Living Myth: Recent Episodes
Michael Meade
Mosaic presents Living Myth, a podcast with Michael Meade, renowned mythologist and storyteller. Meade presents mythic stories that offer uniquely insightful and wise ways of understanding the current dilemmas of the world we live in. Living Myth proposes that genuine solutions to the complex and intractable problems of our world require both transcendent imagination and cohering, transformative narratives.
The world is so flooded with change, it becomes difficult to keep abreast of radical climate changes, shifts in technology, and all the scandals and revelations of politics. In this episode of Living Myth, Michael Meade suggests that being an "agent of change" may not be enough to affect life in meaningful ways. He proposes becoming "agents of creation" who can help tip the scales away from destruction and towards ongoing creation. Following a teaching story in which an old man reviews his life, the point becomes that genuine transformation must begin in the depths of our individual souls, for what truly changes the soul, also changes the world.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 750 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth
Along with these free weekly podcasts, you can now read free weekly essays and long form posts by Michael Meade on Substack. Learn more and subscribe at michaeljmeade.substack.com
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
The fragmentation and polarization that trouble the outside world is also felt deeply within us. Since the world will not settle soon, the unity and wholeness so sorely missing in the outer world must be found within us as well. As things fall apart the "knowing self" within moves closer to the surface, seeking to become more conscious to us. The greater the distance between the little-self and the deep self within us, the more anxiety and fear we will feel. For our lives to grow from within the fears of the ego must be faced and its spell must be broken.
In order to avoid overwhelm and find meaningful life paths, we must tap the deep resources of our self and soul which connect us to the timeless roots of imagination and to the endless energies of creation. Critical turning points in life intend to change us from within, giving us access to imagination and wisdom from the deeper self while also learning to deliver something of our true self to a troubled world.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 750 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth
Along with these free weekly podcasts, you can now read free weekly essays and long form posts by Michael Meade on Substack. Learn more and subscribe at michaeljmeade.substack.com
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
As tensions and conflicts in the outer world continue to escalate, fears and anxieties intensify inside each of us. Increasing polarization leaves us deeply uncertain about the future as well as increasingly disoriented and further divided against each other.
While the poles of a polarity appear to be irreconcilable opposites, they can also be seen as parts of a hidden unity waiting to be found. The true aim of oppositions is the revelation of a "hidden third" that not only relieves tension, but also renews the spirit of life. Thus, the unity missing in the outer world must be sought within ourselves.
Michael Meade tells an ancient myth from Iran which depicts how the medicine we are looking for is to be found inside us. In this old understanding, the secret aim of the tension of opposites is not simply to divide and destroy, but to awaken a deeper sense of wisdom and imagination that can reconnect us to the process of ongoing creation. Creativity is the only outcome of conflict that can satisfy the soul.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 750 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth
Along with these free weekly podcasts, you can now read free weekly essays and long form posts by Michael Meade on Substack. Learn more and subscribe at michaeljmeade.substack.com
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode begins with a fairy tale in which a wondrous tree grows in a palace garden at the center of a realm. The tree at the center produces golden fruit; but each night a golden apple mysteriously vanishes. The culprit turns out to be a golden bird that drops a shining feather before also disappearing. The rest of the tale involves searching for various elements that represent the golden self within us that is the natural inheritance of the human psyche.
In the story, the connection to the golden bird appears as light as a feather. Yet, if we do not pick up the feather of our own lives, we can miss our calling and fall out of the story of our own soul. What was once as light as a feather can become a heavy psychic load, leaving us stuck in depression, in self-rejection or feeling lost. Yet again, the idea of an inner alchemy depends upon the potential for human transformation, which is symbolized by turning the lead in our lives into gold.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 750 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth
Along with these free weekly podcasts, you can now read free weekly essays and long form posts by Michael Meade on Substack. Learn more and subscribe at michaeljmeade.substack.com
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
In this episode, Michael Meade talks about the various ways we can find and connect with our creative muse. He brings surprising insights into practical ways of being creative and the good news that everyone, artists and non-artists alike, has a muse. Creativity is a force larger than ourselves that wants to flow through us, be expressed by us and be given to the community around us.
Meade shares myths and rituals that show how creativity is present and in abundance during the dark times of trouble and despair. Times of chaos and dissolution can also birth creativity that leads us to the next phase of life or of the world, in the never-ending dance of chaos and ongoing creation and creativity.
This episode is edited from an interview on a Jung Platform Summit on creativity.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 750 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at: patreon.com/livingmyth
Along with these free weekly podcasts, you can now read free weekly essays and long form posts by Michael Meade on Substack. Learn more and subscribe at: michaeljmeade.substack.com
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
In this episode, Michael Meade tells an old story about a man whose dreams call for him to go on a long, challenging journey to find a hidden treasure of gold. The story suggests that the treasure we desire most hides where we would never choose to go on our own. Bringing a dream to life requires that we truly change and that can awaken our deepest fears and strongest resistance.
Symbolically, gold represents all that is noble, valuable and unique in each soul. On the other hand, lead is an inert metal that represents all that is base, dense and resistant in life. Meaningful change involves transforming areas of our lives that have become stuck and undermining so as to release innate gifts and talents that have been held back or denied. The psychological and spiritual process of changing lead into gold is part of the alchemy of the soul.
In neglected or rejected areas of our lives buried spiritual ideas and feelings wait to be unearthed, creative instincts wait to be stirred, and greater capacities of love seek to be embraced. They are all part of the living gold of the self and the inner alchemy of the soul. Some redemption occurs each time we become conscious of the contents of our souls, as creative expression and increased vitality transform our individual lives as well as the world.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 750 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at: patreon.com/livingmyth
Along with these free weekly podcasts, you can now read free weekly essays and long form posts by Michael Meade on Substack. Learn more and subscribe at: michaeljmeade.substack.com
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode begins with the idea that each person has a unique story that seeks to unfold from within their soul. If a person is lucky or adventurous or devoted, they will typically find a path that aligns with their inside story. If they follow that path far enough, they will come to a place where there are no footsteps and the only way forward involves what is called the pathless path. Taking up the notion of a pathless path, Michael Meade follows the trail that leads to an array of dynamic energies that include various kinds of vision quests, the nature of being a wounded healer and variations of shamanic initiations.
Eventually, the pathless path leads to the ancient idea of the Outsider, which turns out to be the archetypal image for people who become capable of receiving direct messages from the otherworld of great imagination and inspired spirit. The surprising trail of the pathless path eventually reveals that the knowledge, wisdom and healing energies missing in modern life can only enter the world through those who connect to the archetype of the outsider.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 750 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at: patreon.com/livingmyth
Along with these free weekly podcasts, you can now read free weekly essays and long form posts by Michael Meade on Substack. Learn more and subscribe at: michaeljmeade.substack.com
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
On this excerpt from a Living Myth Premium episode, Michael Meade looks at the growing polarization, conflict and uncertainty in the world and considers how we are living within a "re-creation myth," a period resembling ancient creation stories in which darkness, division, and chaos precede renewal. Creation myths from many cultures describe the world emerging from darkness and separation, implying that periods of crisis can become opportunities for transformation.
You can hear the full episode and receive additional podcast content by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 750 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at:
patreon.com/livingmyth
"Regardless of the conditions of the outside world, we are each here to transform our own lives from the inside and become a full expression of our unique soul." So says Michael Meade when he talks about one of his favorite stories, The Tiger's Whisker. This episode of Living Myth includes a full telling of the famous tale of a woman who must face a living tiger in order to cure what ails her soul. What begins as a small village tale opens up to become the endless territory of the human heart that harbors an old sage, a fierce tiger and the need to find a cure for alienation and the lack of love.
Ancient stories depict how each person born carries a precise medicine in their soul. In order to find and activate the inner medicine we need to face and even embrace our inner wounds. Genius is said to hide behind the wound and accepting our early life traumas opens the path to finding our greatest gifts.
Our psychic wounds secretly connect us to the transcendent function in the soul, so that what wounds us also initiates and transforms us. In that sense, the inner wound can be seen as a womb. In going through the wound, we become reborn as an initiate on the path of healing. In a world troubled with collective anxiety and growing fears, it is helpful to know that on a path with heart, fear is the guide and what you truly love is the cure.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online event "Kairos Time" on Thursday, June 18. Register and learn more at: mosaicvoices.org/events
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 750 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at: patreon.com/livingmyth
Along with these free weekly podcasts, you can now read free weekly essays and long form posts by Michael Meade on Substack. Learn more and subscribe at: michaeljmeade.substack.com
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
In this episode, Michael Meade considers how there are always two stories going on in life. The ongoing drama of what we call the world and the story of the individual soul trying to awaken to a life of meaning and purpose. The two stories are secretly related and become more intensely connected and dramatic during times of upheaval and radical change. When the way we have been taught to view life no longer explains the world in which we live, we are being called to awaken to a greater imagination and deeper understanding of the world around us.
In mythological terms, while one world is collapsing another is secretly forming and waiting to become known. And because we are involved in both stories, we become witnesses to the collapse and potential contributors to the renewal. That kind of imagination does not align with most modern science, which believes that entropy will simply drag us all down in the end anyway; nor does it fit with religious ideas that declare that the end might be near.
In times of chaos what we need to recall and better understand is that the mystery behind it all is the story of collapse and renewal. Mythological stories offer a framework for the essential and necessary process of re-creation. Just as a forest renews when the great trees fall and decompose before the next version can grow. Knowing about this process of collapse and renewal does not make experiencing it less painful or even less confusing. It does give us a mythic and imaginative framework that can help us cope with a world gone wrong, while also developing practices for assisting in the process of rejuvenation and renewal of life on Earth.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online event "Kairos Time" on Thursday, June 18.
Register and learn more at: mosaicvoices.org/events
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 750 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at: patreon.com/livingmyth
Along with these free weekly podcasts, you can now read free weekly essays and long form posts by Michael Meade on Substack.
Learn more and subscribe at: michaeljmeade.substack.com
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
In this episode, Michael Meade explores how each soul born bears a personal story that involves natural gifts intended to be given and an original agreement of the soul that includes an inherent sense of purpose in life. At the same time, each family has fateful issues and inherited plotlines that strongly affect the dependent and defenseless child. The good news is that at each critical time in our lives, we have opportunities to awaken to the original agreement of our soul. The more difficult issue is that we must untangle ourselves from the limits of our family fate.
While all agreements and entanglements with our families can be made more conscious and can be renegotiated; the original agreements of our souls involve the threads of our destiny and are therefore non-negotiable. When the outside world becomes increasingly conflicted and chaotic, we are thrown back upon ourselves. If we are willing to face the fateful elements and early wounds of our life, we find the twist of fate that reveals the destiny that our souls were aimed at all along.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online event "Kairos Time" on Thursday, June 18.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 750 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth
Along with these free weekly podcasts, you can now read free weekly essays and long form posts by Michael Meade on Substack. Learn more and subscribe at michaeljmeade.substack.com
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode considers how until modern times, people have relied on ritual practices to heal the wounds of culture, draw upon the renewing energies of nature and rejuvenate the life of both individuals and the community. Ritual gives a place for constricting attitudes to loosen, for emotions to flow and for the reservoir of genuine hope to renew.
Creative rituals can help release the burdens of our lives and can remove ego attitudes that block the flow of feelings and vital energy. Transformative rituals have the capacity to reconnect our minds and hearts in ways that reduce fear and anxiety and ease the grief of isolation.
On the ground of ritual, undiscovered parts of ourselves can awaken and strengthen our sense of meaning and purpose in life. All the arts were originally used as vehicles of vision and aspects of ritual and ritual is its own expressive art. In drawing upon the primal elements of nature and the inspiration of spirit, we can access spontaneous sources of healing, vision and renewal for both the individual and the community.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online event "Kairos Time" on Thursday, June 18.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 750 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth
Along with these free weekly podcasts, you can now read free weekly essays and long form posts by Michael Meade on Substack. Learn more and subscribe at michaeljmeade.substack.com
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
People increasingly question whether there is any hope for the world at this time. In this episode of Living Myth, Meade suggests that it is the nature of hope to become lost, before being found at another level of life. In the myth of Pandora, hope only appears after all possible troubles have been unleashed upon the world. There is a deeper sense of hope that can arise when "all hope is lost."
At critical times things must seem hopeless before the "second level of hope" can be found again in the depths of the human heart and soul. This sense of "active hope" depends upon the power of the soul to imagine meaningful changes that can help renew the force of life on earth.
The underlying spirit of life and the true resiliency of the soul are connected to the power of vertical imagination that rises from the original ground of being. In the dark times, when it seems that Pandora's Box is open 24 hours a day, it is a deeper sense of hope and a greater sense of imagination that we long for and that the world needs in order to transform and become renewed.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online event "Kairos Time" on Thursday, June 18.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 750 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth
Along with these free weekly podcasts, you can now read free weekly essays and long form posts by Michael Meade on Substack. Learn more and subscribe at michaeljmeade.substack.com
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of explores how as the world becomes a more chaotic and conflicted place, turning to creative practices can help us find ways to settle and center and grow a greater sense of self and soul. Throughout the ages, meaningful practices have served as primary pathways for psychological and spiritual growth, as well as for finding moments of wholeness and inner unity.
Traditional roads of practice typically appear as the inward path of meditation and deep reflection and the expressive path of creative arts such as music and dance, painting and writing. Both primary pathways can help us become more vital and resilient and be more able to "spring back" no matter what befalls us.
Whether through creative arts, contemplative practices or a combination of both, we need ways to keep renewing our spirit, opening our hearts and finding inner coherence. A heartfelt practice can help inspire, heal and transform our lives; it can also help us contribute to a world in need of healing and renewal.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 750 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth
Along with these free weekly podcasts, you can now read free weekly essays and long form posts by Michael Meade on Substack. Learn more and subscribe at michaeljmeade.substack.com
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
To be alive at this time means to be present as many familiar patterns simply dissolve. One major crisis quickly replaces another, so that both collective and personal levels of uncertainty grow day by day. It turns out that uncertainty is a powerful energy that makes us feel deeply vulnerable as well as susceptible to more intense levels of anxiety.
It is also true that what shatters familiar patterns can also awaken us to a greater sense of imagination and lead to more authentic ways of seeing and being. When faced with meaningful challenges and great uncertainty, we are actually closer to finding the key that unlocks the psychic house and gives us greater access to our inner gifts and the way our soul would have us go in the world.
While we may feel isolated in these troubled times, we are not simply alone. Rather, our souls are the natural source of ancient wisdom that keeps being forgotten and of archetypal energies that can guide and embolden us. In the end, the real risk in life has always been becoming our genuine self amidst the troubles and uncertainties of existence.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 750 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth
Along with these free weekly podcasts, you can now read free weekly essays and long form posts by Michael Meade on Substack. Learn more and subscribe at michaeljmeade.substack.com
If you enjo
y this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode begins with the ancient tale of the Titans, the mythic giants who wreaked havoc at the beginning of civilization and arise again when human cultures become power driven and chaotic. For the Titans, nothing is sacred except excess, immediate satisfaction of greed and being insatiable when it comes to power and dominance. Titans were also called the strainers, as their excess of hubris or self-importance caused them to strain to be seen as gods who had no limits and did not need to follow any rules.
In psychological terms, the condition of titanism appears in those who use chaos to gain power and use it solely to aggrandize themselves. Under the spell of titanism, everything is done simply for effect, to make a big appearance that glorifies or even deifies the person who is actually empty and hollow inside. Lacking any sense of empathy for the suffering of others, they come to see violence and destruction as necessary for maintaining power and extending their sphere of dominance.
As we are in a period of great uncertainty and cultural upheaval, we are subject to a return of titanic conditions like lawlessness, wanton greed and the reckless use of power by those who have no idea of how to use it. Yet, sustaining those false uses of power requires that people continue to give their own power to those seeking to be deified. For, power is no godsend in itself and can only become a blessing when it is used to help those in need and to protect those suffering injustice.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online event "The Soul of Change" on Thursday, April 30.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 750 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth
Along with these free weekly podcasts, you can now read free weekly essays and long form posts by Michael Meade on Substack. Learn more and subscribe at michaeljmeade.substack.com
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of begins with the idea that the world we used to know is gone and we have not found a footing in the world that is trying to emerge. That leaves us in a state of uncertainty and in the midst of multiple levels of tragedy. In that sense, we are in a collective rite of passage that seeks to awaken the spirit of humanity and stir the creative depths of our souls. However, if we cannot sustain the vitality of our own being we become unable to change the conditions of community and culture.
The heart of the human drama concerns whether we are becoming a greater vessel for the flow of life. Spirit calls us to a higher sense of self, while soul would connect us more deeply to the heart of nature and the soul of the world. Either we are following spirit and growing more soul or we can find ourselves shrinking from life.
We are each here to live out an inner story and living plot line that brought us to life. When we live our lives more fully it is beneficial, not just for us personally, but also for the transformation of the world. When in touch with the soul's mythic thread we can find the aims and meanings that allow our souls to grow deeper, our imagination to expand and our spirits to awaken.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online event "The Soul of Change" on Thursday, April 30.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 750 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth
Along with these free weekly podcasts, you can now read free weekly essays and long form posts by Michael Meade on Substack. Learn more and subscribe at michaeljmeade.substack.com
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth begins with the idea that we keep finding ourselves in uncharted waters in terms of the future of the planet and in unmapped territories in terms of human culture. The increasing pressures and uncertainties in the outer world create an inner tension that can only be relieved through a change of awareness coming from within us.
In order to avoid overwhelm and find meaningful ways forward, we must tap the deep resources of our souls which can connect us to the timeless roots of imagination and the endless energies of creation. Only imagination can provide the genuine visions we need, while also revealing untapped capacities for healing and renewal.
Soul awakens as things seem to fall apart and soul would have us each find our unique part in life's ongoing drama. Yet, the way of the soul requires that we let go of our conventional and collective beliefs and received ideas. As we make more soul we find more moments of wholeness. When there is enough soul in the world, nature and culture can be truly connected and both can be served.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online event "The Soul of Change" on Thursday, April 30.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 750 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth
Along with these free weekly podcasts, you can now read free weekly essays and long form posts by Michael Meade on Substack. Learn more and subscribe at michaeljmeade.substack.com
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
Clearly, we are living in radical times when almost everything can be taken to the extreme. We find ourselves in uncharted waters when it comes to the future of the planet and in unmapped territories in terms of human culture. In the midst of great uncertainty any moment can lead us to feel anxious, isolated and abandoned.
Life must be lived forward, but often can only be understood in looking back. Looking back far enough reveals that everyone has abandonment issues from early life fears of being left isolated and alone. As if insisting upon being faced, our core fears and anxieties intensify whenever we face the need to change or grow.
Early in life we were vulnerable and easily overwhelmed. Eventually, the issue becomes not just who abandoned us and why, but how we avoid abandoning ourselves when faced with fears and the uncertainty of life again.
In times of overwhelm, the deep self and soul within us also seeks to become more conscious to us. In the essential work of changing from within, each occasion of not abandoning ourselves liberates more of the divine spark that was sewn in our souls to begin with. The light we liberate within our souls also adds some life to a world in the process of transforming itself.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online event "The Soul of Change" on Thursday, April 30.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 750 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth
Along with these free weekly podcasts, you can now read free weekly essays and long form posts by Michael Meade on Substack. Learn more and subscribe at michaeljmeade.substack.com
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
On this excerpt from a Living Myth Premium episode, Michael Meade discusses the inherent longing for redemption and how it can be experienced as a life-seeking process rather than an end-of-life event. He explores the archetypes of creation and apocalypse, reframing the latter as an expression of the dynamic of collapse and renewal. Part of renewal involves connecting to vertical imagination, that goes deep into the unconscious, and can reveal the unique map of each soul's journey and help us become instruments for transformation and awakening.
You can hear the full episode and receive additional podcast content by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 750 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
In this episode, Michael Meade tells an old story of someone who follows a dream that leads to being stripped down and stuck, before it unfolds a path to healing and wholeness. Bringing a dream to life means changing everything and change is most often accompanied by fear and resistance. Meade suggests that living a dream requires the courage to cross not only where others fear to go, but also to enter where we fear to tread.
Stories and dreams are about the mysteries of life. And penetrating the mysteries requires a different kind of vision and a different understanding than what we use to negotiate the common world. The dream that calls us to a greater life is also a bridge between worlds, and the depths of one's soul must first be plumbed if the gold would be found.
