#64 | Michael Meade | Gifted & Aimed

I've been wanting to have you on the show just because you're so steeped in story and mythology and it's such a big part of my world . So I wanted to talk about although we're actually recording this episode on October 13th , which happens to be right in that eclipse mode .

So we're in this eclipse season right now and obviously it's very intense times here in October , but we're actually going to be releasing this into January , around about your birthday , and I wanted to make this episode a real exploration of your own life and your own path and ask you some questions .

I wonder if we could start with how did stories and myth enter your world and how did it come to be ? Because you're so steeped in them nowadays ? How did you learn to gather the wisdom of stories ?

And so then I noticed they'd be like depressed for two weeks after my birthday . And so when my mother said , what do you want ? I said I don't want anything . But my aunt said to me , what are you interested in ? And so my answer was history .

Because at the time I was trying to figure out what happened , what , why were people , like the whole neighborhood acted as if they had all lost their dreams and I was trying to figure out what was that about and I thought history seemed like the answer .

So my aunt , a notoriously short woman , went to the local bookstore or some bookstore and asked for a history book . They pointed to a shelf . She went up and reached up and got a book .

They wrapped it , she gave it to me and and I tore some of the paper off and she said , oh , it's the wrong book , I have to take it back and I'm holding onto it and pulling it and say , no , I want this book . Because I'm looking and on the cover is a guy riding on a horse that's flying through the sky and he's shooting this arrow in an arc .

And I'm just going , I want , and so I keep the book and I tear the rest of the paper off and I says mythology in Hamilton . So that night that was one of the best gifts I've ever gotten and , and it was more , I wouldn't know to ask for it , I wouldn't even know .

So it was the right , wrong , mistaken , accurate book gift , you know , and which is sets up a whole kind of a mythological thing on its own and the idea that things can come to you that you don't even anticipate or on another circumstance might reject .

That night I read almost the entire book , wow and yeah , and it opened something in me that it took me a long time to figure out what it was . But I didn't . I was a short , freckled kid , you know , and I didn't have to get bigger , I didn't have to get older , I was I . Whatever it was , I guess it was the soul .

I had a passport into that world and then on , I was in that world and that the world of myth immediately explained things to me that otherwise I couldn't understand in life . And so that was the beginning .

But that year was fateful in other ways , because six months later 13 and a half roughly and I'm in the local movie theater with my friends , were in what was called a crew it's like a small gang and we were the younger version of the older gang .

And in the neighborhood and each neighborhood nearby had a gang , and one of my friends had done something to upset a neighbor gang of older guys .

And I get up in the movie theater and left my friends and headed to the bathroom at the back of the theater and on the way back I noticed that guys were like coming with me that I didn't know and that were older and bigger , and when we got to the bathroom they threw me on the floor and they pulled out knives .

There's about seven of them , oh my gosh , and they're going to carve me up . That that's the myth , you know payback for whatever my friend did , and they were known to do that , do that . So it wasn't an empty threat . So I'm laying there on the floor and at the time I couldn't figure out what happened at all .

But when I look back , I realized my ego departed . My ego said this looks really painful and I'm out of here .

And then , out of somewhere inside me that I didn't even know existed , a voice started telling them a story Wow , and and , and I could see you know , you're probably in circumstances when people are going to do harm they get a look in their eye and their eyes changed and the knives , the hands with the knives , were going down and they , they just didn't hurt

me at all and just gave me a warning and told , told me to tell my friend to never be like that again . And they let me go . Wow , and so . So now the storyteller had awakened inside and it had its own voice that had there's no rehearsal , there's no practice .

It just came out and there was no hesitation , it just spoke from some deep place that was so compelling to them . They let me go . Wow , I really had a lot .

I had a lot of information that year about who I was and what I was intended to do , but it actually took me 20 years after that to really understand that myth and story was the path that I was on . Wow , and so one thing I drew from that there was there was no one around that could confirm what I was experiencing .

I tried , I talked to teachers , parents , you know relatives , and said you know , here's ? I got this book on myth and then the story , and no one could confirm or realize that this was the path for me . But that's how it started those two occasions within six months of each other .

Just , it was more like a psychological story . Okay , the background was everybody was being abused in their family to some degree . That's kind of how it was .

Yeah , and my friend was every , every day his brother would beat him up , and every night his father would beat him up , and so he had gone a little crazy and that's why he was attacking them when he had no chance of winning a fight with them . So I just started telling the story .

Listen , you think my friend's trying to insult you , but actually he's lost his mind , and the reason he's lost his mind is because his brother beats him and his father beats him . Now , all the guys I'm talking to have been also hit and struck . Why else would they be out there trying to hurt other people ? And so I was really telling them their story .

Wow , and I couldn't . I don't know what I said , it just came out . But they understood that that was a story . They were in and and and just knowing that was enough to stop the process . Wow , it wasn't mythical , it was actually more psychological .

And now my style of storytelling is I never tell a story the same way twice , and I never , never , rehearsed a story , so I just have a sense of the story and then I use the words that come on that day , and if it's a live audience , I'm getting Information from the audience which changes the wording of the story , and so and so what really Awakened in me

on that occasion was this spontaneous speaking storytelling thing , which turns out to be my style .

