This episode of Living Myth considers the increasing sense of weight and pressure that comes from all the tensions and conflicts in the world. Michael Meade uses ancient ideas of fate and destiny to shift the way we might understand our collective fate at this time and also open the sense of individual calling and destiny.

It is our mutual fate to be alive in a time of great conflicts and divisions as culture is set against culture, while human culture is also set against nature. As the pressure and weight of worldwide issues grow, it is important to remember the old idea that meaningful and genuine transformation are the secret aims of the underlying tensions in life.

At a psychological level, maturity can be described as an increasing ability to withstand and understand the tension of the opposites in life. In that sense, the pressures we feel can lead to greater consciousness and deeper levels of understanding in humanity. At the same time, the collective psyche of humanity only changes through the awakening of individual souls.

I'm not suggesting that the individual soul has to solve the great problems, that would be too heroic, and being too heroic is part of what has gotten humanity into the current dilemmas. I'm referring to the old idea that humans are the makeweights in the scales of time. The gravitas generated by the awakening of individual souls creates greater presence and awareness that can help tip the scales away from division and destruction and towards ongoing creation.

Each time a person endures the tension of opposites long enough for spirit and imagination to arise; something is added to the world that was not otherwise present. Thus, each creative act repeats the original creation. In that way, the world gains the creative momentum that is especially needed at the end of an era.

One of the core tensions within each human soul appears as the complex of fate and destiny. Fate involves all that restricts a person from within, while destiny appears as the call to awaken to a greater sense of destination or destiny. This dynamic inner tension plays out as the story trying to unfold from within us and be lived into the world.

Since fate can mean “it is written,” people have come to dismiss it as something overly determined or predestined. Yet, the original sense of fate was more like the thread of a distinct inner plotline that can take an entire lifetime to decipher and unfold. Our individual fate includes aspects of our DNA and inherited elements of our family, but also involves unique qualities that are present in us before we enter the realm of time and place.

In mythology, the Fates appear as a trio of sisters who represent the feminine side of the mysteries of life and who are deemed to be stronger than even the gods. The sisters of fate weave each soul's inner story with limitations that must eventually be encountered in life, but also with inborn capacities that can transcend exactly those limits.

Lachesis is the first sister who gives each soul its thread of fate and its lot in life. Clotho is the second sister who sets a pattern in each soul and gives each a twist of fate that makes that person unique and truly original. The last sister is Atropos, who fixes the pattern in each soul and sets a limit on each life thread. Atropos means “inflexible” or “she who cannot be turned” as she represents all that is irreversible in life and all that is hard wired in us. From her name we get “atrophy” and the sense that things diminish over time and can wither away.

We see that kind of fateful quality in the crises that threaten the natural world and seem irreversible, as well in the intractable troubles that seem about to tear the fabric of human culture apart. In terms of the conditions on Earth right now, we could say that we are in the hands of Atropos, the hard sister. The hard times are her time and so are the end-times when the threads of life get pulled tighter both collectively and individually and we must face our fate in life.

The figure of Atropos can also be felt in the withering sense of despair that can appear at any moment now. In the shadow of this kind of fate, the sense of meaning and purpose of individual life can seem not only diminished, but pointless. Yet, the old stories say that it is only in facing fate, no matter how dire it may seem, that we find the threads of destiny.

The original meaning of the twist of fate was that when we accept the hand that fate has dealt us, something deep within life begins to move. As we move our fate, destiny moves closer to us. Fate would stop us in our tracks and strip us to the bone, in order that we might discover the inner pattern and the sense of purpose that lies at the core of our souls. It is in attempting to escape our fate that we lose the possibility of destiny and also tighten the unconscious web that limits meaningful change and growth.

The thread of destiny allows us to find ways through the exact issues and entanglements that constrain the vitality of our lives. In that sense, fate is purpose seen from the other end of life. When viewed from the ground of destiny, the suffering, the entanglements and restrictions of our lives can make sense.

Destiny comes from Latin roots meaning “of the stars,” as if to say that at some level we are tied to the eternal movements of the stars. Something in the cosmos tries to pull us into greater areas of consciousness and deeper states of understanding. What better time to figure out how to find the threads of destiny and follow our stars than the current times when life has become so disorienting.

Destiny can also mean “to stand out, to stand apart,” but especially to be seen standing in conscious connection to our god-given talents and inborn genius. Destiny can also involve an irreversible process of becoming ourselves from within. And becoming our true selves means revealing our innate genius. Originally, genius referred to the inborn spirit that enters the world with each soul born. Thus, each person has some genius qualities as part of the threads of fate that include the inner gifts and natural talents intended to be brought to the world.

When the world becomes troubled at all levels of nature and culture, what is needed is not simply a new idea or system of belief or new strategic plan. Rather, what is needed is a shifting within individual souls from the limitations of fate to the extensions of calling and destiny. Moving fate can move destiny while also releasing the inner genius with its unique arrangement of gifts and talents.

The word talent originally referred to a weight used to measure gold. Thus, the sense developed that each person has some inner gold in the form of natural gifts and talents. In the strange ways of fate, it turns out that talents not used in meaningful ways become as weights upon our souls. When so much pressure is coming down upon each person, one of the few methods of shifting the weight of the world involves finding ways to use our natural talents to bring imagination and healing to our own lives, but also using our creative energies to serve the regeneration of both nature and human culture.

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