Speaker 1: Yeah, it's Halloween time for those of you in the
Speaker 1: United States. I think Halloween's celebrated in Europe in some
Speaker 1: other countries as well, but here in the US it
Speaker 1: is a big deal. And it's the actual ending of
Speaker 1: summer and the beginning of autumn, so that means the
Speaker 1: fall weather is upon us. And I have noticed it
Speaker 1: is getting colder by the way. November two, set your
Speaker 1: clocks back one hour. That means that it's going to
Speaker 1: be darker earlier here in the United States. You know,
Speaker 1: I think there's a I think it's either Arizona or
Speaker 1: there's one other state that is not participating in Daylight
Speaker 1: Saving Time. But anyhow, happy Halloween, and also remember to
Speaker 1: get up in your outfits, your devil, your warlock, or
Speaker 1: your witch outfit or whatever to scare away the evil spirits.
Speaker 1: That's what the ancestors, what our ancestors were doing in
Speaker 1: Europe and in other countries, they would dress up on
Speaker 1: Halloween and gather and move out the spirits in the house,
Speaker 1: in the barn wherever you were living, so that you
Speaker 1: had the rest of the year to live in peace. Hey,
Speaker 1: this is Cliff, your host of Earth ancients. This is
Speaker 1: a special edition of the program, and we are welcoming
Speaker 1: somebody who I've known about for a year years. Actually
Speaker 1: his name is Michael Mead.
Speaker 2: And if there is.
Speaker 1: Anyone on the planet who you can consider kind of
Speaker 1: a storyteller but also an avatar, someone who is very
Speaker 1: versatile in mythology, anthropology and wisdom traditions, that's Michael Mead.
Speaker 1: And he's probably best known for his work with Robert
Speaker 1: Bligh in the Men's Movement in the nineteen eighties and nineties.
Speaker 1: But he is somebody who is brilliant and is also
Speaker 1: again a storyteller who mixes mythology and storytelling into his talks.
Speaker 1: And we're going to hear from him shortly to talk
Speaker 1: about ancient history and how it applies to us today
Speaker 1: and personal success, personal activation, so that we're not lost
Speaker 1: in space right now here in the United States, we
Speaker 1: are not only dealing with political unrest, but there's also
Speaker 1: a sense of personal unrest and a lot of issues
Speaker 1: coming up with work with income, with just how stable
Speaker 1: our country is. We're not really stable right now. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of infighting and I don't have to say
Speaker 1: anymore other than you know, it's not very comfortable for
Speaker 1: a lot of us, including me, and so hopefully it'll pass.
Speaker 1: It won't be an everlasting kind of thing. But the
Speaker 1: program today is called responding to the Planet's Calling, and
Speaker 1: it's all about your own personal calling. It also has
Speaker 1: to do with what you're here to do, and we're
Speaker 1: each incarnating on this planet known as Earth, to be
Speaker 1: of service, to also have satisfaction, and also to have
Speaker 1: a sense of purpose, and that can mean a ton
Speaker 1: of things. Working with your kids doesn't have to be
Speaker 1: working with other people, can be working with your family
Speaker 1: as a parent, as a mother, as a father, making
Speaker 1: sure your kids are taken care of, that they're happy
Speaker 1: and healthy, and they're being prepared for adulthood, so forth
Speaker 1: and so on. But for me, when I hear about
Speaker 1: a calling, it's more a deep sense of purpose. And
Speaker 1: I think that's really critical for us to consider today
Speaker 1: as having purpose in our life, because if you don't
Speaker 1: have a purpose, you're just living in nine to five
Speaker 1: existence and that gets really boring pretty quickly. And you
Speaker 1: wake up, you go to work, you and you repeat
Speaker 1: the thing, and then you have two days of the
Speaker 1: weekend just to sit and sleep, which I have to
Speaker 1: admit I love to sleep. In I mean, I mean
Speaker 1: I get.
Speaker 2: Up at Let's see, I get up at seven thirty
Speaker 2: every morning. That's not that early.
Speaker 1: I have friends that get up at at five o'clock
Speaker 1: to go to work. They have to commute. But I
Speaker 1: get up at seven thirty. But there's some mornings I'll
Speaker 1: get up and I'll sleep till eleven. I'll wake up
Speaker 1: at six seven thirty. Excuse me, I say eleven. I
Speaker 1: meant to say I'll sleep till nine.
Speaker 2: Very rarely.
Speaker 1: Well, I sleep till ten, but I'll get up and
Speaker 1: I'll wake up, and then I'll kind of lay in
Speaker 1: bed and then I'll turn around and I'll.
Speaker 2: Sleep for another hour or more.
Speaker 1: So anyhow, So today's program is responding to the planet's calling.
Speaker 1: And my guess is Michael Mead. We're really lucky today
Speaker 1: to have a renowned storyteller, author, and scholar of mythology, anthropology,
Speaker 1: and psychology that's.
Speaker 2: None other than Michael Meade.
Speaker 1: And I've been a huge fan of his for many,
Speaker 1: many years. And I don't know how he did this.
Speaker 1: We pulled a rabbit out of the hat to get
Speaker 1: him on the program because he's so in demand and
Speaker 1: so great interest to so many people, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk to him today about the past and the present
Speaker 1: and a theme that he's been bringing up quite a bit. So, Hey, Michael,
Speaker 1: welcome to Earth Anterests. Great to have you on the program.
Speaker 3: Great to be with you. Cliff.
Speaker 1: You have been presenting a series on YouTube on calling,
Speaker 1: and I have found it so important because of our
Speaker 1: current situation here in the United States, Specifically, people are depressed,
Speaker 1: they feel lost, they feel disenfranchised, and I want you
Speaker 1: to explain to us what calling means and if you can,
Speaker 1: can you talk about how our ancestors received and acknowledged
Speaker 1: the calling?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll try.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 3: It actually begins with a kind of decision about the
Speaker 3: nature of the human soul, and there's typically two big theories.
Speaker 3: There's lots of smaller theories, but the two big options
Speaker 3: are that a person comes into the world with an
Speaker 3: empty soul, and the Latin for that was tabula rasa
Speaker 3: the scrape clean table. There's nothing in there. And then
Speaker 3: your parents write on you, and your neighborhood writes on you,
Speaker 3: and your teachers write on you, and your cultures write
Speaker 3: on you, and you become the aggregation of those things
Speaker 3: that have impressed you. Or been impressed upon you. That's
Speaker 3: the one theory that's not a very ancient theory actually,
Speaker 3: but it's a very popular theory. The ancient theory to
Speaker 3: bring the past into it, found in almost all cultures
Speaker 3: around the world, is that each person comes into the
Speaker 3: world already gifted and already aimed. And so that's the
Speaker 3: idea of the pre not pre shaped, but pre scripted soul,
Speaker 3: not in the sense that it's predetermined that it has
Speaker 3: to go a certain way, but it's more like a
Speaker 3: living plot line. And so the components of that gifted soul,
Speaker 3: not the empty soul now, but the gifted soul are components.
Speaker 3: One of them might call it the genius. Genius is
Speaker 3: an old Latin term that doesn't mean high IQ or
Speaker 3: specific talent. It means the spirit that's already there. That's
Speaker 3: the definition of genius. Each person comes into the world
Speaker 3: with the genius quality or genius spirit in their soul
Speaker 3: that is at the core of their heart and at
Speaker 3: the core of their being. And then what happens. Because
Speaker 3: we are born into the realm of time and space,
Speaker 3: we forget this thing that is coming in with us,
Speaker 3: so we don't know about it. Our families don't know
Speaker 3: about it. The family doesn't know the gifts or the
Speaker 3: aims or the destiny of their own children. It's set
Speaker 3: up that way because of eventually the children will leave
Speaker 3: home because there's a missing thing. They cannot find it
Speaker 3: at home. They have to enter the world in order
Speaker 3: to awaken this thing that turns out to be inside.