The world needs healing on so many levels, that there cannot be a single idea, simple process or common belief that ends all the conflicts and begins the healing. The missing ingredient, the deep medicine, the inner gold is hidden in our own hearts. Until we can loosen the stones that we have constructed to protect our vulnerable selves, we cannot find the inner medicine or the inner wisdom of the soul.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online event "The Soul of Change" on Thursday, April 30.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 750 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth
Along with these free weekly podcasts, you can now read free weekly essays and long form posts by Michael Meade on Substack. Learn more and subscribe at michaeljmeade.substack.com
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode begins with the contemporary psychological theory of a "reminiscence bump" which attempts to explain why we remember certain songs and events from our youth, while forgetting most other things. The theory includes the idea that our sense of identity comes from an internalized story that we construct to make sense of our life. Michael Meade contrasts this kind of mainstream psychology with the ancient idea that youth is not simply a stage or a phase in life, but more of a meaningful, symbolic condition connected to something eternal and enduring in our souls.
In ancient myths and fairy tales it is the youngest sister or youngest brother who represents the eternal youth that is part of the natural inheritance of each person's psyche. Although considered too slow or weird or dreamy to begin with, the youngest part of the psyche carries the dream of one's life as well as our innate connection to the roots of nature and the realm of spirit. In terms of myth and depth psychology, the eternal youth of the soul turns out to be the only one able to find a way forward when everyone else has become fearful, discouraged and stuck in life.
The old idea of "coming of age" involved coming in contact with the inner dream of one's life and the enduring passions and unique inner story already seeded in one's soul. Ultimately, the thing we are secretly trying to save is our own authentic lives. And at each critical turning point in life it is this youngest inner sister or brother that tries to awaken further and connect us with what has been long forgotten and what is being newly imagined. When the future of the world is in question, it is the youngest part of the psyche that knows what people have forgotten and what human culture most needs in order to heal, transform and reconnect to the dream of life.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 750 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth
Along with these free weekly podcasts, you can now read free weekly essays and long form posts by Michael Meade on Substack.
Learn more and subscribe at: michaeljmeade.substack.com
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth focuses upon the extreme emotions generated by the war in Iran and the many other conflicts and divisions in the current world. Michael Meade addresses the increasing flood of raw emotions that we are all subjected to and what psychologists are now calling "political depression." Although political depression can present the same sense of hopelessness and despair as traditional depression, its source is different. It does not simply come from within; but rather from the violence and upheaval, the corruption and unjustness in the world around us.
According to recent studies, this sense of political depression has affected the psyches of most people, and along with issues of anger and outrage, increasingly appears in the offices of therapists and counselors. The human psyche cannot simply be separated from the conditions of the world. Whereas emotional responses can be eruptive and disruptive, emotions are also "the necessary and mysterious turbulence without which we cannot truly tell if we are alive or not."
Emotions move us because they carry massive amounts of energy that can be used to change life from within. The natural inheritance of the human soul includes an ability to "feel the feelings" and shift raw emotions to being sources of increased vitality and creativity. Ultimately, emotions are intended to connect us to our deeper sense of self and to the world as it is. In that sense, emotions would have us engage life more fully and live life more meaningfully, especially in times of crisis when a transformation of life actually becomes more possible.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can learn more about connecting to the deep self by taking Michael Meade's new course "Rites of Passage" that explores how timely and timeless practices of rites of passage can help us navigate a changing world and connect more deeply to inner wisdom and our unique genius.
Purchase and learn more at: store.mosaicvoices.org
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 750 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at: patreon.com/livingmyth
Along with these free weekly podcasts, you can now read free weekly essays and long form posts by Michael Meade on Substack. Learn more and subscribe at: michaeljmeade.substack.com
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
In this episode, Michael Meade examines how collective fear and overwhelm can knock the ego off balance and lead to stress and despair. Since the world will not settle soon, the unity and wholeness so sorely missing in the outer world must be found within us. As things fall apart the "knowing self" within moves closer to the surface, seeking to become more conscious to us.
Despite the troubles they cause, critical turning points in life intend to change us from within, giving us access to imagination and wisdom from the deeper self while also learning to deliver something of our true self to a troubled world. The centering and guiding power of the deep self gives us our innate sense of meaning, a true source of coherence and a instinctive sense of purpose.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can learn more about connecting to the deep self by taking Michael Meade's new course "Rites of Passage" that explores how timely and timeless practices of rites of passage can help us navigate a changing world and connect more deeply to inner wisdom and our unique genius
Purchase and learn more at: store.mosaicvoices.org
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 750 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth
Along with these free weekly podcasts, you can now read free weekly essays and long form posts by Michael Meade on Substack. Learn more and subscribe at michaeljmeade.substack.com
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
In this episode of Living Myth, Michael Meade considers the current global challenges and emphasizes the importance of living from a place of wholeheartedness. He reflects on the symbolism of an open heart and how facing personal fears contributes to living a life of meaning and purpose. Woven through this episode are poems from Rumi and William Stafford about the need for transformation and the unique role each soul plays in the world's drama.
Like the Earth, the human heart bears an inner flame that can burn with intense passions and deep longings, but can also illuminate paths of compassion, healing and renewal. Our greatest obstacles and sufferings aim at a revelation of the heart within our heart. For, what the heart loves is the cure and what cures the human heart can help heal a broken world.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online event "Finding Ways to Make a Change" on Thursday, March 5. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 740 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth
Along with these free weekly podcasts, you can now read free weekly essays and long form posts by Michael Meade on Substack. Learn more and subscribe at michaeljmeade.substack.com
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode considers the problem of resistance to change from psychological and mythological viewpoints. While we are facing radical changes that threaten both nature and culture, we are also challenged by the dilemma of human resistance to change at both personal and collective levels. The issue is not simply a lack of commitment to change. Rather, resistance arises precisely where we have the best intentions to change. The problem becomes all the more difficult as we may not be aware of our resistance because it occurs at an unconscious level. Attempts to meaningfully change can feel like an internal struggle between opposing parts of ourselves; one part that overtly wants change and another part that covertly works against it.
What some psychologists call an internal "competing commitment" or a subconscious "immunity to change" was once known as the fatal flaw that leads us away from our soul's natural goal of transformation and spiritual realization. In terms of mythic imagination, each soul has an original intention waiting to be found and a life dream waiting to awaken. And each soul also has its fatal flaw, a kind of reverse attitude that works against that original intention.
Genuine transformation develops from the inside out. Thus, when change becomes essential, not just for ourselves, but also for life on earth, we are called to awaken to the true aims of our authentic selves as well as to the fatal flaws that work against meaningful change, both personally and collectively.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online event "Finding Ways to Make a Change" on Thursday, March 5.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 740 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth
Along with these free weekly podcasts, you can now read free weekly essays and long form posts by Michael Meade on Substack. Learn more and subscribe at michaeljmeade.substack.com
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
Michael Meade explores how stories enable us to understand the world and our place in it. Mythic narratives weave the divine and natural realms together in ways that become antidotes for our anxieties and fears. To be modern can mean to have fallen out of story or to be living in opposing stories as many people believe at this time. Yet, stories are how we understand our lives and how we make meaning of even the most overwhelming and tragic aspects of life.
At each critical juncture or time of change, the story of our soul tries to break through and become more conscious. Since myths speak to each soul differently, they can deliver to each listener the psychic facts and healing factors they most need. In that sense, stories are a form of medicine that can operate at the deepest levels of self and soul.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online event "Finding Ways to Make a Change" on Thursday, March 5.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 740 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth
Along with these free weekly podcasts, you can now read free weekly essays and long form posts by Michael Meade on Substack. Learn more and subscribe at michaeljmeade.substack.com
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
There are certain, critical moments that say directly to us: You must change your life. Collectively, we are in a time when great changes are necessary; yet the idea of truly changing is too fearful for most people. On this episode of Living Myth, Michael Meade tells a surprising story from ancient India in which a fearful tiger suddenly awakens to its true inner nature and becomes transformed.
It turns out that learning about one's true self can be like approaching a tiger. The authentic self has beauty and unique markings. It has power and an intensity of presence similar to the fierce brightness of a tiger. Awakening the deeper self also reveals an inner sense of nobility that can shift fear to awareness and replace uncertainty with a living sense of purpose.
In mythological terms, the less people awaken to who they are in essence, the greater the amount of fear in the world becomes. If we are to find some way through the cascade of crises that currently threaten the world, we must face our deepest fears, open our hearts and begin to see with the visionary eyes of our tiger self. When the inner eyes of our hearts and souls open, we begin to see the world as we were intended to see it, and in so doing, find ways of transforming our lives that also help to transform this troubled world.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online event "Finding Ways to Make a Change" on Thursday, March 5.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 740 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth
Along with these free weekly podcasts, you can now read free weekly essays and long form posts by Michael Meade on Substack. Learn more and subscribe at michaeljmeade.substack.com
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
Michael Meade reflects on how, if we are able to stop and listen more deeply, we can connect with subtle sources of wisdom and guidance. He shares his experiences of receiving guidance that has taken the form of dreams, birds and animals, an inner voice and the realm of myth and story. Essential to the practice of hearing these vital messages is both an embrace of humility and a willingness to stand in the place of not knowing.
During this time of upheaval in both culture and nature, when we collectively stand in a greater period of uncertainty, being able to hear the guiding messengers all around us can bring us closer to the call of our deeper self. The centering and guiding power of the deep self gives us our innate sense of meaning and instinctive sense of purpose. Without this inner, unifying factor, any meaningful sense of change can become fraught with excess fears and anxiety. Since the world will not quickly settle, we have to look deep inside for a true source of coherence, for meaningful guidance and for finding our true aims in life, which are not deterred by the troubles of the world.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online event "Finding Ways to Make a Change" on Thursday, March 5.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 740 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth
Along with these free weekly podcasts, you can now read free weekly essays and long form posts by Michael Meade on Substack. Learn more and subscribe at: michaeljmeade.substack.com
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode begins with the recent shooting in Minneapolis in which an intensive care nurse named Alex Pretti was shot ten times by ICE and border patrol agents. There are fateful occasions when a tragic event becomes a moment of truth for both individual life and the collective meaning and core values of a culture. Michael Meade suggests that: "We are now, and may be for some time, in a collective tragedy that involves a battle for truth and meaning, but also the need for a transformation of culture that is aimed not only at the need for political change, but also at a transformation of the quality of human life at this time."
Meade turns back to Plato's Republic, one of the foundational works of Western philosophy, that explores the meaning of justice and the struggle between "lies of the soul" and the need to "live in truth." Because the current administration is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It must falsify the past by trying to rewrite history. It must falsify the present by telling people not to believe their own eyes and it must seek to falsify the future by blatantly denying the truth and avoiding accountability.
In the end, it comes down to the people, as "living the lie" must be confronted with living in truth. The point becomes not only the exposure of all the false poses and hollow pretenses that living in lies requires; but also the ancient and immediate revelation that it is not only possible, but truly essential that people who seek freedom and human dignity find ways to live within truth when faced with an administration of lies.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 740 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth
Along with these free weekly podcasts, you can now read free weekly essays and long form posts by Michael Meade on Substack.
Learn more and subscribe at: michaeljmeade.substack.com
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
On this episode of Living Myth, Michael Meade turns to the realms of art and practice as ways to avoid overwhelm and find coherence in an increasingly chaotic world. Since the world will not settle soon, the unity and wholeness so sorely missing must be found within us. Fortunately, as fears and uncertainty grow, a balancing imagination and healing energy tries to awaken within our souls. The creative arts and spiritual practices are the traditional paths that can lead us to the deep resources and inner resiliency of our self and soul.
The two traditional roads of practice appear as the inward path of contemplation, meditation and deep reflection and the expressive path of creative arts, such as music and dance, painting and writing. Some people are more drawn to one than the other; others go back and forth or mix the two. They each have their value, and each can connect us to the ground of being and the ever-resilient core of life.
Whether it be through meditation and introspection or art and creative expression, a practice helps us gain an emotional seating and a place of refuge to return to again and again. Having a meaningful practice can give us ways to awaken further and grow within ourselves, while also becoming more able to contribute to the healing and restoration of the world.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 740 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode begins with the differences between paradigm shifts that replace old theories with new ones and a shifting of the archetypes that can transform all levels of life. The origins of apocalypse involve an archetypal shift that begins with a period of chaos and collapse before it leads to creation and a renewal of life. The initial phase of an apocalyptic period also involves a "lifting of the veil" that reveals what has been concealed behind closed doors and uncovers what has long been covered up.
The United States, in particular, has entered a stage where the veil lifts and ideas and motivations normally uttered in the back rooms of power become stated out loud, in public. Wildly divisive ideas and brutal practices that other regimes would try to cover over become boldly declared and are doubled down on when challenged.
Whether it is the incursion into Venezuela, threats to acquire Greenland by military force or the rush to condemn an unarmed mother of three recklessly killed by a masked "federal officer," the point is to make each tragedy a polarizing and dehumanizing event that further divides people, not just from each other, but also internally, so that the lack of empathy and loss of our shared sense of humanity becomes diminished and is replaced with a fear of living fully and freely and standing for the deeper truths of the human soul.
At a time when political and cultural divisions are intentionally driven deeper, what we need are not just better politics and policies, but also a greater psychological sense and deeper understanding of the sanctity of life and the importance of the individual soul. For, the original meaning of the archetype of apocalypse includes an awakening of the individual soul that can initiate a process of renewal of human society based upon the core values of meaning and truth, justice and inclusion and love over fear.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 740 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you find this podcast meaningful, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode looks at the shocking beginning of the new year in which the U.S. government invades Venezuela, extracts the sitting president and announces that it will be "running the country" that has the largest reserve of oil in the world. A dream that follows what appears to be the dissolution of the international order, that has mostly prevailed for the past eighty years, depicts the confusions and fears of a world turned upside down. It also shows how in the maelstrom of reckless conflicts and cultural betrayals, something ancient and enduring about the world is trying to be remembered and be rediscovered, and it seems to take some big trouble to awaken to it.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 740 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you find this podcast meaningful, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
Michael Meade explores how the soul's great adventure tries to surface throughout life, so that any moment can become a true turning point if we leave the maps that others have made, follow the soul's original calling and enter life more fully and more meaningfully. He suggests that ultimately it involves a "gnosis," a deeper way of knowing that uncovers our inner resources and reveals the unique powers and gifts of our soul. We are repeatedly asked to choose: either we accept the life that has been given to us or we undertake the greater adventure of the soul.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 725 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well in this new year and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode begins with the old psychological idea that warns that when the conflicts inside us are not made conscious, they must be experienced outside us as fate. It has become our mutual fate to live at a time when it is not just that nations attack each other with obliterating force, but also that people within nations become increasingly divided and see each other as the enemy. Each day brings another twist or turn in the increasingly tragic story of humanity becoming divided against itself.
Throughout history there have been people in positions of power who seek to gain more power and control by using every issue to divide people into increasingly polarized states of “us vs them.” When Donald Trump told an assembly of all military generals and admirals that the primary threat to the United States is the “enemy within,” he was echoing the dehumanizing rhetoric used throughout history, not only to turn people against each other, but also to justify state violence against its own citizens.
Besides its dark history as a tool of autocrats, the term “the enemy within” is also used in psychology to indicate the shadow side of each person. This personal shadow includes the denied, repressed or rejected aspects of our personality that are mostly hidden in our unconscious mind. Failure to recognize and become more conscious of our shadow aspects leads to projecting them onto those we deem to be “other” than us.
Not only that, but when we allow the shadow side to operate unconsciously, it will, at critical points in life, manifest in self-destructive ways. In that sense, Donald Trump, who projects all of his shadow issues and inner conflicts on others, can be seen as a psychological lightning rod that requires us to become more conscious of what can divide us from within and turn us against our own best interests.
Ultimately, our greatest enemy is within, but not in the cowardly sense of projecting our own faults on those we deem “others” in order to deny our own inner fears and hateful feelings. But rather, our greatest enemy is the fear that we do not have, already woven within us, an authentic way of seeing and being that can allow us to stand up to the troubles we face and find meaningful ways to contribute to a renewal of the core values and underlying unity of humanity that is also an inheritance of our souls.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online event “The Heart Within the Heart” on Thursday, October 30.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 700 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode begins with the idea that myths of creation are also intended to be understood as re-creation tales that reveal the world’s capacity to renew itself. Critical to this old understanding of the potential for a renewal of life on Earth is the primordial idea that humans are mythic by nature. It is our mutual fate to be denizens of history and be limited by the restrictions of time and place; it is also our destiny to be tied to eternal things. By virtue of being human we live in two worlds and at critical times we can become vessels through which the eternal seeks to enter the daily world and bring a renewal of life on Earth.
Seen in this old way, the mystery of creation is not a problem to be solved through logic or evolutionary theory or religious doctrines. Rather, it may best be apprehended through deeper levels of consciousness, as presented in myths which speak directly to a person's imagination through primordial images and life-changing, life-affirming, life-awakening narratives.
Mythic stories depict universal patterns and symbolic codes that continue to speak to the deepest levels of the human soul and that also can inspire the highest levels of spiritual imagination. Through myths of creation, we can touch again the timeless images and archetypes from which the living world first arose. In doing that, we can find inspirations for our own lives, as well as insights into how the world might be renewed precisely during the time when it is most divided and out of balance.
The hidden aim of a dark period on Earth, like a dark night of the soul, is to dissolve our assumptions about ourselves and about the world around us, so that we might find our way back to the origins of life. For, in the age-old dynamic of chaos and creation, humans are revealed to be the missing link between heaven and earth, between the eternal and the time bound.
In the dark times, when all else seems lost, what we secretly seek is a connection to the deeper self within us that is, on one hand, truly personal and unique and on the other hand is transpersonal and touched by the divine. Surprising as it may seem in this time of fixed ideologies and systems of blind belief, what can truly change the course of history, in ways that heal divisions rather than deepen them, is an awakening of the deeper sense of self and soul in each of us that is secretly connected to the origins of life and to the powers of re-creation.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 700 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode takes us back to the origins of the theater in ancient Greece where many of the ideas of democracy also originated. Tragedy began with a lament for the fatal flaws in human character, while comedy used the cutting edge of humor to expose the hypocrisy of those who misuse power. Throughout history, satire has served as an instrument of the powerless against the powerful and as a necessary expression of freedom of both imagination and speech.
The term stage comes from roots that mean “to stand or to take a stand;” not to simply be a stand-in, but to play a major role in the essential drama of living out the inner character and living truth of our soul. For, life requires that we stand for something meaningful, something beautiful, something enduring, especially during tragic times.
Psychological maturity, whether in a person, a political party or a nation depends upon the ability to stand in the tension of opposites long enough for an unexpected third way to arise. By contrast, seeing life simply as a zero sum game of winners and losers can only lead to those in power demonizing others in order to sustain a false sense of superiority.
While the two poles of a polarity may seem to be irreconcilable opposites, they are secretly part of a hidden unity, for existence itself is an essential unity appearing as a de facto duality. In times of polarization, the real point of meaningful discussions and debates is not simply to prove one side to be right or be superior to the other, but rather to seek to a “catharsis,” an emotional and mental release that clears both the mind and the heart and can lead to a genuine sense of healing and wholeness.
The healing effects of a catharsis were considered to be an essential part of both tragedy and comedy. The point would not be to simply provoke strong emotions in the audience, but rather to create ways in which the expression of strong feelings could lead to new insights and greater realizations about life and how people, though we may disagree, each and all suffer both the inevitable conflicts of life and a deep longing for a sense of unity.
As has been said, all the world is but a stage and we, by virtue of being alive at this critical time, are the only players available to take a stand for the essential freedom and life changing imagination of the human soul. And surprising as it may seem, each soul born bears a genius self, that should it become conscious, can reveal layers of understanding and ways of healing and creating that can help change the course of the world.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 700 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
While often being considered the leading nation in the world, the United States increasingly finds itself on the cutting edge of cultural upheaval, political polarization and increasing violence that includes mass shootings and politically motivated killings. The recent tragedy of a political activist being shot and killed by a radicalized young man, while appearing distinct in the sense of being a political assassination, can also be seen as part of the larger tragedy of young men acting out cultural violence.
Whether we like it or not, young people tend to manifest, express and even act out the psychological and emotional symptoms of the culture in which they must grow. In particular, if young men are not fully invited into social life and given a genuine sense of meaning and purpose, something volatile and potentially destructive inside them can drift towards the darker areas of the psyche and in the modern world, can pull them into the darkest parts of the world wide web.