So it was , it was too big of a relevant revelation for me at that age , especially when I couldn't really share it with anyone or get a you know someone else who knew something about it , so I just had to keep it to myself .

Yeah , I mean , they all knew that gang right , and so I mean I said what happened and and and they said wow , you know and . But they didn't say wow . Like that's amazing , we should all learn . They went , wow , we better get the older guys and go get them . So they just wanted , they wanted to retaliate .

They just wanted to retaliate and no one heard I was saying .

Right , because in the absence of great stories , we get more and more polarized and more and more split off as something that you talk about as well , and stories think they're in different stories , yeah , completely different stories , yeah we are all in the story of Conflict and and turmoil .

it was . I Found myself in a good position actually when water of the life water of life got published . I got paid , put the book , I got some money for that book and I really and I wanted to give back and without even thinking it through or seeing the connection to what happened with the local gang , I started working with gangs .

I said I just thought wow , and I hadn't even thought it through , but the thread was there and so I began what became Almost 40 years of working with that rescue gangs , homeless kids and so on . Wow took , yeah , so , so that was in there .

Yeah , that was in there were , because a story I told those guys with the knives Was really a sympathetic story to their lives and so that was in me at a young age and then it became part of our work and For years and years .

it almost takes the shine of the mystery of it .

And Because in working later on then working with really at-risk kids suicide of kids , violent , violent kids , young people that are in the life-and-death struggle I Would be working with these young people and and I would , and then I would depart and go home or go on some other project , and that I come back and work with them again .

By the time I come back , two of them had died or , you know , several had gone to jail . So I realized , each time I was talking to a young person might be the last time . And so what do I talk about ? What do I say ?

And what worked was to talk to them about genius Wow , another you know , and just say you know , you're born with genius , regardless of the background we got , regardless of your family issues , you have genius in you and the genius in you is unique and they would all accept that .

They all could get that idea and that was a way to build a sense of Of , because you know young people in trouble who say you know , don't tell me anything , don't tell me , I have to change . You know they're , you know they're stuck . But all could accept that idea .

And and only when I was doing that that I look back and say , oh , that was the genius waking up in me . Not my mama genius , because my , my theory is everybody has some genius and each soul is unique .

So there's a genius project in there for each person , and Mine found its voice for the first time when I was , you know , but 13 , but it took a while to then live with that voice and can you elaborate for my audience about what you mean by genius ? so Good thing about genius is most people know the word .

Yeah , most people don't know the meaning of the word and so it doesn't mean hi , I cute .

And so when people are lighting candles for a birthday , the original tradition of that was one candle , no matter how you old the person was , you lit one candle for the genius that's the flame inside them , and then gifts weren't given to the person whose birthday it was , they were given to the genius . Wow , so they could give gifts to .

They would light the candle and give the gift to the genius . So genius is the flame of imagination , this flame of inspiration inside each person , and the person is supposed to have experiences that Move the ego to to the side or crack it open , so that this inner genius can come out .

And and then you know that goes along with the old idea that everyone has a calling in life and the calling is calling to the genius that's inside them .

And then so it becomes really valuable in terms of the trouble in the world , because we're living it now , when all the possible Problems in culture are activated To the extreme and all the issues in nature are activated , all the ecosystems are in trouble and so on , all the weather systems . We're in the extremes of everything and there is no simple answer .

There's no way people are going to agree on how to do it . But if enough people awaken to their natural genius , then the genius of some people . Some people are born with an inner knowledge of how to work with water systems in the forest , how to you know how to in Invent better farming techniques .

Some people have that genius and others have the genius of culture , of human culture . They have a genius for psychology or astrology or a genius for how to work with people that are depressed . The genius is unique in everyone and if enough genius Cells awakened , a lot of things would begin to change without everybody having to agree with each other .

So be a human being is to be a citizen of two worlds the obvious world , the evidentiary world , the world , that of measurable things , and then to be a citizen of the other world , the Immeasurable world , the world of inspiration , imagination , compassion , healing , love , all the , all the amazing things that make life meaningful and beautiful .

Are not the measurable things . There they , and so we're a citizen of each world .

And , and in youth , a person is supposed to have experience , experiences where the other world , seen as this spirit world or seen as the world of the ancestors there's many ways to look at it calls an awakening , call into the soul that brings into consciousness the genius , the Gifts , the capacities that are woven into a person's soul and that used to be done

through rites of passage or initiatory experiences .

The modern world lacks those rites of passage , so most people are walking around in the world Without knowing their own gifts , without knowing their own calling and without knowing that their soul is already shaped in ways and aimed in ways that can lead to paths of healing and paths of meaning and paths of destiny .

So the calling is Anything you might want to call the entities , the powers in the other world the spirits and Different cultures different names .

We break that down into it seven and a bit year Parts , and so you're coming up to that Saturn , saturn opposition at that time and and in that moment there's a Almost an interruption of the regular programming and a crisis and a near death and a you know you can , it has the elements of initiation in it in that moment .

Initiation , on one level , means to be reveal oneself to oneself , but it has to happen with other people , because all on our own will either make the water too hot or too cool and we won't get the , the alchemical experience , and so and and and it was always considered to be a death rebirth experience .

