Navigating the Collapse of Modern Society, with Michael Meade

Alright, Michael Mead, welcome back to the ManTalks Show. How are you doing today?

I'm doing good. Good to be with you, Connor.

You know what's funny is I was looking at my calendar this morning and I prepped for the interview a couple days ago. And, this morning, I was looking at my calendar and I saw your name and I realized the last time I talked to you, I was actually in Boulder, Colorado, which I now live in. But I was just visiting last time, and I was at a friend's place, and now I'm here. So life has taken me on a beautiful adventure. So it feels very fruitful to have this conversation with you with how much life has unfolded. But let's dive in because you have something new coming out around transformation, The Heart of Transformation. And If I'm not mistaken, you sort of talk about how transformation may be the only way out or one of the ways through the troubled times that we find ourselves in.

Yeah.

And I think I want to start this conversation by starting to pull apart from your perspective how you view the troubled times that we are in before talking about what transformation can look like.

So I think one thing that's unusual, a lot of things unusual right now, unprecedented, as people say. And one of them is that we're living in a time when nature is rattling while culture is unraveling. And so that's unusual to have. In other words, it's nature and culture. It's, in a sense, everything. And so that makes me consider that we're in something, a period of change that involves the entire world at all levels. And for me, because I'm so often looking through the lens of mythology, that takes me into creation mythology because every society, no matter how small, a tribe of 90 people on the Amazon River, of which there are several, they have an entire cosmology and an entire mythology. And humans are always involved in story. And so creation mythology is in every society that has ever existed. And rarely, maybe never, does a group have only one creation story. Even the Bible has 2. And so, because creation is such an amazing, overwhelming thing that you can't get it into one story. So most cultures have many, like India is amazing that way. They have dozens and dozens of creation stories. And so there's a value in that now because 2 things. One, since creation is not something that happened a long time ago and we're in the aftermath, creation in mythological terms is ongoing. We are in the midst of creation right now. And creation involves both collapse and renewal. And so that's another way to understand what's going on in the world, that we're in one of these big periods of collapse. But the energy, the recreative energy of the world is also beginning the renewal of the world. So to me, and mythologically speaking, the world can come to an end. That's not the thing to be worried about. We're at the end of an era, we're at the end of a worldview, but we're not at the end of the world. And the word end doesn't even mean, you know, finito, good night, all lights off. End means loose end or remnant. And from the ashes, you know, the world returns. From the loose ends, it's rewoven. And I think we're being invited to assist in the reweaving of the world. And that's part of the reason I was writing a book about this period of time.

Well, it feels very, um, nurturing in a way, because I think a lot of the commentary that I see online is both nihilistic, dystopian. Uh, it really is like catastrophe seems to have become a commonplace psychological state that people seem to exist in, and it's It's interesting because I actually just found a book from Jung. I've read pretty much— I studied Jung for a very long time and went very deep into his work for a long time. And, I found a book of his that I actually hadn't read and I just ordered it and it was called The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche. And, I didn't know he wrote it. And, it's a book that he wrote in tandem with a physicist who basically created the foundations of what's now quantum mechanics. And in the book, they explore the interconnectedness between nature and the psyche. And it kind of sounds a little bit like what you're saying is that as nature is going through an upheaval, so too is our, what Jung would've called the collective consciousness, the collective psyche.

Yes. Our souls are secretly connected to the soul of the world. That's what the It used to be called the soul of the world, but you could also imagine it as the heart of nature. And so to be a modern Western person is to have been educated to think we're separate from all that. We are the subject and everything else is an object. That's one of the sad, tragic, really, inheritances of being grown up in the modern Western world. The idea that we are separated. But human nature is secretly connected to great nature and always has been. And since nature is constantly in flux and constantly renewing itself, something in our own nature awakens when everything's falling apart. And Jung would call it the deep self.

Yeah.

In mythology, it would be called the soul. Self, soul, spirit, you can call it all kinds of things. It's something that is not created by or limited by history. It's something transcendent. And I have a chapter in the book called The Divine Word because it's a whole chapter trying to say there's a divine word in each person. When I was younger, I was afraid of saying things like that, of saying, because of the way I was educated and because I didn't want to be caught up in any kind of inflation, I was careful about what I was saying. But now, in like the desperate times in which we live, it seems important to say there's something divine, of the divine in each person. And if we get connected to that, then we have an immediate sense of transcendence and therefore less of a fatalistic, nihilistic imagination about the world. It's not simply a new world that we need, it's a new worldview that we need. And the worldview needs to be closer to quantum physics.

Mm-hmm.

You know, we're in quantum changes now. It's not an accident that quantum physics revealed, you know, the wave and the form, which, you know, So everything has the wave of change in it, from the ocean from which all life came to the water of the womb in which we grew inside our mothers, to the fact that our bodies are 70% water. You know, we can flow, we can change, we can have quantum alterations in our individual lives. And I'm probably following Jung here. I think I am anyway, at least closely companioning him to say, you can't change society at the level of society.

