The other aspect is - and I don't want to generalize too much - but I know that in the west we've always had this image of "the quest". The story says that one day I will reach the Promised Land, but I'll have to go through terrible terrain to get there, meet the monsters and all of that. And on one level that is very true, but what this image does is to create a mental model, or mind-set that says, "Today I am nothing. I am here, and over there is everything". This way of thinking creates a huge gap between here and there, between me and the fulfillment of myself. And then I look with more of a Zen Buddhist approach or an Eastern approach where the image is that life already is. We are already here – it is all around us.

The journey isn’t one of distance – it is one of consciousness. Just be still and be part of it. Where the only thing that is stopping you from being part of it, is your ability to stop and be part of it. It's a different way. So, in the same way that we have used the phrase "poverty consciousness" associated with an ability to acquire material things, I believe we have a poverty of spiritual possibilities in our western image of life.

We talked about that several years ago around manifesting money. The conversation was about how we each set our own ceiling and our own limits of what we're willing and able to create and generate. Well, I think there are echoes of that in the mental models that we use for spiritual wholeness or spiritual enlightenment. And it has to do with; "I don't have it, one day I'll get it." The other is, "It is here, I am already it. Can I allow myself to resonate with that and be it fully? Can I work from the inside out?" So I guess that's what it is, it's the difference between working from the inside out and acknowledging I already am in essence but not yet in manifestation.

It’s tough to stay in that space all the time. Sometimes I revert to the other mind-set where I am nothing and I feel the need to add to myself and appropriate cultural trappings and religious labels in order to be able to stand up and say, "this is who I am." I believe the gap has closed somewhat within the last ten years because of the influence of the eastern philosophies and their attendant practices that are now more prevalent in the west. However, I do believe that we still have a tendency in this particular culture - the American-European culture - to look at things as distant and to look at objects as separate. That’s what I was getting at. So it's our way of perceiving and understanding how life moves through us and how we move through life.

It’s the same thing that I mentioned before. If I truly believe that I'm only on earth for a limited number of years followed by death, oblivion and darkness, my possibilities in life are conditioned by these beliefs. It is very different from another culture that says, "If I do good now, I'll come back better and so I'm willing to sacrifice myself and lay my body on the line". Not that the world-view of "one life and you’re out" is necessarily wrong – I’m saying that it can be limiting – it can cramp your spiritual style. Fear of death can cramp anyone’s style!

Michael Lindfield: It's limiting. It has its limits and then those limits have to be broken through.

Tammie:Okay.

Michael Lindfield: What I'm talking about in regard to the new tools, is first asking the question, "What is the new stance, where do I stand in my conceptual thinking, in my behavior, in my acting out, that has life move through me as freely and as effectively and as creatively as possible?" That's what it's about.

Tammie: That's an important question.

Michael Lindfield: Rather than asking the ultimate question, "who am I?" as we struggle along on this search for identity, we may discover that the answer emerges over time as a result of the search. Maybe our identity is realized as we express who we are. It is in the act of creation and expression, rather than in the act of selfish search, that we truly find ourselves. Live the question and the answer will show up through the experience of living the question.

Tammie: Right.

Michael Lindfield: One of the things I learned in Sweden with this old farmer is that it is impossible to get an answer to life by being removed from life. He told us in no uncertain terms, "We're not going to send our soil off to the labs to be tested. What a dumb thing. They can't measure the livingness of the soil. They can tell you some of the ingredients, but the livingness you tell by looking at it, smelling it and seeing what's growing in it. You don't need to send it anywhere because the answer is here." My interpretation of his message is that you don't pick a flower to tell how well it's growing. You observe it in place, in action. I guess that's really the message.

Tammie: It's certainly not a message that I would forget had it been delivered to me. This farmer I think was a very important gift in your life.

Michael Lindfield: Absolutely. He was a free spirit. He wasn’t appreciated by anybody else in the valley. They all thought he was nuts but he knew what was really going on.

Tammie: He did. You've also suggested that we need a new mythos, a new creation story to inspire and guide us through the coming birth. I just wondered from your perspective, what that new mythos might be.

Michael Lindfield: A mythos is like a cultural seed-image which contains all the possibilities for a particular civilization. I think a new mythos is one that says that there is a great truth that wishes to be born in the world and that the emergence of this truth can only be the result of a collective birth. That truth lives within each of us equally, but how it is able to be expressed individually in this moment may be unequal.

Another important aspect to the new mythos is that we are moving away from the Judeo-Christian concept of "we are born sinners". That belief creates such a heavy millstone to wear around our necks that it can dampen the joy of the human spirit. The root meaning of sin is "separation" and so if there is any sin, it's a temporary separation of our understanding and of our connection with life.

For me, the new mythos - the new seed idea or image - would be that there is a great truth, there is a great beauty, and there is a great wisdom that seeks birth through all of us. It is the great mystery that seeks revelation. And it's only to the degree that we can join together in this common work and form a collective body of expression, that this mystery has any chance of fulfilling its destiny. The Being who embodies this mystery is too magnificent just to express through one particular human or one human particulate. It really is a collective birth.