Hmm , so the great mystery nearest , I can tell , we have to pick one mystery to Consider and to brush up against its life death , rebirth or life death renewal . That's the mystery for the individual human , it's the mystery for nature . Nature is constantly Life , death , and then it's reborn .

Out of its own ashes , out of its own Collapsing trees , comes the new forest and the cosmos , according to all the old mythologies , is always dying and being reborn , and people were supposed to be pulled into that in a way that they experienced it palpably , directly At an early age where their psyche is still not completely formed and actually , by modern

measurements their brain isn't completely formed .

So the the psyche and the brain , in the entire Awareness of the person , is supposed to have an altered experience that involves self-revelation , and so my theory and that's what I started writing about when I started writing was that the writer passage , or initiatory work experience , is an archetypal thing , and because it's an archetype , it can't disappear .

It can be forgotten , overlooked . So the soul is expecting a writer passage . That's why young people take all these chances . Yeah , they think it's just risk or excitement , but it's actually the soul saying we have to go out now and die a little in order to be born a lot .

And so , yes , when I look back eventually at what happened to me at 13 , it was a life and death experience in which something happened , and I'm not joking . My ego wanted no part of it and another part of me said okay , I know what to do here . Yeah , coming in . Yeah , yeah . So it happens anyway .

But it usually happens , like it happened to me , without having the confirming , blessing element of elders or mentors or people who . So , after a person leaves childhood behind which is what adolescence is about they're supposed to lead the family and enter the world .

In some cultures they'll say you move from the lap of your mother to the lap of mother nature and they're supposed to then become a child of nature , a child of the earth , a child of the cosmos , and then what that's also called second birth .

So astrology , a lot of astrology , begins with the first birth , but there's a second that's supposed to come , which is the psychological birth , the spiritual birth , in many ways the emotional birth , and a person then begins to become themselves . That whole thing is missing in modern culture .

So the soul , which doesn't read the news , the soul says wait a minute . You're in a life and death circumstance . This is your initiation . We're going to treat it like that and we're going to release this voice that in some other age and some other tribal situation would have been released through a ritual .

We're going to make this strange , little dangerous thing in the bathroom at the back of the movie theater . We're going to make that your initiation and at least awaken this part of you . That's a good way to understand it .

He is a catonic earth figure who swallows his children and then throws them back up . So there is kind of like a swallow it down and then almost like being gestated in the womb of the father , in a way . You were born out of the womb of the mother .

Then you get swallowed by the womb , by the father's womb , and then thrown back up Because these stories obviously occur in many ways , in many different stories .

The qualities in a person's soul are timeless . They're not part of Kronos . Measured literal time , they're part of timelessness and eternity . The divine . Call it what you will . And so out of this skinny kid facing life and death comes this storytelling thing that has nothing to do with time and it has its own timing .

That's the actual in the title of the book that you're given .

And of course , that's interesting too just to stick with Kronos and Saturn so that if we skip from 13 to when I'm 20 , 20 years old , I get drafted to go to Vietnam .

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Well , they didn't send another letter , they come knocking on the door . So anyway , I go in into the army and no one had told me what happens in there , which is very Kronos-like . There's lots of order and they give you orders all the time , and I'm good at orders .

So they give me an order and I said no , I'm not doing that order , you have something else or come back with something better . So anyway , I get wind up in prison in the military and of course in there they give you even more orders . And so then my response to that was to stop eating .

And so I got put into solitary confinement and for I don't really know , because they took away any notes I had and everything , but for somewhere over two months I'm in solitary confinement and I'm not eating . And so I went in at maybe 150 pounds and I came out at weight 89 pounds .

Yeah , but what's interesting about it is , I'm in , solitary , all by myself .

The only people I ever see are the guards , and they only come by once in a while , but I have visitors all the time , and what's happening is characters from myths are showing up , and I realized I was at this moment where either where I was losing my mind or I was finding my mind , and only later did I see how the thread went all the way back to being

13 . Now I was in life and death circumstances again and , rather than the voice waking up , characters from the myths are coming to visit me , like encouraging me , and so then I now . That's like another initiatory step , and then after that , again , there's no rituals , there's no elders .

At the time I didn't even know what a therapist was , and I'm now stumbling around in the world in a very altered state , alive , almost dead , and knowing that mythic characters can visit you and support you and guide you and help you . Which , and really having no one to share that with . And that's when I began to really study myth .

I studied to understand what had happened .

So you just were rejecting the food as your own , your own sort of yeah , way of pushing back , I suppose , or your own protest , or or what was the rejection of food around ?

I don't want to die of doing the wrong thing and I don't want to kill people in the wrong for no real reason . So it was my mistake , I'm going , I'm leaving . And they said you're not going anywhere . And and so then I said well , you're actually , I'm already gone . And they would say what are you talking about ? I said in myself I'm gone , you know this .

And so when they put me in solitary , I realized they're not getting the message and I said well , maybe they see me eating food and they think I'm here and willing to be here . So I just stopped eating food .

Now I get out of there and I'm stumbling around in the world trying to make sense out of this and I'm going back to myth to try to understand and also other things psychology , yeah , and I and I see this news report about Bobby Sands and other members of the IRA in Ireland going on a hunger strike in prisons .

