Last week Jasmine attended a 3 day retreat deep in a forest outside of Seattle, held by the great story teller and healer Michael Meade.

Michael’s work, alongside great poets and teachers such as Robert Bly, has been instrumental in incorporating ancient mythology, indigenous wisdom and soulful poetry into western spiritual teaching. And this teaching has been pivotal in forming the Utopiat vision.

The workshop brought together 95 people from all over the world, where each of us went through deep purging and healing as well as initiations into our respective “hero’s journey”.

This work is real and poignant. There were ancient tales, soul music, indigenous chanting, sacred ceremonies and poetry reading from some of the greatest masters such as Rumi, Hafiz, Rilke. Yeats, and Whitman. We were all given the opportunity to go deeper into the dark corners of our soul to find the thread of our destiny. And when we do, we will pull it back to the center of the world, so we can piece back together a world that is whole and complete.

This is the essence of Michael’s latest work “the Genius Myth”. In it, Michael presents the ideal that each of us is born with a unique genius. While modern society does not encourage this self actualization process, rather it promotes conformity and obedience, it is the Utopiat vision that there is magic and true power when each of us is courageous enough to find the thread of our destiny and together we can weave back a world that is beautiful and brilliant.

It is teachers like Robert Bly, Michael Meade and countless others whose teaching fuels our journey in realizing the Utopiat vision. We are grateful for their wisdom, for their relentless passion in healing the world.

May we all find our inner genius.Let us heal ourselves and one another. Because #love + #humanity