This episode of Living Myth begins with the idea that we live in times of extreme changes and increasing chaos. When the world around us falls apart the issue becomes not simply a change in lifestyle or shift in politics, but a revelation of the core imagination and original aim hidden within each of our souls from the beginning.

Michael Meade tells an old Native American myth about a youth who has a vision of a “singing stone” that gives great medicine to whoever finds it. In order to find the stone and the medicine that can help him and also serve the community, the youth must experience the four distinct quadrants that make up the earth and compose the Circle of Life. Repeatedly, the youth becomes disoriented and feels that he is being tricked. Yet, the real trick turns out to be revealing himself to himself; for the vision that drew him into the far corners of life revealed that his true name was Singing Stone. The medicine he needed to find was inside him all along.

On a psychological level, we can call the combination of the inner song and the stone or gem at the center, the deeper sense of self and soul that exists in each person. In that sense, the medicine we most need when the world loses its center and everything falls apart must be found in an awakened sense of our inner self and the natural gifts and true aims that were set within our souls from the beginning.

The changes we most desire to see in our collective lives can only come from awakenings that occur in our personal lives. The singing stone, like the philosopher's stone of the ancient alchemists, serves as a living symbol of a sense of inner wholeness that becomes a source of both healing and centering. It is this deeper sense of self and soul that we are each called to find, that can become, not just the redemption of the individual life, but also the medicine needed to effect a transformation of collective life.