Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #259 Michael Meade

Episode Date: July 1, 2022

All the guests I’m lucky enough to have are incredible, none more so than Michael Meade. He has been through what some may call hell and back in the form of a court marshall and solitary confinement. He took that opportunity to dive deep into his psyche and see the world through the lense of world mythologies. We get back story as well as deep deep insight and wisdom into the constant and simultaneous destruction and (re)creation of the world. Connect with Michael:   Website: www.mosaicvoices.org  Instagram: @michaelmeade_mosaicvoices  Facebook: Michael Meade Mosaic Voices  Twitter: @MMeade_Myth  YouTube: MIchael Meade - Mosaic Voices  Podcast: Living Myth Podcast  Show Notes:   Michael's Book list on Mosaic Voices  "Awakening The Soul" - Michael Meade  "The King and The Corpse" - Heinrich Zimmer  "Revisioning Psychology" - James Hillman  Sponsors:   NutriSense If you’re not checking, you’re guessing. Get the ultimate insight  and guidance on your blood sugar management journey. Head to www.nutrisense.io/kyle and use “KYLE” for $30 off your first month of subscription.  Organifi Go to organifi.com/kkp to get my favorite way to easily get the most potent blend of high vibration fruits, veggies and other goodies into your diet! Click that link and use code “KKP” at checkout for 20% off your order! EarthRunners Get back to your roots with this badass minimalist earthing sandals at www.earthrunners.com. Use Code “KKP” for 10% off!  Equip Foods Is an ultra-clean protein/supplement company sourcing their ingredients from high quality beef while keeping the flavor on point. Go get their whole host of great products at www.equipfoods.com/kkp and use “KKP” at checkout for 20% off!    To Work With Kyle Kingsbury Podcast   Connect with Kyle:   Fit For Service Academy App: Fit For Service Academy  Instagram: @livingwiththekingsburys   Odysee: odysee.com/@KyleKingsburypod  Youtube: Kyle Kingbury Podcast  Kyles website: www.kingsbu.com  Zion Node: https://getzion.com/ > Enter PubKey  >PubKey: YXykqSCaSTZNMy2pZI2o6RNIN0YDtHgvarhy18dFOU25_asVcBSiu691v4zM6bkLDHtzQB2PJC4AJA7BF19HVWUi7fmQ   Like and subscribe to the podcast anywhere you can find podcasts. Leave a 5-star review and let me know what resonates or doesn’t.

Oh boy, we've got a barn burner today. Barn burner. I don't know. I'm not sure if the sports terms apply. This is for sure one of my bucket list guests and it happened just really awesomely. Just, yeah, I don't even know how to say it. It happened awesomely. I got into Michael Mead fairly recently in the last couple of years and saw that he had a lifetime of work. And I'd heard his name come up a number of times from my brother, Eric Godsey, as the myth guy, the storyteller. And one of the best storytellers who ever walked the earth, let alone is still alive right now. And so I started diving into his work. I actually started with one of his most recent books, Awakening the Soul, which actually dives right into his life story. And it is phenomenal. I try to recapture some of

that. Michael was in Vietnam and realized right when he was drafted, remember, different time, different setting, different deal, that he wanted nothing to do with that war. And in doing so, he was court-martialed, he was put in solitary confinement, and after enough time in solitary confinement, in solitude, started having visitations from some of the different people and beings that he had read about in myths. And it's just mind blowing to see how people get initiated and brought to their knees really. But Michael is someone who I hold with the highest regard. He is absolutely tapped in. His deep wealth of knowledge on myth allows, and storytelling, it really allows for him to explain things in a way that most people don't and most people can't. And I think that that is one of the missing technologies of the day. Many times on this podcast, we've talked about the fact that the most ancient ways

of learning was through story before we had written word and written language. And then, of course, continuing on after the written word and written language, it was still through story before we had written word and written language. And then of course, continuing on after the written word and written language, it was still through story. It was through parable. It was through myth. And Michael's story is fascinating. They'd really dive into that. He dives into that in the awakening of the soul. And then another book that I had a friend give me, Jade Bryce gave me somewhere in the last two years, a book titled Why the World Doesn't End. And that has been one of the best and most important books that I've ever read. You know, it really, so we dive deep into that book in this podcast and a lot of Michael's work. There's a point where I get just blown the fuck away by my class. I bring up Maladoma Patrice Sommet, who was the author of several books, as well as Of Water and Spirit, which I reference as one of the manuals on initiation.

And I was absolutely blown away. I mean, of course, I don't want to give it away, but I'll give it away. He knows, he knew Maladoma Patrice Sommet, who recently passed away. And I'll let him break that down in the podcast, but yeah, it fucking floored me. I was like, wow, of course you do. Of course you know him. Of course you're good friends. Yeah. So, um, Michael's list of life experience and long list of people who have helped to mentor him and bring him along into the fullness of his expression and being, um, are unparalleled, you know, and he is truly just one of my favorite people on the planet. Awesome. Awesome guy. I can't wait to have him back on. I am bummed that I was pressed for time with this one.

A lot of times I'll only leave an hour or 90 minutes for a podcast just because of the schedule of juggling multiple jobs and being a dad and a husband and all those things. But that leaves plenty of room for us to dive deep again. And we do dive deeply, even in the short amount of time that we have together. Check out his work. We'll link to a lot of this even in the short amount of time that we have together. Check out his work.