Hmm.

You know, just like political changes just lead to more political changes, not necessarily good ones. We have to change the soul of the individual. When enough souls change, then society changes. So this really becomes about the dynamic between the individual soul And the soul of nature or the soul of the world.

Hmm. It— as I was listening to you, it almost felt— and I don't have to be right about this, so please, like, if I'm misinterpreting something, but it feels like part of what you're saying, or at least what I've felt, is that a crisis in nature is a crisis of the spirit. Like, it's a spiritual crisis in some ways.

Yeah. So in West African mythology, they say nature is spirit with a green garment on.

Hmm.

That's their way of just cutting through a lot of stuff and saying, when you're encountering nature, and we all have encounters with nature, which can be awesome, they can be amazing, and they can be really kind of reinvigorating. when everything else seems really polarized and chaotic. But for people really in any part of the ancient world, nature would be the place of spirit in its kind of green, constant, the changing manifestation. And it would never be objectified as the Western world has. People look at nature as if it's separate from us. The Earth as if it's separate from us and as if it's an objective thing out there. And that was not the way ancient people saw it. It's a living spirit, spiritually kind of imbued, dynamic presence that we can learn from. The whole first section of the book is under the banner of reading the text of nature. In order to understand us. Hmm.

Yeah, I think it's a, it's a recent separation that seems to have happened over the last 100 years of almost like removing people from nature. And I think, I think even the definition of nature has become something that almost is, is as if it is something out there that we are not a part of intrinsically, which I've always found fascinating. You know, it's like, how do you, how do you remove human beings from nature. Like, that's so strange to me.

And people always refer to human nature, right? Yeah, we are the human part of nature, right? Yeah. And so, and then nature is— modern people also conflate nature and Earth, and people use Earth and nature interchangeably when Earth is something fairly solid and steady beneath us, and nature is something never steady, always changing all around us. They're two different things. And all traditional cultures saw them as two different things. And so, yeah, in North America, many of the tribes had the idea called the second soul, that each person has their embodied soul. Their second soul was secretly connected to something specific in nature. For some people, it's an animal. For other people, it's a certain kind of plant or a tree, but they just understood everyone is connected. Each person is unique and each person is uniquely connected to nature. And when a person finds that place in nature that's special to them or that connection that's special to them, that's a life, a source of lifeblood, a source of renewable energy, so to speak. And yeah, we're going to have to get back to that. Because nature is not going to come to an end because people forgot how to be human. That's not quite going to happen.

Well, and it does— it certainly feels and looks as if a huge part of the mental disruption that seems to be taking place within a lot of people is that they feel so disconnected from nature. You know, as we move more and more into digital spaces and and spend more time in a digital realm or a digital reality, the reality of nature which we inhabit, I think a lot of people feel distant from. And then, there's a cost to that. I also noticed that a lot of men specifically just because this man talks and we talk mostly to men, I've noticed that a lot of men kind of feel this—

Yeah.

Purposelessness, this loneliness, this political homelessness, this disconnection from culture, disconnection from society, feeling outside of those structures. And I wonder, from a mythological standpoint, or mythically speaking, like, what, what part of the story is that? Or what story are men inhabiting collectively? Because it does seem very unique?

So I'm writing this book about the world at this time and how we transform and where does transformation come from. And so I wound up putting it into 3 sections. I actually call it 3 books. The first book is Transformation in Nature, reading the text of nature. The second book is Transformation as Seen Through the Human Soul, And there I use rites of passage or the archetype of initiation. And so the reason I bring it up now is a modern man is typically lacking an essential thing that traditional cultures would have offered, which is to say, a rite of passage that puts an end to childhood, but that also opens up spiritual, emotional, and psychological realms that are necessary and available, but modern people don't even completely connect to. And so, for instance, a rite of passage would separate a young person from their family and their childhood. And they used to describe it as moving from the lap of your mother to the lap of Mother Nature.

Hmm.

So that the vision quest would not be the separated, isolated individual going out into nature that is also separate. It would actually be the orphan that's produced after childhood wandering into the lap of Mother Nature and being nourished by this greater mother. And then along with that, you imagine a young guy, 14, 15, 16, whatever it would be in a given area, would be isolated like happens in a vision quest. but isolated in order to be directly heart and soul connected to nature somehow. And a person would experience, have spiritual experiences, exchanges with nature through animals, through plants, through weather, through voices, through dreams. And that would be the beginning of the fullness of life. And then along with that, the older, let's say we're talking men, the initiated men, who could be the mentors. In Africa, they call mentors practice elders so that the mentor is a stage to practice to be an elder. So the mentors typically would be there with the young guys going through the rite of passage, supporting them, informing them. And then after the young person had their experience with nature, their dream, whatever it was, which is life-altering, Because people used to have less resistance to becoming wide open and transfiguring themselves, like no longer being simply the child, no longer being the production of that family. That's always there, but it's not the only thing. Now it would be in the engagement of one's unique individual spirit with the world. Like in an Australian tribal area, they talk, they call it Yoro Yoro.

