Welcome to the Living Myth Podcast with Michael Mead, where this shifting, changing world is looked at from a mythic

perspective. This episode brings a focus to the inner initiate, the eternal seeker in the soul. To initiate means to begin,

to originate, to enter into, to awaken. The inner initiate is the beginner's mind part of each of us that is always

wanting to learn and ever ready to begin anew. In that sense, the initiate within us becomes the locust through which healing energies and inspired

ideas continually try to enter the common world is like stepping into the middle of a right of passage that's already been underway.

And part of what that means is that in order to understand what's going on and in order to find our way through the increasing

number of obstacles both external and internal that we all face because of the radical conditions of change

affecting the entire world that we have to become like an initiate. The initiate who can also be called the novice or the neophyte is a part of each person that seeks to awaken to a life of meaning and purpose.

This inner initiate is the archetypal seeker harbored in each soul that is present from the beginning and can be activated each time

we start something new.

To initiate means to begin to originate to enter into and each time we begin something or enter into something new

the inner initiate imagines that we are about to undergo a process of radical change and complete transformation that takes us from the form of life we had been living into the next form of life trying to grow from within our own souls.

Initiation is the old term that means to take a new step on the road of life, but it also means to undergo a complete change of life.

And the initiate, the seeker, the one trying to learn, the one trying to grow, dies a little

death in order to find a greater way of being alive. In traditional rights of passage, the

initiate dies as a child in order to be reborn in a new sanctified level of existence that involves a sense of being

deeply connected to nature as well as being connected to the sacred.

The inner initiate in each person is the source of what's called Beginners Mind, which involves a capacity to keep starting anew throughout the course of life. Keep starting anew no matter what happens in the course of life.

The archetypal sense of beginner's mind involves an instinctive capacity for returning to the beginning,

for going back to touch the origins where life's potentials can be found

and can continuously be rejuvenated. In this archetypal sense, beginning again involves touching the

origins at the beginning of life and the old understanding was that each person is in the depths of

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