While specific causes and motivations for shootings by young men are complex, there are familiar patterns to the trajectory that leads to acting out violently. Research indicates that there is often a strong sense of grievance that comes from a disconnect between the lives they actually lead and the lives they think they should have. This inner disconnect can lead to fantasies of having unlimited power along with intense desires for recognition and admiration. Aided by the extremes of social media, their sense of grievance and their violent visions take up more and more of their mental and emotional lives.
While modern societies lack clarity, understanding and wisdom when it comes to issues of men and violence, traditional cultures developed rites of passage in order to directly engage and temper the wild energies of youth and the reckless urge to battle with both life and death. For, there is an inner volatility that cannot be denied or be ignored without consequences that can turn inward as depression and self-harm or erupt outwardly in violence and destruction aimed at the society that failed to recognize, accept and include them.
It seems to me that in this group, we also have to include those who appear to be grown men, but who demonstrate untempered emotions, reckless immature attitudes about violence that contribute to the tearing apart of society. In many ways, we are all in the midst of a collective rite of passage that requires that we awaken to the deeper issues that can turn a society against itself, while leaving young people in growing gaps of isolation, alienation and despair.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “Finding Calling and Purpose in Uncertain Times” beginning on Thursday, September 18.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this new series and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 700 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth begins with a description of psychological projection as the necessary process through which people project their power on to others in order to see it and become more conscious of it. Modern mass media causes unprecedented amounts of power to be projected onto popular figures including political figures, tech leaders and “influencers.” Inevitably, the condensation of wealth and power causes an activation of their darker, shadow side which inevitably leads to misuses of power that are detrimental to both collective society and the Earth.
The oldest meaning of the word king is “to sacrifice” with the inherent meaning that those elevated to the heights of power should become willing to sacrifice their own desires for the benefit of the people as a whole. The classic symbol of the misuse of power appears in stories where a ruler acts out the shadow side of the archetype of the king. The shadow king symbolizes leadership reversed, nobility perverted, and sacrifice used in the wrong way. Instead of practicing self-sacrifice and serving other people, the shadow king requires the endless sacrifice of others to satisfy his own desires.
Michael Meade uses a series of mythic tales to depict the dangerous arc of descent that can lead from the heights of wealth and power to the depths of tyranny, oppression and brutality. What begins with an inflated sense of self-importance and a false sense of omnipotence inevitably devolves into delusional states of denial, along with an increase of cruelty and a growing taste for violence.
And in these dark times when fear and intimidation are in the air, when we can feel lost and isolated at any moment, it becomes ever more important to know that cruelty comes from weakness and that the will to power comes from an inner abyss of emptiness that cannot be satisfied. But also that we are each the inheritors of the gifts and the powers of our own souls and that becoming fully grown involves reclaiming our power by living out the meaning and purpose of our own lives.
An old meaning of the word soul is “the light found in darkness.” We are here to find the light within our own souls which knows, not just how to survive the dark times, but also how to bring creative energy out of darkness that can be used to offset the misuses of power and to reset the core values of humanity. The importance of truth, the wisdom that keeps mercy at the heart of justice and the necessity of love are part of the endowment of each soul born that cannot be denied or be deported, but rather are always on the verge of awakening more deeply in the hearts of the people.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “Finding Calling and Purpose in Uncertain Times” beginning on Thursday, September 18.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this new series and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 700 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
Michael Meade talks about inner genius and how without a calling we can feel lost throughout our lives. Without a genuine purpose, we can turn bitter, drifting without genuine passion and withering without the blessing of the spirit of life. A true life purpose is not an optional choice or an outline of goals we might accomplish, but rather something inherent and expectant seeded within each heart and soul.
In that sense, being purposeful does not simply mean being goal oriented, but being connected to the inner meaning and core pattern of our self and soul. Finding a genuine purpose gives us a sense of being centered and dwelling deeply within our true self, while also being more able to respond spontaneously to a rapidly changing world.
This episode is edited from a Jung Platform Summit presentation.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “Calling and Purpose in Uncertain Times” beginning on Thursday, September 18.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this new series and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 700 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
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If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
On this episode of Living Myth, edited from an interview with Thomas Hubl for his Collective Healing Conference, Michael Meade considers transformation as an ongoing and natural dynamic of the universe. This core theme is woven through an in-depth conversation about finding deeper self-awareness by examining the ego’s resistance to change and how the wisdom of elders protects and guides us through transformative processes.
As the inner dynamic of transformation, Meade considers how initiation means the continuous breaking open of areas of the soul in order to reveal hidden capacities and inherent gifts. The dramas that befall us become the detours from the mainstream that keep our hearts open to growing and our minds open to learning who we are at our essence and what we are meant to do in the world.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “Calling and Purpose in Uncertain Times” beginning on Thursday, September 18.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this new series and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 700 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
On this episode, Meade considers how the specific struggles encountered in life can open pathways to the center of the self where purpose waits to be found, where vitality can ever be renewed and where spirit whispers its precise calling.
Each personal crisis and life transition can evoke the esoteric pattern of the soul and the deep self waiting to awaken within us. The presence of the greater self is what shifts the ground of trauma and heals the aching soul. As things fall apart all around us, the deep self seeks to awaken our primary impulses towards creativity and the essential urge to become who and what we are at our core.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “Calling and Purpose in Uncertain Times” beginning on Thursday, September 18.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this new series and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 700 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
Beginning with the idea of “die before you die,” Michael Meade describes how a little-death can lead to a deeper sense of knowledge and a greater appreciation for life. Our encounters with sorrow, disappointment and loss can be revalued as ways in which the ego-self dies a little and the deeper self becomes more revealed. Sharing two powerful stories and a selection of poems, Meade shows how the more thoroughly we shed false aspects of ourselves, the more we can redeem our lives and sound our unique note in the world.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 700 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
On this excerpt from a Living Myth Premium episode, Michael Meade explores how resiliency amidst adversity is a hallmark of genius and an essential capacity for navigating a rapidly changing and confusing world. What we need now is the courage to follow our genius all the way to where it would lead us. When enough people awaken to the inner meaning and purpose in their lives, a collective shift of understanding can alter the course of history.
You can hear the full episode and receive additional podcast content by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 700 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
Currently, we are experiencing the demise of a world view and the breakup of the symbols that once functioned within it. As a result, life has become more brittle, institutions have become more hollow, and the sense of collective ethics and ideals crumbles before our weary eyes.
Amidst the current flood of troubling and unsettling events it is easy to feel lost in all the chaos and discouraged by all the conflicts. Yet, it is when we lose our sense of being ensouled that we can be said to be living in darkness and lacking the protection and guidance of our natural way of seeing and being. For, without the soul connection life can seem, not just overwhelming, but also random and pointless.
In the midst of all the political chaos and growing fears for the future, we have our best chance of living with meaning and being resilient if we find the purpose set within our own heart and soul. Awakening to our life purpose involves an alignment with our inner genius, a connection to our core sense of character and a revelation of ways we are intended to serve the community of souls.
Contemporary research shows that having a genuine sense of purpose can lead to living longer, while being emotionally and spiritually healthier. Ancient wisdom suggests that living with purpose makes us more resilient and creative, while at the same time having something meaningful to contribute to the healing and renewal of the living world.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 700 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode begins with a description of the youngest sisters and youngest brothers in fairy tales. They seem out of place and behind everyone else, yet they are the only ones able to break the collective spells of materialism, resentment and despair. They represent the genuine dreamer inside all of us and they are deeply connected to the dream of life and the wisdom of mythology. As agents of myth they have exactly what this troubled world most needs. However, it is the attitudes of the older brothers and sisters that prevail in the daily world. Only after all else has failed will people turn to the youngest sister or brother within who has been holding onto the true dream of life all along.
Michael Meade then lays out the old idea of the Three Kinds of Thinking: the logical, the psychological and the mythological. Following the trail of the youngest aspects of the psyche, he shows how when all else makes no sense, mythic imagination makes the most sense. Myth is the deepest layer of life where grace and wisdom and even redemption can be found.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of 700 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth begins with the story of the Spirit in the Bottle in which a youth must confront a powerful and angry spirit in order to claim his own genius and natural gifts. One point of the tale is that we cannot become who we are intended to be unless our genius becomes conscious and is confirmed by someone other than our parents. If our inner spirit remains bottled up too long, it has no choice but to turn against us. Whereas the spirit in the old tale erupts with anger, in someone else's story it can collapse into an enduring depression.
If, like the youth in the story, we accept whatever aspects of fate that befall us and face our fears, everything changes. Spells are broken, gifts are revealed and what was known as the “second adventure of life” begins. While many theorists and psychologists ascribe the soul’s adventure to the second half of life, Michael Meade suggests something different.
When our mutual fate involves us in a time of worldwide upheaval, turning to the inside realm of the soul and awakening to the second adventure becomes a greater priority. When meaning and unity are lacking in the outside world, they must be sought and found in each person’s inner life. Since the world will not settle soon, undertaking the soul’s adventure becomes the best way to find a genuine sense of meaning and purpose, but also reveals how we can best contribute to the healing of both nature and human culture.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of 700 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth addresses the rise of conspiracy theories and spread of falsehoods in conjunction with the phenomenon of a widespread loss of personal identity. Recent studies show that amidst radical social changes and growing levels of personal insecurity many people feel a greater need to feel part of a group.
While being part of an in-group can relieve underlying feelings of insecurity, it can also involve a loss of true identity. As hostilities between polarized sides intensify, people can cling more tightly to social identities and partisan beliefs, which in turn can make false information and conspiracy theories not only more acceptable, but also more necessary.
As the contemporary confusion between truth and lies intensifies, Michael Meade offers the age-old concept of a genuine “act of truth” that can restore the sense of personal integrity and also serve as an antidote that can reverse the spread of poisons in the collective body of society.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online event “Finding Unity in a Divided World” on Thursday, July 17.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 700 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
On this episode of Living Myth Michael Meade tells a fairy tale about a realm that is rapidly becoming a wasteland because its king has become seriously ill and there is no simple cure. The only way to heal the realm is to find the Water of Life. Doing that requires the seeker let go of all arrogance and accept the condition of not knowing. For only then will the mysterious dwarf provide the guidance and resources that are needed for the quest.
Part of the essential guidance involves learning how to face our deepest fears. And that inevitably brings up each person’s abandonment issues as well as feelings of being inadequate and overwhelmed by what life requires of us. Ultimately, it is only the youngest part of each psyche, the eternal youth and inner initiate that is able to access the wisdom and resources needed to find the Water of Life and return the flow of life to the psychic realm.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online event “Finding Unity in a Divided World” on Thursday, July 17.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 700 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth begins with the ancient idea of each soul receiving a “lot in life.” Lot basically means “a chip of wood,” but in this case, the chip comes from the roots of the World Tree, that also used to be known as the Tree of Destiny. Thus, each of our souls secretly carries a “divine word” or living symbol drawn from the Tree of Life that makes each person a divine experiment in life.
We are human by lot, but we are divine by origin. We must begin life with the hand that fate has dealt us; yet our fate can be seen as more of an oracle set within us than as an outcome predetermined for us. When so many aspects of modern life seem increasingly out of our control, turning to the adventure our souls would have us live can give us our best chance to find a sense of inner unity and live with meaning and purpose.
The soul’s adventure involves stepping off the common pathways and going off the maps that others have given to us. This “second adventure of life” intends an unfolding of the meaningful story trying to unfold from within us. It is a path of awakening to who we already are at our core and how we can best contribute to life. The soul’s adventure aims at things beyond the concerns of the daily world, and yet the transformations it can produce are essential for renewing human culture and for determining the fate of life on Earth.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online event “Finding Unity in a Divided World” on Thursday, July 17.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 700 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
On this episode of Michael Meade recounts a myth from ancient Persia, the name by which Iran was known for centuries. The ancient tale predates all historical hostilities and battles in the Middle East and offers surprising insights into the origins and nature of the kind of conflict that can plunge whole peoples and entire epochs into darkness.
Way back at the beginning, the original clash of opposite forces and the presence of great uncertainty about the future of life entered the world together. The force of chaos and darkness attacks the principle of order and creation using the weapons of lies and aggression. However, that is not the end of the story, but rather a critical turning point in which a greater sense of consciousness and a deeper sense of wisdom can shift the balance back to the process of creation.
The primary problem is that breaking the tension of opposing forces requires that the original split in life must become more conscious. No true healing unless the original split is touched. No true changes without a moment of wholeness that can offset the underlying doubts and projections of guilt and blame. No lasting treaty unless those claiming to create peace already have peace in their hearts.
Only then can it be understood that the effect of an elemental opposition is to generate a deeper sense of meaning and a greater sense of understanding that does not simply stop the hostilities, but also stimulates life itself. Creation is the only outcome of conflict that can satisfy the soul.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online event “Finding Unity in a Divided World” on Thursday, July 17.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 700 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode begins with one of the great scenes in the mythologies of India. Indra had become King of the Earth by winning a great battle; he also became obsessed with power and increasingly demanding. Just when all the people were being reduced to dust and bones by the endless orders and sudden changes, the self-proclaimed lord of the earth has a surprising encounter with a ragged beggar boy. Although young and seemingly an outcast, the orphan boy knows more than the king about the use of power, the meaning of life and how the world can change in a moment.
We are each the beggar boy in the sense that we know what it means to be the orphan, the outcast, the immigrant or other who is being rejected, alienated or exiled. And in the end, the orphan boy, who breaks the spells of self-glorification and self-delusion that entraps the king and all the land, turns out to be Vishnu, the original creator who dreams up the world. Those who insist on claiming that they are superior and more righteous or entitled than others are not only psychologically rejecting their own inner orphan, they are also severing their connection to the underlying and essentially unifying dream of life.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online event “A Divided World, a Hidden Unity” on Thursday, July 17.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 700 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
Increasingly, we are caught in the shattering of the world and in the broken heart of tragedy. The loss of soul in the world leaves people not only divided but turned against each other. The world we used to know is gone and we are suspended betwixt and between chaos and creation. We are in a series of crises and events that seem to turn the world upside down. For it is our mutual fate to be alive at a time of radical transformation that affects all levels of nature and all aspects of human culture.
The great crises of the world do not take place outside the soul, for soul also awakens in the midst of conflict and crisis. Even as everything breaks down, soul knows where to reconnect to life. The presence of soul connects our inner nature to the renewing energy of great nature and awakening the soul stirs a deep sense of resiliency and creativity that serves as an antidote and remedy for the rise of brutality and the misuse of power. What stirs the individual soul can also shift the ground of tragedy and help heal the world.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of 700 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
As nature and culture rattle and old forms crumble, a crisis of imagination occurs and we are called to see the world with different eyes. Finding and following a genuine vision requires an open heart as well as an open mind. Thus, transforming our lives involves a genuine “change of heart.”
While the heart fosters feelings and love, the heart within the heart is also the seat of imagination and the place of wisdom. What was known as the “eye of the heart” sees with a kind of vision that opens to revelations about ourselves and the world. Yet, for the heart to open and the spirit of change to enter us, we must let go of our received ideas and restrictive attitudes.
Love is the divine spark in each heart, intended to illuminate the true path of our life. Such a path with heart reveals who we are in essence and how we are aimed. We are each intended to serve something greater than ourselves; when we serve in that way, we become truly whole-hearted. To be fully alive, growing the soul and incarnating spirit is the only thing that satisfies the longings seeded in the garden of the heart.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of 700 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
On this episode, Michael Meade considers how finding and following the thread that connects our fate to our destiny ultimately involves a pilgrimage to the center of the Self where the dream of life speaks in mythical tones. Seen this way, fate and destiny form an essential arc of meaning that carries a person out into the world and back to the inner treasure of the human soul.
Fate and destiny are the two great agreements that shape the core issues we struggle with throughout our lives. Although the thread of fate implies limitations, it also ties each person to a destiny waiting to awaken. If a person doesn't face their fate, they may never find the deep resources and natural gifts they have inside. If a person doesn't risk living out their destiny, they'll never know who they were intended to be.
There may be no greater time than these troubled times for learning how to face our fate and open the paths of destiny that our souls would have us take and that were the aim of our lives from the beginning.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of 700 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth begins with recent scientific reports which seek to explain why humans may be inclined to put their trust in leaders who claim to be strong and omniscient and will submit to those who are manipulative and deceitful. Studies in anthropology and psychology reveal age-old biases that lead people to believe what others believe in order to “fit in” and idealize and imitate those who appear to be highly successful.
These “hardwired” biases become activated during times of radical change and become amplified when collective levels of uncertainty and fear increase. The modern use of vast digital networks that can unleash floods of disinformation and falsehoods provokes the age-old fears and biases that can manipulate entire societies. The use of mass methods of communication are just the latest tactics in the long history of humanity's struggles over truth and trust and the willful misuse of power in ways that benefit the few at the expense of the overall community.
Michael Meade invokes the old idea that timeless problems can only be solved with timeless solutions. In order to avoid being overwhelmed by uncertainty and confusion we must look, not to the contemporary mainstream of life, but to the timeless streams of myth and imagination. As the fabric of life becomes frayed and time seems to be running out, timeless things that can alter the course of history try to slip back into human awareness. Despite our fears and misleading biases, we are also the inheritors of the capacity of the human soul to imagine a more unified world and find ways to reconnect to life’s innate capacity to transform and renew from within, precisely when all seems about to be lost.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining him for two upcoming events: his free online event “Surviving Uncertainty by Growing Your Soul” on Thursday, May 22 and his new online workshop “Paths of Awakening in Uncertain Times” on Saturday, June 14.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 675 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
Even when change is greatly desired, it is not easily accomplished. This episode of Living Myth considers the problem of resistance to change from psychological and mythological viewpoints. While we are facing radical changes that threaten both nature and culture, we are also challenged by the dilemma of human resistance to change at both personal and collective levels. The issue is not simply a lack of commitment to change. Rather, resistance arises precisely where we have the best intentions to change.
The problem becomes all the more difficult as we may not be aware of our resistance because it occurs at an unconscious level. Attempts to meaningfully change can feel like an internal struggle between opposing parts of ourselves; one part that overtly wants change and another part that covertly works against it.
What some psychologists call an internal “competing commitment” or a subconscious “immunity to change” was once known as the fatal flaw that leads us away from our soul's natural goal of transformation and spiritual realization. In terms of mythic imagination, each soul has an original intention waiting to be found and a life dream waiting to awaken. And each soul also has its fatal flaw, a kind of reverse attitude that works against that original intention.
Genuine transformation develops from the inside out. Thus, when change becomes essential, not just for ourselves, but also for life on earth, we are called to awaken to the true aims of our authentic selves as well as to the fatal flaws that work against meaningful change, both personally and collectively.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining him for two upcoming events: his free online event “Surviving Uncertainty by Growing Your Soul” on Thursday, May 22 and his new online workshop “Paths of Awakening in Uncertain Times” on Saturday, June 14.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of nearly 700 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode uses two ancient stories to show how humans have repeatedly had to deal with periods of worldwide upheaval and fears of drowning in the seas of life. A creation myth from India, depicts how the original sage fell out of the dream of life and into the seas of oblivion. He found himself in an existential condition and metaphysical version of sink or swim.
In order to survive he had to face his innermost fears of annihilation and learn to let go of those things that were not life-enhancing. Only then could he turn within and find a deep sense of buoyancy, the wisdom to not abandon himself and a redeeming vision of a greater sense of life.
When the world as we know it seems to fall apart around us, the primordial fears of loss and overwhelm become activated in us. Yet, as old stories seek to reveal, at the same time we can be closer to revelations of the deep self and soul within us. While the ego or little-self may feel overwhelmed with fears and uncertainties, the greater self within us is actually closer to us and we can be closer to the sage in our own hearts and the guiding force that has been carrying us all along.
When the world has become dark and turbulent again, it is helpful and important to know that at such critical times, a small effort in the direction of awakening our deeper sense of self and soul has a greater effect on us and on the world than it has at any other time.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining him for two upcoming events: his free online event “Surviving Uncertainty by Growing Your Soul” on Thursday, May 22 and his new online workshop “Paths of Awakening” on Saturday, June 14.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of nearly 700 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
On this episode of Living Myth the deep-seated feeling of empathy is viewed in several contexts: as it appears in a traditional story, as it occurs in personal experience, how it is currently being attacked as “toxic and sinful” and how as "suicidal empathy” it is being called “the existential threat to Western civilization.” The idea that truly caring about other people could end civilization is a new extreme in this era of extreme beliefs and what appears to be an endless onslaught of unprecedented ideas and events.
