Michael Meade – The Courageous Path of the Heart

Thomas:

Welcome, Michael. I’m so happy to have you here again with us and your wisdom. 

Michael:

Great to be back with you, Thomas.

Thomas:

I remember our last conversation for our Collective Trauma Summit, and I still remember some of the points we touched on, which are partly similar to what I think it would be great to cover this time and are partly different.

 

So how do we go through this time on the planet and this time in our societies? We all know that there is a lot of uncertainty, there are a lot of change processes happening. And what’s the courage that we need? And so maybe we’ll start with your life as an example, and then we look a bit at the overarching picture and what you see we need to learn in order to be prepared to go through this time in a better way, if that’s possible.

So let’s start with you. Your soul, and you seem to be on your path. You did most probably many things in your life that your soul’s calling for. And you embody those. And so maybe you can share a little bit about your own path and also about the courage that it needed maybe in your life at certain times to make decisions that weren’t so easy, but helped you to unfold your soul’s potential in this world. Whatever comes up when I ask you this.

Michael:

Well, it’s a good question. And of course, courage comes from le coeur, the heart. So it’s really about paths of the heart. And can we find the path our heart would have us taking away? And part of what happens to me every time war occurs on a big scale is I have my own PTSD. Because when I was young, 19, I got drafted to go to the Vietnam War. And I didn’t believe in that war.

But I was 19, and I wasn’t sure. And my family expected me to go. Everyone in my neighborhood thought I should go. But I didn’t feel that I could. So I sent a letter back to the draft board saying, “This is not a declared war. It’s not a wise war. It’s a damaging war. It makes no sense. And so I’m not going to come. But if you have another war, let me know.” And I thought I was being very courteous. And well, the next thing, the people are knocking on the door and saying, “You either go now down to the draft center or you go to jail.”

So I went to the draft center. And so there’s a question of courage there. Can I take this stand and keep this stand? Even though everyone around me doesn’t agree with me. And my soul is saying I can’t do this. This would be a loss of soul for me. So they offer me to be a, I forget what they call it, but a non-combatant person. I’m against it. And I can sign this thing, and they’ll let me do it.

But I read it and I can’t agree with it. It says that I’ve never been violent. I grew up in a rough neighborhood. People know that I can be violent. If my family gets attacked, I will be violent. I can’t sign that. And there’s a bunch of other stuff in there I can’t sign. So I said, “No, I can’t be a conscientious objector in your terms. My conscious is objecting, but not the way you want me to say it.” So now I’m deeper into it.

Anyway, the story goes on and on. And I’m trying to hold my ground, and then I actually don’t hold it because they’re back to the idea, it’s jail or go into the army. And I talked to my uncles and my father. My mother really disappoints me. I tell her what I feel. And she says, “Our sons always go.” And I said, “Wow, that’s not even specific. You’re not even looking at me.”

So I wind up going in. And I go through basic training. I go through jungle training. And all of the time I’m thinking, God, it’s not just that I might die, it’s that I might kill someone for no reason. And that feels to me like a fate worse than death. And I’m still trying to figure it out when they bring the whole company together, and they’re giving a kind of a teaching on what it’s going to be like when you go into the jungle and everything.

And the officer who’s giving it says, “And so if there’s a hill, and you’re told to take that hill, you do that. Soldier, you do that.” And I just raised my hand. I said, “I might not do that. If you tell me to go somewhere simply to die, I won’t do it.” And they go ballistic. How can you do that in front of everybody? And so now I’m in jail. I’m in jail.

And then in the military prison, I was a bad prisoner because now I realize I cannot follow these orders. It goes against my heart and my soul. This is now settled. It’s a little late, but it’s settled. And so then I’m a bad prisoner because I won’t follow orders now. So they put me in solitary confinement. And so I am in solitary confinement for months. And in the course of that, I realized this is it. This is complete take a stance or don’t take a stance.

So I stopped eating. I go on a hunger strike. And I went into that military situation about 155 pounds. I came out 87 pounds. I was skin and bones, but I got out. Actually, it was Robert Kennedy, who was, at the time, the state senator from New York. Someone got his attention. And he called in there and said, “If you don’t release him in 48 hours, I’m coming down to get him out myself.” So he got me out of there. I never knew what happened or how that occurred.

But the courage part was, for me, is I had to take that stance and I had to keep that stance. And I almost died several times from the starvation part of it. And that almost didn’t matter. Once I connected to my heart in that sense of courage from the heart, that was it. I was committed totally and completely. And so I come out of there a different person. I came out of there understanding something about courage and something about life and death. I felt like I had died and came back to life.

And I’ll say one more thing about it, having to do with paths. So I had always been interested in mythology since I was like 13 years old. And in there, I’m in solitary. I have no writing equipment. I have no books. Nothing, just me, concrete floor, metal bars, and so on. And so you can go a little crazy in there. And what happens is I start having visitors. And they’re not actual visitors, no one else can see them, but they’re characters from myth like Odysseus and all. They’re coming to help me out and to give me courage.