Speaker 3: Calling is when the person goes out into the world
Speaker 3: and has an experience of awakening, which is called the calling.
Speaker 3: It calls a person into a greater sense of self,
Speaker 3: into a greater sense of meaning, into a direction that's meaningful.
Speaker 3: But that calling is calling to the genius that's already
Speaker 3: in there. I think that's essential to understanding it. The
Speaker 3: calling may seem to come from the outside, but it's
Speaker 3: calling to qualities that already exist in a person. And
Speaker 3: that's why it's so meaningful and so profound. So this
Speaker 3: is one of the oldest ideas. And so if we
Speaker 3: begin with the notion that each person, each soul born,
Speaker 3: is unique, each person is unique. That means they're going
Speaker 3: to have a unique blend of talents and capacities, gifts
Speaker 3: and aims, and the calling is trying to awaken that.
Speaker 3: When a person responds to the calling. They are bringing
Speaker 3: something to the world that isn't already in the world.
Speaker 3: Their unique creative capacity, their unique genius qualities, and you know,
Speaker 3: things that make not just them meaningful, but there are
Speaker 3: gifts given to the human community, and it makes everybody
Speaker 3: more meaningful. And so I'm not sure you asked the
Speaker 3: thing about how ancient cultures would have seen the calling.
Speaker 3: What I'm talking about when I say genius is the
Speaker 3: spirit that we're born with. That's from the pre Roman culture.
Speaker 3: So and then you can find that there's a beautiful
Speaker 3: story from the Mayan culture about the boy is born
Speaker 3: and he's given the name Bodare, which in its old
Speaker 3: translation means gifted, it means purposeful, it means talented, it
Speaker 3: means destined. In other words, he represents all children born
Speaker 3: that have the qualities in them. And then what happens.
Speaker 3: A person has to wander into the world and and
Speaker 3: in a sense, in counter circumstances that awaken these qualities
Speaker 3: from within. That awakening is responding to the call.
Speaker 1: And are there writings that you define as a subject
Speaker 1: matter calling in perhaps Greek or you mentioned Maya. I
Speaker 1: think of the Maya texts the Pupavu, which describes the
Speaker 1: twins but perhaps has some fragments of calling in it.
Speaker 3: Okay is a good example. It's a very unusual book,
Speaker 3: very mysterious book, but it has in it a creation
Speaker 3: story where, uh, they have the multiple gods like a
Speaker 3: lot of ancient cultures. Did modern people think they didn't
Speaker 3: have the notion of the singular god. But that's a
Speaker 3: complete misunderstanding. They had a diversity of gods that were
Speaker 3: secretly one deity. That's the real old idea. But anyway,
Speaker 3: the Mayan gods, like one of them is Heart of Heaven,
Speaker 3: Heart of Earth. Those are the names they have. They
Speaker 3: create the world what we call the world, and particularly
Speaker 3: the earthly world of mountains and rivers and streams and
Speaker 3: forests and all that kind of stuff. And then when
Speaker 3: it's finished, they feel like there's something missing. And it's
Speaker 3: Heart of Heaven who starts to try to figure out
Speaker 3: what's missing. And he comes to the conclusion that what's
Speaker 3: missing is two things. A being that is conscious of
Speaker 3: being part of creation, and also a being that is
Speaker 3: grateful for the gift of life. And so then he
Speaker 3: begins to try to create that kind of being. He
Speaker 3: makes three tries at it. The first try he tries
Speaker 3: to make it out of mud, and then a heavy
Speaker 3: ring comes and the beings melt. The second one they
Speaker 3: make it out of sticks, and then what happens is
Speaker 3: those sticks become very rigid in their hearted and hard headed,
Speaker 3: and they keep, they keep creating technologies that are offensive
Speaker 3: to the animals and the plants, and so finally Heart
Speaker 3: of Heaven has to bring a heavy rain down to
Speaker 3: demolish those sticks. And the third try they try to
Speaker 3: make it out of corn, and of course corn is
Speaker 3: the sacred element in Mayan cosmology, and so it's then
Speaker 3: those corn people who wind up having this realization that
Speaker 3: they have a gift of life, that they are gifted,
Speaker 3: that life is a gift that exists in them, and
Speaker 3: the implication is uniquely but also that has the realization
Speaker 3: that creation itself is meaningful. And so then the idea
Speaker 3: is we have all descended from them. So that part
Speaker 3: of the story, to me, it's connected to the may
Speaker 3: tale I was telling where the boy is considered to
Speaker 3: be gifted. Oh there, he's the gifted one, but he's
Speaker 3: really everyone. And so I think it does show up
Speaker 3: in the pulp o Bool which is a wild magical mythology,
Speaker 3: but it shows up in the creation part of the
Speaker 3: Pulpa bull and so so creation stories which exist all
Speaker 3: over the world, and most cultures have more than one
Speaker 3: creation story. Even the Bible has two creation stories in it,
Speaker 3: as if to say there cannot be one story of creation,
Speaker 3: that creation is itself an expression of diversity and multiplicity
Speaker 3: that requires more than one story. And so there's a
Speaker 3: way in which understanding human life requires that we understand creation.
Speaker 3: And because of this, if a person is gifted and
Speaker 3: aimed let's say they're aimed at being a musician, or
Speaker 3: aimed at being a poet, or aimed at being a
Speaker 3: or aimed at being an inventor, that that's what is
Speaker 3: waiting to awaken in them when it awakens that person.
Speaker 3: Each person that awakens that way will bring something to
Speaker 3: the world that is not already in the world. In
Speaker 3: other words, we become co creators, or we join the
Speaker 3: creative energy of the world. And of course everyone until
Speaker 3: modern times understood that creation wasn't something that happened back there,
Speaker 3: and we're in the afterglow of it. Creation is ongoing
Speaker 3: every day. The forest rises and falls all the time,
Speaker 3: the trees that were the tallest become the fallen down,
Speaker 3: breaking down elements from which the next forest comes. We've
Speaker 3: been living in that mystery of recreation all along, except
Speaker 3: modern people have separated from that for various reasons. And
Speaker 3: in that separation, modern people have found themselves separate, separate
Speaker 3: from the creative energies that exist inside each person. All
Speaker 3: the people weighing for the next election to fix all
Speaker 3: that is broken now are going to be waiting for
Speaker 3: a long time. It's a matter of reimagining culture and
Speaker 3: recreating it. And if everybody is gifted and aimed, then
Speaker 3: no one has to be a hero and fix it
Speaker 3: all or pretend they're doing that, because it's going to
Speaker 3: be the awakening of the creative energies in the gifted
Speaker 3: people that are uniquely all around the world. That's what
Speaker 3: changes the world, not a single idea and certainly not
Speaker 3: a committee meeting. What changes the world. They used to say,
Speaker 3: change the soul, change the world. And what they mean
Speaker 3: is each soul is capacity to bring elements of change
Speaker 3: and recreation and beauty and healing to the world. And
Speaker 3: that's I think why the whole dynamic of calling is
Speaker 3: so important, right now we as an old saying that
Speaker 3: in dark times there's an acceleration of calling, when the
Speaker 3: structures are all breaking down, they're no longer in the way,
Speaker 3: and there's more calling kind of enters the world. We
Speaker 3: change this world by each of us responding as best
Speaker 3: we can to our own calling. And as near as
Speaker 3: I can tell, no one lacks a calling, because no
Speaker 3: one lacks a soul.
Speaker 1: But Michael, in the muck and the mire, in the
Speaker 1: despair that we feel, how do we recognize the calling?
