Welcome to the Living Myth podcast with Michael Mead.

On this excerpt from a premium episode, Mead explores how even in the darkest times, the inner abundance of the soul

is ever nearby. The problem is that the pathways to our inner inheritance and instinctive

vitality are blocked by received ideas and an over adaptation to early life conditions.

The rigid attitudes of our ego or little self

make it difficult to connect to the imagination

and vitality of the greater self within us.

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Learn more and join this idea of the deep self.

You have the little self, the ego self, that is trying to be the center of everything,

but it cannot functionally do that. But thankfully, there's a

deeper center. And it's been known throughout time that there exists a soul center within each

person. Sometimes it's a universal kind of self, sometimes called the Atman or the great self within,

in contrast to the little self that thinks it's the center.

Indigenous people often call it the great spirit that animates the entire world and everything

in it, including each of us.

The great spirit that makes the world and keeps the

world going is in us. We couldn't even imagine it if we didn't have some connection to it. And there

are many images for this sense of an inner centering self, which is both centering, but also transcendent.

The nature of the deep self within is that it kind of contains everything.

And the images of it can be the inner gold or the philosopher's stone, the golden elixir,

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