And so then I remember the day I had to say, I’m either losing my mind or I’m finding my mind. And I realized this is my mind. This is my path. This is my way. So I come out of there knowing that I was deeply connected with myth, and that I had to realize that something in me was intense and could not be rejected, dismissed, neglected, or repressed.

And of course I come out of there with all kinds of PTSD, and I didn’t fit into the culture and I was a lost soul for a while. But I think I found courage. And I had the idea of I won’t fight in that war, but I didn’t have the courage to take the stand until I found myself really fully in there. And so in a sense, I’ve been on the path of mythology ever since. On it, then off it, raising children, having to do something else, all that kind of stuff. But I found something about my own heart and my own soul.

Thomas:

Wow, that sounds really powerful. I didn’t know that. It’s really powerful, Michael. And also that you took a stance for peace, and what you couldn’t do ethically, this is very powerful. Also, that you just didn’t sign a document that says, “Listen, I’m not violent. I never was.” And it’s not true. Because that would have been the easy way out, but you didn’t do that. That’s really powerful.

Michael:

Yeah. They used to wake me up when I was fasting for a long time. They used to force feed me too. That’s what kept me alive. But they would wake me up in the middle of the night, and say, “We can’t find your vital signs. Do you really want to die for this?” And I said, “No, I don’t want to die. I just won’t live the way you’re telling me I have to live. It’s not me wanting to die. Something in me cannot live that way.” And they just couldn’t understand it. I didn’t even understand it that well.

Thomas:

Right. Yeah. It sounds also like something bigger in you appeared there and pulled you through this time. So that’s amazing. That’s remarkable. And so if you look at this phase of your life, and then you see a fast forward of the trajectory of your life, how do you feel this kind of, because it sounds to me like an initiation, like how this initiative or initiatory phase affected the rest of your life? If you look a bit at, how did this affect everything that came after?

Michael:

Well, part of it was I knew there was this thing in myself that cannot be simply questioned. I connected it to a sense of authenticity. And coming with inner authenticity comes a sense of authority. I was against the authorities, but there was a lot of authority in me. As people used to say, “You defeated the whole army. You didn’t go to the war, but you defeated the army.” And in a way I did. They didn’t want to let me out of there because they were afraid the other draftees would go, “Oh, I’m going to do that too.”

But in the meantime, I had found something out about the depth of the soul and the courage and the heart, and something about an inner authority. Because I’ll tell you another strange thing. So I’m in this solitary cell, not only have I stopped eating food, I’ve thrown out the mattress, the blankets, and all of the clothing. Because I tried to argue with them, and say, “You don’t realize I’m already gone. I’m not here. This is over for me. I’m gone. You’re just kind of technically holding me back.” And this is a very intense thing.

And so anyway, I’m sitting in this cell now naked. I’m 20 years old. And what happened is the officers would come in one at a time at night, off duty. They would come to the cell. And they would all enter the same way, and say, “Soldier, you stand up when I come in.” I was just sitting there naked in the cell, say, “I don’t think I’m standing up. I mean, I don’t think you have a real authority here in this little cell.” So they’d give that up, and then what would they do? They would confess. I was hearing confession every night.

They knew this is the one person they could tell the truth to inside of the army. And they’re confessing, I beat my wife, I drink to get over all the anxiety. And they were all confessing to me, right up to the general in that area. And so this is a whole other part of me that I realized, because I was raised Catholic, so I understand the confession thing, but I never thought I would be hearing confession.

And so how does that play out later? So not that many years later, I start working with severely at risk youth, gang kids and homeless kids. Because I relate to them. And what I wound up doing with them was hearing confession. It would be the same kind of thing. Once they realized that it’s like if you find a good therapist, the good therapist is good because their self is present and it allows your self to be present. And I wound up doing that with gang kids. And then I started working in prisons. Oh, that’s interesting.

So being so far out of the culture the way I was in the solitary cell. And when I came back, I didn’t fit in. I wasn’t a veteran of the war per se. I was also kind of crazy and had PTSD. So I understood living on the margins and so on. And so I didn’t realize until just now I’m saying it, that whether it’s people in prison or refugees that I’ve worked with, or kids at risk, everyone needs to confess. And I’ve heard many, many confessions.

And so something shifts inside a person. And I consider myself a recovering Catholic, but I never thought I would be giving blessings. But I wind up at times doing that. And it’s interesting, not because I think I’m special or something, but because the person needed it so much that if you’re the one there, then give them the blessing.

And one of the problems in the modern world is most people are not blessed for who they are. Young people are told you have to make something of yourself. I tell young people, you already are something, and that something is unique. And we need to make that conscious and bring it present because that will show you where to go in life.