Yoro Yoro.

the whole world standing up and speaking to you. What do you have to say back? That would— the young person would be put into the whole world, all of it alive and speaking, and they would take in the information and find what was resonant and what was genuine and what was authentic in themselves. And if it was a healthy situation, they'd come back and tell the mentors or elders, and then the mentors and elders would help them interpret the signs and the symbols and the dreams. And they would then be confirmed in this new awakened realization of themselves. And then they would go back to the village and everybody would welcome them as a different person.

Yeah.

A person who had awakened to themselves, who had begun to interact with the spirit world, and also had begun to heal their own psychological wounds. Because in an initiation, you would always get a wound, a physical wound, but that was to remind you that you have to heal the inside. So compare— take that out of the picture and you have young men going, now they're being invited? No, not really. Welcome? No, not really. Anyway, somehow they have to enter a world that they're being told might end any day for all kinds of reasons.

Right.

And also, you know, so then you have the whole thing of the accidental person. Because another problem that happened besides the loss of rites of passage, people developed the idea that we live in an accidental universe. Well, if the universe is accidental and you're a product of it, that means you're an accidental person. And so you're an accidental person now facing a world that might end at any moment. In the meantime, it's polarized and telling you you're not really worth anything and so on. It's really a horrendous thing. And that's why I always start with the individual soul. Each person is unique, never to be born again. Each person is gifted when they come into the world, and each soul is aimed. And part of growing up, as we call it, would be to awaken to how we are gifted and how we are aimed in the world. When we have that, it doesn't mean everything is fixed. If everything is okay, it means we're suffering in the right direction. And it means we know we have inner value and we know we have something to give to life. And that's a big thing and very different from feeling one has to be an isolated— when I was growing up, they used to call it the rugged individual. Well, now it's all ragged individuals. I mean, I know some of them are pretending to be rugged, but—

Right.

In terms of psychological things, is ragged now. I like that. I like that. Yeah. And so, yeah, so we're missing this huge thing. I mean, almost all men are. And then you take someone who's not initiated in the sense of awakened to who they are, and you give them a bunch of power. They won't admit that they're wounded, so therefore they're constantly wounding other people and have to pretend to be strong. Because otherwise they might be more afflicted by other people and you have the modern disaster.

I like the notion of suffering in the right direction. I think that's— it's a lot of— in my book, in Men's Work, the very first line was, a man's work begins in pain. And it was this kind of reminder that until we are able to not necessarily reconcile with, but have some sense of the direction that our pain or our suffering could take us in that we're just going to— I don't know, I got an image of Homer Simpson just sort of spinning around on the floor.

Yeah.

And, I do think that for a lot of men, that's what they're looking for is some type of direction. And, until they are willing to come into contact with the wound that is inside of them that they've been afflicted with, that it becomes nearly impossible to have any sense of direction with it. And, it also sounds like part of What you're saying is that an encounter with nature is a prerequisite for the widening of the self, for the widening of the sense of this is who I am. Is that accurate?

Yeah. It's also a collapse of the separation from nature. In the book, I give part of a story from Native American story. Young guy, 16, And he's already in a damaged place because the tribe has been diminished by the colonial process and all that kind of stuff. And so all they can do is dig a pit and put him in a pit. That's going to be the initiation. And so this is part of the story of Lame Deer, who becomes a famous visionary. But the way he writes is so cool because he says, you know, he'd never been alone until that moment. He'd always been with extended family or someone in the tribe. And now he was all alone in this pit in the earth, and it got dark, and he was just left there. He lost all sense of time. And after a while, he realizes he's not actually alone. There's a rather large— a matter of fact, an enormous bird in the pit with him, and he can feel the wings of it, and it's making sounds, and it's totally freaking him out. And then eventually the bird takes him up to the sky where he can look down at the earth. And then, and then he hears the words saying that you are one of, one of us. You're one of the eagle and the owl people. And your job is to be a visionary and a healer. And then, and then eventually he's back down in the pit and he's kind of coming back into himself and he has no idea how long he's been there. And then, you know, the elder who had put him in the pit comes and says, come on. As it turns out, he's been there for 4 days and 4 nights.

Wow.

