Rob Kall: OK. The other question I had from what you said
before is, you referred to water and earth, fire and air -- what are you
referring to? Is this mythological, or
metaphorical or - I have some listeners who might think this is, like,
astrology or something. What are you
referring to when you talk about different forces, or elements?
Michael Meade: The fancy
name for is is Cosmology. Cosmos is a
Greek word for "Implicate order; how things go together." The opposite word is chaos, which doesn't
really just mean disorder, it means "gaping maw," or "dark hole," in a
way. So the cosmos, the way things fit
together, when experienced on earth, has this dynamic of these four elements
that you find in all the tribal and traditional cultures. There's really five elements, but the four
that you find everywhere are Fire, Water, Earth, and Air, let's say.
The world is made up of these parts, and so are
we. It's a little bit complicated, but
think about it this way: the outside temperature today where people are could
be sixty degrees or even seventy, and yet a person is ninety-eight point
six. So it implies that we're on fire,
that we're burning at a higher temperature usually then the temperature around
us. So there's something in us that's on
fire. Then a person is about seventy
percent water, and the earth is about seventy percent water. In Cosmological terms the way to understand
that is, you need seventy percent water to balance the fire that is a in a
person; but also there is a fire that is in the earth, and we still don't know
the temperature of that fire. An
d so a person in that sense is a reflection of the
earth. We have a fire somewhere in
ourselves like the fire somewhere in the earth.
We have seventy percent water or we get a fever. The earth has roughly seventy percent water,
and then the solidity of the earth is similar to the muscles in the body. So we have that earthiness which is our own
tissue and musculature. And then we
breathe air, we participate with the trees and all of nature in this exchange
of air and carbon dioxide, and so in that sense we're tied into and similar
like that planet as well.
So what they used to say cosmologically is each
person is a microcosm, a small version of the big cosmos; and that's why,
through that logic (which is the old logic, not scientific logic) you can
connect the individual soul to the soul of the world. And why people get concerned about the plight
of nature and the plight of the world is
not simply an objective thing; it's also subjective, because our deep soul is
connected to the many inspirations of culture, and the many manifestations of
nature. That's what it means to be
human: is to be part of the basic elements and also the great dynamic of life.
Rob Kall: OK. So, let me take a leap from there. What you're talking about is ways that we are
connected.
Michael Meade: Yes.
Rob Kall: Can you
talk about the connection, I really
believe that we're transitioning from an information era to a connection era,
and I see it when we look at all these giant companies that are forming that
help people connect in new ways.
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