So anyway, I just learned that in talking with you that I actually, part of this heart, life, death experience was realizing I had to hear confessions. I actually had to bless those generals and those colonels. It was kind of crazy. But they were holding me in there, wouldn’t let me go, but they were also coming in asking for kind of forgiveness in a way.

And I was at the point, I noticed I’m doing this with my hands, I was in this almost like Jesus position or something where I would have to say, okay, you’re forgiven for beating your wife, but the problem isn’t simply that you did beat her. The problem is you’re going to do it again. So you can be forgiven, but you have to do something about what in you is causing you to take out your whatever inner violence conflict on your… I was a psychologist too all of a sudden. Anyway, that was life changing.

Thomas:

Yeah, that’s really amazing. I mean, it’s such a strong life story that you’re telling us here. And first of all, I want to say it feels to me as if through this intensity of this experience, of course it was also traumatizing. But it also for me feels like it had an initiatory quality for your life. And it has a reason why people came to you into this cell and spoke to you about their life. And so this is really powerful and interesting.

And also that something in you also became a remedy through that process for other people that you worked with in prisons and refugees, as you said, and the youth at risk. So that there is something grew in you also, power. And I think also that the whole initiatory process plus the trauma kind of recovery creates an active substance. We become a remedy through our own path. And that’s also a bit what our course is about. How can we turn, even the things that are hard in our life, into a remedy also for us and for others?

And so I’m curious, just because now that I heard your story so much deeper, I’m curious about the visitations. So if myth is so much connected to your soul, as your life turns out anyway, later also, but how did that help you or support you in this situation when you were so deep in your prison cell and also in the fasting? When you had that, can you share a little bit how that helped you in this moment? How did that show up in you and help you?

Michael:

I first found myth on my 13th birthday when my aunt intended to give me a history book, but it was a mythology book. And she saw that, when I tore the cover off, it was wrong and she wanted to take it back, and we’re fighting over this book. And something in me knew I had to have this book. It was the right wrong book. It was a gift, but I had to take it. It was like a life-changing moment right there.

And I read most of that book that night. And when I was reading it, I realized, oh, this is the story that we’re living. I was stunned by the idea of the Sisters of Fate. And that everyone that comes into the world, they give you your thread of fate and destiny, and then they make it specific for you, and then there’s a limit to it. And I thought, that’s everybody I know. Everybody has a thread of fate and people don’t know it. I was stunned by that.

And I was in a little neighborhood gang at the time. And then I’m reading about Jason and the Golden Fleece. And they’re all going to find the Golden Fleece, which is not golden like treasure. The Golden Fleece was the symbol for justice. And I’m realizing, oh, even our gang really, we’re looking for something bigger than ourselves, but we don’t know what it… So I used to tell my friends, “We’re Jason and the Golden…” And that didn’t work. So anyway, I had this opening, and I could not find anyone to share it with. Not teachers, certainly not my parents, not my aunts and uncles. So it was weird because I had this thing. But you mentioned the rite of passage.

So I get out of that whole thing, and now I’m like 21 years old and I don’t fit. I’m exactly like a battle veteran in that I can’t get back into the society because I have felt and experienced another level of both life and death, similar to a battle veteran. And so what am I going to do? And I didn’t even know what psychology was. And no one in my family would ever go to therapy because that meant you were crazy. And of course, yeah, they’re all crazy, but we’re not going to share it with anyone.

Anyway, so I started studying rites of passage. Because I remembered something I had read that said that in a rite of passage, you separate and then you kind of die, and then you come back as another person. And since I had almost died several times, so I began to study rites of passage. And that really helped me. That helped me understand that I was in an unfinished rite of passage.

And why that’s important now, I think we are collectively, humanity, in a rite of passage. And we’ve already separated from the world that we had, and there’s many, many places around the world that can testify immediately. And in a rite of passage, there’s no going back. And that was part of my problem. I couldn’t go back. My family didn’t understand who I was. I couldn’t live in the neighborhood because they misunderstood who I was and I couldn’t go back. So I had to go forward in some other way.

So I think we’re in that now. We’re in the middle phase of a rite of passage where we’ve already lost the world we thought we had, but we haven’t found the next world yet. And in rites of passage, they call that liminal. We’re in the liminal space, betwixt and between. Now, that also turns out to be the exact space of creativity. The artist, whoever is making something, if it’s a genuine creative process, in the middle of it, the doubts will come, the uncertainty, the model doesn’t work, all kinds of things will happen.

And then the psyche is in the liminal space, which is the space of upset, uncertainty, serious doubt, confusion, and conflict, but it’s also the space where the images come in and the ideas come in and inspiration comes. And so I think we’re in that now collectively. And that what’s trying to happen is a transformation of humanity. Because as we stand mostly now, generally speaking, we have lost the deepest values, the most deepest qualities of being humane to each other.

