Notable Quotables from Michael Meade
I come from the tribe that says ‘anything worth saying is worth exaggerating.’ It’s up to you to sort out the truth.
Fear is being carried by the ego; not the soul. Fear is telling you where to go. It’s trying to create motion, either motion towards or away from.
What doesn’t get finished in youth comes back again stronger in mid-life.
A person will come out of a crisis as a bigger person or a smaller person.
The gifts are near the wounds. In order to get to the gifts you have to go near the wounds. Our genius is hiding behind our wounds.
We are human by lot and divine by origin; limited by fate, yet driven by destiny, each person a living puzzle as well as a divine experiment.
Change is not movement. Real change changes the entire person. What we find here is what we find there.
I’m not wishing trouble on anyone, but I have noticed how trouble keeps knocking at every door and how it knocks louder each time it is simply ignored or denied.
In order to live life you have to die many times, feel the little deaths so that when the big death comes it’s not so shocking. Get used to losing things.
When you become yourself, you are benefiting everyone else.
Myths are intended to break the spell of time and release us from the pressures and limitations of daily life. Myth speaks to the extraordinary in us and to the innate nobility of our souls. Hearing a mythic story awakens the myth living in each of us. As the story enters us, we enter the timeless territory of myth. We become mythic again, a knowing participant in our own story and a seeker near its source.
The word story means the storehouse and what is stored is what people keep forgetting.
Feeling fundamentally empty and bereft of inner meaning, people accept the role of simply consuming the world, as if the hunger of infancy is extended to the entire course of one’s life.
I don’t think some big idea is going to come along to save the world. Rather than the need to save the whole world the real work of humanity may be to find the roots of wholeness within each individual. The only way to be safe in troubled times is to live a whole life.
We sin anytime we act in in-authentically. All authentic actions are by definition not sinful.
We have to grow not just older but deeper.
When the soul is engaged there is a vitality and what was uncomfortable becomes a non-issue because the soul is now dealing with meaningful things.
Spirit tends to get above things but the way to really get there is to go down and find a way back up.
~ Taken from a recent workshop in Maryland, from Meade’s book Fate and Destiny and his webpage Mosaic Voices.
May 31st, 2011 6:06 pm
Oh, I so wish I could have joined you on this! How far would I have had to drive? I love his insight. Never heard of him, but now adding him to my list.
May 31st, 2011 6:14 pm
He spoke in Maryland, just outside of D.C. He lives in Washington state and so mostly does events an workshops on that coast. We drove the 5 hours just to hear him, have been listening to his tapes for years. You may remember hearing about him in the late 60’s. While in the army during Vietnam he was court marshaled for not following orders that made no sense to him (and not wanting to kill people he didn’t know). He fasted till near death. I read somewhere that Robert Kennedy as New York senator finally intervened.
June 1st, 2011 9:21 am
These are all wonderful, thank you for sharing them. I resonate particularly with the empowering energy of “When you become yourself, you are benefiting everyone else.” This inner journey so often is undermined by our over-culture and the search demeaned as selfish, but how fabulous when we bring our Truth into the world!!
June 1st, 2011 10:49 am
You are right about Michael Meade, you, and I being kindred spirits! 🙂 I think my favorite thought of his, of the ones listed above, is “In order to live life you have to die many times, feel the little deaths so that when the big death comes it’s not so shocking. Get used to losing things.”
This probably resonates with me because, for about 9 years now, I have been wrestling with big losses and trying to figure out how to be the person I became after experiencing them.
He is a very thought provoking guy! Thank you for sharing these insights. 🙂
June 1st, 2011 11:52 am
I am learning so much from Meade and the workshop I went to. It’s not easy stuff, but as he says, ‘the soul likes a little trouble, the right kind of trouble.’ The soul doesn’t grow from comfort. But I am comforted to know there is a design and symmetary to life and it all leads to where we are now and fits together in the end if we open to it.
I have some more of his quotes coming up on end of life and death.
June 1st, 2011 6:49 pm
Thank You so much for sharing these quotes!! I do not know which one I like the best because they all are very meaningful and say the truth!! xo
February 27th, 2012 8:27 pm
[…] the past I have quoted Billy Collins on poetry and Michael Meade on soul and destiny. I never expected to be quoted Johnny Cash, but as wise men go, he’s […]