Speaker 3: So if this stuff was simple, it wouldn't have been
Speaker 3: so readily forgotten. It's a bit tricky. If the person
Speaker 3: is unique, then the calling can be unique. And so
Speaker 3: but here's an old idea. It's a kind of an
Speaker 3: old rule that by say twenty two years of age,
Speaker 3: each person has a genuine experience of the core depth
Speaker 3: of their own soul, or else they die. It's an
Speaker 3: old idea that is to say, everyone is gifted when
Speaker 3: they come into the world, and in many stories, everyone
Speaker 3: is aimed at a destiny, and everybody, by birthright is
Speaker 3: going to have at least one experience of what that
Speaker 3: is inside them. That is this combination of genius qualities
Speaker 3: and calling that leads to a meaningful life. And so
Speaker 3: people always say why do you know that? And of
Speaker 3: course you know you have to go to personal experience
Speaker 3: in a way. I mean, you can know what's in books,
Speaker 3: but you know it in your own body and soul
Speaker 3: when it happens to you. So when I was thirteen,
Speaker 3: my thirteenth birthday.
Speaker 1: My.
Speaker 3: Aunt my mother asked me what I wanted for my birthday.
Speaker 3: And I had learned from sad experience not to say
Speaker 3: what I wanted because I wasn't going to get it.
Speaker 3: We're a poor family, and if I said what I
Speaker 3: wanted and I didn't get it, we're all that much
Speaker 3: more depressed for a while. So I just said it
Speaker 3: doesn't matter, I don't want anything. But my aunt asked
Speaker 3: me what I was interested in, and at thirteen, I
Speaker 3: was interested in history. I was trying to understand what
Speaker 3: the hell happened here. I was going up in a
Speaker 3: poor neighborhood where everybody had lost their dreams and it
Speaker 3: was kind of like despairing in a way, and I
Speaker 3: wanted to understand it. And I thought from what I
Speaker 3: had heard, history could explain it. But actually it can't.
Speaker 3: So my aunt goes off to the bookstore to get
Speaker 3: me a history book. First person in my family to
Speaker 3: go to a bookstore, so further I know. And she's
Speaker 3: very short, and she asks where the history books are,
Speaker 3: and they point to an upper shelf and she goes
Speaker 3: and reaches up, gets a book, they wrap it, she
Speaker 3: gives it to me. I start to tear the paper off,
Speaker 3: and on the cover there's like a young guy sitting
Speaker 3: on a flying horse shooting an arrow into the air.
Speaker 3: And I go, whoa this And my aunt goes, oh,
Speaker 3: it's the wrong book. Give it back, and I'm going, no,
Speaker 3: I want this book. When like tugging, and then I
Speaker 3: ripped the rest of the paper off and it says
Speaker 3: Mythology by Edith Hamilton. So thirteen years old, I am
Speaker 3: given the right wrong book, which is the language that
Speaker 3: I'm intended to learn about and live with. I read
Speaker 3: the whole book that night, almost the entire book, and
Speaker 3: I literally, in this you know house in the in
Speaker 3: this New York city, in a poor neighborhood, I'm going,
Speaker 3: this is it, This is it. I don't have to
Speaker 3: grow up to qualify. I don't have to be not
Speaker 3: a poor person to qualify.
Speaker 2: I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't have to go to school to qualify. I'm
Speaker 3: just finding this language in which I qualify to be
Speaker 3: part of the whole meaning of the world. That's what
Speaker 3: happened to me. But my family actually didn't know, what
Speaker 3: are you talking about? What is that book? You know?
Speaker 3: You ran? Is right?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 3: And then I go to the teachers in school and
Speaker 3: tell them. They say, what this makes no sense? So
Speaker 3: I have this knowledge now, this which is a tune
Speaker 3: to me because I'm going to turn out to be
Speaker 3: a star teller. And so the right wrong book just
Speaker 3: landed there at a time when I had enough self
Speaker 3: awareness to realize, oh, this is totally meaningful to me.
Speaker 3: But it probably took me twenty years to realize what
Speaker 3: that meant in my life and also to get it
Speaker 3: confirmed by others. So here's the other thing. Everyone has
Speaker 3: a gift or a mixture of gifts and abilities, and
Speaker 3: everyone has a calling, but those gifts have to be
Speaker 3: confirmed by someone outside ourselves. It's just part of the
Speaker 3: understanding of human community that all on ourselves on our own,
Speaker 3: we won't trust ourselves, but as someone we respect says, yeah,
Speaker 3: you're pretty good at that. Like I had a friend
Speaker 3: who could just picked up a guitar and could play music.
Speaker 3: I mean, I never did figure out how he did it.
Speaker 3: It was like a gift he could just play, but
Speaker 3: he didn't really own it because he was insecure about it.
Speaker 3: And then when he finally met an advanced guitar player
Speaker 3: who said to him, you're pretty good, that was it.
Speaker 3: Then he knew that with his gift. So it's our gift,
Speaker 3: but it has to be confirmed by someone outside of ourselves,
Speaker 3: and that gives us the hint that what is gifted
Speaker 3: to us, which means that we are intended to give
Speaker 3: that gift is also a gift for others. It's a
Speaker 3: gift for the community, not just for one self. And
Speaker 3: that's why I say, if we want to change the world,
Speaker 3: the more people that awaken to what their gifts naturally
Speaker 3: are and what they're calling should be, that's how the
Speaker 3: world changes. Someone over here is figuring out how to
Speaker 3: purify streams and lakes, and someone over here is figuring
Speaker 3: out how to heal certain illnesses with natural means, and
Speaker 3: someone over here is figuring out how to negotiate conflicts
Speaker 3: that seem unresolvable. And when the more that's happening. The
Speaker 3: more people are responding to those callings that are aligned
Speaker 3: with their energenius, then all of a sudden, it's starting
Speaker 3: to change from below, and then you get ready to
Speaker 3: change the structures and the political dynamics. So I think
Speaker 3: it comes down to, as the ancient people said, the
Speaker 3: individual psyche. And that's why I keep talking about calling
Speaker 3: so much.
Speaker 1: We're gonna take a short commercial break to allow our
Speaker 1: sponsors to identify themselves, and we will return shortly with
Speaker 1: my guest today, Michael Meade discussing your Calling. Will be
Speaker 1: right back. My guest today is Michael Meade. He is
Speaker 1: a storyteller at expert in mythology and anthropology, noted for
Speaker 1: his work with ancient civilizations, and the program today is
Speaker 1: Understanding your Calling. It sounds like in the story of
Speaker 1: your thirteen year old discovery of this book on mythology
Speaker 1: is a wonderful representation. But it sounds like you're saying
Speaker 1: that when we incarnate, we are given signs and were
Speaker 1: prepared in some way to receive the calling. Is that
Speaker 1: a good interpretation?
Speaker 3: Yeah, That the world will collude with the personal life
Speaker 3: so that that which already exists within us gets awakened,
Speaker 3: provoked and awakened. A lot of stuff happened to me
Speaker 3: when I was thirteen, six months after I got that book.
Speaker 3: I'm growing up in a counter rough neighborhood. I'm in
Speaker 3: local gang. We called it a crew, and we with
Speaker 3: the younger crew, which trying to imitate the older guy
Speaker 3: who who were the hoods, you know, And we're running
Speaker 3: around acting that out to one degree or another. And
Speaker 3: we used to go to this movie theater on Saturdays,
Speaker 3: but we didn't have any money, say we would sneak in.
Speaker 3: We had all kinds of ways to sneak into this theater.
Speaker 3: And one day we're in there and I have to
Speaker 3: go up to the bathroom. It's upstairs in above where
Speaker 3: everybody's sitting. And I'm on my way up to the bathroom.