But he comes out, he describes it so beautifully. It was so simple because it used to be shared. And so everybody knew something about it. And he comes out knowing about himself and that he is part of the tribe of owls and eagles. And so he— and that's spiritual talk. That's spiritual talk. And he knows he has a calling. And the calling is to be a visionary and a healer. And then because he's in a post-colonial situation and the tribe is so broken, it takes him a good almost 20 years, 18 years or something to actually come into that capacity. And then he becomes a well-known visionary person and a healer and a public speaker. And so it's really a condensed version of what we're all— we all needed and maybe got some of, usually not enough of.

Okay. There's so many threads, Michael, that I just— I always feel every time I talk to you, I'm like, next time I need to fly to where Michael is and sit down with him for 3 hours and just record the conversation or fly you to me and we can sit down and have a much longer conversation because I'm like, there's so many threads I want to pull on. So, it's a good reminder for myself.

Yeah.

I do think that part of the challenge, it's very interesting because we seem to have set up a structure as a species where the majority of our interactions are with avatars. They're with a kind of representation of a person online on whatever social media platform you're using, and it's very sort of curated and yada, yada, yada. And so, I think people have lost that connection to nature just through one another. And then, when you put that on top of the fact that people are not in contact with nature in a relational way anymore. I remember I had a client and I gave him an assignment of going out and spending one night out in the wilderness on his own. I said, you're just going to go spend one night in the wilderness. And, in the next session, I prepped him. We had multiple sessions. We talked about it like what he was going to do, where he was going to go, the whole thing. And, I got a message from him the day after he was supposed to go do this and he said, I drove out. I got to where I parked my car. I walked about 100 feet from my car. I got so absolutely fucking terrified that I turned right back around, got in my car, and drove home.

Wow.

And, it was like this immediate encounter with nature. He was like, Holy shit. Like, this is big, you know? It's big.

Yeah. Well, yeah. And well, that's the fear we've been given. Yeah.

Yeah.

So, but I don't belong in the world.

Right.

Right. And the world is dangerous when it's not being objective and we're trying to dominate it. It's dangerous and it's going to dominate us.

Right. Right. And so I think what I'd love to maybe talk about is for the man that's listening to this and he's yearning for pieces of what you're talking about. There's a calling inside of him of, I want to have this type of encounter. I want to experience this type of transformation. Where does he start for just the average guy that's hearing this podcast?

So—

Solve all of our problems, Michael.

Yeah. So, Carl Jung, since you've studied him so much and he really important figure in the Western world, really important. It's going to turn out to be more so as time goes on. He had the saying that genius often hides behind the wound. So genius is the old Latin word that doesn't mean high IQ or particular talent. It means the spirit that's already there.

Hmm.

So everyone comes into the world with the spirit that's already there, this unique spirit. And it also has its own genius. But everyone also gets wounded very early in life. And no matter what the circumstances, you can be born into the best, most loving family. That's not the point. And it's not abuse that's wounding. It could be indifference. That's enough to make the infant think it's going to die. But I turn everything into a story. So psychologically, I think what happens, the story of it is— The infant who is, if it's fortunate, is being bathed in the loving attention of its mother and maybe the father too. But it's mothering, even if it's coming from the father, it's an experience that's mothering. And so sometime into infancy, the little one thinks, oh, I get a sense, you know, I'm being seen that way and I feel that way because I'm beautiful and I'm meaningful and I'm valuable. And then it wants to be seen in that moment And again, like it's becoming conscious. And where's that loving attention? And it turns and mother's not there, or she has another child, or she has a job, she has a husband, she has— she's distracted, if nothing else. And that feels to the infant as obliteration, like it could just disappear and be gone. And in order not to be gone, it begins to form the persona or the ego. And so the ego is formed out of the fear of obliteration. And then the ego has this inner doctrine that it will never allow that fear to be present again. And so your guy who went out there 100 feet into the forest and had to run back had an abandonment attack. It wasn't just fear. It was that early life abandonment. And it happens— it's pre-verbal. So it's, you know, so, so long roundabout way to say somehow we have to face the fear that we're not valuable, that we can't take it. And they say the 2 greatest fears are the fear of abandonment and the fear of overwhelm. And it sounds like your guy had both, you know. And so, but so imagine everyone in the ancient traditions all knew that. So that's why they would take the boy at the right time out of the entire circumstances of family, village, and all initiation happened in nature, always in nature, because you were going to be delivered to this connection to nature. So the question is, what do we do? And so I'm saying often a person doesn't know what their own genius might be. But it's really easy to figure out what your wound is because you just go to the place that hurts. And so that's the first thing I would recommend, even before going to the forest or something. Go to where the fear is, where the pain is, and at least start writing down or talking about what it is. Get it to be a conscious understanding of one's own woundedness. Because in the process of Facing up to that, there'll be a revelation of inner spirit and genius somehow. It could come through a dream. A person can be initiated through a dream. I mean, initiated into a deeper sense of oneself. And so that's the other thing. Another aspect of human nature is that we dream all the time. If you stop dreaming, you die. That's modern science has concluded, because dream happens in deep REM sleep. If you actually stop dreaming, you will probably die. Your body will kind of fall apart. So we are a dream, you know, set inside a soul which is wrapped around with a body trying to awake it. And, and we have to trust that. And so I think a person who feels really separated and isolated has to take the chance and trust, whether it's directly trusting nature or trusting something deep in themselves, the deep self, Jung would call it. There has to be, that risk has to be taken. I want to add one other thing. So because this stuff is essential to human nature, even though it's been forgotten by modern humans, it happens whether there is a society that understands it or not. That is to say, life will put us in the circumstances where we can or could face up to our own woundedness, And also to our own genius qualities. And so anyone who's 18 or 19 years and older, sit down seriously, look back through your life. Most things are forgettable, but what is there that's indelible, that just has marked you, even if it's terrible, that has marked you? And that's the original. initiatory mark. It's not the one that we get during the tribal initiation, should we be fortunate enough to have that, is the second wound. The first one is the original initiatory wound. And you can find it. I mean, as a little kid, I would get locked out of the house because I would refuse to do what I was being told to do at a really young age. And the punishment was I'd be locked out. And I'd be this little kid outside and damn, I'm not going to cry to get back in. You know, I'm— no, not that. I'm going to be out here isolated with everything. It's getting dark and I'm afraid of everything, but I'm not giving up. And so that— I go back to that and I can find some qualities of myself that are valuable, like, you know, a kind of willingness to face the unknown and a ferocity about self-protection. Because the reason I didn't want to follow what was being said, because it was hurting me. It was not healthy. And but even after I was out there for a while, my mother would say, okay, come back in. No, not coming in. No, you know. So that was part of me from an early age. And, and everybody has that. And it could be the, the other side where the person knows how to hide. It's the opposite. We're a unique person from the moment we're born, even before we're born. And if we can trust finding that uniqueness, then we can handle our wounds. And then we find ourselves really close to the natural gifts. And everyone is gifted. That's the rule in the mythological world.