We'll link to a lot of this stuff in the show notes. I think he's authored six books and he's done like 20 different audio recordings. He has his own podcast. We'll link to that in the show notes as well. And he's just a phenomenal teacher. And I know you guys are going to grab a lot from this, but really when you start diving into some of his work, you'll really get a fuller and greater picture of the potential of storytelling and the potential of what happens when we break down these myths. There are a number of ways you can support this podcast.

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And without further ado, my brother, Michael J. Mead. Michael Mead, thank you so much for joining the podcast. Good to be with you, Kyle. It's so good. I usually have an arc of trying to get some background information from people on what life was like growing up and what shaped them into the person they are today. And as I mentioned before the podcast started, I think we could spend the entire podcast just talking about that right there. It's certainly one of the deeper dives

that you've had in, in, forgive me for not having this off the top of my head, awakening the soul, which is just an incredible book that is, um, uh, really dives deeply into what made you, you, but in your own words, if you want, and those of course were in your own words in the book, but in your own words today, um, describe what life was like growing up for you and then the culture, you know, and what happened getting drafted and everything from there. I think that's a really important piece for people to understand who you are. I grew up in New York City in what was called a blue collar neighborhood, which could also mean poor people. You know, there were times we didn't have

much. And so that's part of the background, that sense of things are missing and maybe we don't deserve to have them kind of thing. And then I was often the smallest kid in the class. Um, and I had bright red hair as a kid. So I would be this skinny, freckled kid with red hair. But I also had a really intense temper. So I would get picked on, but that would trigger the temper and I would be in all this kind of trouble. And that was significant because eventually as I grew older, I realized that, you know, there has to be more than one way to deal with this because I was willing to fight, but I was losing most of the fights because everybody grew up bigger and I didn't. And so then I had to fight another way. And I found words were for me the best way. I could catch people off guard with language and I could find my way in and out of trouble using language. So I began to depend on language as not just as a skill, but as a vehicle um and so that was one thing i learned uh growing up that that was somewhat separate me from uh a lot of the a lot of the trouble that was going on i was in a lot of trouble uh so later on um when i had some uh success and i had the feeling I wanted to give back. I went to working with gangs and kids

on the street and kids, real extreme youth in trouble themselves, because I knew that feeling. And then I knew some stories that could help with that. So that's the way that thread played out eventually. So this temper of mine, which was also anchored in a kind of a deep stubbornness on one level, but a commitment on another level, really became something when I got drafted to go to Vietnam. And I thought it was a, it wasn't clear what the purpose of the war was. It was never a declared war. And it seemed like an unjust war to me. So I sent a letter to the draft department saying, you know, sorry, it's an unjust war. It's an undeclared war.

So I won't be coming. But if you have another war, let me know. I thought I was being reasonable and civil. And then came the knock on the door that said, if you don't go in, you're going to jail. And a really interesting thing happened right there because I come from an Irish background also. And everyone in my family was like pro-war. And my parents were part of the World War II generation. And my aunts and uncles, even my aunts had fought in World War II. And so no matter who I asked, it was no, you know, like my mother said, our sons always go to war. And wow, I felt tremendously isolated. And so not knowing what to do, not wanting to go to prison directly, I went into the army. And I found that interesting.

Actually, the basic training was really interesting. The calisthenics, being with all kinds of guys, it was all guys from different places, was really interesting. Learning technique was interesting. The calisthenics, being with all kinds of guys, it was all guys from different places, was really interesting. Learning technique was interesting until the day when they gave us a training and the captain said, if you are told to go up this hill and everyone who's going up the hill dies, you will go up when you're given the order. I just raised my hand and said, excuse me, I will not be one of those people going up the hill to die if everybody's dying. And so I just wanted you to know ahead of time, I'm not taking that order because I didn't come here. That's not the purpose of life near as I can tell. And that began a real problem, both for the military and for me. And to boil it down,

what I realized was there were two things, two problems I had. One is I didn't want to die for no reason. And the other was I didn't want to kill for no reason. And once that became clear to me, I just said, okay, that's it, I'm finished. And I, you know, I just said, I'm done. So my mistake, if you don't mind, I'll go home now. Well, they didn't mind. So I got court-martialed and eventually that led to being put into a military prison. And because, well, mainly because I refused to take orders on the principle that I had established for myself. And then in prison, I had to say, didn't you guys get the memo? Because in prison,

they just give you more orders. And I said, I'm not doing orders. And so then I got put into solitary confinement. And that's an amazing experience. I'm at that point, 20 years old. I'm in an eight by 10 cell that's made of concrete and metal. I don't see anyone except the guards night and day. I'm all on my own. And that led me into a really deep place, like a descent. And somewhere in that process, it occurred to me to start fasting. And so now I'm in solitary confinement and I'm not eating. And so I went from maybe 150 pounds to 87 pounds in the course of that time.