And it’s going to continue for a while. Because the forces and powers that be are seeing it all as literal wartime conflict, as if that can solve it, when all evidence is that just causes it to deepen and continue. And it’s in the midst of this tearing apart of the world and this shattering of institutions which can’t keep up with what’s going on. And this kind of deep disturbance to the soul of humanity that we have to find the threads of imagination and the threads of healing and whatever we need to do to remake humanity based on the deepest values of the soul rather than on the collective values of nationalities and so on.

That’s how it seems to me. And we are now all in that space, like it or not. And from a mythological point of view, it can’t end. In mythological terms, the world ends and it begins again. It’s happened many times. Myth is about, I mean, the premier moments in myth are beginning and end. And so mythically, the world continues. I think the issue is how long we spend in the liminal betwixt and between condition. That’s the issue.

There’s a way out. Humanity has gone through this before. Not exactly the same because we have nature unraveling while culture is rattling. That’s unusual. But I think what I learned in that prison cell in a way was there’s something deeper than what I call me that knows me better than I know myself and it knows why I’m here.

For myself, I’m actually closer to being carrying medicine for other people as well or helping them find their medicine. Maybe that’s what I’m trying to do to some degree. But I think you hit on something because I come out of that situation totally in liminal space. I was literally betwixt and between, and I knew I couldn’t go back. I had to leave New York where I had grown up and everything because I couldn’t find myself there because it was a deeper version of myself that I was trying to find. And now I feel like that seems to be what we’re all going through.

Thomas:

Wow, that’s so beautiful, Michael. So many things. It’s just so many things I wanted to capture and underline and other things. But I want to underline two things. I think that’s exactly, on the one hand, what you just said is exactly why we came here together to have this course exactly for this phase of this liminal collective phase that we are in. So that’s beautiful. And you framed it in your own way, and I completely agree with this. And I’m so happy you’re expressing this so eloquently in your own way.

And I loved when you said, “I met something in the present that knows me deeper than I know myself.” A deeper knowing. And I think that’s a very powerful statement also to make, that there is a deeper creative force or whatever, however we call it, our deeper soul, or whatever it is, in our language that is deeper than this time. The movement of the time. And I think that’s a very powerful thing to say. And you’re not only saying it, you are transmitting it through your own experience.

And also it’s great for all of us to feel, wow, there is something deeper than how the makeup, the architecture of the time, the structures of this time look like. And it is very powerful.

And I love also what you said about the one world is gone, the other one didn’t arrive and we are in this liminal space. So if we stay there for a moment, what did you learn over the course of your life? What are the qualities we develop, we have to develop, we might develop, whatever, in these liminal spaces that are supportive? Is there at all something we can develop because maybe it’s just about being in this time? So maybe you share with us a little bit, and what do myths say about the development that happens in this space of creativity?

Michael:

So the first thing I think of is Carl Jung’s idea of the deep self. Some people call it the soul. In mythology, it would be soul. In psychology, it tends to be self. And so the majority of people near as I can tell do not know they have a deeper self that knows who they are and why they’re here. In mythological terms, each soul that comes into the world is unique, but it has its gifts and its own medicine, inner medicine, and wisdom, if we want to call it that. And each soul is aimed at something meaningful. That whole idea has been lost. People now think of the blank soul, the tabula rasa, the soul entered the world blank, and then your family writes on you and the neighborhood writes on you. And you become the sum total of things that have affected you from the outside.

But the idea of the deep soul or the deep self is it’s already there inside. Deep characteristics that are essentially noble in everybody. I mean, that’s how I have to think about it. Because otherwise I’m judging people better or worse without knowing their deep soul. So there’s that. And Jung got that idea of the deep self during World War II. He looked at World War II, which was a tearing apart of the world at that time. And he said what can happen here that changes this? Because he saw the horror of what was happening. And he had been studying Asian mythology when he got the idea of the deep self, which is really profoundly present in Asian mythology. And so he kind of brought that to the Western world in a way. It’s a really powerful image for me.

So in the midst of the liminal betwixt and between, when it feels like everything could be torn apart, fall apart, all could come to an end, that’s at a certain level. And below that is the deep self. And the deep self is bringing all the gifts of the psyche uniquely arranged for each person. But the deep self also, because it’s an archetypal, deep sense of self, is connected to both the past and the future.

So from the deep self, if you can stand the liminal enough to get in touch with the deep self, something happens that is really profound. And to me, you can see it from misunderstanding of the word prophecy. Most people think prophecy means predicting the future. That’s not what the word means. Prophecy means to be standing so deep in the river of time that ideas from the past that had been lost can flow to you and images of the future that have not yet been seen can also flow to you. And an awakening can occur in the depth of the self, in the center, that brings the ancient past and the mostly unseen future together. And that’s a capacity of each person’s self and soul.

So that’s one way to look at it because, to me, we’ve lost something. We’ve lost a soul connection. You can’t go about wanting to kill other people unless you’ve lost your soul. A person in touch with their own self and soul cannot do that. They might have to do it under great, great pressure, but they’re not willingly going to do that. And so we’ve lost something of this deep self and soul. But in a sense, it’s trying to come back.