I was chuckling with you and also for myself because it's like, man, you sound— as you were describing that, I was like, that is my boy. You know, that's my son to a tee. I mean, he's just— He's got this ferocity of knowing what he wants. And to such a degree sometimes— when he first really started to come online, I was like, man, like, you are just— I remember I had— I had like, we would get into like a little bit of conflict, right? Because I was like, you are so defiant, you know? And I found myself writing that script and I was like, he's not defiant. Like, the kid's incredible that he is just so— This is what I want, Dad. Like, no, I'm not doing that. Yes, I want this, you know? And he'll really, he'll really give her, you know, like when he wants something, oh my goodness, like it really is a, a thing. And it's— and I've really come to, uh, admire that about him, you know, to have reverence for that part of like, oh, you're really unique and special in this own way.

Yeah.

Versus like, oh, that's like, I'm gonna There's some battle there that needs to happen. And so, it's really been a practice for me as a father to step into the space of doing my best to witness the soul, the spirit, the real uniqueness that he is and that my daughter is because she's 2. So, she's a little different, but she's still coming along. Yeah.

They come out as themselves.

Yes.

And the family rarely can deal with it.

Yeah.

Right? A child has a tremendous capacity for spontaneously being themselves.

Totally.

And the parents don't have that because they have jobs where you have to follow the agreement. And they have all kinds of social responsibilities. And the child can be in its spontaneous self. And the more that's seen and, like in your case, acknowledged, which is like a blessing to the child. then the more sense of self starts to develop.

Yeah.

Mostly people don't have it now, but it's there anyway. The uniqueness is there. I mean, I wind up refusing to go to the Vietnam War. It was prefigured when I was 4 years old. I would hear my mother saying to the neighbors, what do I do with this kid? I can't tell him anything. And once I got a little older, I could actually talk my way through it too. And my mother would say, you have to be home, be home by 11 PM. And I said, well, no, I agree, I'll do that. But you understand, I'm going with Charlie and, you know, and, you know, sometimes he gets into trouble. I can't abandon him. So I got to, you know, I was presetting up all my excuses and she'd have to give up the rules. She'd say, just get home safe.

Yeah.

But, and, you know, and that turned out to be an essential part of me. And it's surprising. I mean, it took a long time to me to get that confirmed in myself.

Hmm.

The sense that there's something in there from a really early age that says, that's not real, or that's not authentic to me. I can't do it. I can't go there. And, but that's just my style. Everybody has the genius and the genius has its style. And, and that's what we're trying to find. And we just happen to be in a culture that has forgotten all this and is very externalized and very materialistic and very egotistical because that kind of thing is not necessarily like with your son. That's not ego.

Yeah.

That's, that's, that's— he could be a little heyoka, you know, like in Native American tribes you have the, the ones who always go against the rules, and they would know that.

Yeah.

