In this episode of Living Myth, Michael Meade talks about the “inner initiate,” the part of us that is ever willing to take a new step that can lead to a transformation of our life. After connecting the inner initiate to the Muses, Meade reveals how the ideas and images that he finds most compelling come from the Otherworld as the primary source of inspiration. Following the thread of inspiration leads to a description of liminal space as the betwixt and between realm where both awakening and transformation can occur.

Liminality appears as “a betwixt and between place of radical uncertainty and not knowing; but also as being on the edge of becoming.” Not knowing where the world is going, not knowing what the future will be like, can be troubling and even defeating. Yet, the place of great uncertainty can also be seen as the edge of becoming where a genuine transformation of life becomes more possible.

It was while realizing that the heart is the most liminal of all places that the title of the new book appeared as The Heart of Transformation. “The heart I'm referring to used to be known as the heart within the heart; not the heart as a physical organ, but the age-old sense of the spiritual heart, the mystical heart that burns with the flames of passion, that lights up with the spark of inspiration, but that is also the heart as center, as the place where the opposites meet; the heart as the place of illumination and as the dwelling place of inner unity.”

Secretly, our own hearts are continually incubating and imagining a greater sense of life. When the heart within our heart finds ways to open, we become more capable of love and more able to act as vessels through which creative and healing energies can enter this time-bound world. The subtitle of the new book, Personal and Cultural renewal on Earth leads directly to the sense that in transforming our own lives we join nature, which is always in the process of transformation and renewal. In awakening to this deeper, inner, more genuine sense of self, we help awaken something in the world as well.