Wow , and I went wait a minute , what's this ? And I start to study that . And it turns out that there's an old ritual in Irish culture which is , when you can't defeat the authorities , you fast against them . Wow , it's called crocheted , crocheted , and you fast against improper authority in order to adjust the world .

And and then I read that Gandhi , who went on on on on hunger strikes and also went on that great march to the to get salt and all , he was studying the Irish stuff as well . No way , really . He knew of that tradition and he got his idea of the force of truth from that , so , anyway .

So then , all of now I'm realizing some ancestral knowledge in a sense had awakened in me . Yeah , that it wasn't that . Because I didn't understand , one day I just decided I'm not eating , and and so anyway , that was really helpful to me . It was like like we're talking about before . Where does the calling come from ? It comes from the spirit realm .

It comes from ancestors in many cultures which would be part of this realm . Well , my Irish ancestors were giving me suggestions , rather dangerous ones , but it got me out of there .

So , anyway , there starts to be , like you could see , the sense in the story , or the linkage between Well yeah , because the first one is more like the genius calling and the second one feels ancestral .

The Irish have another thing called a geish , and it means a condition on the soul , and so everyone has conditions on their soul . The Greeks would call it fate , and a condition of my soul was that I couldn't do what they were telling me I had to do . I couldn't do it , and I didn't know that until I heard it .

Because when you go into the army like that , they tell you you're a soldier . Now , when you receive a command to shoot and kill , you shoot and kill , you follow the order . And that was when I got in trouble . I raised my hand and I said I can't do that . I can't do that .

I would shoot and kill , maybe if my family's had risk or something , but if you talk to shoot and I'm supposed to follow the order , I can't do that . That was when I started getting in trouble . And so there was another ancestral thing that was a condition on the soul . I knew I couldn't live with that condition on my soul .

I'm not talking about anyone else . Everybody has their own callings , their own genius and their own fate . Mine was that I couldn't do that , so yeah .

So then when I'm studying myth and I'm reading about mythic stories where you have people going into the underworld where I clearly was and then studying things like initiation , to understand this life-death renewal thing , Because I got born out of that dungeon , out of that solitary cell , I got born as a different person . I came out of there a different person .

I sure looked like a different person , but I had a different understanding of the world and I felt like I had died and then been born . And that's exactly what happens in a sweat lodge in Native American tradition .

You go in there as an adult and then you're cooked down , you crawl out on your hands and knees , You're born again and the sweat lodge is the womb and I was in a dark underworld , solitary prison womb and I came out of there a different person .

Some of the themes are coming through from that and I've gone back and listened to it because I didn't realize that you and him had worked together . And this may be jumping a little bit , but how did you come in contact with Maladoma Somae ? No , it ties right in , it does .

He's teaching world literature . He had graduated from the Sorbonne . He went from the tribal initiation to the Sorbonne . Anyway , he's really a brilliant guy , but he falls into this depression because he shouldn't be there and it's not feeding his life .

And so some people that knew him called me and said we have this friend who's going into despair teaching at a university . Could you talk to him ? So Maladoma calls me on the phone and some things are just , you know , part of fate , and within minutes we're both laughing , because we had a shared sense of humor , which in Africa is called a laughing friend .

Like some , relationships are based on humor , and he knew that , but I happen to know that . And so we realized that we were friends and so I invited him to a conference that we were doing , a retreat , actually just with the idea of having him be part of things , so that he would be in a community and it was a multicultural thing .

And then I found out this guy is extremely gifted and really brilliant , and so then I said well , listen , we get you out of that university and I'll show you how to roam around , do workshops and retreats , you know , and you can tell stories and sing songs and whatever you want to do . Everybody likes it .

So then we figured out how to get him a different green card and then we started he teaching together and there were a lot of beauty in that , but one beauty was he had gone through actual initiations .

And then and I told him my story and he told me his story , which is a really dramatic story also , but what we had in common with the life and life and death experiences and an interest in initiatory rituals- we began to work at that together , and then he would .

we began to redesign African rituals to work at that time in the United States , because rituals don't travel well . You can you can take the rudiments of the ritual and reshape it a bit , and so that's what we did together . And then we found out well , we found that we could drum and sing together , and that was like our favorite thing to do .

It's a silent thing where you actually understand the other person really well and anyway we would call it chasing the spirits or cause calling the spirits in and to this day I miss doing that . He's passed on , so you know . Peace on his soul . Yeah , so that was one of those fateful conversation on the phone .

And then next , within a month , we were working together .

Let you manage to go and come back and not die , coming very , very close to death . I imagine that it was probably true that your pulse was very weak at that point . Oh yeah , they were telling the truth .

It was a little death . I was not the same person when I come out of there . That's why I had a study initiation . I knew I wasn't the same person and no one that I knew could understand what happened , and but I had to understand it .

And so then , yeah , I had worked out on a lot of things , but meeting Malodoma was great because he had been denied initiation .

Right , because it's too dangerous .