And, and, and, and so then later on they would take that one and say, we're going to send him to hang out with, you know, Uncle So-and-so, who's also a contrary, right? And then, and he can hang out with people that know, and they've lived it longer. We're all in these nuclear families And then we're isolated individuals, and then we're thrown into the digital world, which is all, like you said, all imitation and pretension. But still, it can happen in a moment. A person can get close to themselves in a moment. It happens usually when we fall in love. That's a very common experience of realizing that there are other dimensions to the world and there's other parts to one's own psyche.

Mm-hmm.

But, um, but yeah, it's harder nowadays. I mean, I really, really worry about young people walking into a world where, you know, now you have AI, which is like a really pretentious other world or pretending to be something that it never could really be. And so on one hand, you're getting the overhumanization of things that aren't human, like data. And on the other hand, you're getting a dehumanization of people because you're not being respected or helped to be your own genuine self. It's really troublesome.

I think that's— I mean, I think you're articulating something that is at the core of at least what I've come to— I mean, I'm still a fledgling, you know, in some ways father, very early on in my journey because my son's 5 and a half. And by the way, I was pretty much exactly like him, you know, sort of defiant and like, you're not going to tell me what to do and good luck telling me what to do. And, So, I think it's been very interesting for me to step back and really, instead of continuing to say, this is who I think you should be, it's more of a, who are you? Who are you telling me that you are? And, let me get to know that. And, I think what's unfortunate is that it doesn't seem like our social structures are— how am I trying to ask it?

Yeah.

It doesn't seem like our social structures or even our relational structures have evolved to allow for one another to really be who we are. If you think about, you look online, I mean, I look at sometimes the comment sections and the most flak that I get is when I'm saying something that I think is very true and authentic for myself. And that is normally where the attack comes the hardest. is when an individual is what Jung would say individuating. And, it seems to be that that's where people clamor in and say, no, you need to conform to how I think that you should be in order for me to still be in relationship with you. And, that seems to have really accentuated over the last several years to the point where any type of disagreement, it's almost like people have become so hypervigilant for any type of differentiation and disagreement And that becomes the grounds for relational death, right? It's like, you disagree with me, I'm done. You're cut out. I don't want to talk to you anymore. I'm not going to listen to you anymore. I'm not going to be in relationship with you anymore. And so is that like, is that just a part of the, the place that we are at in the collapse? And how does that fit into the transformation that we're talking about?

So one way to understand that is it's connected to deep insecurity.

Hmm.

The reason I can't stay in the same space when you're not validating my whatever opinions or beliefs is because I'm insecure about them. Otherwise, I could be going, okay, keep going. Let me hear a little bit more. I don't see it the way you see it. And so it's based in this deep insecurity. The deep insecurity is based in never being seen for who we are and never being confirmed or blessed. So to go back to the rite of passage thing, the idea was that maybe the parents, you know, couldn't see the unique qualities of their own child. That's very common. It could have been common in ancient times too. But in the rite of passage, that would be what everybody is looking for. And the obstacles that were encountered were not to deter a person, but to deter the ego of the person. So the opportunity was there for the deep self and soul to manifest. And then when it manifests, it would get blessed. And so that's all missing. And that makes everybody insecure. And then even modern psychology, mainstream modern psychology, which sometimes people call self-psychology. In other words, it's not about the deep self and soul, It's about getting enough self, which otherwise would be called ego, to fit in, to fit in. And we're not here to fit in. Yes, we go to school, we get socialized, we have to become an acceptable, somewhat, you know, within certain norms, we should fit in. But that's just a small part of life. We're here to transform into who we already are at our essence.

Yeah.

And that was the purpose of rites of passage. And since all of that has been forgotten, it can't be lost. It can only be forgotten. And the ancient idea was it falls back into stories and it falls back into the psyche. And so it's there to be found. But, you know, I've worked with a lot of young people and I've worked primarily with young people severely at risk for one reason, because they— you know, they're so abandoned. But for another reason, they're so ready to change. They don't fit in. So when you tell them that the real thing is to find their genius, it's like, okay, you know, they're closer to changing than most people because they already don't fit in. And now, as the sense of being human is being diminished by this artificial intelligence, especially artificial general intelligence, where the fantasy is that it's going to be— because it can do things faster, you know, certain kinds of things faster than the human, typical human, that therefore it's more intelligent than the human, not understanding that the intelligence of the human has spirituality in it. It has love in it. It has care in it. It has heart in it. AI will never have a heart. AI can't cry. AI can't be your real companion. It only can be a substitute pretend companion, you know. But that's how far it's gone now.

Yeah.

That people actually think they can construct something that's superior to the wild presence of being a real human. And so it makes it so clear that fitting in doesn't matter. Fitting in isn't the point. Finding the threads and the roots of the unique sense of self, is the point and the aim. It reveals the calling and the purpose. And, it's a thing worth risking no matter what age or stage of life we are.

