms of understanding human psychology if we are to do the thing we’re being called to do, which I think is to have a new worldview. In other words, it’s not the end of the world that’s happening, it’s the end of a worldview that’s happening. And we are here because we happen to be here and we’re being called, we’re all potential initiates, being called to go on the quest to find ourselves, but finding oneself gives a person their own worldview. And when enough people get a better worldview, we have a chance of having a better world.
Thomas: Yeah, I love that. I love that. So thank you first of all for the run through the rites of passage. This was very elaborate and very clear. I think everybody can get a sense also, and I was going to say a little bit when you said there are kind of elders that are kind of holding the space for these rites of passage, which is also like a transmission of elderhood and I think a great place of being an elder in a community. And then we can see on the one hand what’s elderhood in our life and how much it’s valued or not in our societies and where is that wisdom at the moment in our societies. So that’s one question, but the other question is because you spoke about we are in that collective rite of passage, and I think that speaks also very much to our work that we are doing, and I think that’s very powerful because we are in this change or transformational process. And I’m wondering about what you just said at the end, the elders that are holding the space for that process collectively. I think that’s a very interesting question. If and how, whatever that is, that principle for the collective, if that exists, if that’s something that we just don’t see, or do we see that? So maybe you can speak a little bit to when you say we are in this collective transformation process, is there an equivalent of that elderhood or wisdom that can be a guidance at the moment?
Michael: And I would say yes, but the move I like to make is the elder is not a person. The elder is a presence. And so sometimes it’s in a young person and sometimes it’s in an old person. And when you have it in an old person—and we’ve all seen this—it’s there sometimes and the rest of the time they’re napping. You know what I’m saying?
It’s not dependent on age, but a person would theoretically grow into it, but in growing into it, a person is growing into themselves. So a couple ideas I’ve learned from different cultures. One is that each elder is unique, and as a matter of fact, they’re operating from a sense of uniqueness that has become conscious to them. A second idea is all elders are healers. It doesn’t mean they’re all shamans and it doesn’t mean they’ve gold got medical kits. What it means is what they’ve learned, whether it’s through silence or practice or whatever it is from it has a healing quality. So the elders bring healing and they bring healing both to the individuals that are going through these processes of change, but also they bring a different vision and typically a healing vision collectively and so on. So the other thing I would say about the elder is you can’t shock the elder because she or he has already been there.
So that means that the elders aren’t kindly, so-called really good people who have never made a mistake. The elders are those who have fallen down hard and have found a way back, and that’s why you can trust them. It’s also why you can’t shock them. And so it’s an interesting thing, some qualities. And then the psychological thing that I think is important is the elder is part of a complex in psychology. In deaf psychology is called the puer and the senex. Puer is a Latin term for the eternal youth. And the eternal youth is in a complex with the wise old sage. And so when a person goes through rites of passage, it awakens the dream of the eternal youth and it stirs the sage in the heart. Both are supposed to happen. I found this description of a tribe in central Africa, and I can’t find out much more about it, but I found this description where someone said, when we’re initiating our young people, we’re awakening the sage in their heart.
And when we’re initiating our elders, we are revitalizing the dream in their soul. So the elder is someone who is in touch with the eternal youth. So that’s why the elder doesn’t ever seem to be simply old because they’re in touch with something that’s eternally youthful. But the way a youth is not necessarily, just because a person is young doesn’t mean they’re youthful. They’re youthful when the spirit of life that is youthful is awakened them. And when a person is an elder, it doesn’t mean it’s not about a position, it’s about a condition. And wisdom is a condition, and wisdom always has to be precise to the occasion. There is no general wisdom. You can take any wise thing, and it can be its opposite in a given circumstance. And so I think people have the elder in them, we have the youth in us, so we might have to go through it on a psychological level in order to recreate it on a social level.
Thomas: Yeah, it’s beautiful. It’s also lovely how you describe certain qualities and that we are looking for these kind of qualities that we described, not just for people as you said, but for certain qualities that are presences that hold the space for the collective transformation. Yeah, that’s powerful. Do you want to say more about that, about the current moment, what we are going through or maybe how we can more consciously participate in what you just said?