As people become increasingly uncertain about the future of the world, they also become more easily divided against each other. Uncertainty can not only cause financial markets to plunge, it can also cause people to become more extreme and absolutist about religious beliefs, secular ideologies, and personal opinions. As collective feelings of fear and uncertainty grow they can be used by self-negating ideologies, not just to claim that we are truly separate from each other, but also to insist that some of us are essentially better than others, and therefore count for more even in God's eyes.
In times of cultural upheaval, even empathy and compassion can be weaponized in order to turn those who simply seem “other” than us into those who are enemies to us. Meanwhile, the hidden message of suffering and tragedy in this world involves the sense that we can empathically feel and thereby know the pain that others suffer, precisely because it reflects our own suffering and losses. Just as charity and understanding begin at home, empathy involves being compassionate towards ourselves.
It is our mutual fate to be alive at a time in which we are in a struggle between suffering ever greater and more tragic divisions in life, or else awakening to the ways in which we are all interconnected. Rather than something toxic or suicidal, genuine empathy can be an indication of authenticity and psychological understanding. It can also be a source of hope and a deep resource which can help reveal the inner aim of our lives as well as more mutually inclusive and more wisely sustainable ways to live together.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining him for two upcoming events: his free online event “Surviving Uncertainty by Growing Your Soul” on Thursday, May 22 and his new online workshop “Paths of Awakening” on Saturday, June 14.
Register and learn more: mosaicvoices.org/events
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 675 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode begins with an often asked question: What is the soul? Michael Meade describes the soul as “the animating and connecting force without which we cannot live,” yet that “cannot be seen directly or simply be proven to exist.” He further describes the soul as “a betwixt and between thing, neither simply physical nor strictly spiritual,” but rather “the third element in the trinity of existence, that fills the subtle space between spirit and matter.”
Soul is the connecting tissue and the hidden continuity of all of life. It is “the missing ingredient when everything seems to fall apart. When we lose our way in the world, it is the soul's way of being that has been lost. For we are most lost and truly abandoned when we have lost touch with our own soul, with our own inward style and way of being. Each person born enters the world as a unique soul on a unique life adventure. From the view of the soul, the troubles and obstacles we encounter in life are secretly intended to awaken the inner nobility and creative energies that are part of our soul’s inheritance. As unique souls we live on the verge of awakening to who we already are at the core of our being and how we can best contribute to a world in need of more soul.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade talk more about awakening the soul by joining his free online event “Surviving Uncertainty by Growing Your Soul” on Thursday, May 22. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 675 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth considers the oldest versions of the tale of Pandora’s Box as a way of understanding how it is that all the ailments and troubles of the world seem to be loosed upon us again. The name Pandora is connected to the abundance of the Earth and carries meanings like “all gifted” and ‘the one who sends up gifts.” It turns out that it was not Pandora who lifted the lid and released all the anxieties, chaos and suffering that can plague life on Earth.
Pandora married Epimetheus, the brother of Prometheus who gave fire to humans and was credited with inspiring human culture. Whereas Prometheus means “far-seeing” or “one with foresight,” Epimetheus means “one who is short-sighted” and only able to see the effects of his actions after the damage has been done. In the old myths, it was the impulsive, uninformed and short-sighted brother who lifted the lid on the proverbial box and released all of the troubles of the world at the same time.
As waves of anxiety, uncertainty and panic once again spread through the world and undermine social patterns and institutions, it doesn’t take a seer to see that the self-proclaimed strong men and would be autocrats repeat the impulses and lack of foresight that characterize the weaker, blinder and ultimately ill-fated brother. While branding themselves as all-knowing culture-bringers, all would be dictators and autocrats, out of their own arrogance, blindness and greed, inevitably open Pandora’s box and release storms of uncertainty and chaos that intensify all the pain and suffering, all the corruption and injustices that torment people and threaten the core values of human culture.
Thank you for listening to and supporting the Living Myth Podcast. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of nearly 700 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth explores how as humans we live and die in the context of the stories we tell ourselves about the world and our place in it. Two great stories happen at the same time, the great drama of the world and the unique story trying to unfold from each individual soul. At this critical time on earth, something essential to the story of the world is trying to be re-discovered and something crucial in each life story is trying to be revealed.
People are increasingly fearful about the future of the earth. Yet, people cannot simply be scared into caring for the earth. Fear can be an awakening force; yet fear over time can become a cause of further division and greater isolation. The unity of life must be found again and one challenge involves seeing how collapse and renewal can be happening at the same time. Through myths of re-creation we can touch the timeless images and archetypes from which the living world first arose and find inspiration as well as insights into collective transformation on Earth.
Thank you for listening to and supporting the Living Myth Podcast. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of nearly 700 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode begins with the idea that in traditional cultures worldwide the search for wisdom would be a necessity for developing genuine leadership. It would also be a primary practice for those who would become elders. Genuine elders were considered a valuable living resource, without whose guidance entire societies could become trapped in short term thinking, mired in materialistic aims and in danger of entirely losing their way.
Traditionally, elders lead by remembering further back than others and by seeing more clearly ahead. Although growing older can involve a loss of short term memory, elders remember the essential values and the enduring truths that people keep forgetting. Thus, they are less likely to be strictly political leaders and more likely to be cultural and spiritual guides. In this archetypal sense, elders serve as seers who can see behind and beyond the politics of the day, and perceive more accurately the needs of the future.
The passing of time makes everyone older, but not necessarily wiser. The qualities needed to be a true elder involve more than physical changes. There is something metaphysical, psychological and spiritual involved. As William Blake put it, "Wisdom combines insight with experience and vision with maturity. If maturity expands vision, it leads to wisdom. And if it does not, maturity simply becomes degeneration." As someone else once said, "You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely."
The archetype of the elder exists in the depths of each person’s soul where it is connected to the deepest ideals of humanity. When the world becomes dark and foreboding and even the future of life on Earth becomes uncertain, the inner elder and wise sage can awaken in each of our souls. When that kind of awakening occurs, something ancient and enduring, something visionary and creative can enter the world through us and provide the wisdom we most need.
Thank you for listening to and supporting the Living Myth Podcast. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of nearly 700 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth begins with an unassuming teacher finding herself in a public controversy for refusing to take down posters that state that everyone is “welcome, important, respected, encouraged, valued and equal” in her classroom. As she said in an interview, "I would do anything to protect my students. I love all of them unconditionally, and as teachers, we protect them from danger, quite literally. This is the one small thing I can do to stand up for them, to protect them from being affected by racist sentiments that are affecting their classroom and our culture."
There's an old idea that says that at critical points in the course of life, we find ourselves in situations in which we have to become worth our salt. For, there are truths set within each soul that can become a medicine and an antidote against the rampant falsehoods and political manipulations being used to create fear, to drive divisions and to cause people to abandon their own genuine selves.
The greatest challenge has always been the risk of becoming our genuine selves in a world that tries to turn us into everyone else or scare us into believing things that are simply untrue. Genuine change begins in the depths of the individual soul, and this is the struggle that we came here for.
We are the students of life trying to awaken further and we are the potential teachers and leaders and healers trying to tap the wisdom of the sage set within our own hearts. Each time we allow ourselves to be touched by the beauty of the world and by the roots of truth, we take another step in the direction of generosity and inclusion; we go further on the path of the soul and come closer to understanding how we are all in this together. Whether we diminish our lives out of fear or grow more soul and live in truth depends upon how much we become worth our own salts.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online event “Radical Resilience” on Thursday, March 27. If you’re in the Boulder, Colorado area, you can join Michael for 2 events on April 4 and 5.
Register and learn more about all these events at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 650 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode begins by tracing the evolution of propaganda from the creation of a papal agency entitled The College of Propaganda just over 400 years ago to the current process of “flooding the zone” to gain “full spectrum dominance of the news.” What is described as “rapid fire propaganda” aims, not simply to reframe the collective narrative, but rather to drown out all other narratives.
In addition to being emotionally and psychologically exhausting, the flood of emotionally charged language, outrageous claims and crude accusations serves the goal of turning people against each other, using the age-old divisions of right vs wrong, us vs them and good vs evil.
Since there is no simple way to stop the rapid-fire propaganda project that is well underway, one question becomes, how do we find a place to stand when we find ourselves, not just in a time of increasing uncertainty, but also in a storm of unreality? Michael Meade turns further back than the origins of propaganda to the sources of universal truths that cannot simply be drowned out or be canceled because they are indelibly rooted in the innate nobility, radical creativity and ancient wisdom of the human soul.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online event “Radical Resilience” on Thursday, March 27. If you’re in the Boulder, Colorado area, you can join Michael for 2 events on April 4 and 5.
Register and learn more about all these events at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 650 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
At this critical time on Earth, we are caught in storms of change that involve the shattering of norms and a loss of orientation as unprecedented events tear at the heart of humanity and ravage both the body politic and the face of the earth. The sense that we might just turn away from the troubling news of the day does not simply save us, for the polarization and fragmentation that trouble the outside world are also felt deeply within us.
As the rational mind reels from the cascade of irrational events, we are thrown back upon ourselves, so that the illusion that the troubles are simply outside us can keep us from finding solutions that reside deep within ourselves. When we find ourselves on the edge of uncertainty and near the road to despair, we have an essential choice. We can succumb to anxiety and fear and become a smaller self increasingly alienated from life or we can turn inwards and find connections to a deeper sense of self that naturally resides within us.
In times of radical change and potential transformation, a greater psychological awareness is required, and a deeper understanding of life is needed. Knowledge of a deep self center and source of inner guidance has been known to people throughout time. This deeper sense of self does not suffer overwhelm, but rather has surprising resources and radical resiliency. The deep sense of self knows who we are at our core and how we are aimed at life. This animating inner self makes each of us unique and essentially valuable and it tries to awaken and become more conscious to us precisely when everything else seems to fall apart.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online event “Radical Resilience” on Thursday, March 27. If you’re in the Boulder, Colorado area, you can join Michael for 2 events on April 4 and 5. Register and learn more about all these events at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 650 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of focuses on the dehumanizing aspects of autocratic movements. The increasing uncertainties about the future create vacuums that would be dictators and autocrats seek to fill with big lies and fraudulent claims that are presented with a false sense of certainty. The autocratic playbook that they all inevitably follow requires that they enforce forms of economic and informational isolation and instill a siege mentality that depicts the outside world as being hostile, unfair and dangerous.
Authoritarian leaders deliberately seek to polarize people and radicalize what would otherwise be civil societies. They intentionally promote divisiveness and force people to take sides, while also demanding undivided loyalty to themselves. Autocrats cannot succeed unless others in power or seeking power assist them in creating an alternative reality. Eventually, those who enable and help justify the authoritarian regime lose their own ability to resist the inevitable descent into brutality, nihilism and violence.
When questioning the judgment or actions of a leader equates to blasphemy, when blind loyalty overrides individual ethics and collective values, and when healthcare, science and education become tools for serving the agenda of the self-proclaimed savior rather than for seeking for truth and understanding, then a society has entered a critical phase of a life threatening socio-political disease.
Autocratic leaders do not simply undermine institutions and sabotage basic freedoms, they also seek to normalize dehumanizing behaviors that make social and political violence unavoidable. If some people are denied their part in the whole of humanity, that leads to a diminishing of all the people.
Ultimately, history is written in the depths of individual human souls and the story we are in is still being written. If we allow those in power to deny a genuine sense of humanity to some, we can only continue to lose our way and further lose our souls. If we open ourselves to the understanding that we are literally all in the same story, each suffering in our own way, we may find genuine ways to help heal and protect each other and have no need and no room for would be autocrats or self-appointed kings.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online event “Radical Resilience” on Thursday, March 27. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 650 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth begins with a consideration of psychological characteristics of the archetype of the king. In its positive form the king archetype is often connected to the sun which appears as a unifying force that brings warmth and light along with generosity and life enhancing generativity. Since it is the nature of archetypes to manifest negative as well as positive energies, the shadow king manifests the dark side of power, the corrupt side of ruling and the backside of humanity that everyone else must suffer.
The dark side of the king archetype appears as the tyrant or dictator who rules by fear and force, who seeks to control everything, while growing increasingly vindictive and destructive. The old term for the kind of arrogance and psychological inflation that causes a person to run amok and violate the natural order of things was hubris. When those stricken with hubris are given power, they display a great insolence and recklessness that leads to a shattering of norms and breaking of laws with callous disregard for any damage done or suffering caused to other people.
At a time when the world is experiencing a rise of dictators and autocrats, some psychologists are describing a Hubris Syndrome that shows how destructive patterns intensify the longer an afflicted person is in a position of power. Pride may come before a fall, but overbearing hubris can be said to come before a complete implosion and collapse. It becomes increasingly important for the future of democracy and the well-being of humanity that we all learn to see more clearly how the psychological disorders of those given positions of great power can plunge enormous numbers of people and even entire countries into unnecessary levels of division and disaster.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Arts and Practices” on Saturday, March 1. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this new workshop and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 650 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
On this episode, Michael Meade explores the roots of wisdom and what it means to face the darkness. The healing and transformation needed now, both individually and collectively, require going into the exact places that look darkest to us. In following this path, we encounter hidden resources and an inner gold that connects us to sources of wisdom. During this time of division and isolation, Meade suggests that whereas simple knowledge tends to divide things, genuine wisdom makes meaningful unity possible.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Arts and Practices” on Saturday, March 1. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this new workshop and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 650 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth begins with the idea that we are experiencing not just radical changes that happen in quick succession, but a maelstrom that threatens to upend life as we know it. The word maelstrom comes from old roots meaning, “a grinding stream or great whirlpool that sucks everything into its downward spiraling vortex.” Being alive at this radical time when extreme changes engulf most areas of life means that we repeatedly risk being overwhelmed and pulled down by events that can be disheartening and discouraging.
Faced with increasing uncertainty we must find things to hold on to that can keep us from being pulled under. We need the practices, the arts and the methods that allow us to witness the maelstrom but survive the vortex of descent and despair. People in Finland use the term “sisu” to describe an inner ability to push past usual limits when facing great adversity and survive even when the obstacles seem to be insurmountable.
Sisu involves an innate quality and latent power that exists deep within each of us, that can be accessed when our limits are tested and our greatest fears are faced. In that sense, sisu involves having the courage to follow what feels right and what feels just, and trust in life's hidden potentials. While sisu bears similarities to notions of resilience, grit and will power, it goes much further. The understanding of sisu includes an underlying sense of individual courage, but it also involves an awakening of the principle and power of a just and inclusive sense of social unity.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Arts and Practices” on Saturday, March 1. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this new workshop and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 650 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode begins with the idea that we live in times of extreme changes and increasing chaos. When the world around us falls apart the issue becomes not simply a change in lifestyle or shift in politics, but a revelation of the core imagination and original aim hidden within each of our souls from the beginning. Michael Meade tells an old Native American myth about a youth who has a vision of a “singing stone” that gives great medicine to whoever finds it. In order to find the stone and the medicine that can help him and also serve the community, the youth must experience the four distinct quadrants that make up the earth and compose the Circle of Life. Repeatedly, the youth becomes disoriented and feels that he is being tricked. Yet, the real trick turns out to be revealing himself to himself; for the vision that drew him into the far corners of life revealed that his true name was Singing Stone. The medicine he needed to find was inside him all along. On a psychological level, we can call the combination of the inner song and the stone or gem at the center, the deeper sense of self and soul that exists in each person. In that sense, the medicine we most need when the world loses its center and everything falls apart must be found in an awakened sense of our inner self and the natural gifts and true aims that were set within our souls from the beginning. The changes we most desire to see in our collective lives can only come from awakenings that occur in our personal lives. The singing stone, like the philosopher's stone of the ancient alchemists, serves as a living symbol of a sense of inner wholeness that becomes a source of both healing and centering. It is this deeper sense of self and soul that we are each called to find, that can become, not just the redemption of the individual life, but also the medicine needed to effect a transformation of collective life. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Arts and Practices” on Saturday, March 1.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events. You can save 30% on this new workshop and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 650 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth. If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode looks at the misuses of power, the dangers of arch narcissism and the ways that the dream of America is now being severely tested. An old proverb states that: Power lacks morals and principles, it only has interests, and the interests of the powerful are often at odds with the genuine principles and the truth and the kind of understanding needed to create community. The troubled times in which we now all find ourselves are the crucible in which we need to learn more about psychology of power in order not to become discouraged and disempowered and fall under the rule of those who only see power as a force of dominance to be used in the pursuit of personal gain at the expense of human community.
Before he was elected the first time, Donald Trump declared that he could shoot a person on Fifth Avenue and pay no consequences even for such a violent act. That was not simply an off hand statement of personal inflation, but rather a psychological revelation of an underlying sense of being above the law and beyond being accountable for recklessness, cruelty and even violent crimes. Having been elected to a position of great power again causes him to further identify, not just with being a dictator or a king, but with being like a vengeful deity who can create and destroy at will and being god-like, he cannot be restricted, can do no wrong and cannot be held accountable.
Because arch narcissists are psychologically undeveloped, they tend to use black and white thinking and binary codes. Thus a person is either a winner or a loser, and you must either be blindly loyal or you are declared enemy and can be considered evil. In that sense, the use of political power is always personal for Donald Trump. He may use the playbook of dictators and autocrats, but he does it in a dangerously personal way, because narcissism is literally his personal signature as well as his fatal flaw.
This kind of imperial narcissism and threats of vengeance and retribution for disobeying were what the founding fathers fought against. And at this critical time when the delusional power seekers and the self-inflated oligarchs seek to replace the dream of unity through diversity with the sad old rule of "to the winners go the spoils," it becomes our calling, as those who seek freedom and justice for all that find ways to unite in diversity, reject the would be dictators and petty tyrants who carry the flag of the false self in favor of the genuine dream that is always trying to re-awaken and become more conscious in the hearts of “We, the people.”
Thank you for listening to and supporting the Living Myth Podcast. You can further support this podcast in the new year by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 700 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at:
patreon.com/livingmyth
If you enjoy this podcast and find it meaningful, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and all of us at Mosaic, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our creative work.
On this excerpt from a Living Myth Premium episode, Michael Meade explores how even in the darkest times, the inner abundance of the soul is ever nearby. The problem is that the pathways to our inner inheritance and instinctive vitality are blocked by received ideas and an over-adaptation to early life conditions. The rigid attitudes of our ego or little-self make it difficult to connect to the imagination and vitality of the greater self within us. The deeper self is our true center that can be both a place of stillness and refuge or a place of breaking open and breaking through the limitations of the little self. You can hear the full episode and receive additional podcast content by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 700 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth
Michael Meade considers how as the world rattles around us and the soul trembles, balancing symbols and archetypal energies stir deep within us. If we can hold the tension of the immediate limitations, we can connect to the soul’s power of redemption and life’s natural energies of renewal.
Archetypes, like instincts, are part of our inner inheritance. They hold all the potentials of life and can initiate creative responses to the challenges and dilemmas we face. As the outside world becomes more divided, the sense of creation coming from within repeats and renews the origins of life as when the sky and earth were separated and the world began.
The archetype of creativity connects us with the deepest roots of humanity and the ancient roots of renewal. The emergence of imagination and inspiration from within is a revelation of our undaunted soul and a little redemption as each act of creativity brings something new and meaningful into the world.
Thank you for listening to and supporting the Living Myth Podcast. You can further support this podcast in the new year by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 700 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at:
patreon.com/livingmyth If you enjoy this podcast and find it meaningful, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and all of us at Mosaic, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our creative work.
Michael Meade looks at how a living system tends to be most complex in the middle or at the center, while being most open at the edges. Being at one side of a bridge of change opens possibilities of crossing over and reaching a place of greater understanding on the other side.
Yet the actual change must happen in the complicated middle which involves both loss and renewal, both chaos and creation. The creative middle way involves the power of becoming; becoming aware of new ways of being as well as coming to know ancient wisdom again.
The inner medicine of the soul is found in the moving middle where a person can truly change. An older person can be inspired by a youthful spirit, a younger person can become wiser than their age might suggest. While in touch with the golden middle way we become most aware of our true selves and more in tune with the ever renewing mysteries of life.
Thank you for listening to and supporting the Living Myth Podcast. You can further support this podcast in the new year by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 700 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at:
patreon.com/livingmyth If you enjoy this podcast and find it meaningful, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and all of us at Mosaic, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our creative work.