And so I was like wasting away. But in the meantime, in the depth of that darkness, something happened that changed my entire life. And at first it was really weird because I'm in solitary. I'm not seeing anyone except I had visitors, which were like characters from mythological stories who were there. And I had to make a decision, you know, am I losing my mind or am I actually finding my mind? Because I had loved mythology starting when I was 13. But now it was like the characters and the stories were coming to help me out. I was not being abandoned. I was abandoned

by everybody, but not them. And so I had to accept this as really part of my mind. And that gave me an amazing realization that something could be living inside me that would not abandon me, that I was not in fact alone, kind of like a tribal person realizing the presence of the ancestors in a way. And that helped me survive and I eventually got out. And sometime after that realized I have to not just study mythology, it has to be my way of life. And so that's eventually what happened. Yeah, that's such a potent story. And it brings up a lot, even just the mention of a tribal person really sensing and feeling into their ancestors and the presence of their ancestors. You mentioned that in the book, that this form of fasting was an ancient practice

from the Irish and that this un know, this unlocks within you and, you know, just this is what I'm going to do. Yep. It was in there. It's called trokod. That's the Gaelic for it. And the idea in ancient Irish culture was if someone is misusing authority, you fast against them. And I think what they were doing was saying, if you misuse power, you're taking nourishment from people. And so you fasted back to show them. And the idea is your misuse of power is denying life. And we're going to fast to show you that. And that came out of nowhere. And then later on, I found the roots of it, and it didn't come from nowhere. And it's interesting because Gandhi's protest in India

partly came from him reading a report on fasting in Ireland. And it reminded him that ancient India had the same kind of ritual of ritual protest by fasting. And so there's a whole tradition there that awakened in me in these kind of bereft conditions I was in. Yeah, and having practiced many different forms of means of getting into an altered state of consciousness, myself through plant medicines. I know you just did a podcast with my brother, Aubrey Marcus, who's no stranger there either. But I think about different ways that we unlock that. The traditional vision quest was no food, no water. Aubrey's done a week in the darkness where it's pitch black, you're all alone. And these doorways can be opened up to the other side, the inner side, whatever you want to call that. It just fascinates me because clearly when I grabbed your book, I was like, wow, the detail and the level of way that you connect the threads of mythology into the current times is second to none. But it made me think like something must have switched on.

Of course, I just kept reading and then I was like, well, here you go. There's the real initiation. Yeah. So what happens? Cause an initiation, three steps,

usually separation from everything, you know, a descent. That's the second step, a descent into darkness, which is accomplished by fasting or, or, or,

you know, staying up at at night all kinds of things that would happen ritually and the third step is return to the community where the community recognizes the transformation you've gone through and blesses and confirms your new state of life well i go back to the community new york city such as it is. I'm 87 pounds. My clothes are hanging off me. I'm traumatized on all kinds of levels and no one's waiting for me. Most people didn't agree with what I did. And so I'm lost now. I mean, I'm in this liminal space. I have no return. I had to leave New York. And so then it occurred to me, fortunately, that what I have to do is study. Since this had this ancestral quality, it must have happened before. And I found all of the literature on initiation. So I began a study

of initiation when I was 22 in order to understand what happened to me and in order to find a way out of it. And so that became a brilliant thing to realize, wow, if I see this as an initiation and I can find, get some help to conclude it, then I'm a version of myself, a somewhat awakened version of myself. And at that time, I'm also realizing I'm living in a culture that does not have a rite of passage or initiatory process. And that means that the people who are in power are often uninitiated, which means they misuse power because they never learned about their own power or their own powerlessness. And so it gave me a radical insight into the culture that I didn't even feel part of for a while. I felt like very much an outsider. Yeah, that's such an important piece. I know you've mentioned it in your own words, but I often think back to Joe Rogan talking about, I think he was on a high dose edible of cannabis at one point and having kids, he just saw all the adults,

the people in adult meat suits as little kids walking around in grownup meat suits. You know, and he was laughing about it. It was hysterical to him, but like that unfortunately is the case with the loss of the rite of passage and with the loss of initiation. Yeah, it's tremendous loss.

And so you now have young people disoriented and feeling more lost even than I was that number of years ago. And then you have culture disoriented because we have had almost like a collapse of leadership. And so you have strong men kind of claiming they can do everything, which of course they can't. And so I've been saying lately, and I might've written it in that book, I don't recall really, but that we're in a collective rite of passage, that we're in a rite of passage trying to rediscover our sense of humanity and that humanity is trying to get to its own roots again and so that we can begin to envision a different world. Absolutely. You do mention that in Why the World Doesn't End. And it got me thinking that one of

the, I'm not sure you likely have heard of him, but Maladoma Patrisso May, he wrote of water and spirit, was a West African shaman. And one of the things he speaks to with initiation is that if it is an authentic initiation or an authentic rite of passage, that death must be on the line. Like in order for it to have, you have to have real consequence as a potential for that. And that's something I've really been processing the last couple of years is death is on the line and it's, and it's the first time as a culture we're confronting that through our fears, through pandemic, through all of the things and all the pressures of existential risk that we all face, that it is that brushing up against this.

And not everyone lives through that. That's what makes an authentic cultural initiation. Yeah, it's interesting. And I want to say, you know, rest in peace, Maladoma, because he passed on last year. And so here's an irony and a beauty in a way. So I'm wandering around the United States trying to recover from my, you know, initiation, my unfinished initiation. I'm studying initiation. I'm learning about all these different cultures, including African culture. And I'm beginning to talk about it because I'm a storyteller and I'm telling stories.

And I get a phone call from someone saying, there's a good friend of ours who's from Africa and he's teaching at the University of Michigan and he's dying. He's wasting away in depression because it's such a barren world for him because he comes from tribal Africa. And we're wondering if, would you be willing to meet with him? And we think maybe you could help him. It's maladoma. So may.