Michael: Well, there’s lots of things. I want to repeat the idea. We’re in a very unique time because nature is rattling at the same time as culture is unraveling. And the mythological frame for that is apocalypse, but apocalypse doesn’t mean the fiery end of the world. That’s a confusion that came out of the end of the original Bible. But apocalypse means collapse-renewal. Apocalypse, it’s an old Greek word and it means lifting the veil and the veil lifts and you can see evil things and you see beautiful things. The veil lifts and you see, oh, wait a minute, there’s corruption in all kinds of institutions. Oh wait a minute, the institutions aren’t even working that well because things are changing too fast. So the veil lifts and we get to see more. And then the question is, can we grow? Can we grow our identity so that rather than being constantly shocked about these changes, can we then see them as part of this bigger transition that we can learn from while we’re experiencing it?
So that’s one place I go with it. And then maybe the other thing I want to reinforce is that the nature of the elder is similar to the nature of nature, so that elders know something about death. There’s a saying in Africa, the elder knows more dead people. Well in Africa, the dead are not considered to be completely dead. They’re called the living dead and they’re the ancestors. And so they’re sending dreams and possibly sending good ideas. And so the elder is living with one foot in that other world and understanding also this nature that death is like the center of life. That’s a strange statement to make. But death is not just at the end of life, death is in the middle of life. That’s an old Irish proverb. Death is in the middle of a long life, which means that the way we get a meaningful long life is we die a lot along the way. And the elders though are those who have consciously died and found a deeper sense of being from which they have something to give to other people and to give in terms of reconnecting to nature and re-imagining human culture on a meaningful level.
Thomas: Beautiful. And the veil that’s lifting, let’s say part of the current culture is dying or a veil is lifting. It’s like if you have a curtain in the theater and there is a pattern on that curtain that’s lifting, what’s the pattern? What’s the filter in humanity that we are pulling out so that we can see more? What are the qualities of our culture that you see dying at the moment?
Michael: Well, really important one is the exaggerated sense of separation from subject to object. This Descartes, the Cartesian split. It was there before Descartes, but he sure brought it into prominence, and people believe that stuff. They believe there’s a subject and out there is the world, and it’s an object or nature. No, it’s all interrelated in ways that are significant and actually magical at times and utterly important. So as this, I like that image of the curtain has a pattern, and so subject-object separation is going up and out. It wasn’t such a good idea to begin with and we don’t need it now because, okay, back to liminality, when people voted for and gave their sense over their intelligence over the subject object split, what happened was emptiness in the middle. There were never two things. There’s always three things. And the third thing was the intermediaries, it was called.
It’s also the liminal space, the intermediaries who were intermediate between, what would you say, earth and heaven between the person and the divine, between the little self and the great self. The intermediaries would be seen as the water spirits, and nature was considered to be spirit with a green garment on, spirit with the essence of nature. And so the intermediaries were our ways to connect. I know a lot of artists, and I respect and I love art, I just love it. But I also hear people saying, well, my art and my music. And I also think, wow, the word music comes from the word muse. No one gets music unless the muses are delivering it. In other words, we tend to be more like receptacles and vessels for divine imagination that’s trying to come through us in the form of emotions, but also in the form of the arts and also the practices.
And so once the curtain goes up and you say, okay, let’s let go of the subject object split, what comes back is the intermediary things that were secretly keeping everything connected and they can become stronger again. And then people, so I’ll make one practical, semi practical, I’m not very practical, but semi practical bridge, the environmental movement is so important. We need the living environment. And in a funny way, it needs us right now. We have created a lot of damage, and I say if we have the power to create the damage, but we must have the power to also heal and revitalize. And so I think the environmental movement needs to understand that nature is not part of a scientific project, that nature is part of a spiritual project, that nature is alive with spirits just the way it’s full of medicines. And so when the curtain goes up, I think we get to see that, oh, right behind the curtain is the dance of nature. And behind that is the song of the cosmos. And we are part of that, and we are from the moment we’re born, we’re born into a cosmic moment. That’s what astrology is trying to show. And we’re born into the song of creation and we each have our own note. And if we can find our own note, we are contributing to the song and the dance goes on and creation continues and our soul can rest.
Thomas: Yeah, that’s beautiful. That speaks a lot to me. And also what you just said is I think that this Cartesian split also led to the fact that even that planet and human are separate versus my body is the planet. And when we go through nature, you go through the forest and say, where is nature? And nature is not just around me. Nature is through me because I’m also nature.
Michael: Human nature.