And just as when an individual has a crisis in their life, it’s in that crisis that they become a bigger soul or else become a smaller person. And humanity is now in that crisis. We’re either going to awaken to a greater sense of soul and self, which is going to bring courage, an unusual kind of courage and imagination, or we’re going to stay stuck because we didn’t manage, and then people’s lives might get smaller and smaller until another critical moment occurs. I’m not sure about that. But I love the idea that we’re in prophetic times if we understand prophecy as ancient things trying to catch up to us and unseen things trying to reveal themselves to us.

Thomas:

Wow, that’s very beautiful. So what I hear you say is also that this is a time where it’s not about how much we can hold on to what we know about the world, but it’s a time where it allows us because we are less identified maybe with all the structures that are falling apart, even if that’s a painful process, to remember, to become a member again of a deeper soul stream that then infuses fresh information from ancient and future times.

Michael:

Yeah. Yeah. Because Jung also had had the idea of, he gave it different names, but I think he was a prophet in his own way, in the sense that he was bringing ancient knowledge and wisdom to bear in the present moment. And so in his own way, he would refer to the soul as being this timeless agent of humanity that goes all the way back to the beginning. And then the idea is that, in terms of remembering, when you take the idea of the archetypal level of soul, memory goes all the way down and all the way back. And if we can allow it in the precise time when the institutions cannot deal with the rapidity of change and the dramatic extremes that are going on, at that exact moment, that’s when the deep memory or the deep well of memory can come up through people.

And I don’t mean to be Pollyanna about it. We’re going to suffer for a while. And the agony of being alive right now is genuine. But there’s also evidence that groups have gone through this before. In India, they call it fording the river of time, that you come to a place where you have to cross the river. And why cross the river? Because on the other side is all the things that we lost, the great imagination, the courage that people lack, the images and the stories and the wisdom. That it’s nearby, but we have to cross a river to get to it.

And then some spiritual groups take a hold of that, and they say, “Once you get those things, you don’t come back.” But no, there’s another way to see it. I call it bodhisattva time because the bodhisattva, in terms of that spiritual tradition, is the one who becomes enlightened and aware and more knowledgeable and more centered and grounded. And then goes, “Oh, I better go back and help everybody else because they need this too.” And so sometimes I think we’re in bodhisattva time. Whatever we can learn, we have to not take for ourselves. We actually have to find a way to distribute it like medicine.

Thomas:

Wow, beautiful. Yeah. Lovely. Yeah, I love this deep well and how we deepen this, how we touch this groundwater that seems like out of reach. You said before, “Well, we lost touch with the soul.” How does one lose touch with something that’s so intimate?

Michael:

Well, by denying and repressing and suppressing it. So I’m using soul as the old term for the connective tissue of life. Spirit is a wonderful thing. And spirit wants to ascend and also get to the place of oneness usually. We call it spirit. Not plural, spirit. Well, soul is going down. It wants to go down. Spirit’s connected to air and fire and goes up. Soul is connected to water and Earth, and it wants to go down. So we’ve lost our downness. Humans who are children of the Earth by definition have been trying to destroy the Earth or exploit it to the point of destruction. And that has to change.

As a matter of fact, from a point of view of Earth awareness, or you could call it a bodily wisdom, bombing things to shreds cannot be an answer. It’s actually destructive, not just to people, of course, but also to the Earth. And so it’s as if we have to learn the idea of going down. There’s an old saying, when you find yourself in a descent, dive. We are in a big descent. I mean, so many things are saying we are descending. So the point then is to dive. And I know that people can’t trust that if they don’t know they’re diving towards something. So there’s really something essential about the meaning and the value of the individual soul.

And maybe that’s what I’m saying. We’ve lost the value of the individual soul. How else can people be so destructive and so dead on opposed to each other? As soon as we realize each person has a soul and each soul is unique, philosophically, ethically, that puts us on a different ground. And so that I think has been forgotten because of mass culture. Mass culture says we are each part of a voting group. We’re part of a purchasing group. We’re part of an ethnic group, all that kind of thing.

The most important thing has always been the individual soul because it’s the individual soul that awakens. It’s the individual soul that takes a meaningful stand. We think of all the people, heroines and heroes, the real ones, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, everybody can name who they are, they were individual souls that took a stand. And in doing that, they didn’t just find the center and the grounding of their own life. They affected everyone around them.

So the collective of humanity can’t change at the collective level. It has to be individual souls that then affect the collective change. And then to go back to Jung who’s borrowing from mythology, really, each individual’s soul is as deep as deep can be. The word memory comes from Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory, and she’s also the mother of the muses. So if we go into the deep memory well, we not only find things that have been lost and forgotten, we find our individual connection to the muses who are the inspiration for all kinds of creation.