And so, so I, I have to figure out how to get him out of the University of Michigan. He's there on a green card, which says you can only work at the university that brought you in on the green card. So we have to get him another green card. And then I said, come on, I'll show you how to do workshops. And anyway, so we become really good friends and we become we we begin to teach initiation together uh him having been he was the oldest person ever initiated in his tribe and then he became the youngest elder ever initiated in his tribe and and during most of that period, or a good deal of

what we worked together. So yeah, I know the book. The wheels are spinning so fast, mind blown emoji. This is so awesome. Yeah. This is so awesome. Yeah. So my next question was going to be, did you find somebody to help you ground that experience, to help you bring all this through? Or was it mostly through the continued and ongoing study of mythology that helped you to piece things together and reintegrate? Well, the study of it was tremendous. It was important for me. I'm interested in knowledge. And so having that knowledge was really important, but that's not the same as a community blessing. So I'll tell you another wild story. So I'm doing, I've begun, I'm a storyteller. So I've begun telling stories, mythology and all

that. And it's, and it's working, you know, it's amazing. I'm getting paid to do it and so on, but I have to do it with real people. I can't do it at a university or something. It doesn't work for me. This is like embodied, meaningful change. And so I wound up doing it with men's groups, partly because I started on this project of how could we help American men find more soul? Because I feel like soul is the missing ingredient. And so I decided at one point to do a men's retreat that is primarily for veterans from the Vietnam War, those who refused to go to the Vietnam War, those who went to Canada and eventually came back and so on. I'm going to reconnect the elements that were there when I got into trouble because the whole culture got torn apart.

And there were all these elements. And so we wound up with like 100 guys in a remote forest with no real plan, except I'm going to tell stories and we're going to be honest with each other. And we had one rule, which is no physical violence, because that's the way men often settle things that they can't settle easily. And if we can get past that point, who knows what we'll find. So we have this amazing conference for a week where honest things are said and arguments are had between battle veterans and those who resisted the draft, those conversations that never got had or all had in this room that is at times on fire. And at times it's like the whole room goes into the depth of the ocean and people are crying and everything. And so then we ended with a big feast where we're feasting each other.

You live your life the way you did. We were all in the battle. We were all in the war. The ones who didn't go in the war were in the war by being against the war. And we were honoring all that. And so we were going to have people stand up in groups like, you know, the ones against the war, the battle veterans. And when the battle veterans stand up, they're supposed to say something and they're not saying it. And then two of them come over and stand me up.

And they say, you stand with us. So I got my return because the battle veteran said, you took on a battle that was even bigger than we were in. Someone said that wasn't so true, but what happened is that was a return. I don't know if I'm making sense. Yeah, absolutely. I had been in a battle. My battle was with war, but it was a battle and I had to be welcomed by those who knew battle. A similar thing happened. I went to, I used to do a lot of work in prisons. I was in a maxi max prison telling stories to men who were doing anywhere from 15 years to life. And in the middle of it, one of them actually was the leader of the group there, said, you're a warrior.

It's just that you took on the war as your battle. And so I started to get welcomed that way. And that was a blessing for me. It was really allowed a part of me to come back home, to come back home and to realize that that was my fight. It was different than the war that I had been called to be in, but that was my fight. Yeah, and it is an absolutely beautiful, beautiful story and retelling of that account in your book. So I appreciate the openness and honesty and laying that all out because I felt like I was in that cell with you at times.

And I have no idea what that feels like. So I know that might sound like bullshit, but your ability to communicate with the words really paints the picture of how it was going down and the feelings that were going through your mind and even getting spied on by the commanding officer. All of it became very alive to me. We've had so much happen in the last two years that has people on every side of the fence pointing fingers and saying, I think it's this, I think it's that. But really through the lens of this collective initiation, what are some of the things that drove you to write Why the World Doesn't End?

And I will say that has been perfect medicine for me because all I could think is the world is ending and I have two little kids. So it has been a beautiful medicine for me and I thank you for that one as well. Thank you, yeah. Yeah, that was like, I'm writing that in 2011. I think it got published in 2012. And so what happens is mythology and storytelling

is prophetic. So is poetry. A lot of the arts are prophetic. But the word prophecy doesn't mean predict the future alone. Prophecy means to have messages from the past come to you and visions of the future. Prophecy connects the ancient past with the future that's barely visible. And so I was having one of those moments where I realized climate crisis is already getting pretty evident to me, evidently prominent, and many things are going wrong in the world. And there's the mythology that the world comes to an end, which is found in monotheistic religions, Christianity in particular, where the end of it is this fiery end. And I realized that there's a mistake here. The world doesn't come to an end. The world ends and begins again, just like stories do. And so I thought I should write something of the mythology of the end that doesn't end.

And so I intended it as a mythological inoculation against the fear of the end. But it was like I was back in the prison cell again, because it threw me into the depths. I had to feel it. I had to live it for well over a year, really, just to get the stories down. And so I'll just encapsulate that one part of it. So in Christianity, Western culture in general, the end is called the apocalypse, which usually means fiery end, which comes from the vision of John of Patmos that winds up in the Bible. But that was one vision. And apocalypse is a Greek word that doesn't mean fiery end. It means collapse renewal. And so that's what we're going through.

We're going through the collapse. It's going on. The institutions are being hollowed out. And it's partly the collapse of familiar things that's turning everyone so fearful and against each other. That's part of it. And the thing to understand is that, yes, we're going through a collapse. We're in a descent. COVID put people in a descent and on various sides of the issue. But that's not the whole story. The whole story is that we're supposed to witness and feel and experience those things. And then

like a vision quest, we're supposed to, in the darkness, find the vision and then come back into a world that can be remade to be more welcoming, to be more compassionate, to be more inspired, to be more connected to the earth and to nature. So that was where the book was trying to go. Yeah, and it does so perfectly. I know you go to great lengths to tell this myth in the book, but I would love it if you could, you know, briefly for us or however long you want to go with it, actually talk about the myth of the woman in the cave. Yeah. So this is, so then, you know, it's interesting, the world of a storyteller, right? So, so I collect stories, I read stories, I hear stories. And I'm interested in myths.