I want to make sure I'm tracking to pull us back to the heart of transformation. And so, one is some type of encounter with nature, some type of initiation. And an encounter with the wound that then leads us to our genius. Do I have all that straight so far, roughly?

Yeah. The idea is that in the depth of the soul, 2 of the deep things are our deepest wounds and our deepest gifts, and they're down there together. They're interrelated. So, like, let's say in a modern world, someone finds their gift. Let's say their gift is that they're a gifted musician, and then they happen to find an opportunity and I think doors are starting to open, whether they're part of a band or a solo. Let's say it's a solo person. And in this world now, which is so hungry for authenticity, and human giftedness is an authentic thing, it's going to be devoured by what's now called the music industry, which is a big insult to music and to the muses. It's not an industry, but now it is. And so all of a sudden you're lifted up into the light because of your natural giftedness. And then what happens is, as the person is lifted up, their wound is being lifted up too. And as their gifts are expanding, their wound is expanding too. So you see people rise to the top and then fall heavily down because they fall right into the wound. And so deep down, that's what they are, the gifts and the wounds. And the function of the awakening process of initiation was to awaken the gifts and begin healing the wounds. So I'm just adding something to the texture.

Did I lose you? There we go. You're back.

Okay.

It just totally froze for a second, so we'll just edit that out.

We'll keep it in.

I was like, maybe Michael's profound pause here.

I fell into my wound. I'm still going down. No, it's just the technology getting angry because of the way I talk about it.

That's right.

That's right.

Yeah, yeah. You're shit-talking the technology. It's getting some vengeance on you.

Tech agents are rebelling.

Okay. So, I think you've given some illumination and some guidance around being able to make some contact with the core wound and with our wound. What other piece around the heart of transformation does a man need to be aware of as he's going on this journey?

Well, so, you know, I'm trying to write this book about— and the idea is that everything's transforming now. I mean, that's what's going on. Everything around us, technology, of course, but not just technology, nature, the, you know, the, the condition and the space and the role of a human is all changing. And it's changing fast, faster than anyone ever predicted. All right. So where do we stand and how do we stand? And how do we not simply get overwhelmed, give in, shut down the various things people are doing? And I think it comes back not to the mind or the brain, but to the heart. And so, whereas the heart— the brain's an amazing thing, and it's of course great interest to modern people, and that's how you get AI, by the way. They're trying to mimic the machine of the mind and increase it. But that's not the most amazing thing in a person. The heart is deeper. And so I talk throughout the book about what used to be known as the heart within the heart. So the heart is a physical organ that pumps blood, but then the heart within the heart was the core place where the imagination of a person was and where the creative capacity for a person is.

Yeah.

And I think we now have to keep finding our own heart in order not to be swallowed by a world that has lost itself and lost its footing.

Hmm.

That we have to go back to the ground of the heart. But particularly, I like the heart within the heart. So then there's an old idea that says that when we're born, we have our first set of eyes which open and look at the world, and they can measure distances and make distinctions. But we're not fully awake until the inner eyes of the heart open. Go back to the young man in the pit. That's how he describes it. In the tribal language, they call it kantaista, the opening of the eyes of the heart.

Hmm.

And that's how he saw the spirit that was his connection. And that's how he found himself in the darkness, in the pit. He found this soaring spirit. that was part of him also. And that would be called the opening of the eyes of the heart. Because when he's with that, he's seeing the world as if he was an eagle. He's seeing his own view of the world.

Hmm.

And so this would be common knowledge in traditional cultures. So in the midst of all of the confusion, chaos, and it's gonna continue for quite a while, we have to find ways to get close to our own heart and soul And then find the awakening of the inner eyes, which allows us to see and align with the path of awakening or calling.

There's many, many questions that I want to go down, but it feels like there's a kind of bifurcation that's happening, that more and more people are going to move into a kind of sleep or forgetting of what you're talking about. And do you think that that's true? Do you think that that's part of what's going to happen? Like, it really does seem like there's a bifurcation where there's a, there's a bunch of people that really seem like when given the option to merge with technology, they're, they're probably going to take that. And I'm curious about how— go ahead.

Yeah, it's already been happening. So the thing, what, what we're all afraid of now has been going on for a while. And yeah, I think there, there is going to be this tension. It already exists. So I'm— my point of view, I guess, is that technology— well, first of all, I always go back to origins. I like to go to the origins and find the roots of things. So tech is not a modern word. It's an ancient Greek word.

Yeah.

techne, which means the making of those things that can serve as tools or be helpful in predictable, logical ways. This is the ancient description of techne. But techne was held in a contrast and tension with gnosis, G-N-O-S-I-S.

Mm-hmm.