Speaker 3: I'm still thirteen and thirteen and a half now, and
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, there's two guys in front of me,
Speaker 3: and two guys behind me, and two guys on my side,
Speaker 3: and they're all bigger than me, and they're going with me,
Speaker 3: or really I'm going with them. Now we get to
Speaker 3: the bathroom, they throw me onto the floor next to
Speaker 3: a urinal, and now there's seven of them, and they're
Speaker 3: surrounding me and they've got like knives and a couple
Speaker 3: of them have sharpened monkey wrenches, and I realized who
Speaker 3: they are. They're this group called the monkey Wrench and
Speaker 3: they're known for doing lots of harm and they are
Speaker 3: going to hurt me. And it turns out that it's
Speaker 3: because his friend of mine, who had lost his mind
Speaker 3: kind of, he had some crazy reasons, started calling them
Speaker 3: names and everything, and they couldn't catch them, but they
Speaker 3: caught me. And so I'm there, you know, looking when
Speaker 3: people are going to do home, they get it like
Speaker 3: a stare in their eyes. And I didn't know it
Speaker 3: until then, but I saw it, and I realized that
Speaker 3: I'm going to get really hurt. And looking at a
Speaker 3: psychology psychologically now I realize what happened is my ego departed.
Speaker 3: Just thought I don't want to be around for this.
Speaker 3: And what happened is I started telling a story, laying
Speaker 3: there on the floor, thinking I'm about to die something
Speaker 3: in me. No rehearsal, no preparation, no plan, just starts
Speaker 3: telling a story. And as I do that, their eyes
Speaker 3: lose that glare and literally their hands go down and
Speaker 3: the weapons are now, you know, hanging down. And then
Speaker 3: eventually the leader of the group says, well, all right,
Speaker 3: you know we're going to let you go, but you
Speaker 3: tell your friend never talk that way about us again.
Speaker 3: So now not only have the language of myth, I
Speaker 3: now have become a storyteller in a life of life
Speaker 3: or death situation. And the same thing happens. I go
Speaker 3: right back to my gang the guys and say I
Speaker 3: found something stronger than weapons. And I tell them and
Speaker 3: they go, oh, we got to go get those guys,
Speaker 3: And I'm saying, you're missing the point. They didn't hurt me,
Speaker 3: and they didn't because I told them a story. There's
Speaker 3: something stronger than just attacking each other with the weapons.
Speaker 3: But everybody they ignored me, and I had another piece
Speaker 3: of the story, but I had to have that confirmed
Speaker 3: later too. So I'm trying to say that everybody has this.
Speaker 3: Not everybody has dramatic stories like that, but everybody has
Speaker 3: their story. And hidden inside a person's story are certain
Speaker 3: occasions when this inner quality awakened, but it usually doesn't
Speaker 3: get confirmed because the culture has forgotten about it. So
Speaker 3: even though it's tricky and not easy, I say to people,
Speaker 3: go back over your life storily story, especially teenage years
Speaker 3: and adolescent and look at anything that was surprising. Sometimes
Speaker 3: what happens is the young person realizes what their gift
Speaker 3: is and they try to share it with the family
Speaker 3: that had different intentions for them. They didn't want a musician,
Speaker 3: or they didn't, you know, they wanted a doctor or
Speaker 3: whatever it is, and so it gets becomes latent, it
Speaker 3: gets repressed. But you can go back and find these moments.
Speaker 3: And so that's what I did. I went back and
Speaker 3: I found those moments and realized and when you find them,
Speaker 3: they keep getting bigger. In other words, I go back
Speaker 3: to that story of being about to be I think,
Speaker 3: really harmed or killed by really rough guys with weapons.
Speaker 3: And then it explains to me. Why how many years
Speaker 3: later was it? I don't even know how many years later.
Speaker 3: I was about maybe thirty years old when the first
Speaker 3: book I wrote, The Water of Life. They paid me
Speaker 3: some money for it. It was like a total surprise.
Speaker 3: And I had this, you know, because I'd never written before,
Speaker 3: and I had they paid me a lot of money actually,
Speaker 3: and so then I had this money, What am I
Speaker 3: going to do? And I decided to start a nonprofit
Speaker 3: to work with violent youth. So yeah, so I for
Speaker 3: decades have worked with gangs and street kids and prisoners
Speaker 3: and people who wind up getting caught up in violence
Speaker 3: because I have some understanding of it, but also because
Speaker 3: I had that awakening and that kind of circumstance.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I'm trying to suggest that when we find these
Speaker 3: places where our own gifts become revealed and we have
Speaker 3: moments of awakening, they can keep expanding that. You know,
Speaker 3: I understand more about that experience now than I did then.
Speaker 3: It's gotten bigger inside of me. It actually gives me courage.
Speaker 3: I can go into a situation that's not clear and
Speaker 3: there's fear and everything, and I can draw on that
Speaker 3: because there's something that happened to me. It's not an
Speaker 3: abstract quality, it's actually a lived experience.
Speaker 1: What about the individuals who are working in the nine
Speaker 1: to five existence who have no awareness for the calling?
Speaker 1: Is it subtle hints? Is it events that are shown
Speaker 1: to them that they need to wake up and consider
Speaker 1: another vocation?
Speaker 2: What do we how do we work with that?
Speaker 3: Well? One thing I like old saying, and one of
Speaker 3: them is sometimes the obstacle is in the way, and
Speaker 3: sometimes the obstacle is the way, in other words, a
Speaker 3: person's working hard day and night, Like I was doing
Speaker 3: that as a young father and a husband with four children.
Speaker 3: And then because people say to me, well, even if
Speaker 3: you have an idea what it is, how do you
Speaker 3: find the time? You can't make money at it. You
Speaker 3: have to And so I was a young father with
Speaker 3: four kids. I had to make money. And I knew
Speaker 3: that part of my calling involved language and ideas and stories.
Speaker 3: And I would get up an hour and a half
Speaker 3: or two hours before the kids. And anyone who has
Speaker 3: had kids know that as they get older, go into school,
Speaker 3: they get up earlier. So I was getting up earlier
Speaker 3: and earlier because I needed an hour and a half,
Speaker 3: better two hours, if I could get it before everybody
Speaker 3: was up. If I could do that three days in
Speaker 3: a row, I'd be okay. I was nourishing and feeding
Speaker 3: my psyche. I was feeding my imagination while I was
Speaker 3: also feeding the family. And so I was told you
Speaker 3: have to pick one or the other. Either you're going
Speaker 3: to be you know, you're going to work and be productive,
Speaker 3: or you're going to be some creative person who you
Speaker 3: know scrambles for existence your whole life now you can
Speaker 3: combine the two, and once you get a feeling for it,
Speaker 3: you know that you have to nourish it. And even
Speaker 3: that one and a half hours early in the morning
Speaker 3: was enough nourishment to keep me going. And then eventually
Speaker 3: you just bump into things. You bump into things like
Speaker 3: things are all into connected. And so there were occasions
Speaker 3: I had started telling stories, but you know, I was
Speaker 3: just some weird guy telling stories, and then I just
Speaker 3: made a certain connection and something I said at a
Speaker 3: given point caused some other people to go that was
Speaker 3: really insightful. Where did that come from? And on you
Speaker 3: come and teach this stuff that you're working on at
Speaker 3: this conference. And the next thing, I was working at conferences,
Speaker 3: and pretty soon I quit the nine to five job
Speaker 3: and I became an itinerant storyteller.
Speaker 2: Amazing.
Speaker 1: That brings up another topic, which is genius. And I
Speaker 1: think you you talk as though we all have this
Speaker 1: genius capacity in us, which I find is radical because
Speaker 1: I think some people may not recognize their own genius
Speaker 1: and just kind of go through the sledge. But talk
Speaker 1: about genius for a minute, and it's important.
