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

On this episode, Mead talks about inner genius and how without a calling we can feel lost throughout our lives. Without a genuine

purpose, we can turn bitter, drifting without genuine passion and withering without the

blessing of the spirit of life.

A true life purpose is not an optional choice or an outline of goals you might accomplish,

but rather something inherent and expectant seated within each heart and soul.

In that sense, being purposeful does not simply mean being goal-oriented, but rather

being connected to the inner and pushing us towards the calling

is at odds with the ego or the little self.

So often what's happened is received ideas, fixed attitudes, traumatic experiences

are so settled in a person that the genius and the calling gets swallowed in there.

And so sometimes it's easy to go through the troubled part of the psyche.

It was Carl Jung, great psychologist, who said, genius hides behind the wound.

Genius is the object and to some degree the source of the calling.

So if a person is in doubt, go to the wounded areas.

And if it can, you know, face the nature of the wound, the genius is there.

I know a lot of people, when I first started to talk about this, I was working with severely

at-risk young people who were at risk of death day after day. And I was trying to figure out,

how can I talk to them if I only get to talk

to them once. What could I say? What's meaningful? You know, when people say, well, you know, it'll get

better. That's not meaningful to someone who's caught on the streets, caught in violence,

caught in drugs. That's not meaningful. But I found out to say to them, did you know that you

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