I'm particularly interested in folk, what I call folk myths, not the big myths that you have to study to understand it all. But what did the folk, what were they carrying for mythic knowledge? And so I find this little story that's told in several parts of North America by native people. And it's the shortest version of this story of end of the world, beginning I've ever found, goes like this. And it doesn't start with once upon a time and all that. It starts with something like, it is human to search for knowledge. And when it comes to knowledge, there is a cave and it's not far from here. And in the cave is the knowledge we're looking for.

In the meantime, people are moving in all kinds of directions 24 hours a day, driving fast on highways and superhighways and byways and back roads, and no one's finding the cave, which has the knowledge that everyone's looking for. If you did find a cave, what you would see inside the cave is an old woman. And she's sitting in there weaving the most beautiful garment that anyone has ever seen. And she'd been weaving it for a long time. And she wants it to be beautiful. So she's making the hem out of porcupine quills. And in order to weave them, she has to bite down on them and flatten them. And she'd been doing that so long, she's worn her teeth down to the gums,

but still she keeps biting on the quills and weaving them into the hem. And every once in a while, she has to stop and go to the back of the cave because in the back of the cave, there's a cauldron hanging over a fire. And some people say that fire is the most ancient thing in the entire world. And in the cauldron over that fire are the seeds of all the plants and all the grains and all the trees. And if she doesn't go back and stir the stew of seeds, then the seeds will burn and therefore there won't be green living things

on the earth. So every once in a while, she goes back to stir the pot of seeds. And as she's slowly going to the back, the black dog, what black dog? The black dog goes over to where she has laid the beautiful garment down and the black dog sees a loose thread and it takes the thread and it pulls it and it keeps pulling until it unravels the beautiful garment until a chaotic mess on the floor of the cave. And the old woman comes back and she sees the chaos on the floor and she stops for a moment and then she sits down and then she sees a loose thread and she picks up the thread. And as soon as she picks up that thread, she has a new vision of a beautiful garment, even more beautiful than the one she had been working on, and she begins to weave that garment again. Some people say, damn that black dog. If it wasn't for the black dog, the old woman would have finished this beautiful garment. It would be the most beautiful thing anyone ever saw. But the elders who are telling the story say,

be careful what you wish for. When something is finished, it dies. That woman is the woman weaving the world. If she ever finishes the garment, the whole world will end. So be thankful for what unravels your life because there's another vision nearby waiting for you to pick up the thread of that and begin to help reweaving the world again something like that so good

so good that's the shortest story for the whole thing it it it really you know it it makes it makes a lot of sense. And I know that there's one, one of the things you talk about with, with the, the archetype or the myth of apocalypses is, is this end and renewal and how it's almost anytime you look at the world, you also bridge, maybe it would help too for the, for the thread that I want to get to. If you compare the monotheism of the west and to the eastern those two paradigms of what the vision is one going down one going up so a couple of things on the way to that so the old woman is is the you know uh the the mother of fate like the fates that gave everybody

the thread of life when they came into the world. And she represents a kind of feminine version of weaving the world again after it falls apart. And I always ask audiences, has anyone ever had their life fall apart? You know, hands go up. Some people put up two hands, you know, and yeah, we've all had our lives unravel. And then it doesn't come to an end. It feels like it's ending, but it doesn't. So we have these experiences. And then I have to say something about the black dog because people are confused about blackness and whiteness.

It's a real problem in culture. The old Greek word for wisdom was dark knowledge. And so blackness wasn't something you could pin on a person. The word chemistry begins with an Egyptian word, chem, which means darkness. So darkness used to be considered the source of wisdom. And so the black dog is like a trickster element, but it also has its own knowledge. So just to say that because people get confused by that. And so then when I was unraveling and re-raveling the story in the book, it occurred to me that one of the big divisions in the world is actually east-west. Wars are usually fought north-south, but big divisions of knowledge happen east-west. And so the west is called the occident. That's the old word for the west. And occident means falling down sun. And the east is called the orient and orient means facing

the rising sun and so the myths of the west are all about everything falling down and burning up like the at the end of the day like when the sun disappears into the ocean and so the myths are about the oxidant the falling down and falling burning up of the world and the disappearance of it and the myths of the east are about the eternal return it's called the arc of eternal return about how the the the world consciousness beauty comes back every morning because they're oriented to the east and our word orient is used all the time to reorient yourself and so when i saw yoga in particular and meditative practices coming into the west you know so that every shop mall has a yoga center now i saw the eternal return coming into the west the idea not only that the the sun

always rises which is the opposite myth from most of the West, but also that the sun that you're looking for, the central knowledge you're looking for is inside you. Because the West was aimed in an outer way and the East has this knowledge of what we're really looking for is inside. And one of the few things that you could say could be valuable about being locked up somewhere is the only place to go is inside. Absolutely. Yeah. I love the analogy you used on the glass half water or half full or half empty when it's half it's, it's both, right? It's not either or. So is the world always burning and coming to destruction? Yes. There's an element that's always unravel either or. So is the world always burning and coming to destruction? Yes. There's an element that's always unraveling itself. And at the same time, the equal and opposite is true.