Speaker 3: So it's this idea that there is a spirit inside
Speaker 3: us that has gifts and qualities that are already existing
Speaker 3: in us. Like at thirteen and a half, I can
Speaker 3: come up something in me. I'm vacating, I'm fleeing the situation.
Speaker 3: But something in me can come up with a story
Speaker 3: that compels these guys with the weapons to just forget
Speaker 3: about the idea of hurting me. That's the genius thing
Speaker 3: to do. And then you realize it's not like a
Speaker 3: genius me, I'm a genius. It's a quality in the person.
Speaker 3: And so then it's a mixture of gifts, talents, and abilities,
Speaker 3: but also style. So I become a storyteller. And people
Speaker 3: always say, well, what's the key to storytelling? The key
Speaker 3: to storytelling is style. A person learns their own style,
Speaker 3: they're totally convincing. If a person learns all the tricks
Speaker 3: that you use on stage and all, they may not
Speaker 3: be convincing at all. The style, the word style is
Speaker 3: not superficial. It means something inscribed on the soul. And
Speaker 3: so there's a style inside a person that's part of
Speaker 3: the genius. For instance, if you love like a piano music,
Speaker 3: you know just so profound and there's so many great pianists,
Speaker 3: but the really great ones. You hear a few bars
Speaker 3: and you know who that is because their genius is
Speaker 3: coming through. Yes, they they're great piano players, but their
Speaker 3: unique way of playing that sonata is what you feel.
Speaker 3: And so it's a unique mixture of things that gives
Speaker 3: a person gifts that they can give. In giving the gift,
Speaker 3: the genius gifts in giving them, it doesn't diminish the gifts.
Speaker 3: It increases them. But I want to say something else
Speaker 3: about it, because this is an all pure light and
Speaker 3: all the doors open and everything's cool, right, Because the
Speaker 3: word talent is it comes from a German word that
Speaker 3: means the weight used to measure gold, the weight they
Speaker 3: put on the scales to measure the amount of gold.
Speaker 3: So genius is also called the golden qualities in a
Speaker 3: person like the guy who can play the guitar as
Speaker 3: soon as he picks it up, or or the person
Speaker 3: who has a naturally good voice, or the person who
Speaker 3: has an instinctive but also uniquely qualified way of connecting
Speaker 3: to animals. That's a genius thing. And should they become
Speaker 3: a vet, yeah, probably, But it's even more genius than
Speaker 3: that because they're connecting to the spirit of animals and
Speaker 3: so on. And so forth, and because ancient cultures really
Speaker 3: revered that kind of connection. But the word talent is
Speaker 3: a weight, So that means, for instance, if a person
Speaker 3: has genuine talents and they're not conscious of them or
Speaker 3: practicing using them, or learning how to express them, then
Speaker 3: what could have been a golden thing that lit up
Speaker 3: the room and lit up their own psyche becomes a
Speaker 3: weight on their soul. For some people, the reason they
Speaker 3: are depressed is because they're not expressing their own genius.
Speaker 3: So the world is very rarely neutral. So we're either
Speaker 3: growing our soul and becoming a better version of ourselves
Speaker 3: or we are shrinking from life. That's the way it goes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's I was just thinking right now that
Speaker 1: a lot of people are so depressed that they are
Speaker 1: shrinking and they're unable to get out of the muck.
Speaker 1: And h is it that the soul works to get
Speaker 1: this person out and reveal the calling or how do
Speaker 1: how do they how do they move forward?
Speaker 3: Well, the old ideas are that the soul is here
Speaker 3: to transform. So I had mentioned spirit. Genius is like
Speaker 3: the spirit, but genius lives in the soul, So genius
Speaker 3: and soul are not the same. Thing in cosmology, spirit
Speaker 3: and soul. Genius is a spirit, you can call it ether.
Speaker 3: Genius is a spirit. Spirit is connected to fire and
Speaker 3: air and it wants to rise up. And soul is
Speaker 3: connected to water and earth and it wants to descend.
Speaker 3: And so a person's psyche is a mixture of spirit
Speaker 3: with its assentsional aspirational qualities and soul with its intrigue
Speaker 3: with going deeper and getting more connected to the earth,
Speaker 3: to the animals, to nature, to other people. And so
Speaker 3: the way out is both spirit and soul. Sometimes a
Speaker 3: person is stuck and they can't you know, they're feeling
Speaker 3: the weight of the world. The weight of the world
Speaker 3: is coming down on everyone now. People traditionally have not
Speaker 3: felt the weight of the world the way we are
Speaker 3: feeling it for a number of reasons. First of all,
Speaker 3: nature is rattling at the same time culture is unraveling,
Speaker 3: and so we're in this thing where where nature is
Speaker 3: in trouble, just as human nature is in trouble. That's
Speaker 3: a heavy thing. Typically you could think of nature as
Speaker 3: balanced and so on, but nature's lost some of its balance,
Speaker 3: partially because of humans losing their balance. But now because
Speaker 3: of mass communication, we know what's going on. Young people
Speaker 3: are growing up into the knowledge that nature is in
Speaker 3: trouble and that culture is what do you call that,
Speaker 3: divided and polarized. They're growing up into that atmosphere, and
Speaker 3: that's why it's so important that calling and genius be
Speaker 3: kind of become better known. So a young person goes, well,
Speaker 3: I'm not going to find a career that for my
Speaker 3: whole lifetime. You can't do that anymore. Things change too fast.
Speaker 3: They say, the average young person is going to have
Speaker 3: five or six or seven careers. The people, all the
Speaker 3: people that were just studying whatever that is how to
Speaker 3: work with digital stuff, and that was going to be
Speaker 3: their job, they just all lost their job because AI
Speaker 3: is going to replace all that. Everybody has to start
Speaker 3: over again. That's the world we're in.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: But the benefit is when these other avenues remember piece
Speaker 3: you and I are old enough to remember, someone would
Speaker 3: study and go to school, or they would get an apprenticeship,
Speaker 3: they would get a job and do it their whole life.
Speaker 3: That doesn't happen much anymore. Everything's changing so fast. So
Speaker 3: then where do we get stability, centering and aim from.
Speaker 3: It has to be inside and we have to remember
Speaker 3: the old stories that said that inside everyone is this
Speaker 3: genius combination that is set up for a calling that
Speaker 3: awakens the psyche spirit and soul that leads to it
Speaker 3: a life, a meaning, and a potential destiny mention one
Speaker 3: other thing. The Greek term for geniuses dimon dai mon dimon,
Speaker 3: and so it's a very similar idea that everybody has
Speaker 3: this unique dimon or inner spirit, but when we don't
Speaker 3: live the dimon, it becomes a demon. The unlived inner
Speaker 3: spirit changes from spiritual guidance to demonic entrapment. It's it's not,
Speaker 3: it's not, there's no neutral. To be alive is to
Speaker 3: either be expanding the inner life of the soul and
Speaker 3: the spirit, or to be diminishing and becoming less alive,
Speaker 3: less courageous, feeling less meaningful, and feeling more trapped.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: We're going to take a short commercial break to allow
Speaker 1: our sponsors to identify themselves and will return with Michael
Speaker 1: Meade discussing you're calling.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: My guest today is mythologist, anthropologist, and storyteller Michael Meade
Speaker 1: coming to us from Washington, and we're learning about our calling,
Speaker 1: what if that means, and how do we put it
Speaker 1: into effect. The Hindus developed a system called the Yugas.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you're familiar with the basics of it, and
Speaker 1: right now, apparently we're in Kelly Yuga. The darkest period.
Speaker 1: Is this calling some of the is it focusing on
Speaker 1: the next phase and helping us come out of this
Speaker 1: dark period?
Speaker 3: Well, big heavy stuff to yugas and all, you know,
Speaker 3: I forget how long a yuga is.
