Ep. 504 - What the Heart Knows

Living Myth

In this episode of Living Myth, Michael Meade explores the concept of the 'inner initiate'—the part of us that courageously steps into the unknown, driving

Key takeaways

• The inner initiate is driven by curiosity about becoming rather than concern for outcomes.
• Transformation often begins with a sudden image or idea that arrives unexpectedly, like a gift from the Otherworld.

Main topics

• Inner initiate
• Liminal space

Notable quotes

The inner initiate is more intrigued with that becoming, transforming, beginning dynamic than it is concerned about what the outcome might be.

Conclusion

True transformation begins within the heart—the sacred space where imagination,

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:09) Welcome to the Living Myth Podcast with Michael Mead, where the shifting, changing world is looked at from a mythic perspective. In this episode, Mead talks about the inner initiate, the part of us that is ever willing to take a new step that can lead to a transformation of our life. Following this thread leads to a description of liminal space as the betwixt and between realm where both awakening and transformation can occur. It was while realizing that the heart is the most liminal of all places that the title of Mead's new book appeared as The Heart of Transformation. The heart he refers to used to be known as the heart within the heart, not the heart as a physical organ, but the age-old sense of the spiritual heart, the mystical heart that burns with the flames of passion, that lights up with the spark of inspiration, but that is also the heart as center, as the place where the opposites meet, the heart as the place of illumination and as the dwelling place of inner unity. When the heart within our heart finds ways to open, we become more capable of love and more able to act as vessels through which creative and healing energies can enter this time-bound world. Speaker 2 (1:46) The word initiation essentially means to take a step, to step into. And the implication is that the initiate, the person taking that first step, is entering a new phase or new stage of their life. So the initiate, or what I'm now calling the inner initiate, is the part of us that is willing to step into things without knowing in any way what the outcome might be, because that part of us is intrigued with the act of becoming, which also involves the dynamic of transforming. The inner initiate is more intrigued with that becoming, transforming, beginning dynamic than it is concerned about what the outcome might be. In some traditional initiations, the neophyte or beginner eventually receives a new name. The idea is that in an initiatory event, a person changes so much that they have become as if another person. And one way to acknowledge that is to confirm the changed person by changing their name. In some traditions, the name would be kept private and only known by those who were involved in the initiation projects. And in other situations, the new name would be made known to everyone in the village or in the social group so that everyone realized that the person that they formerly knew had now changed in substantial ways that would affect them as well as the initiate him or herself. So an interesting exercise is to go back over one's life and try to locate and recognize points of meaningful change where it could have been a complete initiation and we could have come out of it as a different person and even bearing a different name. So one way that I experienced that had to do with the first time I wrote a book. The truth was that I didn't know if I could write a book. I thought it was an impossibly hard thing to do. And I respected so many people who had written books that when I read them had almost initiated me into different forms of knowledge and awareness. So I didn't see myself necessarily as becoming one of those people. And I might have... put off any attempt to write a book for a long time out of fear and inner insecurity, except I began receiving requests from publishers who for some reason were willing to publish a book should I be willing to write one. So eventually, I decided I would try to write a book, but the truth is, I might not have taken this step except I had a sudden image of a certain story that I understood immediately would be the core of that book. That gave me a starting point, and it turned out to give me the title of the book as well, for that initial book was called The Water of Life. So I had a story to begin with and I had a title that I could use. But the strange thing is, I couldn't start the book with that story. Because as I worked on it, it became clear to me that that story was the center of the book. It was the middle of the book. And so I really began writing in the middle of the book and eventually had to back up and write a beginning and work my way towards the middle, which I already had as if freely given. through that initial inspiration and appearance of the story of the water of life. In the strange way of the world, after I finished writing the book, which I actually rewrote three times during a single year, having never written anything before, and while I was still as if dripping wet with the language of the book that I had barely finished, the publisher arranged for me to read it for the first time or read from it for the first time at that year's National Book Convention. And so, not long after I had written a book, I found myself standing in front of a rather large audience at the National Book Convention with the task of reading from it. The truth is I had trouble reading the words I had written for a number of reasons. One of them being