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This episode of Living Myth begins with the sense that it is part of our mutual fate to be living in radical times, when the extremes are activated and the center cannot hold at the level of politics or society.

When the heavy winds of change blow, what is underneath the surface of life becomes revealed. Part of the revelation is that people who have based their sense of self upon outer forms can be rapidly radicalized and become living expressions of the splitting of the collective psyche. Under pressures of radical uncertainty and rapid change, people more readily abandon the difficult search for truth in favor of the type of security found by identifying with a group.

Some will give up all sense of a meaningful inner identity in order not to feel a deep sense of insecurity. Being part of a group that claims righteous superiority can help suppress feelings of deep insecurity and powerlessness. However, the cost of self-betrayal involves becoming increasingly disconnected, not only from provable truths, but also from common reality.

Modern notions of an accidental universe, combined with the belief that the human soul is a blank slate, leaves people feeling increasingly isolated and empty, and therefore powerless to change the tragic course of life on Earth. People may be vehemently opposed to each other in the outside world, but when it comes to what is within each person, most modern people feel empty on the inside.

By now, most people do not even know that there is a deeper self and soul within them. In that sense, our problem is not only the need to awaken to the nature and aim of our own lives. We now have, by historical necessity and by collective fate, the problem of redeeming the sense of each soul being unique and meaningful on both the personal and collective levels. For, the unifying center that cannot be found in the outer world must first be located in the depths of the individual soul.

What has been mostly forgotten is that the inner message and defining pattern of our souls must be uncovered if we are to become genuine individuals. Individual means someone undivided on the inside and awakened, to some degree, to a sense of meaning and purpose in life. Unless we can find ways of being undivided on the inside, there is no way for collective society to find a sense of unity in the outside world.

Each of us has the most to give, and can contribute most meaningfully, when we become who we already are at the core of our lives. That is the inside story and the hidden message that has been etched in the soul of humanity and needs to be rediscovered and brought back into current imagination and understanding.

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