Speaker 2: It's ridiculously thousands of years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So one way to look at that is it's
Speaker 3: so big that counting doesn't matter too much, you know.
Speaker 3: The other way is to see it is that we're
Speaker 3: in the darkness for quite a while. And this is
Speaker 3: rough for people that have been brought up to think
Speaker 3: that democratic elections can change everything. You know, we now
Speaker 3: know that we can't even trust the elections the institutions.
Speaker 3: That we're in this period of darkness, which includes collapse
Speaker 3: of institutions, and so the things that used to protect
Speaker 3: us now are turned against us. And so I go
Speaker 3: to these really old ideas like, for instance, one of
Speaker 3: the old descriptions for the human soul was the light
Speaker 3: found in darkness. So when we're in the dark ages,
Speaker 3: we have to find the light inside our own darkness.
Speaker 3: One of the great things that happened in the Western
Speaker 3: world is in our lifetime is ideas and practices from
Speaker 3: the Eastern world came to the West. In the Eastern
Speaker 3: world they've always thought one ugu lees to the next yoga.
Speaker 3: It's in a cycle. In the Western world they think
Speaker 3: it begins with time and then the end of time comes.
Speaker 3: It's a very limited idea in the West. But when
Speaker 3: you bring in the Eastern idea, you get this expansive
Speaker 3: sense of cycles. But the cycle, the big cycle, is
Speaker 3: not the one that we have to understand necessarily. The
Speaker 3: cycle inside ourselves becomes the thing. How do we how
Speaker 3: do we find light inside our own darkness? When the
Speaker 3: outside world doesn't provide, you know, pathways that make sense,
Speaker 3: or or the guidance that we need, or the sense
Speaker 3: of a center that makes meaning out of everything, then
Speaker 3: we have to fall back on ourselves. And the Eastern
Speaker 3: world was all about that. In the Eastern world, they said,
Speaker 3: what we go out in the world looking for already
Speaker 3: exists inside us. And that's the same thing was found
Speaker 3: in the West, and the idea of the energenious. What
Speaker 3: we're looking for is inside, but we have to go
Speaker 3: outside into the world in order to encounter the kind
Speaker 3: of difficulties that break the the kind of spell of
Speaker 3: the ego down so that we can really fall deeper
Speaker 3: into ourselves and realize that what we're looking for is inside.
Speaker 3: And so I think in the call of Yuga, the
Speaker 3: idea was, as I recall from the Vedas, that in
Speaker 3: the Cali Yuga even the spiritual practices don't work as well,
Speaker 3: and so they say in the Cali Yuga, you have
Speaker 3: to go deep inside. So there's a story from the
Speaker 3: Vedas where there's this king who in this case happens
Speaker 3: to be a philosopher as well as a ruler. We
Speaker 3: don't necessarily have that in the modern leadership, but anyway,
Speaker 3: and so Uh, the king was so interested in philosophical
Speaker 3: ideas and genuine learning and oh my god, truth that
Speaker 3: he would have this this spiritual uh kind of guru
Speaker 3: come and talk to him on a regular basis. A
Speaker 3: part of the week of the of the ruler would
Speaker 3: be visiting visits from the guru, and he would ask
Speaker 3: them the kind of questions that you know you've encounter
Speaker 3: and find within yourselves when you're struggling to learn and grow.
Speaker 3: And so one day the ruler says to the guru,
Speaker 3: so if the sun were to go out, where would
Speaker 3: the people find the light that gave them the courage
Speaker 3: to go out and do their work in the world.
Speaker 3: And the Gurut said, well, they would get it from
Speaker 3: the moon. And so then the ruler said, but what
Speaker 3: if the moon failed to appear? And then the guru said, well,
Speaker 3: they would get it from the stars. And then the ruler,
Speaker 3: who's not giving up on his proposition, says, and what
Speaker 3: if the stars failed to come out? And then the
Speaker 3: Guru said, then they would turn inside and they would
Speaker 3: find the light in their own deep self and they
Speaker 3: would go out into the world with the courage of
Speaker 3: that light. Wow, that's a five thousand year old recipe
Speaker 3: for what we have to do now. The lights are
Speaker 3: failing the things that we saw as guiding lights. Right
Speaker 3: now in America, the idea of democracy is wildly under attack.
Speaker 3: And democracy depends upon the individual human soul, and so
Speaker 3: that's where we have to find it. And then we
Speaker 3: have to go against things that we were taught in
Speaker 3: the sense of realizing what we're looking for is inside
Speaker 3: and there is a Western version of that.
Speaker 2: The Greeks called it the.
Speaker 3: Diamond, the Romans called it the genius. We have that
Speaker 3: in our own western kind of tradition, and now's the
Speaker 3: time that we needed, you know. So I went from
Speaker 3: being awakened as a storyteller by the threat of a
Speaker 3: gang to working with armed gangs in Chicago and la
Speaker 3: and various places. And after I was working in South
Speaker 3: Sude of Chicago, working with street gangs, and they love stories,
Speaker 3: and so I would come back every couple of months
Speaker 3: and tell them stories. And then I would come back
Speaker 3: after a couple of months and they'd say, you know
Speaker 3: so and so, yeah, he died, you know so and
Speaker 3: so she'd kill herself, you know that one you know
Speaker 3: is in jail. And I was just breaking my heart.
Speaker 3: These are fifteen, sixteen year old kids, and I started
Speaker 3: to have that despair of what does it matter what
Speaker 3: I say, you know? And and I told them that,
Speaker 3: I said, I feel like overwhelmed by by the tragic
Speaker 3: loss of these of your young lives. And they said, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: we wait for you to come back and tell us stories.
Speaker 3: You can't you can't stop. And so I realized that
Speaker 3: there was really, uh that that's what a calling is.
Speaker 3: You don't stop because it got hard, you don't stop
Speaker 3: because your heart was broken again. And so then I thought,
Speaker 3: how can I talk to them? Like I realized, I'm
Speaker 3: talking to these young person I come back a month
Speaker 3: or two later, they could be gone. What do I
Speaker 3: say to them in a very brief way that could
Speaker 3: be genuine, meaningful and impactful. And I started to say,
Speaker 3: did you know you're a genius? And they would go what.
Speaker 3: The word genius is well known in Western culture, and
Speaker 3: so saying it means something says he what do you
Speaker 3: mean I'm a genius? And I would say, well, I've
Speaker 3: known you for a little while and I see the
Speaker 3: way you behave you got this kind of genius? That's
Speaker 3: how it looks to me. And they say, well, what
Speaker 3: does it matter? And I said, well that genius could
Speaker 3: take you out of this situation you're in. It's bigger
Speaker 3: than the situation in a way, it's bigger than you,
Speaker 3: bigger than you think you are. And the next thing,
Speaker 3: they're all wanting to know about genius. And so that's
Speaker 3: what got me realizing that same message has to go
Speaker 3: to people who are more fortunate and less oppressed. Because
Speaker 3: we need our genius capacities in order to change the world,
Speaker 3: but also in order.
Speaker 2: To yield it.
Speaker 1: It sounds like though, when the soul is recognized and
Speaker 1: you are working to follow the calling, things kind of
Speaker 1: not only fall into place, but there are high and
Speaker 1: low periods that you encounter. How do we work around that?
Speaker 1: How do we stay in and how do we lock in?
Speaker 1: And I guess is the word the two things? One
Speaker 1: would be more of a philosophical psychological thing, and the
Speaker 1: other thing has to do with practice, And so the
Speaker 1: first thing is the old two things, maybe two ways
Speaker 1: to say it. The old meaning of ambition was not
Speaker 1: to be driven to be better than others. The word
Speaker 1: ambit means to walk the circumference of the realm, So
Speaker 1: real ambition is to walk the entire circle of the psyche,
Speaker 1: and that turns out to mean the highs and the lows.
