“When a person begins to live with their ‘genius’ they begin to be truly wyyrrdd”*

(*According to Michael Meade, one of the meanings of the welsh Wyyrrdd is to have one foot in both worlds)

“The genius wants activity. It is connected to the stars. It is connected to a spark and it wants to burn and it wants to create and it has gifts to give. You have a name that is inside you and the stars know your name and even if you are lost in this world if you remember your connection to the stars, to the dance of this cosmos, you can find yourself.”

 

Michael Meade is attempting to reintroduce the idea of the ‘genius’ to our contemporary world. Through his organization, the Mozaic Multicultural Foundation, he has started the Genius Project.

Michael Meade –

“We’re in the time of tragic stories. The background for this consideration of genius is really the rattling of culture and the disruption of the world. We don’t just have one problem. We have pretty much every problem we could imagine and we have it all at the same time.”

From the website –

“The context for Mosaic’s Genius Project is our modern world, full of uncertainty, in which we are subject to threats coming from both nature and culture. As climate change and social meltdowns threaten the stability of modern life, we live in a world that borders on chaos.”

“The issue is not whether someone “is a genius,” for genius is a given, something naturally given to each of us as part of the inner project of one’s life. Inner genius is something originally given to each of us in order that we each find a way to give something meaningful and valuable back to the world.”

“Genius has the root meaning of “the spirit that is already there.” As such it points to the inner uniqueness and natural giftedness that enters the world with each person born. When seen as a cohering thread in each life, inner genius serves to weave together a person’s innate talents and abilities while also revealing one’s purpose in life. If people are to find creative ways of living together and healing both culture and nature, the awakening of individual genius may be the deepest and most imaginative way to approach the seemingly impossible tasks that face contemporary cultures.”

 

We are connected to the cosmos, to this world and to each other by the very fact that we are all made of the same star dust. We are also connected to a deep ancestral and mythological lineage that continues to speak to us of the wisdom that lies within. The challenge to stand simultaneously in the world of the imagination as well as the everyday world we live in is great. Mass culture is one of our enemies. As Meade reminds,

 

“One of the problems with mass culture is that it is automatically against the individual. The individual means the undivided person. It means the one who found what was supposed to be found inside them and learned how to live it and therefore they are not divided within themselves. They are not divided from their soul and they are not divided from their own genius, but they are living with it. Mass culture cannot foster that. It cannot support it. It tends to go against it. It is always an upstream swim to become a real person but in a mass culture you are swimming against ocean waves.”

 

The encouragement that Meade offers in the face of this and other challenges is the fact that with the mythology of the genius, each of us is answering a call that came with us into this life we were born into. This calling is a unique answer to the question of ‘what do I have to offer to the world?’ Listen below as he tries to open a window into this idea for each of us to explore.