It doesn't matter , probably in some sad or yeah , sad and additional or something , yeah , yeah , yeah , maybe sad and return time , because it's amazing to me that that you come out of that and your physical self is almost broken but your spirit is obviously on fire at that time , but probably stronger than ever it's been , really , you know , because obviously you

come and you somehow , or some part of you , knows what you need now , which is kind of remarkable .

And so then I'm back in the regular world and I don't fit in at all . That makes no sense to me . So I had to leave New York and I went all the way to the other California , the other side of the country , trying to find a way really to start again is what I didn't understand . That , but that's what I was up to .

But then I had to really turn to study and I studied all these different tribes and how initiation went and what rites of passage they had and how that went , and I started to make this realization that it's all archetypal and the only thing missing from my experience was the return right . The rite of passage is separation from everything and everyone .

Well , you know Salt Lake confinement qualifies you there and then some kind of ordeals that feel like life and death . Well , yeah , we got that covered .

And then it's not over until you return and people who understand what you went through and know that you're a different person welcome you back as this different person , with a greater understanding and a deeper reverence for life or something like that , and that's missing .

So eventually , eventually , what I did and I bet the date of this would be interesting I decided to have a conference where I invited to it , and this was for men primarily .

Later on I worked with , by the way , battle veterans that included women and men , but on this occasion I invited men who had gone to Vietnam , who had refused to go to Vietnam , who had left the country and eventually came back , who got out of going to Vietnam by lying , by cheating , lying .

I invite you know I had all these connections and word went out if you're part of this Vietnam experience , come to . So over a hundred guys wind up in this remote camp for a week .

We had guys that were really wounded , obviously , and then we had many people with PTSD and we , we worked at it for a week . We told each other stories and I use myth to frame the whole thing and so we were all inside myth and it was . It was amazing , was really challenging and difficult , and at times it looked like it's gonna fall apart .

And then we all realized what the truth was . We had all been in the war together . Even the one who didn't go were in a war .

Hmm and so at the end of it , the night before we closed , we had this like a feast and and , and I suggested at the feast that if someone has moved you , if their life story has moved , you toast to them so that they realized they've been seen by you and you're kind of blessing them .

And so then someone else said well , after we did that for a while , they said why don't we also toast groups like why don't we toast all the battle veterans and toast all all the ones who are opposed to the war ? And that seemed right . And so they said well , let's start with the battle veterans . All the battle veterans stand up .

There's over a hundred people sitting at at this really long Extension of tables and all these bad veterans stand up . It's really powerful . And then they come over to me and stand me up and I said no , no , no , I'm not a battle veteran . And they said yes , you are . Wow . And I said what ? And they said you took on the whole army . You're with us .

Wow . That was the end of the rider pass so that was your return , yeah . I'm almost gonna cry .

Loads of PTSD there , loads of trauma , you know a lot of violence , a lot of potential chaotic , you know Mess that could happen if it's not held right . But you're willing to put yourself in there and really trust that Spirit has got you and that genius has got you , souls got you . The whole thing will contain it .

Speaking of Saturnian things as well , the big container , right , because that is also the same thing like so can you contain ? You know , that's what Saturn really brings us , which is ways , also blocks and limits , and all those negative elements of Saturn gets bandied about . But it's actually a containment process and .

That container , within that container , they call you forward and and and rewrite your myth right , that you , that you say I didn't fight . You say refused to fight and they say no , you did fight . Yeah .

And then the old rule applies when you Complete one initiation , you're qualified now for a bigger , deeper one . Wow , that's a stopping point , but it was a great stopping point and it was something I really needed . No one else could help me with that .

I'm not saying everybody was fine after that , no , but had you walked into that , you would . You would see and feel yourself in an altered place , where , where , by the end , the those who are battle veterans are embracing anti-war activists and wow . It just , it just brought her all back together and so so I call that sudden community .

I I learned that it's sudden because Everybody usually you know I'll be with a big audience , I'll say how many people have a had an experience of separation , the beginning of a rite of passage and most almost everybody Puts the hand . How many have suffered through our deals . Now both hands are going up .

How many have been welcomed back with an understanding of what you went through ? Very few hands are going up . That's the part we don't get . Yeah , most people living unfinished initiations Right at that time . For that group , we returned you know , how hard it is for battle veterans to return .

That doesn't rely on anybody talking to anybody , it's just like a microcosm , microcosm of the healing . That's okay , that's available , for that would , that would just kind of reverberate .

But then there's also people going with like , as you say , they're not , they're not , they don't go out well , or that everything's fixed , that everything sorted out , but they go out with something , some invisible things , some kind of wisdom , maybe an awakened elder . What did you say again about the sage in the heart ?

In the book is three paragraphs when they're saying that we are , our tradition of initiation goes back for thousands of years , and when we're initiating a young person , what we do , what we're doing is awakening the elder in them .

And when we're initiating the elders , what we're doing is reawakening and re-bibing the dream , the dream in there that brought them to life . Wow , and that's all I need , that's all I really work with .

So what happened is , if you imagine , all those Men who have wound up going to Vietnam were young , yeah , and instead of waking up the elder inside them , they got a heavy dose of the wrong kind of warrior and all kinds of crazy stuff . But when we all got together , somehow you could .

