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As human cultures seem increasingly at odds with the rhythms of nature and modern societies succumb to inner conflicts, people of all ages can feel that there is no longer any purpose in life. Although we all may be suffering a modern predicament, Michael Meade suggests that we are also in an archetypal mythic condition.
Like characters in an ancient story, we are collectively on a great threshold which can be simply seen as the edge where everything falls apart or be viewed as a great threshold of awakening, where ancient wisdom as well as new visions of life can arise. Meade uses a dramatic scene in an old story to show how the turning point depends upon whether or not we abandon our true selves.
As everything seems to teeter on the edge of destruction or else on the verge of transformation, meaningful change does not come from a social agreement, an ideology or a belief system. Rather, it comes from awakenings of the heart and soul in individual lives. As an old saying reminds, if there is no change at the level of the individual soul, there can be no change at the level of collective culture.
The sense of identity that we need in order to tolerate the great tensions and pressures of contemporary life is not a “social identity” or some kind of collective abstraction. What we are looking for, what humans have always been seeking for, is the precise and unique identity that was written on the walls of our souls before we were born. Seen that way, the edge of our life becomes the place where we connect to missing parts of ourselves and find the hidden “wisdom of the threshold.”
When that type of turning point happens in the lives of enough people, everything can begin to turn around and we can find ourselves on the way home, with home meaning the place where young people find their genius and true dreams of life and older people have meaningful visions that include renewed connections to the living world of nature as well as to the nearby realm of spirit and great imagination.
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