It's always rebuilding. It's always rethreading. And it's always creating the new. Good for you. That's what I think the story says. We are the witnesses of those two things. Can we be conscious witnesses of the fact that people are opposed against each other in a really damaging way? Can we be conscious witnesses of the fact that there are more serious, you know, contagious things that are coming through illnesses that happen on a physical level, but also on a psychological level?

More people losing their minds. That happens. Can we witness that and at the same time find our thread and figure out a way, a vision to follow that begins to reweave a better worldview and a better way of living together? That's what the story challenges us to do, I think. Absolutely. Since that book was written so long ago, I know you have a podcast. You have, I think, 20 plus audio recordings. I still have a couple that I haven't gotten to, but I'm super excited to dive into.

And I think at least six books. What has been stirring you the last two years? Obviously, you were a little bit ahead of the curve there, but right on time at the same time. What are some of the myths and the stories that have really awakened within you in the last two years? Well, I've been telling a lot of creation myths. I call them recreation myths because when you really study them, you realize they're not talking about something that happened in the past. Creation didn't happen a long time ago, and now it's, you know, winding down. It is winding down, but it's also happening, like you said, at the same time. Creation is ongoing. We are part of creation all the time. And so I've become really interested in picking up the thread.

How does a person in the midst of the chaos that's going on, in the midst of an unreconciled world that is disorienting to everyone, how do we find our orientation? And so in studying myths and psychology, I found the essential story in a sense, which is that each person born is unique. Each person enters the world gifted and each person has something to give to life. That's what we're here to do. And so I think of that as a thread, a plot line inside each person that is, we're trying to awaken to this inner story that is trying to unfold from us into the world. When we align with it, we become a gift giver.

We become a healer in a sense. We become someone who is helping to weave life, not unweave it. And if enough people do that, we don't have to agree on the same idea. If everyone is, I call it genius, because genius is an old Latin word, which means the spirits that's there when you're born. Everybody has that spirit when they're born. If everybody has genius and enough people were following the genius, then the world gets rewoven and they don't have to agree with each other. Some people's genius takes them into nature. I've worked with young people that have ideas on how you replant arid land to become

thriving forests in ways that people didn't know before. They're finding it. It's part of their genius. There are other people reinventing funerals so that people die with a greater sense of dignity and nobility. And that's their genius. There's people that are geniuses at psychological healing. There's people that are geniuses at plant medicine and so on. And if people are following those genius threads, you don't have to agree with each other. And yet everybody can be working on the same project. So that's where I wind up.

That's what I'm into lately. Yeah, it's awesome that you're mentioning this. I'm actually, we just started a farm. And so one of the guys I've been diving into is Sepp Holzer. If you're not watching the video, he wrote a book called Desert of Paradise. And that's exactly what he's talking about. How you restore endangered landscape and reforest the deforested areas. So that's one of a few threads, right?

So it's just, yeah. And it's parallel to the fact that our culture is a desert, and we have to reforest the culture too. So the modern idea, especially in the West, is culture and nature are opposed. That's a really bad idea. And it's not even an old idea. Culture and nature are connected. Human nature is connected to great nature. We can be the agents of nature if we understand our own nature. And so, yeah, that's what we're being called to. And people are finding their ways. So I know it looks to a lot of people like it's all tragedy and loss and conflict. And yet people are finding their path. And there are many good things going on that have to do with real vision and have to do with bringing out people's natural gifts. Yeah, I continue to see that and witness that as well. You know, even with just small wins like my buddy Rick Doblin, who is the founder of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, getting the FDA to approve on fast

track MDMA therapy for veterans and things like that, which is a heart opener and can connect people back to their trauma and allow them to process that in a new way. Just all of these things kind of going in tandem, like it's all falling apart. And there's some really amazing things that have the ability to shift stuff very quickly, all taking place in simultaneous land. Yeah. Which from a certain point of view, we're all in the same story. It's that most people don't know that we're in the same story. But if you get the idea that the story is collapse and renewal, it's easier to realize that everyone actually is in the story. And it seems to me we have to learn this bigger sense of story. It's like there was a big revelation in the Western world with Freud, followed by Jung, and the idea of psychology and then depth psychology. So the first level of the world is the practical level,

the measurable level, the statistical level, which could also be the logical level. And that's one level of the world, and it has its own facts and it has its own ways of measuring and accounting for things. And then psychological takes it to a deeper level. And so the first world might be about what I'm doing. The second world is how do I feel about what I'm doing? And so psychology opens up a deeper realm where it's my inner life comes into play. And so does everybody else's. And then depth psychology takes that even deeper because Jung comes along and says, not only do you have a personal kind of unconscious, but there's a collective unconscious.

So he's rediscovering mythology and calling it the collective unconscious. And in the collective unconscious, there are archetypes. And the archetypes are the original forms for everything we've ever done. And we can access them and bring unconscious material up into consciousness, which is the way we use our gifts, the way we use our creativity. And so then I'm trying to say you know besides the depth psychology there's a mythology down there which is the real deep realm of story and human so a poet once said this world is not made out of atoms it's made out of stories and so when we find those eternal stories that don't

don't end we start to realize the earth is a living story. The cosmos is a living story that does not end. It only seems like it's ending. And once we realize that, we realize, okay, we can find a way to pitch in. This is an amazing time to be alive. It's tragic and desperate, and it's also on the verge of renewal. And in that sense, it's a profound time to be alive. Absolutely. It's not boring, that's for sure. There's no doubt about that. I had one of my close friends, Eric Godsey, talk to me a bit about the making of the Red Book. Are you familiar with the story with Jung? Yeah. Yeah, that he had basically gone into his own psychosis, as he called it, and he started having visitations. And he would treat people during the daytime and act like everything was fine, wouldn't tell his wife.

