Michael J. Meade Quotes

Whereas literalists and fundamentalists tend to choose one pole of any dilemma or opposition, whereas modern political parties and religious groups tend towards demonizing each other, the creative individual must be born again and again in the crucible created by the tension between opposing instincts, conflicted feelings, and contrasting ideas.

When seen with imagination, all things shift toward meaning, releasing energies that are hidden within appearances, releasing the inner wings of spirit, opening wide the doors to healing and wholeness.

The point has never been to 'believe' in myths or to simply accept what others have said they mean. The key issue with mythic images is to let them speak to us, wherever and whenever we find ourselves seeking guidance, permission, or understanding.

The home we are looking for in this world is within us all along. The lost home that we are seeking is ourselves; it is the story we carry within our soul.

When a situation feels like a matter of life and death the deep self is close at hand and it already carries inner medicine and its own life remedy.

What’s secretly in the water
of modern culture is that people
enter the world empty.
That’s a very dangerous idea,
because if everybody’s empty
than other people can get us
to do whatever they want
because there’s nothing
in us to stand against it.

But if we came to do
something that’s meaningful,
that involves giving and
making the world a more
beautiful, healthy, lively place,
then you become a difficult person
to move around and manipulate.

The esoteric level of philosophy reads as philosophia, which translates as both a love of knowledge and as the knowledge of love.

The less we think about what others might be considering or thinking about us, the more likely we can live the story that our own souls came here to unfold and unveil to the world.

When a person becomes aware of their genius and they live it and they give generously from it, they change the world, they affect the world. And when they depart everyone knows something is missing.

In mythic terms, the earth is a place of mystery and wonder where life always hangs by a thread and all the events of history are loosely stitched upon the endless loom of eternity. Secretly, we are each tied to the divine. Human awareness was thought to be the extra element in creation, able at times to help tip the scales toward renewal.

kintsukuroi, or the “golden repair” of something treasured or important that has become cracked or broken. When applied to the repair of ancient and valuable pieces of pottery, the practice becomes kintsugi, or “golden joinery.” The key to this imaginative art appears when the glue used to fill the cracks and join the broken pieces becomes blended with actual gold. After the repairs have been made, the broken vessel becomes more valuable than ever. Metaphorically, kintsugi suggests that

Searching outside oneself for what can only be found within can lead to a life lived in the wrong direction and sacrifices made for the wrong reasons. People can wind up alienated from themselves even if they achieve lofty goals set by others.

To be purposeful is not to be goal oriented, but to seek to reconnect to the source of one's life.