Speaker 1: In alchemy they call it circulazio. And what they mean
Speaker 1: is throughout life a person is going to go through
Speaker 1: almost predictable steps of getting higher in the sense of learning,
Speaker 1: in the sense of joyful experience, the sense of awakening.
Speaker 1: But then there's going to be an alternative dissent that's
Speaker 1: required also where a person goes into the darkness and
Speaker 1: into the qualities of injury and woundedness and into the
Speaker 1: sense of despair in order to find their way eventually
Speaker 1: back up to the higher So they would put the
Speaker 1: idea of the highs and lows into either the ambit
Speaker 1: of the psyche, learning the whole realm of the person,
Speaker 1: or in the ups and downs that are part of
Speaker 1: expanding the soul. So despair, for instance, which means to
Speaker 1: lose all hope despare. It's a French hope is spr
Speaker 1: despere to be without spr hope.
Speaker 3: But the idea was when we lose all hope, it's
Speaker 3: not the end. Underneath the initial superficial experiences of hope,
Speaker 3: there's a deeper kind of hope. I call it the
Speaker 3: second level of hope, which is connected not to wishfulness,
Speaker 3: but it's connected to deep imagination. There's an old saying
Speaker 3: that a person doesn't know how to see the world
Speaker 3: until they've been in despair in the darkness, Like the
Speaker 3: King and the.
Speaker 1: Guru.
Speaker 3: The light we're looking for is down in the dark,
Speaker 3: and eventually we get more used to going down there
Speaker 3: and it becomes a quicker movement down and then coming
Speaker 3: back up. That's one thing. The other thing is, once
Speaker 3: we have a way to go, a path, a path
Speaker 3: with heart, a genius, path, a calling, there's so many
Speaker 3: names for it, we need to practice to sustain it.
Speaker 3: So I'm mentioning that with the youth in Chicago, the
Speaker 3: gang kids, and they're saying, you can't give up. We
Speaker 3: depend on you to come back and tell us the
Speaker 3: stories they were telling me. I had a practice and
Speaker 3: I had to keep practicing it. I can't give up
Speaker 3: my practice because I'm now feeling injured or or scared
Speaker 3: or sad goes go into the practice. And so in
Speaker 3: order to first problem is you don't have genie. The
Speaker 3: second problem you haven't found you Jesus genius. The second
Speaker 3: problem as you found it, and now you have to
Speaker 3: figure out how to live with it. How do you
Speaker 3: integrate it, how do you find a way to give
Speaker 3: it that's meaningful, and how do you sustain it? And
Speaker 3: so I always wind up these days besides saying this
Speaker 3: paths everyone has called to a path. That's an important
Speaker 3: old piece of knowledge. But a companion piece is to
Speaker 3: stay on the path. We all need a practice or
Speaker 3: practice is and then so then we go back to
Speaker 3: ancient India, where they would say, well, there's two main
Speaker 3: roads of practice, and one is the path of contemplation meditation,
Speaker 3: looking inward and looking for a stillness and center inside.
Speaker 3: That's a great path, a really meaningful path. The opposite
Speaker 3: path is the path of expressive arts, the creative path
Speaker 3: of expression, the exact opposite, where a person is taking
Speaker 3: what's inside and pouring it out into the world. Often
Speaker 3: a person needs both paths, or you need to go
Speaker 3: back and forth, or you need to find your own combination.
Speaker 3: In other words, it isn't a binary choice. Most of us,
Speaker 3: like as a storyteller or whatever mythologists, I find myself
Speaker 3: just find ways to be quiet and sit with the
Speaker 3: images in a story, because when I do that, they
Speaker 3: start to inform me. They start to literally give me
Speaker 3: ideas and understandings of what that aspect of life is about.
Speaker 3: And so most meaningful pathways will include some kind of
Speaker 3: practice of contemplation and some kind of practice of expression.
Speaker 3: And in ancient India they would have on altars or shrines,
Speaker 3: they would have both elements there. So first we have
Speaker 3: to find the genius, get some sense of the calling,
Speaker 3: take have to find the courage and take the risks
Speaker 3: to step into the world not as what everyone else
Speaker 3: thought we were, but as what our soul knows we are.
Speaker 3: And then in order to sustain that, find practices that
Speaker 3: support it and give us places of refuge but also
Speaker 3: sources of renewal HM.
Speaker 1: As we conclude, Michael, what does a society look like
Speaker 1: with a large population of people who are following their calling?
Speaker 1: I'm just curious, is there is it?
Speaker 2: Do you have a thought for that?
Speaker 1: Or can you can you can you recommend a period
Speaker 1: of time where it looks like there was a majority
Speaker 1: of people that were following the calling.
Speaker 3: I think it's always been a mixed bag. It's always
Speaker 3: been some of the people just think, hey, this is
Speaker 3: about nine to five or or this is you know,
Speaker 3: just this that and the next thing, and you're lucky
Speaker 3: if you can retire and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: And there's there been the other people going, are you kidding?
Speaker 3: You know? I wouldn't even be here except I just
Speaker 3: love music. Someone or every time I hear the sound
Speaker 3: of an animal being wounded, I'm going to go there
Speaker 3: and help them, you know, And those people It's not
Speaker 3: always been that everybody got it, and apparently it's not
Speaker 3: always been that everybody had to get it for it
Speaker 3: to be meaningful. In other words, the culture changes when
Speaker 3: a proportion of people awaken to things that are meaningful
Speaker 3: and begin to live it out. What that proportion is
Speaker 3: I don't know, but it's definitely less than fifty percent.
Speaker 3: It might be way less because the people that are
Speaker 3: living day to day using conventional ideas are really writing
Speaker 3: on the ideas and experiences of other people. When the
Speaker 3: ideas and experiences of other people rise to a greater
Speaker 3: height and descend to deeper levels of understanding, the everyday
Speaker 3: people are pulled into a greater like by those that
Speaker 3: are already living it. Think of the Renaissance, right, So
Speaker 3: I think that's how it works, and so I think
Speaker 3: that the way I'm imagining it now, we are in
Speaker 3: such desperate straits because of this thing of climate crisis
Speaker 3: and cultural crisis happening at the same time. It means
Speaker 3: that every calling is meaningful, and it means that if
Speaker 3: enough people did awaken in ways that just have to
Speaker 3: do with their own naturally endowed gifts and naturally ways
Speaker 3: of entering the world and being meaningful, then that shifts
Speaker 3: it for everybody.
Speaker 1: And so.
Speaker 3: The old idea that might have started with that is
Speaker 3: the human soul wants to transform, It wants to expand
Speaker 3: and grow throughout life. Throughout the life. We're not supposed
Speaker 3: to be similar at the end of the way we
Speaker 3: were at the beginning. We're supposed to be this awakened version,
Speaker 3: version of ourselves that brings out things that already exist
Speaker 3: inside that turn out to be meaningful, not just for us,
Speaker 3: but also for other people. And so when that happens,
Speaker 3: then what if someone like you know, I'm a storyteller,
Speaker 3: mythologist kind of guy. You know, I'm not running for office.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to run for office. I can't operate
Speaker 3: within the limitations of a political structure. I have that
Speaker 3: freedom of imagination. But yet there's someone else right down
Speaker 3: the road who is called to act out not just
Speaker 3: being an official, but being a statesman or a stateswoman.
Speaker 3: So what happens when the callings start to happen is
Speaker 3: people are going in ways that are meaningful. Younger people
Speaker 3: or other people are watching someone do something meaningful, and
Speaker 3: if they're really compelled by it, it usually means their
Speaker 3: calling is similar. And so the next thing, you get
Speaker 3: natural education, which is mentoring where a person gravitates towards
Speaker 3: someone who's further down the road that their soul wants
Speaker 3: to go on. And the next thing you have people
Speaker 3: being pulled along by other people. And we're in a
Speaker 3: state now where every gift is meaningful because the wound
Speaker 3: are in all parts of nature and culture.