Michael Meade recounts an ancient myth that reveals essential knowledge for navigating the turbulent time in which we all now live. The mostly forgotten tale describes the origin of the soul and explains how it is that we keep forgetting the still surprising idea that each soul brings to life a unique story and a destiny that seeks to unfold in the course of each life.
When faced with dark times and worldwide troubles, there is no formula that can save us. There is no simple fix or silver bullet, but only the possibility of turning within to connect more deeply with something already present, already knowing, just waiting to become conscious.
The ancient Greek word for truth was aletheia, which translates as “to not forget.” What seeks to be remembered by us are the core truths of life that include the underlying mystery of life, death and renewal and our innate connection to the inner genius that repeatedly tries to awaken us to the aim and purpose that originally brought us to life.
Thank you for listening to and supporting the Living Myth Podcast. You can further support this podcast in the new year by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 700 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at:
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If you enjoy this podcast and find it meaningful, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and all of us at Mosaic, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our creative work.
Although it may often feel that we are running out of time when it comes to the great issues of the world and the struggles of daily life, Michael Meade suggests that it is not more time that we need but a stronger connection to things that are timeless, and therefore eternal. Meade tells an ancient Bushman story from Africa that depicts the dilemma which humanity faces with each crisis that involves issues of meaning, truth and the human soul. When great troubles abound, whether it be on the world stage or at a critical stage of life, what we need is the touch of imagination and a hint of the eternal. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 700 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at: patreon.com/livingmyth If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode begins with an ancient myth from a tribe along the Amazon River. The story tells how the inner soul of each person travels at night all the way the center of the cosmos. Once there, the soul receives a message that is brought back and shared with the tribe as a dream. Meade draws on this link between the individual soul and the cosmos to describe how ancient cultures imagined each person to be born with a speck of star hidden in their soul, buried in their heart, just waiting to become a person’s “guiding star.” Each person is intended to contribute presence and meaning to the world and liberation happens each time we become conscious of the contents of our soul. We are here to awaken and learn how to express the uniqueness of our souls, and if we do that we add presence, being and creativity to the world and we become irreplaceable. If we don’t find the meanings hidden in our souls, the world loses presence and people who have no idea who they are come to dominate society. Rumi wrote that: “The world inside is bigger than the world outside.” Meade argues that in this time of darkness and conflict, hatred and bigotry, we have to revive the sense of the inner magnanimity and enduring brilliance of the individual soul. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 700 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at: patreon.com/livingmyth If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
On this winter solstice episode, Michael Meade states at the beginning: “This is not just the dark time of the year, but increasingly dark times for everyone, especially for those who care for the souls of other people and for the well-being of the earth we all live on.” He goes on to describe how ancient symbols and practices at the Winter Solstice served as a reminder of the cosmological connection between the human soul and the hidden unity of life.
Symbols have the power to bring the mind and the heart together and connect us to the deepest truths of life. A Christmas tree can stand for the Tree of Life, as it represents both the still point at the center and the power of life to change and renew itself. Simply lighting a single candle in the midst of darkness can be a reminder of the eternal process of renewal and restoration that is an essential, yet easily forgotten aspect of all of life.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online Solstice ritual “In This Darkness Singing” on Friday, December 20.
Register and learn more at:
mosaicvoices.org/events
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 700 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at:
patreon.com/livingmyth
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode begins with the word polarization being chosen as the dictionary word of the year and ironically being the one thing that both sides of the political spectrum agree upon. The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines polarization as “a division into sharply distinct opposites in which opinions and no longer range along a continuum, but become concentrated at opposing extremes.” When polarization becomes the key word, extreme levels of tension are being experienced, both on the collective level and in the psyche of each individual person.
At critical times on Earth, the basic elements and energies of life polarize. We become crucified by seemingly irreconcilable aspects of a conflict that was under the surface all along. When that happens, simply choosing one side or the other in order to avoid the tension and the uncertainty simply causes the dilemma to reform in another area or at a different level. At that point, it becomes important to know that a tension of opposites is the precondition for creation and for any meaningful change.
While the two poles of a polarity seem to be irreconcilable opposites, they are secretly one. For in a true polarity, like light and dark or up and down, one side cannot exist without the other. Like night and day, existence itself is an essential unity, appearing as an oppositional duality. Seen that way, meaningful change and true transformation are the secret aims of the tension inside life itself.
While great uncertainty and fear can cause people to quickly choose one side of each dilemma, maturity, a word which can mean both “ripe and timely,” is related to our ability to withstand and understand the tension of the opposites. When we hold the tension of opposites long enough a surprising third way can appear that allows a truly creative solution that renews the energy of life itself.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online Solstice ritual “In This Darkness Singing” on Friday, December 20.
Register and learn more:
mosaicvoices.org/events
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 700 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at:
patreon.com/livingmyth
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode begins with the recognition that, what the United Nations calls “the biggest election year ever recorded,” has left most countries on Earth more divided and less free. Any issue that arises quickly becomes another example of two opposing attitudes or conflicting views of life. As increased polarization fractures any sense of civil society, people come to believe that they literally live in two different worlds that are essentially unreconcilable.
Following a line from Shakespeare, Michael Meade considers the idea that we are in “a prison of our own making” if we believe we are simply living in two different stories. Rather, it is our mutual fate to be alive at a time when the underlying tensions of life rise to the surface. We are all in the same story which can either lead to a meaningful transformation of life on earth or leads us further down the road to oblivion.
Although people commonly now feel that we live on opposite sides in a divided world, the deeper divide and the more damning prison of our own making occurs when we forget that as humans we have always lived in two worlds. The heart of humanity has always been stretched between the ground of Earth and the endless expanse of the heavens. Humanity has always dwelt in the betwixt and between, the liminal space between the throes of hard reality and the wonders of great imagination.
We are most human when we suffer the tension of the opposites in order to find again the threads to the ongoing story of creation and the renewal of the world. The trouble is that genuine visions and meaningful revelations of the way out of the darkness tend to appear only after all the more rational, familiar and predictable ways of seeing and being have failed.
In truly critical times, we can’t solve our problems at the same level in which they were created. We become more trapped in time, more stuck in blind beliefs and more caught in despair when we have no other level of life to turn to. If there is no otherworld of spirit and imagination, there can be nowhere to turn to when everything around us becomes more irrational, more dehumanizing and increasingly chaotic.
As has happened at other critical times here on Earth, the keys for unlocking this prison of our own making have to include an awakening to the sense that there is an otherworld that exists right beside this world, that extends far beyond the political world, a realm that is not ruled by the blind march of time, but rather is connected to and can reconnect us to things eternal.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online Solstice ritual “In This Darkness Singing” on Friday, December 20.
Register and learn more:
mosaicvoices.org/events
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 700 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at:
patreon.com/livingmyth
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
Michael Meade answers questions about the sources and meanings of grace and gratitude. Gratitude used to be called the “parent of all virtues” and its presence indicates the natural nobility of the human soul.
We are most human and most alive when we allow ourselves to be touched by the beauty of the world and when we feel genuine gratitude for the life we have been given, no matter how hard or how dark the world around us has become. In this way, expressing gratitude helps to bring grace back into the world.
More than ever, we need moments of wholeness and unity to rekindle our spirits and to ease our souls. We need occasions of grace and gratitude, however small they may be. We need to feel that life, despite all the existing divisions and conflicts, retains a sense of holiness, so that occasions of gratitude, however small they may be, can enable more grace to enter the world.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining him for two free online events: “Living Authentically in Uncertain Times” on Thursday, December 5 and his online Solstice ritual “In This Darkness Singing” on Friday, December 20. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 700 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth. If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode begins with the old idea that emotions travel in pairs. Sorrow tends to travel with joy, so that if we allow sorrow to penetrate us, it will pull us to a deep level of our soul where joy can provide a renewal of spirit that lifts us back up. On the other hand, when we deny the grief and sorrows that enter our lives, we wind up losing our capacity for joy. Another natural pairing of emotions occurs with hope and despair. While despair can mean to “lose all hope,” it is not simply a blind alley or a dead end. Rather, the dark territory of despair becomes the place from which a deeper sense of hope can arise.
In response to the dark times in which we live, Michael Meade revives one of the oldest stories ever recorded. On the tattered remains of a papyrus scroll from over four thousand years ago, an unnamed poet describes a deeply unsettled country where people suffer from increasing chaos and an erosion of ethical values. He reports how wide scale injustice and the excessive greed of powerful people has induced the spread of mindless violence and brought him to the depths of despair. In his darkest hour his soul speaks and advises him to turn to the original potentials of his life and live in authentic ways despite and because of the troubles that have befallen everyone.
In times of darkness and loss, it becomes more important to know that there is a deeper sense of hope that can be found by experiencing some of the depths of despair. This hope found after hopelessness involves inspiration and the kind of vertical imagination that can reclaim the deepest values of humanity and envision meaningful ways to, not simply survive, but to revive the meaning and purpose of our lives. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining him for two free online events: “Arts and Practices: Antidotes to Overwhelm, Sources of Resiliency” on Thursday, November 21 and “Living Authentically in Uncertain Times” on Thursday, December 5. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 700 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth. If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
Michael Meade turns to an ancient myth from India to show how elections can have such dire consequences that the rule of law becomes replaced with the “law of the fishes.” In the great oceans the big fish endlessly devour the little fish and the same drama is often replicated in the realm of culture, where every pond has its big fish and the small fry continually become fodder for the big shots. The law of the fishes was used by ancient people to describe periods of cultural disorder when there is no genuine leader, but only those seeking to wield power.
Raw power lacks morals, lacks principles and only has interests. And the interests of those who are seduced by power become endless longings for more wealth, more personal fame and more dominance. When those elected to positions of authority are committed to the idea that there are only winners and losers, the big fish not only make all the rules, they also break the rules and do so for personal gain at the expense of everyone else. It is not simply that an excess of power corrupts, but that the desire for great power attracts those who are most corruptible.
The chaos that ensues from the lack of genuine leadership leads to increasing divisions amongst people and to the loss of norms that otherwise would protect common folk. If leaders are dishonest, unjust and not dedicated to serving the people as a whole, if they are too narcissistic and power driven, the society will fall into the realm of the fishes. Under the law of the fishes, as governing falls into the hands of a powerful few the rich become richer and the poor become poorer. Society becomes more lawless, people turn against each other and minority communities live at the mercy of those who hold power, but do not know what to use it for.
In the ancient story, as at this troubled time on Earth, everything hangs in an uncertain balance as humanity is required to choose between the chaos of the “survival of the fittest” and the greater sense of awakening to the force of meaning and truth and the presence of an underlying unity of life. In the midst of fear and division people can learn to reconnect to the origins of life, which mysteriously leads to becoming interconnected with all other levels of life and to being reconnected to life's inner power to renew itself. The drama of the world turns out to have more than one level of understanding, so that at opportune times, a small change can lead to a great effect and can even turn everything around.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining him for two free online events: “Arts and Practices: Antidotes to Overwhelm, Sources of Resiliency” on Thursday, November 21 and “Living Authentically in Uncertain Times” on Thursday, December 5.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 700 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
It is our mutual fate to live in a time of such disorientation and upheaval that the institutions we hoped would protect us cannot keep up with the flood of changes pouring through both nature and human culture. It makes sense that we could feel lost when the present is full of chaos and fear, while the future looks increasingly uncertain. In the long run, we are not simply in a battle between Democrats and Republicans or conservatives and liberals, but rather we are in a struggle for meaning and truth, in a battle between nobility and mendacity, which means a struggle for the authenticity of individual life and the soul of human community.
Each time the world takes a darker turn, it becomes easier to feel lost and begin to fearfully imagine that one loss is just going to lead to another loss until the whole thing becomes lost. Yet, the sense that everything and everyone has become divided into two opposing parties or mutually exclusive beliefs is not simply proof that everything is polarized, but rather is the painful evidence that what we are desperately needing and secretly looking for is a genuine sense of unity that can only come from a place that is deeper and more true than all of the things that divide us.
As has happened before, the world has been darkened by the shadow of those promoting falsehoods and being willing to “live in lies” in order to gain political power. The truth is that a government that is built upon falsities becomes captive to its own lies. Meanwhile, everyone who manages to refuse the system of lies threatens the power of falseness and helps in some way to break the spells of ignorance and self-delusion. In the growing climate of great uncertainty, amidst the storms of misinformation and the flood of extreme emotions, the important thing is not to lose our own sense of soul and our own instincts for authenticity.
The antidote to the collective poison of living in lies is found where each of us finds a way to live in truth. Despite the chaos and confusions of the modern world, we are the current inheritors of the deep human longings for truth and beauty and the life-sustaining capacity to grow from within and help transform the world. Each time we take another step in the search for meaning and purpose, we are living in truth.
Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new free online event “Arts and Practices: Antidotes to Overwhelm, Sources of Resiliency” on Thursday, November 21. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 700 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth begins with excerpts from a new psychological survey that a majority of American adults are worried that the upcoming presidential election could be the end of democracy in the United States. More than 7 in 10 people fear the results could lead to widespread violence. While it is clear that the political stakes are high, the levels of uncertainty and fear are even higher.
Across the board, people feel less able to predict and control things, much less integrate the flood of emotions that come from all of the upheaval. Caught between the extremities of nature and the extremes of contemporary politics, people can become inundated by fear, flooded with worries, and overwhelmed by the radical presence of uncertainty. In the radical times in which we live, human intolerance for uncertainty has increasingly become an intolerance for other humans.
Michael Meade offers an ancient story that suggests that simply turning away from the storms of life or trying to deny their effect upon our psyches does not protect us from the corrosive conditions of our human community. When the world becomes stuck and deeply divided, the solace we desperately need and the sense of unity we have so clearly lost must be sought in the unseen realm of great imagination and in the healing haunts of nature.
Traditionally, the medicines needed to heal this world have been found in the Otherworld in the form of imagination, visions and dreams and in the shape of nature with its many ways of offering healing and refuge for the human spirit.
When the realm of human culture becomes unwelcoming and toxic, whatever it might be that stirs a sense of eros and deep connectedness can quickly become the antidote to the storms of uncertainty and the currents of fear and anxiety. As many ancient stories try to remind us, the indelible spirit of life keeps trying to enter the world and can only enter it through those people who are alive at a given time.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new free online event “Arts and Practices: Antidotes to Overwhelm, Sources of Resiliency” on Thursday, November 21. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 700 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode addresses the issue of the “strongman” in politics and the way it exemplifies and contributes to a loss of authenticity, a lack of integrity and a loss of soul in modern cultures.
“As a storyteller and someone who studies mythology, I carry stories around, maybe in the same way that someone might carry food or medicine or equipment in a backpack in case a need arises. To follow the metaphor, I need stories for nourishment. I need stories for medicine. And stories equip me with ways of dealing with trouble or tragedy or trickery that I otherwise wouldn't have. When something strikes me as troublesome, a story often comes to mind. That's what happened when I read news reports about the current presidential election in the United States coming down to gender issues and what it means to be a man.
Observers and pollsters are pointing out that while a high percentage of women say they will vote for Vice-President Kamala Harris, an even higher percentage of men say that they will vote for former president Donald Trump. Polling data also indicates that younger men are increasingly being persuaded by Trump's posturing as a strong man. And sadly, that leads him to double down on crudely demeaning the first woman to become a vice president in the United States, while also threatening to punish members of the media and anyone else who opposes him.
While the notion of a strong man as savior can seem appealing when the world is full of conflicts and uncertainty, the long history of human survival as a species depends upon something other, something more than just claiming to be strong or trying to appear as manly and invincible. The idea of people, especially young men, falling for the posture of strength and the pretense of courage brought to mind an old story from the traditions of Central Africa.
The ancient story of how a powerful hunter becomes a visionary seeker has been handed down from people who were specifically known to be crafty survivors able to withstand hardships and survive the most difficult life circumstances. They knew that in the hard times they had to draw upon their instinctive capacities for toughing it out. They also knew that at critical times the point becomes hunting for a greater sense of meaning in life and responding to the age old calling of truth and beauty, or else everyone might lose their way and wind up both empty handed and hollow inside.
We are living amidst massive storms in nature and confounding storms of conflict and chaos in culture and our survival, as well as life on the planet, depends upon our connection to our own souls, where the instincts for survival and the longing for truth and meaning dwell together. In the depths of our souls we can find the age-old connection to the Soul of the World, which has survived endless numbers of storms and natural disasters. The quest for truth and meaning is as ancient and necessary as the hunt for food and shelter and safety; for truth and beauty provide places of refuge for the heart and the soul of humanity without which we cannot find the true courage or the actual wisdom needed to survive the storms of life.”
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade talk more about finding soul in difficult times by purchasing his new in-depth course “Holding the Thread of Life”. Purchase and learn more at courses.mosaicvoices.org
You can save 30% on this new course and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 680 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode is about the need for living symbols that can give us a sense of unity and wholeness in a divided world. Symptom is an old Greek word that refers to something that “falls upon us or strikes us” in a way that wounds us or divides us against ourself. At this critical time on Earth, almost anything can suddenly become symptomatic and leave us more personally wounded and more collectively divided.
The word symbol derives from Greek roots, meaning “to throw together or bring things together.” A genuine symbol unites unlike or opposite things in a way that reveals the underlying unity of life, but also reveals other levels of reality. When most levels of Nature and culture simultaneously manifest disruptive symptoms, we have a greater need for symbols that can remind us of the origins of life, which are always nearby and able to be tapped for the energies of healing and renewal.
The antidote for the isolation and dissociation that has become so characteristic of modern life lies in finding again the ancient wellsprings of human imagination and the personal thread to the underlying continuity of all of life. In this old way of imagining and thinking, an endless story unfolds from the core of creation, and a living thread of imagination is woven within the heart that connects each of us to that unfolding story.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “The Soul of Change” beginning on Thursday, October 17. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this new series and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 700 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth begins with the idea that the old terminology of 100-year storms and 1000-year storms makes little sense, since events of that magnitude now happen so often. It becomes difficult to deny that we now live in a world that is more unpredictable, more chaotic, and sadly, more dangerous. As the storms occurring in nature grow greater and move faster, a parallel intensification of cultural conflicts and political storms have also been growing greater and changing with remarkable speed. By now, the two areas of increasing turbulence can be seen to overlap in ways that add more chaos and more unnecessary suffering to those who are caught in the path of the storms. At the same time that many communities struggle with life-altering losses and remain without water and basic services, the so called “online community” has become inundated with a storm of its own making. The disinformation, lies and conspiracy theories that have become a maelstrom in the political realm, have now been injected into recovery efforts after the recent hurricane in ways that actually endanger rescue missions and make it more difficult for people to get the necessities they need to survive. The aftermath of natural disasters can now include unnecessary and unnatural emotional torment for those already suffering losses of life and livelihood. As the world increasingly becomes a place of chaos and conflict, we all suffer greater levels of disorientation and overwhelm, even if we are not directly in the wake of the latest natural disaster or shocking missile attack or polarizing statements by those claiming to be leaders. We are all living through a collective loss of soul, for the soul is the missing thing, the unifying element between opposing forces. The soul is the connective tissue of the world, and without it, the darkness around us can just grow deeper and deeper. Yet, no matter how alienating the outer world can become, the deeper layers of the self and soul remain places of healing and self-forgiveness, that in turn connects us to the unifying source of life that keeps trying to awaken within us and knows how we can each contribute to the healing of a broken world and to the process of renewal that can follow all the chaos.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “The Soul of Change” beginning on Thursday, October 17. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this new series and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 700 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth focuses on the sense that we are living through a radical time when change becomes necessary and a transformation of life becomes more possible. Michael Meade uses an ancient myth to depict, not just creation, but importantly the process of re-creation which secretly sustains life on earth. When we find ourselves in a time of radical changes in nature and conflicts and chaos in human societies, growing our true selves and changing our lives becomes more possible, unless we become stuck in the grip of uncertainty and fear. If we stay at the fearful, anxious level too long we can become divided from our deeper sense of self and can lose our natural capacity to be part of ongoing creation.
