{"author":"Michael Meade","author_id":"Michael+Meade","total_quotes":81,"quotes":[{"text":"Set within the seed of the soul is not jut a fleeting image or a vague pattern but a lifelong story enfolded within, waiting to be cracked open and lived all the way out.","author":"Michael Meade","tags":["life-story","soul","transformation"],"id":324,"author_id":"Michael+Meade"},{"text":"The ability to be tough-minded remains useful; but by now, the fact that we are all in trouble in terms of both nature and culture can only be denied by those who become overly conservative and blindly reactionary. The more tender-hearted imagination that suggests we are all in this together and that there must be an underlying unity in life may be the only way to survive.","author":"Michael Meade","tags":["compassion","gentleness","imagination","unity"],"id":3298,"author_id":"Michael+Meade"},{"text":"Whether we know it or not, our lives are acts of imagination and the world is continually re-imagined through us.","author":"Michael Meade","tags":["imagination","renewal"],"id":7388,"author_id":"Michael+Meade"},{"text":"Life roars at us when it wants or needs us to change. Ultimately, change means trans formation, a shifting from one form to another that involves the magic of creation. The trouble with entrenched oppositions is that each side becomes increasingly one-sided and single minded and unable to grow or meaningfully change. In the blindness of fear and the willfulness of abstract beliefs, people forget or reject the unseen yet essential unity that underlies all the oppositions in life.","author":"Michael Meade","tags":["change","polarization","transformation","unity"],"id":7737,"author_id":"Michael+Meade"},{"text":"Liberation happens each time we become conscious of the contents of the soul.","author":"Michael Meade","tags":["consciousness","liberation","soul"],"id":10350,"author_id":"Michael+Meade"},{"text":"In order to understand the conditions we are in, we must place ourselves not in the mainstream of life but in the timeless stream of myth. As the fabric of life loosens, the veil between this world of hard facts and the otherworld of great imagination also becomes thinner and more permeable. Just as time seems to be running out, timeless things try to slip back into human awareness.","author":"Michael Meade","tags":["imagination","spirit","timelessness"],"id":11465,"author_id":"Michael+Meade"},{"text":"If we meet a myth with our lives and deepest concerns, the mythic oracles speak directly to us. Myths are oracular in the sense that each person can receive a message or an insight that relates to their life circumstances. The point has never been to “believe” in myths or to simply accept what others have said they mean. The key issue with mythic images is to let them speak to us, wherever and whenever we find ourselves seeking guidance, permission, or understanding.","author":"Michael Meade","tags":["climate-change","inner-voice","myth","soul"],"id":20358,"author_id":"Michael+Meade"},{"text":"In these dark and uncertain times, there can be great value in imagining a bit of star in each human soul. Not just that it gives some hope for humanity at a time when man’s inhumanity to man seems ever on the increase; but also because it points to an inner brightness that can light the way in dark times.","author":"Michael Meade","tags":["dark-times","inner-light","inner-star","soul","uncertainty"],"id":32653,"author_id":"Michael+Meade"},{"text":"Soul is found where life deepens us, where meaning calls to us, where trouble deters us, wherever and however we slow down in the midst of the rushing and racing at the surface level of life.","author":"Michael Meade","tags":["calling","inner-wisdom","soul"],"id":50474,"author_id":"Michael+Meade"},{"text":"When we place our immediate conflicts in the territory of an archetypal story we can better see the nature of our problems and find solutions that bring creative imagination to bear in the realm of hard facts and hardening dilemmas.","author":"Michael Meade","tags":["archetypes","creative-imagination","myth","story"],"id":50523,"author_id":"Michael+Meade"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":81,"pages":9,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}