And then as the nighttime came, he'd have to actually process all the beings that were speaking to him all day long and he started to paint and a lot of the red book is which is an expensive book but it's it's this incredible artwork that he did really trying to alchemize everything that was coming in and made the publishers not really you know release it 50 years after I died because he didn't want it to ruin all of the work that he had done you know as an academic and what he had done for psychology and of course you see it now and it's like wow like this is you know any great psychedelic experience looks like this. You know, there's, there's a, there's a, there's a lot in the, in what he achieved from the depths of his intertwining with the archetypes and the mythology that came through to him. And the, the most profound psychologist, I would say, I mean, he took Freudian ideas much further.

Freud was afraid of what was down in there. And Jung actually studied Eastern mythology. That's where the ideas began to come in, from that Eastern eternal return myth. And he realized that that sun that returns is inside everybody, and he called it the deep self. And so then he went through, yeah, all those tortured levels, which in another culture would be seen as a shamanic initiation, where you become dismembered in order to be put back together in a different way. So that's one way that I look at it. And then the psychologist becomes an artist.

And so because when when you get down there, we're all artists when you get down there. I mean, if you think about it and for instance, there's martial arts, which are the arts of Mars. And then there's the arts of love and there's music and there and painting and all that and all of the arts originally were in service of the divine i mean we live in a very strange world where you have the music industry and and you have you know artists and museums are like an industry and people keep calling it an industry when it's really the creative practice through which people found and expressed the divine. And so it's a rightful place for mythology to wind up is in the realm of myth and art, which is the old woman in the cave also.

Talk a bit about what are some of your practices or things that you do to recenter and reconnect to that piece you know having gone through such a deep level of initiation very early on in life what are the ways that you you return to that center to draw up more and draw more from so it's interesting in the sense because it's different for everyone, right? I mean, you can see steps, but the timing and the shape of the steps and the condition of the terrain is actually different from everyone. That's the beautiful thing. So that in mythology, they have a thing called pathless path. So you can follow someone on a path and people usually do that. It's a good way to get going. You find a hero or you find a teacher, you find a guru, you find something that represents meaning and you go on that path. And then one day you hit the pathless path and there's no footsteps anymore. And we have to make our own path. And then we become like those who we were following. And so that's a great thing. And that's part of the myth. So what happens for a lot of people in the modern world is we're thrown onto the pathless path, you know? And so you begin...

So I remember having the experience once of, I love to study. I mean, I love to study things I love. And so school didn't work out all that well. I mean, I could pass tests and all that, but I wasn't getting what I needed. But I learned how to learn. That was the value of school for me. And so after school was over, now I'm studying mythology. And as I get older, I'm studying the things I love. Turned out to be philosophy, but it also turned out to be music. And so one thing that happened to me is I'm reading books and piling up books, and then I happen to read in a book that knowledge is a sacred path. In India, it's called Jnana, J-N-A-N-A, where if you study in the right way, it takes you to the divine. So then I thought,

you know, because people would say, well, you must be an intellectual. You read a lot of books. No, I'm looking for the divine. And so now I realized, oh, that's a real path. So that was great, because then it became a practice for me, not just a study, but a practice. So that was one, and that was a good thing. But in, and then stories have been profound to me. So then I, I was so full of stories. I would just, you know, be at a party or something and someone would say something to me. I wouldn't even hear them. I would say, did you ever hear that story? And I'm like telling stories in a way that's not working very well. Eventually, I figured out if I had an audience, maybe, you know, anyway, so I became a storyteller. But at the same time, I became interested in, I was interested in ethnic music. So I'm listening to music from all over the world.

And somehow I wind up playing drums, hand drums, Afro-Cuban style, and then other styles. And then I realized these things go together. I didn't know. So I started telling stories while playing hand drums. And I remember I did it at, the first time I did it was at a folklore society. And after I finished, someone said, is the story that you told, the rhythm that you played, and the drum that you're using all from the same culture? And I said, no, absolutely not. That was a Central African story told on a West African drum played with an Irish style and spoken with a New York accent. That's what that was. You can't do that. And I said, I just did that. And so I realized, wow, I'm looking for a different audience than the folklore society for the most part. But anyway, what I'm saying is I was picking

up practices. And so one thing I learned is if I'm running around like we used to do before COVID doing things, and then I'm feeling disoriented and I'm not sure where I am exactly. I could study for three hours things that were meaningful to me and I could find a center again. So I found that that was one road to the center. Another thing I could do is just play rhythm for a while and I will literally come into the center. They've done studies on rhythm music and your heart comes into coherence when you drop into the center. They've done studies on rhythm music and your heart comes into coherence when you drop into the rhythm. And from there, it wasn't that much to realize that song and chant would be another way of getting be. And I use them in a unique, you know, combination that's natural to me that might not work for other people. And then I'm going to add

one other thing, because it seems to me people have to have an essential connection to nature. And I have friends that love to climb mountains, and that gets them into the center. I happen to like to swim in salt water, and it really doesn't matter too much what the temperature is. It's like I get home, I find a sense of self, almost as if I've entered the womb again in some way or something. And so that's been a really favorite way too. So all those things turn out to be practices. I mean, swimming can be an exercise also, but if you're doing it in a body of salt water,

it's also a baptism practice every time you do it. And so I wind up with a, um, an odd arrangement of things that bring me to a central place. That's incredible. Yeah. I remember reading, uh, the Vedanta, Vedanta treaties, and that was, they had talked about that path, um, the path of knowledge. And, um, on that note, I always like to get books that have influenced people's lives. You're an author. What are some of the books that you've read that have really touched you and moved you in a way and stretched your imagination and your understanding of life? Wow. A lot of the books that have really moved me are out of print and hard to get. I mean, a book came,