You could see people begin to act With the instinct of an elder and everybody could bring healing to each other . Um , so I then worked with battle veterans specifically . We would do retreats with battle veterans because they don't want anyone else present . It's so weird .

And yet I was , had been initiated into it , and and no one knew that , but they would come , the battle veterans would come and they would trust me . And it was , you know , and and also I began working in prisons and I was very much right because I had been in prison .

Yeah , I've been in solitary , I know what that's like , and so I could go into prisons and work and women's prisons and men's prisons , prisons and bring myth into prison , wow , wow .

And I used to go in and say , okay , you know , this is gonna be a prison break , we're all gonna break out of prison today Going a lot , and I said , but , but the bodies will probably stay , but we're gonna ride on the on the list on the wind of story , and we're gonna find other parts of our , of ourselves , and , and so all of that is , you can see ,

faithfully predicted and , and , and experienced at a young age . Yeah , a calling that is fairly specific , very specific .

I think this is kind of part of the the struggle in the world , right , because there's a , there's a longing to be initiated into something very Specific , very clear , very Sort of personal , to the soul , to the self .

Yeah , and there can be , we can be stuck in something much more general , but it sounds like that path was very , very , I don't know , maybe Capricorn coming in here of late , just how clear and , and you know like structured it it had . Invisibly , of course , not , of course you're just following the threads . But yeah , and that middle ground .

So what I then realized I had been Invited , pulled into Was liminal space , and so Our project we call mosaic mosaic . Sometimes now we call it living myth , but it's been going for 40 years and it always involves liminal space .

So , gang kids , street kids , homeless people , battle veterans , refugees , it's been one liminal group after another , partly because they they need stories , they need Blessing , they need healing . Partly for that reason , but also because they're ready . They're already departed . They're already into the ordeal .

You know it's really , and now we're all in the ordeal , right , okay , I call it a collective right of passage and we're all in the liminal space . Yeah , because of culture rattling , uh , and and nature rattling at the same time .

It's certainly extreme and so , um .

So I mean , as we're talking , the war has broken out again between Hamas has attacked israel , but on the other , on the other continent , russia had as it made in ukraine , as if we're going back Years and years , yeah , um , and then , in the meantime , we , we have just come through the hottest time on earth and since records have been kept , um , and , and so

the the world is overheated in terms of Violence and conflict , but also in , literally , in terms of climate crisis and global warming . So we're in this initiatory Betwixt and between place , where it's it's hard , almost everybody is traumatized . And then the question becomes what's the way out , what's the vision , what's the awakening trying to occur ?

And to go back from where we started from , um , it seems to be the only real response is a deeper awakening of the human soul , right and and people can't solve it collectively because they can't agree . But back to the quality of genius . If enough people awaken to a meaningful path in life , things start to get healed without everybody agreeing .

Everybody just agrees to be legitimate , meaningful and purposeful on their own path and suddenly some people are helping nature and other people are helping culture and and and . Then maybe we can . Then I'm suggesting that people find ways to do sudden community . So you get a brief sense .

Community is a latin word , comes from community toss , and it means to do something so deep that feels so deep , that put it , pulls everyone together , whether they agree or not . So death does that and loss does that , and PTSD can do that right , and and being treated as other can do that .

All those things are opportunities to create a healing community and I suggest that it's temporary , because it's very hard to do things that are sustainable right now . Right , better , imagine it as as temporary .

There's some sort of idealism to that . That's just actually really unhelpful . But we can be in the same story again .

I think that's the , the fracturing of the , perhaps like with so little return and so much ordeal , um , to go with what we're talking about , it's like fracturing out and then people feel safe in in their part of the story , almost as though that other part isn't part of their story at all , like it's completely foreign or completely other and then the other

rising , becomes so extreme that we've come in in these polls . You did mention the astrology . I would say that it's the this transition , pluto God of the underworld , you would know Pluto and Hades is has been since 2008 , has been in Capricorn the nature story , and is heading into Aquarius the culture story , so it's cussing .

It's like this 18 month liminal cusp between the two . That does feel like it's part of that Part of the story . Yeah , yeah .

that means devil .

It doesn't mean he's nice and kind , like he can be terrifying and you know , whatever it is that we meet down there , but it's still An underworld god , you know , married to Persephone , underworld marriage of god , goddess , in a way , rather than you know , one of the things to to move out of mythologically is that idea of good or bad , good and evil sort of

thing that can get stuck in that in that so then if we think , well , pluto is like , is actually traveling in between , spending this time going back and forth In this 18 month period that started about six months ago , still got another year to go . Interesting to sort of like . Take that into , because I think that's what astralis .

That's why I found astrology Helpful , is it ? It does give a mythological overview , because these are the gods and goddesses wandering through the sky . They're not gas giants and things . In my opinion they're . They're the beings themselves , in the same way that they actually came into your solitary confinement .

It's not a hallucination , it is that , and also it's being visited by these actual beings .

And then I'm thinking of uh , saturn secretly has the gold . In the depth of Saturn is gold , and in the depth of the earth is gold Right . And so in the darkness you find the gold . And the old symbolism for having genius was the gold inside the soul , that the struggles in our lives are not there to defeat us .

