Episode 445 - The Spirit of Life

Living Myth

Michael Meade

Transformation, Philosophy, Society & Culture, Genius, Education, Myth, Soul, Culture

4.9 • 944 Ratings

🗓️ 23 July 2025

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This episode of Living Myth begins with the story of the Spirit in the Bottle in which a youth must confront a powerful and angry spirit in order to claim his own genius and natural gifts. One point of the tale is that we cannot become who we are intended to be unless our genius becomes conscious and is confirmed by someone other than our parents. If our inner spirit remains bottled up too long, it has no choice but to turn against us. Whereas the spirit in the old tale erupts with anger, in someone else's story it can collapse into an enduring depression.

If, like the youth in the story, we accept whatever aspects of fate that befall us and face our fears, everything changes. Spells are broken, gifts are revealed and what was known as the “second adventure of life” begins. While many theorists and psychologists ascribe the soul’s adventure to the second half of life, Michael Meade suggests something different.

When our mutual fate involves us in a time of worldwide upheaval, turning to the inside realm of the soul and awakening to the second adventure becomes a greater priority. When meaning and unity are lacking in the outside world, they must be sought and found in each person’s inner life. Since the world will not settle soon, undertaking the soul’s adventure becomes the best way to find a genuine sense of meaning and purpose, but also reveals how we can best contribute to the healing of both nature and human culture.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Living Myth podcast with Michael Mead, where this shifting changing world is looked at from a mythic perspective. This episode begins with the story of the
0:23.5	spirit in the bottle, in which a youth must confront a powerful and angry spirit in order to
0:29.2	claim his own genius and natural gifts. One point of the tale is that we cannot become who we are
0:36.4	intended to be unless our genius
0:38.7	becomes conscious and is confirmed by someone other than our parents. If, like the youth in the
0:45.5	story, we accept whatever aspects of fate that befall us and face our fears, everything changes.
0:53.9	Spells are broken, gifts are revealed, and what was known as the
0:59.0	second adventure of life begins. A recent online event began with the question, how do we find unity in a divided world?
1:24.4	Part of the answer involved the sense that the outside world will not soon settle,
1:31.9	nor will current levels of polarization be resolved anytime soon.
1:38.2	So the unity that we instinctively seek cannot be found in the outside world, and therefore it must be found
1:47.6	inside ourselves. It must be found in the depths of our own self and soul. In that sense, we could
1:56.8	say that the conflicts and the increasing tensions in the outer world
2:02.5	throw us back upon ourselves. And although many modern people have come to believe that
2:09.8	they are or might be empty inside, all of the old stories, as well as the deepest
2:16.7	understandings of the nature of the human soul,
2:20.4	consider that each person is born with natural gifts that are intended to be given,
2:27.0	and with an inner unifying story that tries to unfold from within us throughout the course of our lives.
2:35.9	In that sense, there may be no better time in human history
2:41.7	for people to turn to the story inscribed on the walls of their souls
2:48.8	in order to find both a greater sense of meaning and a deeper sense of inner unity.
2:56.1	One of the old terms for the sense of turning within in order to find God-given gifts
	...

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