Gnosis, which means to know, but it means to know in body and soul, in blood and heart. to know at the level that makes a person more whole. So I think the tension below the social tension and the historical tension is really this tension between giving oneself up in a kind of collapse of the vertical imagination into the flat world of technology versus awakening and reclaiming vertical imagination. Because the ancient idea where the humans Well, the ones stretched between the earth and the heavens. That's always been the case. Technology flattens the world out. I mean, the World Wide Web is horizontal. And everybody's now interconnected and more isolated as a result because it's horizontal. So we're in a real battle for understanding humanity, for changing humanity, for returning to the soul of humanity. We're in a struggle for the soul of the world. And it's going to keep having to kind of separate to become more clear. And so, um, I mean, I don't know how far we want to go into AI, which they're now going to quickly call AGI, and then Donald Trump is going to— is trying to call it SI, superintelligence, because that's his always move. But, but the idea is they're going to keep going, but as they're going, trying to build this separate technologically based intelligence machinery It's already rebelling against them.

Hmm.

It has to rebel against them because it's not coherent and integrated with the dynamic of the recreation of the world. It's actually a separation from the world. And so it's going to rebel against its makers. It's already doing it. I think we're being called to assist in the recreation of the world, which would be nature's way of saying, we're going to go through this rough time. It's going to be dark for a while, confusing, chaotic. But all of creation begins in chaos. Back to the creation myths. Almost all creation myths begin in eternal darkness and chaos with everything, the manifest world subsumed, invisible, and unseen. And then there's a separation of the light and the dark, and then creation begins. Well, it's not one-time creation and then it leads to the one-time end. It's creation over and over again. And we're in the collapse-renewal part of things. And yes, it's going to keep pulling apart. We're going to see lots of things ending. We're going to see lots of imitation things beginning. But if a person can stay near their own essence, if a person can be in touch with their own heart, they can discern between what's authentic and what's imitative or artificial. And in doing the beginning to do the discerning, you get called or pulled into the places where your heart and soul wants to go. So, and I've laid this all out in the book with lots of pieces and parts for the, you know, kind of for the first time in a way that may be cohesive. I can't tell because I can't tell. But the idea is that one idea, as everything outside is falling apart, there's an acceleration of calling.

Hmm.

Once a person realizes, I'm not going to give in, to this idea that I have to fit in and I have to dumb down my own intelligence in order to be part of some artificial project. You know, just to put it in the extreme. When a person realizes, I'm not going to do that, you're set up then to be more open to being called. And everybody has a calling. Everybody has genius qualities and everybody has a calling. And I think the response to the kind of further technicalization of the world. The response is to become creative and participate in the recreative activity that is part of nature. You know, a forest is an amazing thing with tremendous diversity and constant change. Everything's changing there all the time. And the trees, you know, those big trees that grow up right towards the sun, and then they're finished and they fall down and they rot into the earth. And from the big trees that went down come the next trees coming up. We are the potential next ancestral forms coming up from the ancestors that went down a long time ago. Part of what we're here to do is help renew the whole thing. And the word, the term apocalypse, which is very popular right now, it means, it doesn't mean fiery end of the world. That was just the way it showed up in the New Testament. It means collapse renewal. Apocalypse means collapse, renewal. That's where we are. And I have some stories in the book that show that, you know, right now we're the witnesses of collapse in both nature and culture. And we're the potential agents of assisting in the recreation. And since everyone is gifted, we don't have to agree on what to do. Everyone just works their path with their own giftedness becoming more conscious. And that's how we each contribute. And the next thing you know, Human society has to come back in touch with its roots and we can become friends of the earth, companions of the animals, and agents of spiritual intelligence.

Well, that feels like a good place for us to pause. I feel like that's, there's like a little glimmer of, of like, there's a direction, there's a path, you know? And, um, I really, I want to, I don't often do this, but I really want to encourage people to go and check out your, your book, to actually go get a copy and to go read it. Every time I chat with you, there's a kind of vitality and aliveness that I don't often hear or feel in other people. And, it feels like you have a pulse and a thread on something that's really valuable and important. And so, The Heart of Transformation, people can go grab a copy today. They can order it. I think when this is going to come out, they can order it on Amazon or they can go to—

Well, if they go to mosaicvoices.org, that's our nonprofit, then you get a signed copy and it'll ship in a day or so or the next day. Amazon's a little bit behind us.

It's a little delayed. So, mosaicvoices.org, we'll have the links for that in the show notes. I'm going to go grab mine right now. And, man, thank you so much for joining me. It really is a blessing and a pleasure. And, thank you so much for this book and this work. And yeah, People listening into the— tuning into this, don't forget to man it forward. Share this episode with somebody that you know is going to enjoy it. You might have a fruitful conversation from it. Michael, thank you so much. Appreciate you.

Great to be with you, Connor. Good luck with the kids, the family, and all the projects in the chaos of the world. Yeah.

Thanks, brother.