They had to crack us open so that we can find the inner gold . They used to call it the golden qualities of oneself , the inner nobility , the inner capacity to love . And so when you put it into mythological terms , or if you put it into writer passage terms , initiatory terms , there's a way out . And the way out is deeper .

You go all the way down , like the roots of the trees going all the way down to get the minerals in the water , and we're being forced into the underworld before we can be reborn into new visions of the upper world . That's how I'm seeing it .

And then someone tells me well , you should go hear Robert Bly , he's telling myths . And so I'm in Seattle , he winds up in Seattle and I go to hear him and it's great . He's a great poet and he's 17 years , 18 years older than I am , so he's like an elder and a lot of good things about it .

I meet him that night and it's so happens , this is interesting , so happens . So he comes off stage , it's a pretty big crowd and he was great , it was really imaginative . Everybody's imbued with the imagination , but people react differently and so I'm in line to say thank you . Most people are saying thank you , that was great .

Or I have a question and the guy in front of me kind of attacks him a bit , and so by the time he turns to me , robert's a little bit knocked off his balance and I said okay , just take a breath . And he said what happened ?

And I said well , you're completely vulnerable , you've been up there talking about emotions , you've been given stories and poems and you're completely wide open and for some people they can't help it , they have to take a shot . And so the guy just hit you while you're vulnerable and he goes oh , who are you ? So he was my name .

He said thank you , we should talk , wow , wow .

So , anyway , he then invites me to an event . We changed letters , actually , and he invited me to an event and that's the first time I'd ever been .

It was a conference that had Coleman box , the translator , the room was there and all kinds of amazing teachers were there , and then this great audience and it was all myth and story and everything and wow , it was just like entering , like finding another part of the world that was doing the things that I was trying to do .

And then , since he opened doors , like I needed someone to help me take some steps and he opened the doors and the next thing I was at all these events he would invite me to and I found audiences that understood what I was doing and saying and then , anyway , so that went on for years and then , in the course of it , I had gotten interested in James Hillman

. To tell you the truth , I found a book of his in a Good Will box and he used to make me tell the story to audiences and I didn't wait for it to show up on the shelf . I took it out of the box and I read it that night . That was in Revisioning . Psychology was the name of the book , yeah , and I thought this guy's good .

And one time I asked Robert , do you ever hear of James Hillman ? He goes . I know James Hillman . I said can't you invite him to an event ? So we wound , and that was faithful , literally .

So I wound up meeting James Hillman at a conference in Maine on a lake , and he gives this presentation that I think was called Jesus Christ and the Atomic Bomb Twin Brothers , I think that was his title . Wow , okay , and it was clearly incendiary and people got really upset and some people loved it and some people didn't .

Anyway , it's over and I see him standing on this deck overlooking the lake and I thought this is before I had been introduced to him and so I want to meet him . So I go down and I wait for a moment and I say , excuse me , dr Hillman , I just wanted to introduce myself and say something . And he said , yeah , but what did you think of that presentation ?

And I said , well , it was explosive . And he said , yeah , but why was everybody so excited ? I said , well , you were talking about two explosive things . One was an atomic bomb and the other you're connecting Christ to that . And I said so what did you expect ? And actually the audience is gonna divide and be opposed , just like nuclear

fission . He goes .

And he said you should write about that , and that became the book Fate and Destiny . So he became another mentor and then the three of us worked together , which was an amazing experience . I mean it was incredible for us .

It was James Hillman had been doing that , robert had been doing his own version of that , and it became this experiments of how to work with men and emotions and soul and it gave me an opportunity to experiment with ritual , because the work was done in week long retreats , really .

So , yeah , and I had already been experimenting with that , and Robert had too , and so we would do 100 men at a time per week and it would be story . Story was the container and it was brilliant and it was revelatory .

But it got caught into cultural notions and then it became like a celebrated thing and it got really out of control and I think most people didn't realize it was always only soul work . That's what it was . And , to tell you the truth , throughout that time we were all also working with women and men . It was never just men . That was part of .

It was and that's the part that blew up . And then , like a lot of things that we did , like a lot of things that blow up , it went down pretty fast too . Which was too bad and because and it still goes on in its own ways . But part of what was behind it was how do we get men to live in more soulful ways and bring soul to culture ?

And it was all about soul and healing . And then it became turned into all kinds of other things because it got filtered through people's fixed ideas about masculinity and infemininity and all that kind of stuff . But it was beautiful work and it was very meaningful .

It then goes on a different kind of an arc . What we were doing was really consistent with the arc of writer passage , but once it became a celebrated media thing , you're then on the arc of rise and fall , and so then it's exposed over the place .

You know , if obviously Saturn's wondering Cronus is wandering around with us that containment that's required and it sounds like you guys did have containment , except that there was another force coming in , prying , opening and you know , opening things up . Yeah , yeah , yeah .

And then they want that inner gold , and so that process of taking what was previously pretty well contained became the undoing of the whole thing and it became ridiculed and it became actually codified and so on and so forth . And there was a lot of learning in that .

A lot of learning in that , and you realize why in traditional cultures they're careful about their rituals , because if you're not feeling and present in the process , then it's easy to reject it or to be jealous of it or envious of it or you know , somehow not related to it . And that's pretty much what happened .