Thomas: Exactly. We are nature too. I think that interdependence or interrelatedness is so important also for the healing process that you said that it’s not just us in nature, it is like we are nature. So the interior of humanity and how we affect and create our—impact our environment is so important as not two, but we’ve split them often. So that’s very powerful.
Michael: And if we put Descartes into the psychology that I was talking about, Descartes didn’t have a mother. He was not nurtured or nourished. He grew up with people he didn’t actually know in apparently dark, cold, castly places or something. And so he said, “All I have is my mind.” He also never had a relationship. He was really, he is the Cartesian split because he was a dramatic representation of the split. He himself was separated from his deeper self from all relationship and so on. And so he’s more like a symptom than a guide. But the symptom is helpful because it tells you, there’s an old idea that says initially you have to see where the symptom comes from. Eventually you have to see what the symptom is aimed at. And so the split is aimed at unity. Every time we encounter a split, we’re actually finding something.
It’s like a wound. Once the wound is opened and cleans, then it can become closed and healed. And if it’s in the human tissue and everything, the healed place is stronger than the tissue nearby, the wound when it’s healed makes us stronger. And so anyway, I’m just rambling, but we can see Descartes as the symptom of the split that has penetrated throughout the world. It leads eventually to the nuclear split and weapons like that, and it leads to the cultural upheaval we’re in now where anything you mentioned gets split into two right away. And people think they’re in two different stories, but we’re all in the same story. It’s the story of the split and how to heal it, and the split is also an aspect of liminality, being betwixt one thing and another.
Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, that’s beautiful. And you also speaking to, of course, Descartes’ teaching needed a fertile ground in us in culture. And then the traumatic split between mind and body often is also what we are healing in many of the things that you spoke about. And so that symptom, once we are aware of it as you are bringing it to our awareness, so then it can start to heal and unify that’s beautiful and grow beyond itself. That’s the whole story of posttraumatic learning. And so that’s beautiful. That’s beautiful. So what do you feel for our listeners now—before we go there, one thing I wanted to come back to because I heard you at the beginning also saying that basically that what you called ego or that small self is also like a defense against an original wound, like a wound that happens very early. Is there, in your eyes, is there a way to say, okay, we develop modalities to kind of liquefy or heal that original wound, so that separation between the big self and the small self becomes more unified also so that the soul can shine through more?
Michael: Yeah, that’s the dynamic. Now I like to start with the idea that each soul born is unique. We’ll never be born again. Many people will be born, maybe better people, I don’t know. But we each have our own experiment with life, and it’s our own story trying to unfold from within us. That’s the old idea. So the wound is part of the story so that most people, whenever I’ve been taught something, it was always, oh, we’re going to get a cure. Well, in mythological terms and in terms of rites of passage, the wound becomes a womb. The wound doesn’t go away, it becomes non-toxic, and it becomes the womb that, I mean, this goes back into ancient poetry too, where the poet would say, “Everything I’ve ever learned, I learned from being wounded” or “My whole life has been an adventure from my woundedness.” So I have a little different view on the wound, especially from mythology, that the point isn’t to cure the wound, the point is to live what’s hidden in the wound.
I’m just trying to think of who said that. Anyway, I think it was Carl Jung who said, “Genius hides behind the wound.” So as soon as we get in touch with the wound, we’re actually closer to our own genius. Genius means the spirit you were born with. And so I think woundedness has to be re-imagined so that it’s not seen as medical. And so it’s not seen as wrong. I think the wound is natural. I think the way we got the wound is typically wrong. So one, when a person has been abused, and I’ve worked with some groups of people all of whom were severely abused. And what I noticed was once you have the wound of abuse, your life has changed. That wound cannot be taken away. It can be learned from, it can be healed, but heal means make whole. It doesn’t mean go away. To be whole is to include the holes, the fullness and the holes.
And so from our wound, we learn something about our nature also. And so in rites of passage, for instance, a person would be given a physical wound on purpose to remember what happened, to remember that they’re wounded, to remember that they have grown from the wound because if we remember our woundedness were less likely to wound other people. And so there’s a knowledge of the wound that has to do with the liminal, but has to do with healing. And so if you go back to elders, they’ve all learned the nature of their own wounds and they’ve learned how to accept the wounds of others and bring healing to the situation. And it’s a hard thing to explain, but to me, the wound doesn’t go away. It just becomes a womb from which life can come rather than a wound that threatens death.