And so just to put a mythological touch on it, we are in the end times with regard to the world that’s already gone, and we’re in the beginning times in terms of what’s trying to happen. But I think what’s trying to happen is coming from deep, deep down rather than high, high up. And so the individual person becomes the potential agent of recreation by becoming more aware of their own life.

And to go back to the idea of the paths, in terms of depth psychology, but also mythology, each person is already called to a kind of path in life. And it’s different than a career. A career might get you through. A path will get you to be yourself. And when a person has response to a genuine calling and they find a path, you can tolerate much greater tension and much greater conflict. And of course, tension becomes creative tension. And they say that the way you judge the maturity of a person is based upon how much tension they can handle. Because the more tension we can handle, the more we are available to inspiration from above and also creative energies coming from below.

So I think, I guess when I said we lost soul, we lost the understanding of the importance of the individual soul. Because that soul individually carries unique gifts and unique medicines and capacities that the world needs. Not that anyone’s going to be the hero that… I like the hero myth, but I’m not a big fan. I’m a fan of the genius myth, which says that everyone has their own inner genius. And that when that genius awakens, they realize not just that they have capacities and gifts that should be given, but also they have a calling, which is what opens the path.

And the paths of genius, if enough people all gets on the paths of genius, we don’t have to agree because everybody’s going to be doing what they’re called to do. And if we agree at least that the soul is noble and meaningful, then mostly noble, meaningful things will happen. And then that changes the world from below up.

Thomas:

Wow, this is beautiful. First of all, again, so eloquently put. And also, I love this depth and this well from which we create something new. And I love this, like how you mentioned that when we really find our vocation, you found your vocation, but your vocation is not separate from the rest. Your vocation is inclusive of the rest of the world. Because as soul is the connective tissue, when you touch your soul, you are with everything.

So it’s not that I do my thing and then maybe it will support the world. If I’m really connected and it’s not my thing, it’s the expression of my soul, but it’s not separate, like my thing. And that’s beautiful.

When you said, okay, that’s the connective tissue, is the soul, and this feels really beautiful. For all of us, is there anything we can practice, participate in a certain way in such a phase that makes a positive difference? Are there any skills to develop?

Michael:

The way I see it, and this comes mostly from stories, everyone enters the world gifted and aimed, specific arrangement of gifts, talents, capacities, and a specific aim. It doesn’t mean that a person can’t have a multiple complicated path through life. It just means that it’s aimed at something. I wrote a book called Fate and Destiny. And I was trying to say fate is all that restricts us. Destiny is everything that calls us to live beyond all restrictions we’ve been given. And we’re all in the path of fate and destiny being pulled back and forth and held in that tension.

So if we can take on the idea that everyone is unique and uniquely gifted, the word genius doesn’t mean high IQ or even specific talent. The word means the spirit that’s already there. That’s the original meaning of the word genius. So the spirit that’s already there in a person is an arrangement of gifts and capacities. And finding that doesn’t make life less tragic or less troublesome. It just means we’re going somewhere while we’re experiencing the tragedies and the suffering.

And then this idea of being gifted is connected with the notion that, like you were saying, it’s not for me, I’m me. The gifts aren’t mine, they’re intended to be given. And then the big surprise happens. The more the person gives their gifts, the more the gifts are present. You can’t drain it because it’s the spirit that’s already there. You can’t drain it. It’s all a matter of learning how to keep giving it in more meaningful ways.

And then, I don’t know, but to me, calling, which is really important, you can choose a career. And there’s an old story about the man who sees a ladder against the wall and he starts climbing that ladder rung by rung, gets all the way to the top, and realizes it’s leaning against the wrong wall. How many people have had that? So what the calling is, the calling is calling to the genius in a person. So the calling is specific also. And the calling can come at any time. And in a sense, that’s what I learned in that prison cell. So last thing I wanted was to be locked up and locked down, and maybe the last thing anyone would want. And then here comes the calling.

Then I spend the next 20 years trying to live with that calling, kind of understand what it means. And as it becomes more clear, then the path becomes more clear. And there’s an old idea in India of finding the path with heart. So the first thing is some sense of who I am and what I bring to the world. And the next thing is finding or hearing the call, and then having the courage to take the risk. When I started telling stories and talking mythology, I didn’t know anyone else doing that. And Joseph Campbell, who I eventually worked with, was the only one anyone knew doing that. But he was an academic. I’m not an academic. I’m doing it in the streets. I’m doing it in prisons. I’m following a call without any evidence of where it’s going or how you negotiate it, and then it starts to take its own shape.

And so it seems to me, well, there’s an old idea, when everything’s falling apart, there’s an acceleration of calling. And you mentioned it earlier. When the institutions are not working and the frameworks are shattering, the call of spirit gets through more. It’s more available. And when there’s no way to see a sensible life path, there’s more reason to take a meaningful life path. And so that can happen.