As difficult and fearful as it can be to live at this critical time on earth, the human soul is ancient and deep and knows that the world can collapse and renew itself at the same time. In terms of myth and imagination, we are also in a period of re-creation and potential renewal. To be human is to feel vulnerable and suffer uncertainty, but also to be touched by the divine and therefore be able to heal and transform and contribute to the natural and necessary process of re-creation.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “The Soul of Change” beginning on Thursday, October 17. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this new series and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 680 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode begins with the idea of the Cone of Uncertainty as the front part of a hurricane or tropical storm that can veer to the right or left and change directions frequently. Michael Meade uses the Cone of Uncertainty as a metaphor for the political storms and radical uncertainties that characterize the current campaign season in the U.S. “No political forecaster could have predicted the storm of inauthenticity that overshadows so many issues and increasingly divides people into fearfully opposed sides. At this point in the amplified uncertainty of the modern world, some major candidates are boldly creating and spreading outright lies, as if their plan is to use an overwhelming storm of misinformation and easily proven untruths to simply overwhelm people and undermine any source of truth or shared sense of common humanity.”
When the world becomes flooded with anxiety and uncertainty a greater psychological understanding is needed and that can come through an awakening of the authentic self that makes each person unique and unrepeatable and valuable in the struggle for healing and renewal. When we unfold the story wound within our souls and untie the knots within our hearts, we instinctively add presence to the world and contribute to the spirit of life in ways that are authentic and meaningful. As we transform ourselves from within, even if it only consists of small steps or little ways, we also help in some way to transform the world.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “The Soul of Change” beginning on Thursday, October 17. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this new series and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 680 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
On this episode, Michael Meade explores how life is change and to be truly alive means to be repeatedly transforming ourselves. There's an old statement that says, "The soul is here for us to transform". Yet at the same time, something within us resists changing, even when the time for transforming our lives has come. In the mysterious way of the world, the metamorphosis of the butterfly offers ways to understand why we resist the exact changes we most need in order to transform ourselves and help change the world.
Along with this potent image of the butterfly, Meade also looks at transformation through the core practice of ritual. Creative rituals can help release the burdens of our lives while connecting our minds and hearts in ways that reduce fear and anxiety and ease the grief of isolation. Ritual gives a place for constricting attitudes to loosen, for emotions to flow and for the reservoir of genuine hope to renew. On the ground of ritual, undiscovered parts of ourselves can awaken and strengthen our sense of meaning and purpose in life.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “The Soul of Change” beginning on Thursday, October 17. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this new series and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 680 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth focuses on the struggle between the force of tyranny and the power of liberation from falsehoods and injustice. The old Greek word tyrant was applied to despotic kings and rulers, but was also used to describe popular usurpers who claimed to be all powerful and above the law. In modern usage, a tyrant can be any oppressive or cruel ruler, a would-be dictator or autocrat. The rule of divide and conquer has been a favorite tool of tyrants who typically ascend to power through the manipulation of people's fears and the proliferation of confusion and chaos.
A key characteristic of such a tyrant is an insistence upon complete obedience from other people. And there lies a sad irony, for tyranny is not something simply imposed upon people without their agreement. Rather, the rise of tyranny requires consent from those willing to lose their own sense of individual freedom and liberty. Needless to say, it is when people are becoming smaller at the level of their self that they give the power of their lives over to those who claim to be the strong men, but who turn out to be empty within themselves and lacking that very thing that makes each person meaningful and purposeful, that is to say, a soul.
Opposite tyranny's unfair and cruel use of power would be a greater sense of autonomy and freedom. The word liberal can mean “generous, noble or free,” but can also mean “selfless and unrestricted.” Although it has become common for conservative politicians to use the word liberal as something derogative, it remains the key concept and core spirit of any genuine democracy. The American experiment in democracy was founded upon the liberal principle that all humans are endowed with natural rights and that government exists to protect those rights.
Authoritarianism has always posed the most potent challenge to liberalism, and it has now returned as an ideological force armed with previously unimaginable tools of social media, disinformation and social controls, even reaching into the heart of liberal societies, seeking to undermine them from within.
The dream of America as a liberal democracy was never simply an economic enterprise, never only a search for personal aggrandizement. Rather, America has always been a dream of freedom needing to be renewed and be reimagined by each generation. The seeds of that dream have always included longings for opportunity, but also a desire for living with a sense of justice for all that includes care for those less fortunate and mercy for those suffering illness or trapped in poverty. There has always been a deeper dream of America, not simply the political notion of a union of states, but an intuition of a deeper unity of life. Not simply the chance to win an election, but an opportunity to keep dreaming the dream forward and even the opportunity to sacrifice for a future of renewed meaning and universal ideals.
The word vote can mean more than “the formal expression of a wish or a choice for a candidate or a proposal.” Vote comes from old radical roots that mean “a vow, even a promise to God or a solemn pledge.” And there are times when casting a vote can be both an act of recalling the origins of the dream of freedom and also a strike against tyranny in all its forms. For it is exactly in times of great conflict and fear that the ideals of humanity must be remembered while meaning and truth are being struggled for again.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 680 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
One of the problems in the modern world is that people now tend to believe that science and technological inventions can solve problems that exist on much deeper and much greater levels. As Albert Einstein expressed it: “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.” In the upward and onward at all costs rush of the modern world, it is the heart and soul of humanity that most often becomes lost. Fortunately, it turns out that the missing elements that make life meaningful, purposeful and beautiful do not simply disappear. Rather, what is sorely missing in the outside must be sought in the deeper, greater sense of self that is the natural birthright of each human soul. Times of radical change and great uncertainty can become the exact conditions in which we each become the potential recipients of messages from the cosmos that remind us that what we are most desperately looking for already exists inside us in the form of a unifying and guiding sense of self and soul. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael live by joining his free online event “Finding a Calling in Life” on Thursday, September 5. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 675 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth. If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
For many reasons, people question whether there is any hope for the world at this time. Yet, it is the nature of hope to become lost before being found again at another level of life. In the old myth of Pandora's Box, hope only appears after all possible troubles, pains and agonies have been unleashed upon the world. At critical times, life can seem hopeless before a deeper level of hope can be found again in the depths of the human heart and soul. This deeper level of hope includes a greater vision of the world, as well as a sharper insight into one's own being, and thus the individual soul becomes the ground of all invention, becomes the root of all genuine imagination that can, in truth, alter the course of life and become the source of renewed hope for the world. When life becomes full of uncertainty and subject to radical changes and continuous shocks, what we need is a radical sense of hope that connects us to the vertical imagination that can, in truth, alter the course of life. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael live by joining his free online event “Finding a Calling in Life” on Thursday, September 5. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 670 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth. If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
On this episode, Michael Meade talks about inner genius and how without a calling we can feel lost throughout our lives. Without a genuine purpose, we can turn bitter, drifting without genuine passion and withering without the blessing of the spirit of life. Yet, the spirit of life within us does not age as we grow older. The inner genius continues to be on the verge of awakening and our calling keeps calling no matter what age we are, no matter what position or condition in life we may have. Because what calls to us is timeless, the calling can come at any time in life. This episode is edited from a Jung Platform Summit presentation. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael live by joining his free online event “Finding a Calling in Life” on Thursday, September 5. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 670 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth. If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
On this episode, Michael Meade tells an old story of someone who follows a dream that leads to being stripped down and stuck, before it unfolds a path to healing and wholeness. Stories and dreams are about the mysteries of life. And penetrating the mysteries requires a different kind of vision and a different understanding than what we use to negotiate the common world. By now, most people can agree that we are living in a broken world at both the levels of nature and culture. What still seems difficult to accept is that the way to find solutions involves accepting our own participation in the woundedness of the world. The presence of the wound makes healing necessary; it is also the presence of the wound that makes healing possible. The current moment of stripping down institutions and dissolution of familiar patterns of life may be the exact condition in which we begin to see with other eyes and find the threads of the dream of life again. But, in order to find ways to awaken to the meaning of life again, we have to accept our own woundedness. The world needs healing on so many levels, that there cannot be a single idea, simple process or common belief that ends all the conflicts and begins the healing. The missing ingredient, the deep medicine, the inner gold is hidden in our own hearts. Until we can loosen the stones that we have constructed to protect our vulnerable selves, we can't find the inner medicine or the inner wisdom of the soul. Only through that kind of process can we find genuine ways to become wounded-healers and bring some healing back to the world. If enough people would do that, then enough medicines would be found that we could contribute to the healing of ourselves, and at the same time, be humbly, but creatively helping to heal the world. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael live by joining his free online event “Finding a Calling in Life” on Thursday, September 5. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 625 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth. If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
In a world that's rapidly changing in ways that can feel chaotic and threatening, it becomes easy to feel diminished, lost and small. Although it is common now to feel like nothing but a speck in a vast, accidental universe; we only feel truly small when we lose our sense of soul. Small and insignificant as we may feel at times, we carry within our souls a spark that is connected to the galaxies and to the origins of creation. When the world becomes darker, more confusing and more chaotic, we have to learn to see with the eyes of the soul or else wind up feeling smaller and smaller when our souls would have us grow in meaningful ways.
When we begin to feel diminished by the chaos and the confusion in the world, there are two places to turn to. We can turn to our innate connection to the stars, to the origins of life and the source of ongoing creation. For that is part of the inheritance of the human soul. And we can turn the opposite way, looking inward where there is also a great expanse of darkness, in which the speck of star, the spark of life and inner light of the soul waits to receive our attention in order that it might grow, and it can only grow from darkness.
It is our nature to be betwixt and between, to be part of both the macrocosm and the microcosm; to be stretched between the mundane and the sacred, between the gravity-bound surface of the earth and the endless expanse of the starry heavens. We are here to grow our souls, despite and because of the darkness around us. For, the world is not a finished place; rather it is always on the verge of becoming. The same is true of our lives; for our souls are always on the verge of awakening further in both small and big ways that can connect with and contribute to creation ongoing.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 660 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth begins with the series of shocks and radical changes that have occurred in contemporary American politics and the current election campaign. Michael Meade expands the theme of dramatic changes to include both nature and culture as we find ourselves “in the midst of a transformation of life on earth.” Whether we want to admit to it or not, we have entered a radical transition of life in which we are being pushed and pulled into territories that we would not choose to go on our own. We keep finding ourselves in uncharted waters in terms of the future of the planet and in unmapped territories in terms of human culture.
At the same time, the human soul is not separate from the living world, but rather is secretly attuned to it. The radical changes sweeping through both nature and culture at this time can be felt by our souls, and because humans are implicated at all levels of the current crises in the world, a transformation of humanity is also required. Without a renewed sense of genuine imagination, the battles between lies and genuine knowledge will grow, just as the divisions between the mind and the body, humanity and nature will also expand. When everything seems about to fall apart or even come to a tragic end, what we need is not a sense of evolution over time, but a felt connection to the possibilities of recreation and renewal at this particular time.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 660 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
We live in a time when seemingly all possible conflicts and oppositions come crashing all around us. Each day leaves us more exposed to raw emotions and rocked by the harsh energies of life. The tragedies and calamities of this era leave us in the lurch of history as antagonisms harden into stone and life seems increasingly stuck.
In order to imagine ways to pass through the dire straits of these troubled times, Michael Meade turns to ancient myths which can offer a third way to see when we find ourselves caught between opposing ideas and hardened ideologies.
The old myth of Jason and the Argonauts includes the quest to recover the Golden Fleece, the symbol of justice, authentic authority and balance needed to bring peace back to the world. The tale also involves facing the famous obstacle of the clashing rocks that represent the danger of being crushed between the rocks and the hard places. The story illustrates that some greater imagination must be found, and something must be consciously sacrificed, or else more people will become unconsciously and unnecessarily sacrificed.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 650 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
On this episode of Living Myth, Michael Meade suggests that in times of change, just as in periods of personal crisis, there can be an intensification and an acceleration of calling. Whether it comes as a daunting challenge or a crushing blunder, a big dream or a cutting loss, each major life event has within it an opportunity to awaken to the call of the deeper self and the resident genius of the soul.
What calls us calls for the giving of the inherent gifts and natural talents we brought to life to begin with. What calls to us calls to the dream set within our soul before we were born. Answering the call opens pathways of genius and imagination that can lead to finding one’s “dharma” or natural way of being in life and serving in the world. We are each called to become more fully ourselves and our transformation liberates our spirit, but it also serves something beyond ourselves. In transforming each of us, genius also transforms the world.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael speak more about the themes in this podcast by taking his new in-depth course “Healer, Mentor, Elder, Guide”. Purchase and learn more at courses.mosaicvoices.org.
You can further support this podcast and save 30% on this new course by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 650 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
On this episode of Living Myth, edited from a Shift Network Summit on mysticism, Michael Meade suggests that we each arrive at turning points where the map we have been given does not match the territory we find ourselves in. Because each soul is unique, each life journey leads to the pathless path where we must awaken to the dream of our own life. When we open the eyes of the heart, we find the ways of the mystic souls and visionary seers, the outsiders and wounded healers who hold the threads to the underlying unity of life.
In seeking after what the soul desires we become pilgrims with no home but the path the soul would have us follow. As the old proverb says, “Before you begin the journey, you own the journey. Once you have begun, the journey owns you.” After all, what good is a dream that doesn’t test the mettle of the dreamer? What good is a path that doesn’t carry us to the edge of our capacity and then beyond that place? A true calling involves a great exposure before it can become a genuine refuge.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael speak more about the themes in this podcast by taking his new in-depth course “Healer, Mentor, Elder, Guide”.
Purchase and learn more at courses.mosaicvoices.org.
You can further support this podcast and save 30% on this new course by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 650 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode begins with the sense that the recent presidential debate and the series of radical Supreme Court decisions add to the long line of broken moments that leave us in a deepening state of loss about the present and in an increasing condition of uncertainty about the future. Michael Meade turns to ancient ideas about how the process of elevating people to positions of power and authority is related to the web of life. At critical times the web of life becomes more fragile and we find ourselves in danger of losing that which secretly holds us together.
One of the great dangers in the modern world involves the accumulation of great power in the hands of few people without a corresponding education of the people regarding the inevitable shadow sides of power. The more power a single person or a single group can wield, the more damage they can do to the delicate threads of humanity and the subtle web of things. The manner in which power becomes misused or mishandled relates directly to the character flaws of those being elected. For, being elevated to high office inevitably intensifies the shadow side of whoever handles power.
Because of human nature, whoever is given great power will have specific ways in which they become attached to power and become inflated about their own importance in the given situation. Those handling power become tempted, not only to misuse their authority, but also to hold on to it in order not to suffer a loss of a sense of self.
The oldest meaning of the term “king” involved a sense of sacrifice, and the sacrifice means “to make things sacred.” Ancient rites of elevation to high office were intended to be a reminder of what is sacred in life, and also be a renewal of the ideals and core values that bind us all to each other and connect humanity to the web of life.
Each occasion of electing a leader is an opportunity to recall how handling power corrupts in predictable ways and that the ways that we empower people or use power ourselves either contributes to the vitality of the web of things, or the web of life, or else it diminishes, unravels, and can destroy the web of life.
The word crisis refers to “a point in the treatment of an illness or a disease where things can go one way or the other.” We live in truly critical times amidst a series of shocking events and broken moments that are likely to continue. We are in a collective rite of passage that requires that we find deeper ways to understand the shadows of power and greater ways to reimagine the meaning of leadership and sacrifice in service of the ideals of humanity and the living web of life.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 650 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth begins with the idea that the task of finding symbols and stories through which we discover the meaning of our lives is as old as human consciousness. In that sense, Carl Jung was rediscovering ancient knowledge when he wrote: “What we are in our inward vision can only be expressed by way of myth. Each human life is…like a plant that lives from its rhizome. Its true life is invisible, hidden in that root.”
In response to a time of great crisis in his life Jung realized that an inner myth was trying to become conscious and that he had to awaken to it: “I took it upon myself to get to know my myth and I regarded this as the task of all tasks.”
Since collective mythologies no longer generate a sense of existential meaning and coherence, turning inward in search of our own mythic story becomes essential for our health and psychic growth. By tapping the inner mythic root, we can develop a more conscious and creative relationship with our own deep self and soul; but also find our unique way of contributing to a world in crisis.
As was the case with Jung, our personal myth or inner story tries to surface each time we feel we are in a crisis or at a turning point. If we allow the inside story of the soul to awaken and guide us, we become the living word trying to enter the world though us. Like Jung on his radical path of self-discovery and mythic recovery, we are repeatedly being called to find and learn the personal myths trying to be born from our own souls.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 650 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth is about how our dreams call to something in us that is awake in some other way. Dreams call us to recognize other aspects of ourselves, other levels of awareness and even other realms of being. Dreams are the universal evidence that there is an Otherworld and that we as humans, as dreamers live in both worlds. Each person born is called to become a living bridge where dreams and reality can meet.
Whether we acknowledge it or not, whether we remember it or not, each night we dream. And each night we die to the practical, measurable, logistical world and float on waves of the eternal. We let go of so-called reality, pull on the skyrope of dreaming and whether we know it or not, we touch the source of life again.
We are called to awaken in ways that allow us to hold the two worlds together. For, what is most missing in the common world must be found in the Otherworld. In order to find our way in life and not lose our sense of self, we need both deep sleep and deep dreams. The two go hand in hand and each contributes to the creative presence of imagination and the renewal of life and that can happen while we sleep.
Life is the dream that dreams us up to begin with and that dreams the world on through us. Even when everything around us seems to be falling apart, dreams of a coherent center or a living source of life can appear to remind us that we are secretly connected to the Otherworld, to the center of things, to what used to be known as the Soul of the World.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 640 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth begins with the meaning of the verb to think. Ever since Descartes declared, “I think therefore I am,” thinking has come to mean to form in the mind, to consider, to reflect upon. Yet, the Indo-European roots of the verb “to think” can also mean “to feel” and even “to imagine.” The sense of thinking having more than one meaning leads back to the ancient idea that there are three realms of life and three ways of thinking about the world.
The first and most evident realm of life appears as what most now refer to as the “real world.” At this level, things tend to be seen as concrete and measurable and thinking tends to be objective, logical, even logistical. The second realm of life involves a greater capacity for psychological thinking as there is a kind of doubling of reality. How we feel is added to the factual details of what we experience. Our inner life expands, a deeper self becomes more present and relationships become more complex and more important.
On the third level of life, we find that behind the logical and beyond the psychological, there exists the realm of the mythological. Seen this old way, myth has its own logic as imagination is added to the powers of thinking and feeling. It has become a common mistake to think that myths are about the past, the deeper truth is that myth is about what happens all the time. It isn't that literal things aren't real, but that they have never been the whole story.
Mythic imagination can reveal the hidden patterns and universal truths that make events meaningful and that can also make life renewable. For, myth has always performed a redeeming function as it can open new ways to envision the world and new paths to follow in life. Myths are vehicles of imagination that are not intended to be believed in, but that exist in order to be learned from.
The deep and abiding truths that nourish the roots of life can never be proven through scientific methods, but must be grasped intuitively. The point is to allow the immediate powers of myth and imagination to give us a poetic grasp of our own lives and the events in the world.
Whereas history is said to simply repeat itself, myth connects us to the origins of life where creation constantly renews itself. When life seems to make no sense at all, it is the mythic sense of life that we are lacking. Mythic imagination makes the most sense when the common sense of things has been lost and the familiar ways of thinking and seeing no longer work.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael live by joining his free online event “How To Not Abandon Oneself” on Thursday, June 13.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 635 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
On this episode, Michael Meade tells two stories about the question we are asked at the end of our lives. We enter the world as seekers and what we most need to find is the uniqueness of our own souls. Each life is a surprising pilgrimage intended to arrive at the center of the pilgrim’s soul.
The figures most revered in the many traditions found throughout the world became memorable because they became uniquely themselves. Whether a spiritual teacher or an artist, a healer or a leader, they had to awaken to an inner vision and find a destiny that was already set within them for the tale of their life to become instructive to others.
Although it has mostly been forgotten in the modern world, each soul bears an inborn purpose and a natural way of being from the beginning. Each person born is intended to bring something meaningful to the world. When everything seems to be falling apart, we must turn all the way inside in order to find the threads of meaning and purpose that are woven into our very being. When we follow our soul’s inner thread it becomes more clear that the changes so urgently needed in the outside world have to begin with meaningful changes in the souls of those born to these troubled times.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael live by joining his free online event “How To Not Abandon Oneself” on Thursday, June 13.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 625 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth brings a focus to the inner initiate, the eternal seeker in the soul. To initiate means “to begin, to originate, to enter into, to awaken.” The inner initiate is the “beginner’s mind” part of each of us that is always wanting to learn and ever ready to begin anew. In that sense, the initiate within us becomes the locus through which healing energies and inspired ideas continually try to enter the common world.