Thomas: That’s beautiful. And also what you said about the depathologizing of the wound, depathologizing the defense mechanisms around the pain and learning, seeing that there’s intelligence in life and that grows. It’s not about getting rid of it, as many people might think it’s something that I need to get rid of versus it becomes part of the bigger hole. And I think that also shows that the capitalistic version of purpose is often my career, but the holistic version of purpose is actually including the wound as part of the purpose. So that’s really beautiful.
Michael: Yeah, I’m really with you on that. The word ambition means to walk the entire realm. So it’s called the ambit. And the idea was back in the day, all of the realms were small. There were many, many, many kings and queens and chiefs and all that because everybody had a little realm, like a lot of people had realms. And so each year, whoever the ruler was, had to walk the ambit of the realm in order to be connected with the earth and to understand the dynamic of that realm. And so ambition means to walk the ambit. So to be really ambitious is to know the circle of one’s own self, which includes accepting one’s wounds and not trying to get rid of them. And so real ambition is connected to our woundedness because there, not only can we be—healing is extracted from the wound, but also we become more creative because we’re actually understanding how wounds happen all the time.
And we become more attuned to woundedness. And so many modern leaders will not acknowledge their own wounds. And so they cannot be trusted because they will wound other people because of the ignorance of their own, the way that they’re wounding and the way that they’re wounded. And so the elder, the elder is never traditionally a position really like a leader. The elder serves a different function than the leaders. The elder is actually in the state of trying to find wisdom on a recurring basis, which is different to trying to lead everybody, closer to healing everybody or doing some healing.
Thomas: That’s beautiful. It’s also beautiful what you said about leadership and about wise leadership also that our leaders, by accepting our wounds as a leader, we actually become more trustworthy and we become more integrated, not to wound other people. I think that’s a beautiful, for many leaders and business leaders and political leaders, I think that’s a very powerful sentence. And if one wants to unpack that sentence, there’s a lot to find in there.
Michael: And the elder knows when to leave office and to let go of power and knows how to let go and say, now I’m going to dwell—the old idea was the elder has one foot in the other world, one foot in the world of the eternal things and one foot in this world. And so they’ve become a bridge between the eternal and the time bound. And once you’re doing that, you don’t want to have a daily job. You don’t want to be in charge of things. You want to be open. You become more like a channel. And so there’s another old idea that says the eternal is trying to deliver knowledge to this earthly planet all the time. And that knowledge can only enter the world through people who receive it. And so the very answers we’re looking for are actually being sent. But can we be humble enough, open enough, and give enough space to allow it to come in? The elder is doing that struggle.
Thomas: Yeah. The elder is the one that checks the inbox for the mails that came from the cosmos. Right? It’s lovely. It’s lovely. I very much am with you on that. I think we all receive that. But the question is if we can open the mails and to really listen to that and if you have space enough, are there any final words that you want to leave our listeners with in this time? It was such a pleasure. It’s such a creative flow that I dove into with you. So is there anything that you want to leave us with?
Michael: Yeah, I like the idea that all the elders are healers. And if we say we each have the wise sage, the wise old woman, wise old man in our heart, the sage is in the heart. And so that means we all can be an elder at a given moment. And then to me, I hear the echo of William Blake, who’s one of my heroes, and William Blake says, every day has a moment of eternity waiting for you. In other words, the eternal’s trying to come in and it’s trying to come to us each day. One of the reasons to have a practice, whether it’s, there’s two big roads of practice, meditation, contemplation is one road, the creative arts is the other road. They’re both practice roads and whatever road we’re on, the eternal is trying to give us some eternal vitamin drops every day, every day has a moment of eternity, because I cling to that, given the heaviness of the world, the loss of species, the loss of ecosystems, the loss of truth, the loss of meaningful leadership, all that stuff is a burden. It’s heavy. And then I cling to the idea that the eternal is trying to get to us each day because as soon as the eternal touches us, the wound is momentarily healed and we’re in touch with wholeness and we’re okay. So I’m wishing that people could have that moment more often.
Thomas: Eternal vitamins or supplements. Vitamins. That’s great. I love it. So thank you Michael. This was very enriching. I feel very inspired, enlivened. I felt I was in a dance with you for an hour. And it’s lovely to get the download of your wisdom and thank you so much. And I think many people can really enjoy this conversation. So thank you. Good.
Michael: Alright. And great to meet you, Thomas. Great to talk and have a good conversation. Thank you