Speaker 1: Wow, amazing, Michael, wonderful. Great to have you on the program.
Speaker 1: How can people learn more about your work? Give us
Speaker 1: your website and you I can't. I think your YouTube channel.
Speaker 2: Has a name. I can't remember. It's not Michael Mead,
Speaker 2: it's something else.
Speaker 3: I don't know either. But so we have a podcast
Speaker 3: called Living Myth where every week there's a free podcast
Speaker 3: and I usually use it to look at modern circumstances
Speaker 3: through the lens of myth. So there's that, and it's
Speaker 3: free every week, and you can just find that google
Speaker 3: Living Myth. The website is Mosaic Voices all lowercase, all
Speaker 3: one word dot org there, yeah, and then you can
Speaker 3: find free essays and recordings and books and all kinds
Speaker 3: of things that are on the website. And then the
Speaker 3: YouTube I think is also is it Mosaic Mosaic voices
Speaker 3: dot org. It's also the YouTube name, and we're increasingly
Speaker 3: putting on stuff on YouTube, primarily primarily because it is
Speaker 3: now the greatest platform for education of young people.
Speaker 1: Right before we started I mentioned your teaching or lecturing
Speaker 1: or storytelling. Are you doing that primarily through your YouTube
Speaker 1: channel or are you doing that live? Can people see
Speaker 1: you at locations we do?
Speaker 3: It's on all on the website. We do live online
Speaker 3: events and many of them are free. You can just
Speaker 3: cut you know, they play all over the world. People
Speaker 3: come on for free, and then some of them are
Speaker 3: you know, more detailed, and so you can pay a
Speaker 3: little bit to get to those. But the podcast is
Speaker 3: free every week and then, and there's many online free
Speaker 3: events as well. We're trying to get Living Myth out
Speaker 3: into the world as a kind of medicine.
Speaker 1: Excellent, fantastic, real pleasure having you on the program, and
Speaker 1: I really appreciate you.
Speaker 3: Thank you, and great to be with you, Cliff and
Speaker 3: be well.
Speaker 1: I want to mention that Michael has made most of
Speaker 1: his talks free. You can see him on YouTube at
Speaker 1: Mosaic Voices or just type in Michael Mead as Meade
Speaker 1: and you can hear more on the Calling, but he
Speaker 1: has a number of other very early talks that he
Speaker 1: gave as a storyteller, and in some of them he's
Speaker 1: joined with Robert Blye. This was when he was part
Speaker 1: of the Men's Movement, which he's not really.
Speaker 2: Focused on anymore.
Speaker 1: I don't know what happened to the Men's movement after.
Speaker 2: Robert bly passed away.
Speaker 1: There were others in the movement as well. And years
Speaker 1: ago when I was a program director here in San
Speaker 1: Francisco for the Whole Life Expo, there were a few
Speaker 1: people that were representing men, Men's movement, men's feelings and
Speaker 1: the emerging identity of men hoping that they are working
Speaker 1: with him. So they don't keep everything closed up so
Speaker 1: you can't express yourself. You just invite all kinds of
Speaker 1: emotional problems and physical problems. They've shown that if you
Speaker 1: are uptight and anxious and you can't talk about it,
Speaker 1: it's not good.
Speaker 2: It's not good for you.
Speaker 1: So and this was part of the movement for men
Speaker 1: to begin freely expressing themselves. So anyhow, Michael Mead is
Speaker 1: a treasure and if you ever get to see a
Speaker 1: chance to see him live, he is fantastic. And I
Speaker 1: was really happy to him on the program so and
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed him as well. Hey, I want
Speaker 1: to mention Chris Duns coming up in a week and
Speaker 1: he is going to present more information on the book
Speaker 1: he's writing, but also our discussion will be on these
Speaker 1: unusual sculptures of Egypt and these are the megalists I
Speaker 1: talk about all the time. And if you didn't get
Speaker 1: his first book, Advanced Machining in Egypt, this topic is
Speaker 1: covered in this book and we're going to review it
Speaker 1: as the book must be twenty years old, but he
Speaker 1: made some outstanding observations as an engineer, and this is
Speaker 1: how we advanced our under advance our understanding of ancient
Speaker 1: cultures is the level of sophistication in the artwork and
Speaker 1: the reliefs in the sculpture, in the buildings, temples and
Speaker 1: pyramids that we see from these ancient cultures. And what
Speaker 1: he discovered in these megalists is just outstanding. We're going
Speaker 1: to bring up and discuss it next week. So don't
Speaker 1: forget Chris done in our program next week on Earth Ancients. Hey,
Speaker 1: I also want to mention that we have a tour
Speaker 1: coming up in Egypt. It's our Grand Egyptian Tour number seven.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be April twenty eight through May tenth. This
Speaker 1: is not to be missed because we're gonna go off
Speaker 1: the beaten path and visit some very very old kingdom
Speaker 1: cities that aren't described very much, are not discussed, but
Speaker 1: the artifacts that are left are just amazing. They're huge
Speaker 1: blocks of stone. There are temples, there are sculptures, and
Speaker 1: the majority of this tour is visiting sites that are
Speaker 1: a megalithic in origin, megalithic and relief and in sculpture,
Speaker 1: and it's what I've been wanting to do for a
Speaker 1: while and I think you'll have a great time. For
Speaker 1: more information and all the details go to Earth Ancients
Speaker 1: dot com, forward Slash Tours, look for the band on
Speaker 1: the Grand Egyptian Tour with Mohammad Ebrahem, and I think
Speaker 1: we're also going to have a couple of experts, including
Speaker 1: Armando May who is part of the Stars team, swing
Speaker 1: by and do a talk on what he's been up to.
Speaker 1: He'll be in Cairo at that time, and so we
Speaker 1: definitely want to have him come by and speak to
Speaker 1: our group on just what some of the latest discoveries are. Again,
Speaker 1: for all the information and all the details, go to
Speaker 1: Earthacients dot com forward slash tours. One thing to remember,
Speaker 1: one thing that's critical to remember. Most of these tours
Speaker 1: are ten to twelve thousand dollars ten grand. Our tours
Speaker 1: are less than half roughly five grand, not including your
Speaker 1: flights to Egypt, which you can get very inexpensive for
Speaker 1: a very cheap rate. But we cover the interior flights
Speaker 1: abodots to Cairo, Cairo to wherever the buses the special visits.
Speaker 1: Mohammed Imberhem is our host. He is an expert, and
Speaker 1: we will see things that you don't do not see
Speaker 1: on a regular tour, and are again fifty percent less
Speaker 1: than what most people pay. This is why our tours
Speaker 1: fill up really quickly. So get on board Earth Ancients
Speaker 1: dot com forward slash tours. This is a tour to
Speaker 1: see the true ancient pass What we are seeing is
Speaker 1: not dynastic Egyptian. This is the Prediluvians. These are the people,
Speaker 1: likely from the place called Atlantis, likely from advanced cultures
Speaker 1: that were destroyed during the cataclysm. And what we see
Speaker 1: is mind blowing monstrosities of sculpture or relief and so forth.
Speaker 1: So come out and join me earthasients dot com, Forward
Speaker 1: slash Tours. All right, that's it for this program. I
Speaker 1: want to thank my guest today, Michael Meade. Come you
Speaker 1: tell us from Washington State. As always a team of Geltour,
Speaker 1: Mark Foster and Faya out in Pakistan.
Speaker 2: You guys really roged. I really appreciate your help.
Speaker 1: All right, take care of you well and we will
Speaker 1: talk to you next times. Sus some stamps