Entering the modern world is like stepping into the middle of a rite of passage that has reached the stage of darkness and descent. In the midst of all the conflicts and confusion, the inner initiate knows how to tap the original source of life and keep finding ways to start anew and help regenerate life on earth.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online event “How To Not Abandon Oneself” on Thursday, June 13. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 625 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode brings a focus to ways in which the troubles and tragedies of the world can fall upon us in storms of emotion. When life becomes greatly uncertain, and the daily world becomes deeply unsettled, we can find ourselves subjected to sudden states of fear and anxiety. Michael Meade uses an old Sufi teaching story to open up the emotional territory where fear can become contagious and one emotion can turn into another.
Emotions are a necessary and mysterious presence, a flow of energies without which we cannot tell if we are alive or not. Emotions make us vulnerable and volatile, but they also allow us to change and grow. The old idea is not that we should avoid, reject or repress emotions, but rather that we need to learn how to feel them. Raw emotions can be eruptive and disruptive, yet feelings can contain emotional energies so that they become centering, instructive and healing.
Fear can awaken instincts and intuitions that we need for survival. Anger can reset personal boundaries when we feel overwhelmed or violated. Sorrow can wash away attitudes that no longer serve us. Emotions turn out to be part of the great outflowing of life, without which we cannot fully live or change or meaningfully grow. When not repressed or denied, emotions serve as the vital links between body, spirit and soul. In that sense, emotions can be seen as messages that keep us connected to a deeper sense of self and to a greater sense of life, especially when the world around us is radically changing.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade talk more about the territory of emotions by joining his free online event “How To Not Abandon Oneself” on Thursday, June 13.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 625 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
On this episode, Michael Meade explores the dynamic between myth and dream and considers the idea that myths are like the collective dreams of humanity. He also speaks to the core idea that each life carries a message and a meaning trying to find its way into the world and each adds a thread in the tale of history being woven as we speak, being shaped as we dream, and potentially being made anew each time we step more fully into the story trying to live through us.
The inner dream is the vessel for each uniquely shaped life, and when the seas of change and the times of loss sweep over the world again, it is the inner dream of life that must be awakened. By honoring the ancient wisdom of the past, we can discover where we are in the story of our own dreams, live out those dreams, and contribute towards the renewal and re-creation of the world.
This episode is edited from a 2022 interview for a Shift Network Online Dreamwork Summit.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 625 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode begins with the idea that we suffer a mutual fate of living in a time of tragedy and trouble, and yet, the way through the troubles of the world must depend upon an individual thread of fate set within each person. Although the thread of fate implies limitation in each person’s life, it also ties each person to a destiny waiting to awaken. In order to illustrate the dynamic of limitations and calling, Michael Meade tells the story of how he came to write the book called “Fate and Destiny”.
There may be no greater time than these troubled times for understanding how the exact limits of an individual life can lead to the specific destiny that was the aim of that life from the beginning. As Meade says, “destiny is purpose seen from the other end of life.”
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade talk more about fate and destiny by joining his new online workshop “Facing Fate, Finding Destiny” this Saturday, May 11.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this new workshop and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 625 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
On this episode of Living Myth, Michael Meade looks at two contemporary crises involving young people through the lens of rites of passage. One crisis involves the alarming increase in both the numbers of youth who consider suicide and those actually taking their own lives. Teens and young adults across the country report growing levels of sadness, loneliness and hopelessness with youth of color and LGBTQ+ youth increasingly being severely affected.
Young people have no choice but to grow up in the collective atmosphere of their culture. At this point in time that means to be more exposed to extreme cultural conflicts as well as the raw emotions and extreme edges of human nature. The other crisis stems from troubling and tragic forces that currently tear at the heart of humanity and form the background for student protests erupting on college campuses.
Throughout the world it is typical to find young people at the forefront of movements demanding societal changes. At the same time, the more conservative elements of a society tend to overreact when students and young adults inevitably seek to respond to issues of mass violence, injustice and needless death and destruction. It is natural for youthful aspirations to raise and defend the highest ideals of humanity, especially in the face of inhumane forces and practices. At the same time, modern cultures often lack the presence of genuine elders who can combine a true passion for human ideals with the wisdom to find ways of healing and uniting people in the midst of cultural crises.
Although coming of age has come to mean being legally recognized as an adult, traditional rites of passage involved coming upon that which is ageless, timeless and enduring in human life. To truly come of age, especially in a time of undeniable global crises, means to experience both the dreams of what life might be and the agonies that currently plague so many people on earth. The old idea was that the specific struggles of youth become the twists of fate through which they find seeds of meaning and purpose in their own lives, while also trying to face and change the dilemmas and tragedies that afflict their community or society.
Living amidst the cascade of crises that continually upend the contemporary world is like entering a radical rite of passage that is well underway, but that remains mostly unconscious. At this critical time, healing and renewal is essential on most levels of life and means facing chaos and uncertainty and accepting the need to struggle with the core issues of meaning and justice and the rights of all people to be able to live meaningfully.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Facing Fate, Finding Destiny” on Saturday, May 11. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this new workshop and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 625 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode follows the path of an old tale in which youth and elders have to solve seemingly impossible tasks, outwit a power-driven ruler and help create a more welcoming, wise and just society.
Traditional tales from many cultures show how youth and elders are opposite sides of a psychic pairing in which each is necessary to understand the other. Despite cultural gaps between them, youth and elders are secretly connected, and each holds an essential piece of the human inheritance. The eternal youth in each soul carries the original dream of our life, while the old sage in each heart has the wisdom needed to find and follow paths of meaning and purpose.
Elders can carry a greater vision because they have developed insight into their own lives, they have faced up to whatever fate has handed them and found ways not simply to survive, but also to understand the struggles and the suffering that are part of each human life. As those who become truly old enough to know better, they also become living depositories of wisdom for the next generation to draw upon. And in that sense, they develop inner authority and authority that knows what needs to be preserved and be remembered in order for human life to be noble and meaningful and properly in tune with nature.
When the world becomes increasingly divided, the challenge involves redeeming positive views of both the elder and the youth, and thereby rediscovering how each can help envision a more creative and inclusive world. When enough people can become vessels through which the eternal youth and the wise old sage can enter the world, then there can be an awakening of the collective soul that can turn things around, even in the midst of a period of great conflicts and loss. Human culture is intended to be continuously remade through the genius of youth and the wisdom of elders acting in concert with the capacity of nature and the earth to repeatedly renew life at all levels.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Facing Fate, Finding Destiny” on Saturday, May 11. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this new workshop and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 625 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
On this Earth Day podcast, Michael Meade begins by looking at the Gaia Hypothesis published 50 years ago and then explores the older roots of the name Gaia, which can be traced back to ancient India where Gaya or Gayatri appears as the ancient goddess of creation. Gaya appears in the Vedas or sacred texts as the source of all knowledge and wisdom. As the “mother of all,” she also had the power to heal all ills and nurture all of life, so that the wellbeing of the planet depended upon the presence and support of Gaya. Originally, the Vedas existed in the form of chants and hymns with the root sound Om being the original tone emitted from the womb of the cosmos. The potent chant known as the Gayatri Mantra was considered the first hymn to come forth from the root sound Om. Thus, Gaya or Gaia whether in sound, in image or in name brings a long lineage that echoes back to the origins of life and resonates with the hidden unity of the world.
In that sense, there was something truly intuitive in the idea of using the name Gaia in a modern attempt to revive the sense of the world being a living entity and all of life being secretly interconnected. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Facing Fate, Finding Destiny” on Saturday, May 11. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events. You can save 30% on this new workshop and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 625 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth. If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
Michael Meade tells an old story from India about the creation of the world. In it, an ancient sage named Markandeya is caught in the tension between creation and wonder, despair and loss. His existential crisis speaks to the world we live in now with its increasing levels of fear and despair. Addressing the two great fears - fear of abandonment and the fear of being overwhelmed – Meade talks about how easily we can get lost in despair if we don’t know there is something essential in the ground of our being. He suggests that this story, and all the old stories, remind us that every soul born comes in with genius capacities, natural gifts and a unique way of being – a fundamental quality that serves as medicine and antidote to feelings of discouragement, fear and anxiety.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Facing Fate, Finding Destiny” on Saturday, May 11. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this new workshop and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 625 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth considers how a total solar eclipse can have the effect of reinforcing the now common idea that we are each but a mere speck on a small planet orbiting a relatively unimportant star within a random and meaningless universe. Or it can be a revelation that reassures our souls that we are secretly connected to the whole living cosmos.
A total solar eclipse has the paradoxical quality of hiding the sun, while also revealing aspects of its true nature. At totality, the sun appears as it truly is, a star amongst the other stars. At totality, it looks more like a living, breathing thing, rather than a bright, solid orb.
Despite the increase of cynicism, and the rise of nihilism, our souls have an inborn expectation to have profound experiences of luminosity and the hidden unity of life. The numinous appears as something uncanny and mysterious that gives us a sense of the presence of the Divine and awakens a deeply felt intuition of the rightness of a situation or an event. Within such a moment, the habitual distinction that we make between inner and outer, between subjective and objective, between dream and reality breaks down to reveal the living cosmos and our own lives under one eclipsed light.
For a moment of indefinite duration, our attention is pulled away from the increasingly divided and polarized state in which we live, and the world suddenly makes sense. On one level, we barely matter. On another level, what matters most to us turns out to matter to the world as well.
Epiphanies are occasions of unexpected benediction and blessing during which meaning can flood us with a felt sense of the wholeness and the holiness of life. As wise people used to say, the whole world reveals itself to be a form of living truth. An eclipse of the sun can be seen as a gift, as a collective moment of eternity waiting and wanting to be seen by the inner eyes trying to open from within each and all of our souls.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Facing Fate, Finding Destiny” on Saturday, May 11.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this new workshop and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 625 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
On this episode of Living Myth, Michael Meade contrasts two creation myths that feature the original division that becomes the source of all subsequent divisions in life. One ancient tale makes clear that healing and transformation are the secret aims of the tension of opposites that exist inside each person, inside each society and inside life itself.
“At critical moments in the life of individuals and societies, the basic elements and energies of existence polarize. While the two poles of a polarity seem to be irreconcilable opposites, they are secretly one. In a true polarity, one side cannot exist without the other; for existence itself is an essential unity appearing as a duality. Yet, at the level of pre-systemic thought, the mystery of totality underlies all the conflicts and divisions in life, both personal and collective. We suffer what divides us in order to find ways back to the wholeness before all the dividing began.
Something ancient in us bends us towards the origins of the whole thing, so that what troubles us takes us down to the bottom of what troubles us and back to the beginning before the original unity was divided. The word healing means “to make whole again.” Healing, health, wealth, wholeness all hail from the same etymological roots. To heal is to make whole and what continually requires healing is the original split. No healing without a return to origins, no healing that does not in some way touch the original split.
Without stories that remind us of the hidden wholeness and the hidden holiness of the world, all that is left are the pressing problems and threatening divisions that seem increasingly impossible to solve.”
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “The Creative Middle Way” beginning on Thursday, March 28.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this new course and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 600 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
On this episode, Michael Meade suggests that the message borne by spring flowers breaking through the hard ground of a long winter involves much more than a simple return to how things were before. In mythological terms, creation is ever ongoing as nature continually presents the essential mystery of life renewing itself from the haunts of death. In terms of that ageless story, we are being invited to participate in a return to the original potential that was there at the beginning and continually becomes present again. This greater invitation involves the blossoming of our own souls as well as a potential renewal of culture. In Greek myths, Eros was the first-born deity, there at the very beginning, but also present again at the beginning of any new project or meaningful change in life. Eros is the archetypal presence of longing and attraction, the primal energy of connection, the secret glue that holds everything together. Eros is the power that connects each of our souls with the living, breathing soul of the world. Eros is also the connective tissue in social life and all relationships. When this soulful sense of instinctive connection and compassion declines, people turn against each other and life itself is diminished. When we lose our natural sense of longing for beauty and truth and being present to the wonder of creation, we become as if dead to the world. It is our collective fate to live at a time of both tragedy and transformation. It is our mutual calling, not simply to return to the world as we knew it, but to become part of a genuine renewal, a flowering of imagination and a recreation of the sense that we are all connected and part of the mystery and the ongoing creation of life on earth. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “The Creative Middle Way” beginning on Thursday, March 28. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events. You can save 30% on this new course and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 600 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth. If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode is about how the inner tension between the limits of fate and the call of destiny manifests uniquely in each person’s life. It is also about how a dark night of the soul can serve as the liminal stage of a life-changing rite of passage. Finally, it is about how we are currently in the midst of a collective rite of passage that involves the destiny of humanity and the fate of life on earth.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “The Creative Middle Way” beginning on Thursday, March 28.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this new course and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 600 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode begins with Socrates’ idea of the difference between two types of lies. The first type of untruth is the “noble lie” best understood as stories or myths that are not factual, yet are foundational because they reveal important truths and wisdom. The other kind of untruth is the “lie of the soul” that is taken into a person's being and becomes treated as if it was the truth. This is the most dangerous kind of lie because it has a destructive effect on a person's core being and soul.
The rise of political strongmen in many parts of the world is typically based upon lies of the soul that cause wide divisions and great animosities amongst people. Unfortunately, many modern people have become infected with lies of the soul, which then become like a collective poison that can corrupt people in positions of power as well as entire institutions. Just as the lie of the soul separates a person from any kind of inner truth, it can also separate a society from the very truths upon which it was founded.
Currently, we are living through our own harrowing version of the loss of essential truths and the rise of lies that divide people and threaten the stability of the world. As a partial antidote to the spread of lies that damage the soul, Michael Meade turns to the epic myth of Churning the Milk Ocean from ancient India. We all are caught in a tug of war that keeps dividing people and threatens to pull everything apart. Yet, one of the functions of myth is to show that this has happened before and further reveal that the increased tension of the opposites can also generate the energy and consciousness needed to raise forgotten truths and generate the healing needed to restore balance and meaning to life on earth.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “The Creative Middle Way” that begins on Thursday, March 28. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this series and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 600 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode begins with the idea that we are living in flood times again as we face overwhelming changes at most levels of life. Deluge and flood stories have been found even in landlocked places, as if to make clear that it is not simply the literal seas that can overflow, but also the psychic waters of the unconscious that can overwhelm an individual or an entire culture.
In the old story of Noah, a great ark serves as a life preserving vessel in the midst of great loss and worldwide flooding. In the tale of Jonah, the life enhancing vessel turns out to be a whale which acts as a kind of cosmic womb. In this archetypal vision, the belly of the whale becomes a place of revelation of the mysteries of life and a source of knowledge and wisdom that is missing at the surface of life.
In the symbolic womb, what is worth saving in the individual soul becomes saved; while what is misconceived, misguided and riddled with fear becomes dissolved. Emerging from the belly of the whale depicts a passage from the darkness of primordial chaos to the light of creation. This kind of redemption from below becomes the source of a genuine hope that comes from facing darkness and despair and finding a psychological rebirth and spiritual regeneration.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can learn more about how stories can awaken us and give deep insight into our lives by taking Michael Meade’s new in-depth course “Finding Stories to Live With”. Purchase and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/store.
You can save 30% on this new course and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 600 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
Michael Meade tells a story to illustrate the idea that sometimes we must go where we fear to go. Fear is an old word that derives from the same roots that give us “fare,” as in “thoroughfare.” Although it often causes people to run away from troubling situations, at a deeper level, fear means “to go through it.” When we fail to recognize how fear works in the world, we become ruled by it. The point is not to become paralyzed with foreboding or be caught in the panic that can grip the collective and cause people to run blindly in the wrong direction. The point is to willingly go where most fear to go and follow where the fear might lead.
Fear used to be called “the awakener,” for healthy fear intends to awaken us to our inner nature and the meaning and purpose embedded in our souls. When faced with danger or disintegration, fear would have us respond from the depths of our soul, where the core pattern of life tries to grow and guide our way. In the end, what we fear will not go away, for it indicates what we must go through in order to awaken, become more genuine, and live more fully.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can learn more about how stories can awaken us and give deep insight into our lives by taking Michael Meade’s new in-depth course “Finding Stories to Live With”.
Purchase and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/store.
You can save 30% on this new course and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 600 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
Michael Meade uses an ancient tale about a lost message from the god of creation to consider the contemporary dilemma in which many people become blind to the truth. The old Sanskrit word avidya can mean “ignorance,” but also “delusion.” Avidya is a fundamental blindness about reality, not simply a lack of information that can be resolved with some new facts, but a veiling of the truth that can befall, not simply individuals, but entire groups of people.
The veil of avidya causes a kind of trance state in which people become increasingly distanced from their own deeper self as well as the underlying realities of life. The loss of shared truths in the outer world must be balanced by a greater sense of inner truth being uncovered in the hearts and souls of individuals. This kind of awakening involves a conscious connection to a deeper sense of self, which then becomes the unifying factor in each life. When the center cannot hold in the outside world and everything becomes divided, we need to tap the deep resources of our own self and soul, which can connect us to the endless energies of creation.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 600 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
Unlike religious narratives or scientific theories, folk myths don't require that we believe in them. They simply prefer that we continue to learn from them. Sometimes, the ancient wisdom needed for surviving and transforming our lives comes in the form of animals. This episode of Living Myth centers upon an old teaching tale about how a wise fish, a half-wise fish and one who is simply unwise deal with the nets intended to entrap them. Amidst a consideration of all the current crises that can entrap and incapacitate us, a bird appears with three pieces of wisdom about avoiding being trapped by the past as well as being caught in present fears and dangers.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 600 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
Increasing tensions throughout the world pit the effects of modern culture against the instinctive practice of becoming a genuine individual. Yet, the heart of the human drama concerns whether we are becoming a greater vessel for the flow of life. Either we are following spirit and growing more soul or we can find ourselves shrinking from life.
Downward movement personalizes and upward movement eternalizes. Thus, the genuine way is made by answering both the call to spirit and the pull of soul. Spirit continually calls us to awaken to a greater sense of self, while soul would have us connect more deeply to the world.
When in touch with the soul’s mythic thread we can find the arts and practices, the aims and meanings that allow our souls to grow deeper, our imagination to expand and our spirits to awaken.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 600 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
As the world rattles around us and the soul trembles, balancing symbols and archetypal energies stir deep within us. If we can hold the tension of the immediate limitations, we can connect to the soul’s power of redemption and life’s natural energies of renewal.
Archetypes, like instincts, are part of our inner inheritance. They hold all the potentials of life and can initiate creative responses to the challenges and dilemmas we face. As the outside world becomes more divided, the sense of creation coming from within repeats and renews the origins of life as when the sky and earth were separated and the world began.
The archetype of creativity connects us with the deepest roots of humanity and the ancient roots of renewal. The emergence of imagination and inspiration from within is a revelation of our undaunted soul and a little redemption as each act of creativity brings something new and meaningful into the world.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 600 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
Under the rule of the ego or little-self, we live on the fringes of our natural potential and our genuine purpose in life. A core pattern exists in each soul intended to shape the unique project of that life from within. Whenever we experience a life transition or personal crisis, the esoteric pattern and latent genius within us tries to awaken.
At each turning point in life, we must face our deepest fears in order to grow. The path of discovery will inevitably raise the exact fears that hold the heart captive. If we don't respond to fear, that's when we get stuck and paralyzed by fear. Fear is a message to the instincts and the intuitions of a person to move towards a greater awareness.
In contrast to the sense of a heroic journey that leads to treasure in the outside world, the road of awakening involves a pilgrimage to the genuine center of the deep self. What is so often sought in the outer world waits to be discovered in the soul’s inner realm. As things fall apart all around us, we have to find the center of the deep self within us.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 600 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
Currently, the world is beset by a cascade of crises that seem impossible to solve. Yet, the situation can also be seen as what the ancient Greeks called a kairos period, a betwixt and between time in which the course of history changes and all of reality seems to be altered. Things become both impossible and more possible at the same time as life transforms on many levels.
A kairos period often begins with crises that break time open and break down our usual patterns of life. Although radically disorienting, such moments can be transformative, even revelatory as hidden potentials of life become more visible. In that sense, kairos can be seen as “awakened time,” moments in which we can awaken to a greater sense of the world and our place in it.