But the other thing I’ve found is that everyone has a natural inclination towards certain practices. No one can go the path on their own. We need to connect to other souls. The idea of having friends of the soul. It’s not like needing many friends like on Facebook and modern stuff like that. It’s having a few soulful friends who know who we are and still like us. I’m joking, but you know what I mean. We know each other’s weaknesses and we love each other for who we are. That’s really important, having friends of the soul.

And then the other thing is having practices. And because the gifts of a person are specific, the inclination towards practices can tend to be that way too. And so I really encourage people to find practices because we can be knocked off the path and knocked out of our sense of cohesion by all the things that are happening day after day, and it’s going to continue.

And so there’s two great paths of practice, the meditative contemplative path and the creative expressive path. That’s the way they divided it in ancient India. And some people are called to go into deep meditation and reflection, and they find their self that way. And other people are called to go and be creative, make music, make art, whatever it is, because anything we’re making can become a creative practice. And then some people go back and forth. And that’s okay too. There’s no rules.

The idea, sometimes you just ask people, what do you love? And if a person can answer that, well, that could be part of the path and that could be part of the practice. And so some of us love music and need music. And then you have to figure out, am I just a listener or am I going to make it? And then in making music, you’re not trying to win the contest, you’re trying to find the voice coming through you. And so practices become really important because the world around us is not going to settle. And a practice can become a refuge, a dwelling place. It doesn’t have to be silent and quiet, although for some people that’s it. It can be very creative. And in the midst of a world full of destruction, being creative is its own kind of rite of passage.

Thomas:

Yeah, beautiful. Beautiful. And before you said something that also caught my attention, you said in a way, maturity we see in the way how much tension we can stay related to or handle. And I want you to maybe speak a bit more about that. How does this reflect maturity? How does it teach us that if we have tension or discomfort in our life, it’s not necessarily a good or a bad thing. It’s part of the path and our relationship to it and how we handle it also shows something about the maturity of our path in the world. And yeah, so maybe you can speak a bit about this because I think that’s also a very important aspect of how to be in this time right now.

Michael:

Yeah, that’s part of the liminal condition is extraordinary tension. Well, the first thing that comes to mind is, I’m a kid, I’m at home in the house in New York City when I’m growing up, and my mother and father are having a really intense argument. Little unusual for my father to be so outspoken and argumentative, not so unusual with my mother. But I wake up and I go into the kitchen, and there they are having the standoff. And I don’t know which one to go to. I’m getting really scared. And then I finally decide I’m going to go to my mother. Later in life, I wouldn’t necessarily go that way. I think my father was on the greater danger. But anyway, I had to go to one or the other. I could not stand the tension as a child.

And so then when we get to looking like or acting like adults, we should have the capacity to withstand that tension greater. Because, near as I can tell, everyone is an abandoned child, everyone has early life traumatic experiences. That seems to be part of the deal. But also part of the deal is realizing later I am no longer a child. Yes, I can feel overwhelmed by the tension of this, whatever it might be, a battle, or even just creative tension, but I don’t have to be overwhelmed. I actually can recall living through things and things that I’ve learned.

And so that’s what I’m calling more maturity. Not more responsibility in that kind of a Protestant ethical way, but a greater capacity to remain present when the circumstances become challenging. And then realizing I’m not a child. I don’t have to simply choose one or the other. And that creates the creative opportunity. Creativity is the only outcome of a conflict that is satisfying to the soul, whether it’s the inner conflicts we have or the outer conflicts we have. The issue is not winner and loser.

I worked with William Stafford, the American poet, before he died. He was a great person, great poet. And he wrote a book called “Every War Has Two Losers.” And I think a new book could be written, Every War Now has Many, Many Losers. And so very often, even in situation of war, people can’t hold attention any longer. And so then the only thing is to win or lose. But creative tension is there to create a third thing.

I live in America and we have two political parties. And one is supposed to be Republican, the other is supposed to be Democratic. And the Republican is the upper class. They’re supposed to be holding up a class, elite ideas, but also principles. The other side, the Democrat, is we the people. And that’s supposed to be insisting that everybody has a place and everybody deserves a chance. And if those two sides were legitimate, if each side held to what its ethics are supposed to be, the answer wouldn’t be winner and loser. The answer would be a third thing that neither side thought of until they held the tension long enough. And so that’s my understanding of creative tension.

And naturally it happens inside us. I remember at the point where I was married and had four children, and yet I have also found that I’m a storyteller and a student of myth. And I tried to make a living as a storyteller, and it didn’t work. The house is falling down. And finally the family is saying, “It’s entertaining, but it’s not providing what we need.” So I had to go get a real job. And I made a deal with myself that I would do five years of work in the world that I don’t want to do in order to put a roof on the house, and get the kids who are now growing everything that they need. And after five years, I’m going back to the calling. And it kind of worked.