I don't know if you have a thought on this , but how do we get the right amount of containment when there's social media and there's TikTok and that you get a little bit of gold and you just throw it out there into the world , kind of thing ?

It's such a different world in the world of containment and healthy Saturn energy which would be how to contain and even conceal for long enough for it to be right , Jess stated in that particular archetypal , father womb .

And so then you wind up with this tension between how hidden to keep it and how open to be about it . That they say , in terms of a ritual , there's only two mistakes you can make to be too inclusive or to be too exclusive . Those are the only two errors , and so that's easy to understand . But then how do you do it ?

And so what we've done is we always make the defining issue the woundedness of the people that are present . So , like we're working with refugees , you don't have big problems about people wanting to get in and take away whatever you're doing , because people don't want to be near refugees . We're working with homeless peoples or gang kids . That's what we want .

That was my response to what happened when men's work became this media thing and this kind of overblown cultural thing that was moving further and further from the original work . So our organization , mosaic widgets , went from one liminal place to another . You know where most people don't want to be , but that's only a partial solution .

And now , what do we do when everyone's in liminal space ? It's one of the things I struggle with just what's the proper thing to do or what's the healing thing to do . So I don't know .

Sometimes it's like tragedy becomes the teacher , and when enough people feel tragedy , then they know what we're doing is we have to be careful with each other and we're doing it for each other , not for some outside interest . But at that time the outside interest really took over things .

And so because then the wounds reflect and can help each other , and so I don't know , now that there's more trauma in the world , then there's more fear in the world and there's more grief in the world and fewer people can stop it or reject it . Then maybe there's things that are going to work now . That didn't work very well then .

So we are actually coming up to Chiron's own return , like his own , coming back to himself , this 50 year cycle that he's in and I do think , this hybrid creature that does remind us of the unity of mortal , immortal , animal and consciousness .

The story of Chiron , which I've also heard you speak to , it's one of my all time favorites because he does have culture .

He is ultimately raised by Apollo , the sun god , but , being half animal , he's also deeply connected to nature and natural medicines , nature's medicines , and wandering around in the forest , talking to the trees and the invisibles , and so , as a figure , I feel like his emergent , at least emergent , at least astrologers know about him , you know like as he comes up

in 1977 , he's discovered in that time and so his myth sort of enters , like that's one of the places astrology can help , like whose myth enters and at what time .

So , in that late 70s period , and we come up to the return of that in this , in this next section of this decade , which will be interesting to watch , at least because a lot of the themes you're talking about are very much in the wounded , in the wounded healer and the wounded healer the wounded split all of those things .

Yeah , you know we eventually has to go back up into the stars , but there's an archetype .

experience being locked in rocks , and Chiron , who has the capacity to say I'll take your place . So he has the capacity to shape , shift into Prometheus's place , basically , or at least saying like I'm willing . I'm willing because I'm in so much pain , and now I see your pain , I'm willing to exchange with you .

And in that moment Zeus releases at least Prometheus and Chiron and turns them into constellations , that sends them to the heavens .

.

And so , if you imagine , take that out of the central place and put the wounded healer in brilliant transition to where we are now . Yeah , because , right , because people keep stealing fire , and now it's a little chip inside of all these devices .

Yeah , that's really like a , like an ancient fire firing up all these devices that claim the night people , that really separate people and leave them in isolation of a different kind .

Yeah , just as you were describing that , I was seeing the changing of the gods Right , like the sun Right , because the Greeks call it the chyros , the chyros moment , when the gods shift , and so that's a brilliant shift from . Prometheus's burning vision that led to all the technologies of life , to the wounded healer .

He stops the immediate , which is that this griffin , or the eagle , is taking that liver and it's growing back every day . That's Prometheus's main condition , so he's able to just like I can stop that . And now leaves Chiron and Prometheus to exchange talk , be with each other . Yeah , that's beautiful .

You know story that's also the healing and then the heal you have that the wounded present and that's all what it was about , and then healing the wounds of the masculine , but also then figuring out how to heal the wounds of the feminine , so that the genders are reunited on the path of healing .

And so I'm really happy to hear that , astrologically , that's coming around , because that's the only way we get out of this .

So just watching those symbols , you know as best we can talking about them , getting people enthused into the myth again . So it's that actually did blend .

Yeah , because he's an animal-lap , human , right , and he seems so , you know , and that's what happens to everyone , really . And so , wow , it's beautiful to come around to the wounded healer . Big gods , I mean , that would have been .

I can see so many points in my life where that would have been the best thing to be informed about and welcomed into , and eventually it happened . But we're all there now , right , the only way we change this world is in the dynamic of being wounded healers .

You know , maybe we've changed as a collective and we've changed as a right , like we certainly need to , but focusing on that return .

Yeah , and the flames inside each person we were talking about at the beginning , the genius flame , can grow to be a major force of change for the individual , but also , eventually , for the collective . Yeah , we're here to transform , we're here to initiate into a life that's trying to come out of us anyway .

Yeah , and we're here to heal ourselves and in doing that , we help heal each other and maybe we can help to transform and heal the world . I think that's what's trying to happen .