I see them because used to be actual books, wasn't online. And so I see this book that I studied for a long time on ritual in Africa that was so profound that it was just describing rituals that were done and then how the people thought about it. And it gave me a sense of what imagination was behind rituals. There's a book called The King and the Corpse, which was written by Joseph Campbell's mentor, Joseph Campbell's teacher, which is a profound book on myths from India and myths from the West put into this one book. I've worn through the covers of that book several times. So the books tend to be like that, that they're not that common, those books. And they're about, usually about myth or something or about psychology.

Interesting story of how things happen. I once found in a like a bin where people had discarded what looked like the remnants of someone's life who had died and they threw the stuff away. And one of the things they threw away was a book called Revisioning Psychology. I was poking around in there and I found this book and I took it home. And I read the book that night. It was a profound book about Revisioning Psychology by James Hillman, it turned out. I'd never heard of James Hillman, but now I did. And so he changed my mind about how to see psychology.

It was fantastic. And then in the way mind about how to see psychology was fantastic. And then in the way of the world, I wind up meeting him. I wind up at a conference that he's teaching that and he gives a presentation which upsets almost everybody in the room, actually divided people against each other. And afterwards, he's on a dock looking over the lake. And I decided I'm going to go up and talk to him and just introduce myself. And I go up and I say, excuse me, doctor, but I just wanted to say thanks for the talk. And I wanted to introduce myself. And he said, what'd you think of that talk? And I said, that was intense. And he goes, yeah, I'm out here

wondering if I did the right thing. And I said, oh, I think so. He said, people got so divided. I said, well, your title was Jesus Christ and the atomic bomb, twin children of the modern world. I said, like, we dropped the nuclear weapon in the room, naturally it divided. And he goes, oh, good point. And so then he says, what are you thinking of? And I said, oh, right now I've been working on the idea of fate and destiny and what the difference between the two of them are or might be. And he said, that's a really good thought. I haven't thought about that. Keep thinking about that. I wrote a book called Fate and Destiny sometime after that.

And so he became a mentor for me. And so there was a book I found in the garbage that, and then when we would, we worked together for years and we'd be at some event presenting and he said, Michael, tell them how you found out about me. It'd be funny. You know, I tell the audience, well, sometimes you find something good in the garbage and that's why I found a good doctor. And so, so, you know, there's a book that I revere that was a throwaway. And I think it comes to mind because it's like the books, the practices, the things we're attracted to really have meaning. And if we stick with them, they open up worlds we didn't know about.

I mean, James Hillman was profound to me because he blessed my thinking. And I needed that. I needed that. And so, um, um, and he was a direct, the last living direct student of Carl Jung. And so I had this inroad insight into depth psychology by working with James Hillman. And so it reminds me also in a way mentors are like books. They're like books that open for us. And they're like people that turn to pages in our own, the book of our own life also. And so mentors are a key, I think, in terms of finding one's own way and getting confirmation and what they used to call blessing. We need someone, we can be, we can find our gifts and even learn how to give them, but we need

someone that we respect to say, you're good at that or keep that up. I've known people who could play an instrument like a guitar really well, but if you ask them, no, no, no, I'm still learning, and then they find some revered guitar player who then says to them, keep it up, you're good at that, and that's it. Now they can keep that gift they can hold that gift because it got confirmed from the outside so that's another act another

element of study i would say is getting our studied selves blessed by people who we respect that's incredible i really appreciate that. What are, you know, with how much content that you put out over the years, is there anything in you right now that you're creating that wants to come out and come alive? I'm writing a book and it's a book on recreation myths and what we were talking about earlier um it's a book of how the world renews itself and it's also a book of of trying to uh give people entry points into mythology the way i I was talking about the logical world, the psychological world, and the mythological world. I don't think we get through this without finding old knowledge and finding the old stories that remind us that we can live through it and that we can find ways,

deep ways of finding unity again. And so I'm writing a book about that, using myths where everything falls apart, using myths where everything disappears, using these stories, and then showing how the myth shows the way through it. And also it's about how the healing paths open up in the time of difficulty. It's about that as well. So that's what I'm doing most of the time now. I mean, I... That's incredible.

I really appreciate you taking the time to come on the podcast. I think it's the first time I've said it in public, actually. I have a close friend and mentor, Paul Cech, who's writing a book right now. And just reading chapter by chapter as he's getting through it. I can't imagine. He's a father. He's doing a lot of things.

And yeah, so I do really appreciate your time and your wisdom and your lifelong experiences that you've shared with us today. I really hope I can get you back on when your book comes out. I'm going to chew right through it and hopefully digest as much of it I can. And if I've got any more questions around the material, I'm sure I'll have them for you on the podcast this next round. Sounds great.

I'll look forward to that as well. All right. Michael, where can people find you online? So it's one of the easiest ways is Living Myth is the podcast. There's a free podcast every week, Living Myth. And then the website is mosaicvoices.org, mosaicvoices, one word,.org. Or just nowadays, put my name in Google, you'll find the way there. And so there's

recordings there and there's things to read and essays and I don't know, a bunch of stuff there. And thanks for asking. Yeah. Thank you so much, Michael. I appreciate your time. Good to be with you.