But in the meantime, what happened was because I was tuned into this calling, which involved inspiration from the muses, I started getting awakened at 4:00 in the morning, roughly, with deliveries from the muses saying, “We can’t get to you later in the day because you got the dumb job. We can’t get you at night because you’re so tired. So we’re waking you up at 4:00.” Which in ancient India, they called the hour of God. And so the first book I wrote, that’s what it was. I would wake up at 4:00, and there would be a voice speaking paragraphs. And each night I would have a choice. Am I getting up to write them down or am I falling back to sleep? And sometimes I was so tired I had to sleep.

But I also remember the attention. I’m literally getting deliveries from the muses. And I hear my mother’s voice saying, “Well, you need eight hours of sleep.” And I realized, oh no, I better get up right now because that’s not what I need. I need this vital source of creative energy coming from outside myself. And so in my own little version of trying to do this, I get deliveries, I call them deliveries, and often 4:00, 4:30 in the morning. But as I’ve paid attention to it, it can happen at any time, day or night.

And I’m just saying that in order to illustrate the idea of a practice and a calling, opening a path that gets wider and gives us the chance and the opportunity to become vessels of energy that’s trying to come into the world. You can call it spirit, you can call it creativity, call it soul. We can put a lot of names on it. But those energies that are the most creative, most medicinal, and most soulful energies can only enter into the world through the people living at a given time. We are each potential agents of healing and recreation, and we each can find our own way to open the channel, to use a contemporary word, and then realize how this happens.

I’ll say one more thing. So when I tell stories, I’ve never rehearsed a story, and the story is never told the same way twice. And when I was starting out doing that, I would get criticized by the Folklore Society, or somebody saying, “You’re not doing the original version.” Well, I know there is no original version. But also they just said version, implying that there was more than one version. And so I had to claim this ground, which means that when I’m telling a story, it is trying to live through me in the moment. And if I can allow that, then that story, I’m giving life to the story, which is giving life to me, and the audience can feel it too.

And so I’m just using that as an illustration. Whatever the path is, the path can be almost anything. But when a person allows themselves to be present to it, then knowledge becomes available that was otherwise unknown, and capacities, including having more courage in the heart because I’m standing on ground that means something and goes deeper than my feet.

Thomas:

Wow, that’s so beautiful. Lovely, lovely, lovely. I love this, what you said about that the story comes through you because you are living in a body, and the information can come through you and leave you and make you more alive at the same time, make it alive in you. This is a beautiful way to share it.

And it also means it’s true because I think in many mystical traditions, exactly what you said, the spirit comes through, but the people that are incarnated, that are in a body, that are living right now, this is needed. This magnetism is needed to bring spirit into matter for the manifestation. And you’ve put this beautifully. That’s lovely.

And I want to underline one thing that I think is such an important skill to have, or to develop more and more, is that as long as I can host tension of a conflict or the tension in myself, I do not externalize it as other. And in the moment I externalize it as other, I become part of the polarization of our world and I become part of a camp that then needs another camp to oppose its own voice. And I think this is such a powerful thing you just said about that this capacity to host a tension and then allow it to become a creative process, I think this is one of the major functions right now that we can really train to develop, and it’s beautifully said. So thank you for this for this as well.

So I see our time, time’s flying, and we are already more than an hour here. So Michael, I’m really enjoying this conversation. I’m enjoying the music of your words and the flow of how it flows through you. It’s really beautiful. Is there anything else that is not specific to any question that you think it’s great for us to hear before we wrap up?

Michael:

Yeah. Ikkyu, the somewhat famous Zen poet, who was also called the criminal poet because he broke so many rules, making him my favorite Zen poet, but he has a poem in which he says at the end, “You can’t help but be who you are and where.” And the first time I heard that, that hit me as real truth. And so we’re talking about calling, giftedness, courage in the heart, paths of heart, but we all have to start where we are. And when I hear that, when I read that, I realized, oh, that there’s permission in that and there’s forgiveness in that. So we have to give ourselves permission to be who we are in our limited condition in the given moment, and I think we have to forgive ourselves for who we are and where we are. Only then can we actually find the footprints of the path with heart.

So because it’s such a hard time because the pressure in the world comes down on each individual in ways that are really unusual, and it pushes everybody into their early life trauma stuff, and people get caught there. We also have to have ideas, and this one works for me. You can’t help but be who you are and where. And that’s the starting place for the initiate. That’s the starting place for the awakening soul. And so I try to say that to myself frequently because… Anyway, permission and forgiveness are necessary for finding the path. And that’s one phrase that helps me keep finding it.

Thomas:

I love it. I think this is a great way to end on that note. And thank you so much, Michael. This is great. I really enjoyed this. It’s so resonant. It’s so deep. And so thank you very, very much. And I’m sure everybody’s going to enjoy your wisdom and your flow. So thank you.

Michael:

Well, thank you for inviting me. And it is a conversation, and I feel your presence, and that allowed me to be more free. So thank you for that.

Thomas:

Thank you.