Michael Meade

It is our collective fate to live amidst the hard times we're experiencing today, with culture and nature in upheaval around the world. Yet, whatever shatters the outer patterns of our lives can also open us up to psychological and mythical levels of unusual depth and meaning. During times of crisis, certain archetypal energies and shapes... arise and assist us in navigating radical transformation. In this way, a crisis can also be a calling, a crucible of transformation, and a collective rite of passage.

I keep imagining how the time of collapse and chaos can also be a radical period of re-imagination and potential renewal... precisely in the midst of chaos each of us may be closer to finding a particular thread that gives our life genuine meaning and also gives us something to contribute to the re-imagining and reweaving of the world.

There may be no way to completely avoid the fires erupting all around us, but the human psyche is ancient and immediate and therefore uniquely resilient...The inner alchemy of the soul intends to turn the heat of all that fumes and burns into the light of illumination.

...If we can stay in touch with ourselves, if we can find the connection to our deeper selves, we can find this deeper level of hope that truly should be called imagination...in the depths of each person there is a greater self and a core imagination that is truly the source of one's life.

The hardest thing in life may be to learn to truly trust that there is something noble and generative in ourselves. This is a greater sense of the notion of believing in our self; to truly believe in oneself means to uncover the inner core of imagination and authenticity that can also be called the genius within us. When we connect to the inner resident of the soul, we also learn how we are woven to the Soul of the World.