Moments of awakening become “lived time” in which genuine transformation can occur at all levels of life. We have entered such an extended moment of radical change and alteration, one that is life-defining as well as life-changing. When the whole world turns upside down, it is the soul at the bottom of everything that is trying to become known again.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 600 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode takes up the issue of healing from the ancient idea of the Sacred Fifth, or Secret Fifth, that represents the hidden center of the world, the original source of wholeness and renewal. Following the Navajo myth of the Fifth World, Meade describes how a small reed can become the connective link to the axis of the world that then leads to the hidden center that remains the living source of life. The ancient myth becomes a way of recovering from and shifting the burden of the otherwise overwhelming dilemmas of the modern world.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of nearly 600 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
On this New Year’s podcast, Michael Meade begins an exploration of the myths of creation and tales of re-creation that allow time to renew and the world to begin again. Any serious consideration of creation must also include the energies of chaos that continually dissolve and disintegrate what creation establishes in the world. An ancient story from India describes the “two hands of creation” through which the world recreates itself from emptiness as well as from abundance, from sorrow as well as joy and from despair as well as wonder.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 590 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode approaches the darkest time of the year through the creative tension between time and eternity and between darkness and the light. Prior to the hardening of time that is so characteristic of the modern world, the eternal was understood to be part of the present moment, as well as being part of the distant past.
The mystery of renewal is woven into the fabric of being and into the cycles of nature, so that moments like winter solstice represent the core process of creation ongoing. In the far reaches of night, the sun stops for a pregnant moment in which timelessness renews time and brings the light back from the darkness. When seen symbolically, it also represents our innate ability to move from the darkness of unconsciousness to being more aware, or as people say, enlightened.
On one hand, we are time-bound creatures, on the other, we are secretly tied to eternal things. Because we live in such dark times in terms of all the conflicts in the world and the threats to the living systems of nature, it becomes more important that we relearn the secret connections between time and timelessness and between the darkness and the light.
The essence of solstice involves stopping, even if only for a moment, so that a touch of the eternal can restore our sense of the holiness and sacredness of life at the very time when the darkness is at its deepest. The instinct for warmth and care for love, and also for generosity in the dark of the year, arises naturally from the souls longing to feel the holiness and the interconnectedness of all of life.
In making beauty at the darkest time on Earth, we stand in relation to the natural beauty and the natural wonder of this world. We stand in connection to the radiance of the cosmos as anything from a single candle to a glowing shrine or a great bonfire can become a symbol of our longing to help bring the light of spirit and the touch of healing and holiness to life on Earth.
On a personal level, solstice creates an opportunity for each of us to let go of what holds us back in life before starting anew as the sun does each year. When the light of the soul grows within us, it contributes the light of imagination and the spirit of inspiration needed to bring greater understanding to the world.
In facing the darkness together, we can rekindle the divine spark of life in each of our souls and can help each other renew the sense of human community being essentially connected to the light of creation, to the breath of inspiration and to the ongoing process of creation and renewal on Earth.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online solstice ritual “In This Darkness Singing” on Thursday, December 21. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 580 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
Currently, the common understanding of “streaming” means “listening to music or watching video in real time as part of a continuous stream of data.” An older idea describes a cosmic stream of essential knowledge constantly pouring through the world. This much needed knowledge about life on earth flows freely, but at such a fast rate of speed that most people cannot catch it or even see it. On this episode, Michael Meade suggests that when it comes to finding ways to respond to the climate crisis and all the humanitarian issues in the world, we may have to find ways to slow down and tap into the ancient stream of wisdom.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online solstice ritual “In This Darkness Singing” on Thursday, December 21. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 600 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
This episode of Living Myth begins with scientific studies of the ways that ants can be capable of incredible feats during times of crisis. A single ant will quickly drown in the turbulent floodwaters of a hurricane. Yet, a group of ants can instinctively create water repelling rafts that allow them to float for weeks without drowning. Flotillas of ants are an example of “swarm intelligence,” a collective creative capacity that allows ants and other species to solve complex problems.
In the strange way that facts and myth can meaningfully coincide, the Hopi First Nations people of the American Southwest have compelling stories of how the Anu Naki or Ant Friends were the saviors and original guides of the first people. When the entire world was threatened by fire and great floods, it was the Ant People who showed the first humans how to find refuge and sustenance and survive life threatening changes.
The Ant Friends also showed people how to create Kivas as underground spaces for community rituals and prayer. The old word Kiva has two parts with ki meaning ant and va meaning a dwelling place. A Kiva could be a place of refuge and retreat from the pressures of the daily world. It was also a place of connecting with Earth energies that can bring healing and centering to the entire community.
Indigenous peoples from all around the world typically learned about survival and adaptation in times of radical change by reading the texts of nature. Ancient myths and the resilience of other species can both serve as guides to how we survive the cataclysms occurring in the world at this time. For, both can be sources of essential insights into what was once understood as the Earth wisdom embedded in the living texts of nature.
Since we find ourselves, once again, facing both intense heat and great floods, we need to learn more about truly resilient systems that involve creativity as well as survival. That includes “swarm intelligence” as well as the kinds of Earth wisdom that can help us survive the uncharted waters, the hurricane seasons, and the rogue waves that currently threaten the ecosystems of nature as well as the social systems of human culture.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Ritual, Healing and Transformation” that on Saturday, December 9 and his free online solstice ritual “In This Darkness Singing” on Thursday, December 21. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 600 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth begins with the ancient idea that nothing exists until it passes through imagination. Imagination is not simply a subjective inner capacity; rather, it is a genuine force of life. In this old way of seeing, the increase of conflicts and intensification of hate in the world can be seen as a loss of soul and a lack of genuine imagination.
At a time when modern cultures can be seen to be unraveling and the sense of the shared suffering of humanity so quickly turns into hatred for whoever can be deemed as the “other,” genuine imagination is not just increasingly important, but can be seen as the redeeming factor for both the individual human soul and for human culture as a totality.
Although viewing life in literal terms has become a habit for many, it ultimately gives us a false sense of security and keeps us blind to the knowledge we most need when the world around us keeps changing. In the ancient world, myth could mean emergent truth and mythic imagination was understood to be the primary way in which the human mind and the human heart could connect or reconnect to the universal truths that underlie all of reality.
Lacking a renewed sense of genuine imagination, the modern world will continue to divide and fall apart. For what is missing in most cases is not simply a lack of the resources needed to change things, but a tragic lack of the imagination required to awaken to a greater, more inclusive visions of reality. For, it is the intermediating function of imagination that makes it possible to unite otherwise opposing states, such as the objective and the subjective, religion and science or any pair of antithetical ideologies.
Imagination has always been the unifying force in the human psyche, the inherent function that precedes thought, but also follows the body's inner ways of knowing and being. Imagination is the key that opens us to all that is immeasurable, creative, and healing in life. For that reason, imagination has been called the deepest power of the human psyche.
The power of imagination, which is part of the natural inheritance of each soul, has surprising and indelible capacities for creativity and renewal. By the virtue of imagination, we see with penetrating insights and creative vision, not the delusions of fantasy, but the surprise of revelation. The point is to allow the immediate powers of myth and imagination to give us a poetic grasp of our own lives and the events of the world. Without such a mythic sense, the world becomes increasingly divided and we can become overwhelmed by conflicts both inner and outer. As the collective sense of unity collapses, the uniqueness within each person's soul becomes the essential source of the unifying imagination needed to sustain and renew life.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Ritual, Healing and Transformation” that on Saturday, December 9. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this series and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 560 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode begins with an ancient Mayan myth about the first human ancestors being shaped from corn. Far from being random creatures, humans were created to bring missing ingredients to the world. The missing ingredients included: a conscious awareness of the wonder of creation, a sense of gratitude and thankfulness, and a potential for imagination and genuine vision.
Central to the role of humans was the capacity to be thankful for the gift of life. Thus, people all over the earth have created ceremonies and practices of gratitude and thanksgiving. The idea of giving thanks and the word thankfulness comes from the old root word grazia, which gives us gratitude as well as grace. In that sense, what we seek in giving thanks are moments of gratitude that can bring a sense of grace back into the world. And this can happen in small ways that do not require large gatherings, an abundance of food, or any pretension that everyone might agree on life's great issues.
More than ever, we need occasions of grace and gratitude, however small they may be. We need moments of wholeness to rekindle our spirits and to ease our souls. We need to feel that life, despite all the existing divisions and heated conflicts, remains a holy place, a place where healing remains possible.
When the world keeps turning upside down, it can be time to look and feel deeper inside in order to find the people and aspects of life that we are most grateful for. Sometimes that's all we need to do in order to reconnect to and contribute to the holiness of life. In doing that, we can ease the burden of our own hearts; we can also connect to the original sense of humanity and enable more grace to enter the world.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Ritual, Healing and Transformation” that on Saturday, December 9. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this series and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 560 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth looks at both the need to transform and our resistance to change through the lens of the metamorphosis of butterflies. The fact that the Greek word psyche means butterfly implies how we are secretly connected to the essential dynamic of transformation in life. As if compelled by the primordial poetics of transformation, scientists named the cells that carry the potential for a true transformation of the caterpillar “imaginal cells.”
The capacity of the imaginal cells to develop into a butterfly and transform life completely is related to the inner capacity of the human soul to also transform repeatedly in the course of life. In the same sense that the imaginal cells hold all the information and energy for the butterfly to be, there is core imagination and deeper self trying to awaken in the soul of each person.
At the same time, something within us resists changing, even when the time for transforming our lives has come. In the mysterious way of the world, the metamorphosis of the butterfly also offers ways to understand why we resist the exact changes we most need in order to transform ourselves and help change the world. In simple biological terms, an exchange of one kind of cell for a different kind of cell changes a crawling caterpillar to a winged butterfly. In terms of understanding the essential dynamic of change in the world and at the core of the human soul, a great mystery is revealed that can be called the wisdom of the butterfly.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Ritual, Healing and Transformation” that on Saturday, December 9. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this series and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 580 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
On this episode Michael Meade turns to Greek myths about the Furies in order to imagine ways that deeper understanding and healing might be found amidst the tragic events engulfing Gaza and Israel and the “unbearable losses and blood-dimmed blindness that currently plague humanity as a whole.”
The Furies appear as primordial spirits of vengeance and retribution that can rise from the underworld when people violate the rules of nature, when innocent blood is wrongfully spilled on the earth and when age-old feuds are provoked.
Once stirred to a frenzy, the Furies enter the daily world in many shapes and forms, causing people to act out vengeance in ways that are deeply personal, but are also the expression of unhealed wounds and grievances that go back to ancestral roots. In Homer's Iliad the Furies frequently cloud people's judgment and cause them to act irrationally. However, the prolonged presence of the Furies can shift fierce passions to violent rages and beyond that to untold madness; for the Furies were known to punish people by driving them mad.
The Furies are stirred by acts of violence that violate nature and shed innocent blood and there is a kind of primal, albeit blind justice in that. Yet, there is also a greater sense of the sacredness of life and a level of justice that exists deep in the soul of humanity, that can reveal ways to greater understanding and make true healing and forgiveness possible.
When the Furies threatened to torment all inhabitants of the Earth and make the land toxic and unlivable, the goddess Athena persuaded them to relent and break the cycles of blood vengeance. The wisdom of Athena includes a deep knowledge of the difference between protecting life and being caught in tragic battles that can only continue the violence and vengeance that drives people apart, that can drive them mad and destroys the Earth in the process.
As goddess of wisdom and protector of civil society, Athena gave the Furies a place of respect in her own temple. Instead of simply being the hard hand of retribution, they could also contribute to finding mercy for the suffering of people. Vengeance and retribution could not simply be removed from the world; however, a balancing capacity for mercy and forgiveness was revealed to be a necessary part of finding justice and preserving life.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new free online event “Living in a Time of Overwhelm” that on Thursday, November 16. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 580 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth begins with recent scientific research showing how having purpose can lower levels of stress and contribute to longevity for older people. Michael Meade suggests that in troubled times finding a genuine purpose is also necessary for young people who can easily become discouraged and despairing about life. The ancient Greek term telos refers to the kind of purpose that gives us, not simply a sense of aim, but the potential for fulfillment. Connecting to that kind of inherent purpose gives us a deeper sense of self and also a capacity to respond spontaneously to critical turning points in life.
A true life purpose is not an optional choice or an outline of goals we might accomplish, but rather something inherent and expectant seeded within each heart and soul. In that sense, being purposeful does not simply mean being goal oriented, but being connected to the inner meaning and core pattern of our self and soul.
Finding a genuine purpose gives us a sense of being centered and dwelling deeply within our true self, while also being more able to respond spontaneously to a rapidly changing world. Whether the awakening to genuine purpose happens as part of a longevity process for older people or appears as the beginning of a meaningful life for young people, facing great uncertainty, finding and living our soul's purpose is the way that each of us, in our own way, can contribute to the making and shaping of the next version of the world.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new free online event “Living in a Time of Overwhelm” that on Thursday, November 16. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 580 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode begins with the idea that we are living in the dark times in which the storms, conflicts and tragedies that darken the earth place us in a crisis of spirit and soul. Either we find a greater sense of our own life spirit and soul purpose or we become overwhelmed with feelings of anxiety, helplessness and despair. As the light hidden in darkness, the soul includes the power of imagination as well as surprising capacities for creativity and renewal.
Michael Meade describes how the dark time of the year, as well as the dark periods in life, were the precise times when ancient cultures turned to myths, stories and rituals to find ways to restore the imagination of people and renew the spirit of life. Meade offers two ancient myths that show how genuine visions, creative ideas and healing come from consciously entering the darkness in order to bring lost knowledge and wisdom back into the light of consciousness.
The lives of the artists and creators, the healers and the peace makers involve conscious descents into darkness to find what is hidden and what has been lost. That's the mythic message, the ancient learning and the hidden light waiting to be found in the darkest of times.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 560 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This replay of a timely a relevant episode considers the difficulties of finding peace in a troubled world. The increasing amount of tension and conflict in the outside world generates a corresponding intensification of conflicts within each soul. Because the individual soul is not separate from the conditions of the world, simply turning away from outside conflicts does not necessarily lead to states of inner peace.
The word peace comes from two deep roots. On one hand, peace can mean “to settle, to find stillness;” on the other hand, it can mean “to reconcile, to make agreements.” Each root meaning involves a deeper understanding of life and each can lead to finding a greater sense of inner peace.
Being at peace can feel like sitting by a still pond, untroubled by anxiety or the stress of daily life. Yet, being at peace with oneself can also mean finding a vital stream of creative expression that connects the deeper self within us with a genuine calling and way of serving the world. Either way, if we can't find inner agreements that help resolve our own conflicts, we won't be able to help solve the great conflicts that now divide the world.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “Heart Within the Heart” that begins on Thursday, October 19. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this series and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 580 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth begins with the growing procession of unprecedented, heart rending and earth-shattering events that currently tear at the core of human culture and also ravage the face of the earth.
The sense of a split screen world of growing tragedies involves one screen showing a map of all the life-threatening hot spots where brutal, deadly warfare is already raging and many other conflicts are heating up. A parallel screen shows the growing number of hot spots where temperatures keep spiking at record levels and the ravages of climate crisis endanger earth’s essential ecosystems.
It may be hard to imagine that we have reached a point where widespread warfare involving many nations might occur again, while we also arrive at the place where radical heat waves have already become a deadly danger for vulnerable people in many parts the world; but that is where we are.
It is our mutual fate and increasingly our shared nightmare to be living at a time when human vengeance and the technologies of war are making more places on earth dangerous to the point of becoming unlivable. At the same time, the lack of creative solutions and the heartfelt commitment needed to stop global warming endangers increasing numbers of people who inhabit places that are also becoming unlivable.
We are living through a great turning of the tides of time and churning of the chaos that surfaces between the end of one era and the beginning of another. We are caught in a cosmic moment of time turning over and life repeatedly turning upside down. We are in the tension of a great transition in history in which both destruction and creation are involved and where one can turn into the other, in true apocalyptic fashion. Chaos, turmoil and loss are all essential characteristics of apocalypse, but so are revelation, discovery of lost things and the potential of renewal.
A poet once wrote that “in the dark times, the eye begins to see,” meaning that it is when we face the darkness around and admit the nightmare that has fallen upon us, we begin to see with the inner eyes of the soul of humanity and with the kind of vision and care that can come from our own hearts and we become capable of seeing ways forward. In this old way of seeing, the heart breaking purpose of tragedies is to awaken us to the importance of each individual life as well as to the life enhancing necessity of our innate connections to the enduring pulse of nature and to the living spirit of the Earth itself.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “Heart Within the Heart” that begins on Thursday, October 19. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this series and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 560 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode begins with the ancient axiom inscribed at the Oracle of Delphi: Know Thyself. In Greek mythology Delphi was known as the “navel of the world,” the center and womb from which life as well as inspiration comes. Like many ancient practices, seeking guidance from the oracle also involved a ritual process of being made anew by connecting to the center and the origins of life.
Ancient people went to the oracular center when they were stuck in life or felt overwhelmed by conflicts, loss or tragedy. In many ways, we find ourselves in a collective condition of conflicts and overwhelm that also requires guidance, wisdom and oracular truth.
Michael Meade explores connections between the ancient symbolic center and the deep self-center in each person, which can also be oracular. The deep self and soul within each person can speak in the form of big dreams, sudden realizations and moments of awakening that can reveal guiding visions and inner truths.
Seen that way, to “know thyself” can mean to know that there is medicine within you, that each soul is connected to the womb of the earth, to archetypal sources of wisdom and to the capacity to renew by touching the origins of life.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “Heart Within the Heart” that begins on Thursday, October 19. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this series and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 560 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode begins with the idea that our original agreement with life involves the inner dream of our soul and the unique pattern that brought us into being in the first place. At birth the soul enters a series of secondary agreements that involve accepting the world as we find it and learning to negotiate between our soul and the “facts of life,” between our deepest desires and the reality of one’s circumstances.
Our true guide is the deepest image in our soul, the divine spark and core imagination that is also the renewing force of our being. Each soul lives on the verge of remembering the forgotten agreement and original dream that it carries within. In that sense, the real struggle in life has always been to become that which we already are at our heart’s core.
At each critical turning point in life the first agreement of our soul tries to become more conscious to us. Either we are growing more soul and becoming a greater vessel for the flow of life or we are shrinking from life and secretly feeding blind instincts and the hungry ghosts.
Although we are never far from our original agreement and divine connection, it often seems the farthest thing from us. Recalling the soul’s original agreement provides us a return to the underlying unity of life and a sense of genuine purpose in the world. The most genuinely human moments are moments in which the soul awakens to its original dream of life.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 580 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
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If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth tells the story of Gustave Fechner, a scientist and professor of physics who went blind while doing experiments involving human sight. After years of living in utter darkness, his eyesight returned, bringing with it a renewed vision of the world. After decades of looking at the world through the lens of physics and the hard sciences, Fechner had a spiritual awakening that brought a deeply personal connection to the living pulse of nature.
Having dwelt for years in darkness, the doctor had developed a kind of vision that revealed the living soul of nature. His book on The Soul Life of Plants showed how plants and trees are part of an ensouled world. It was an international best seller for over seventy-five years. Dr. Fechner became a renowned teacher of natural philosophy and “psychophysics,” a branch of psychology which refuted the artificial separation between mind and body, between subject and object.
In the great lost and found of the cosmos, important knowledge keeps being forgotten. It also keeps trying to become conscious again, but tends to do so after we have experienced a period of darkness. When the world turns dark again, as it has now, it's important to know that the inner light of the soul is not a reflection from the outer world, but an inner light itself, a visionary flame that burns with emotional heat and vitality, but also with a capacity for illumination.
Everyone has access to a key that can open the door to a meaningful life, yet each must enter their own darkness in order to discover it. In learning how to follow the light hidden within our own darkness, we help break the spell of single-eyed vision that has damaged the living realm of nature and help in the recovery of all that has been lost in terms of genuine vision, ancient wisdom and the underlying unity of life.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “The Soul’s Great Adventure” on Saturday, September 23. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this workshop and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 560 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth begins with a review of the Great Soul Trial, a strange event in 1967 in which the existence of the human soul was the subject of a superior court trial in Phoenix, Arizona. The loss of soul that now plagues modern culture is then traced back to the Fourth Council of Constantinople in 869 CE. Before that Council the main conception of human nature derived from the ancient view of the cosmos being made of spirit, soul and matter. After that event the prevailing notion became a dualism of spirit and matter that lacked the presence of soul as the connecting tissue at all levels of life.
This sense of division and loss of soul affects human thinking to this day in the form of the mind-body split and contributes to the sense that human culture and nature are essentially opposed. The loss of soul is part of what allows people to exploit nature in ways that are degrading, and also part of the collective ideas that say that human culture has to dominate nature.
Despite what has often been concluded in legal courts, in church councils and in the halls of science, the soul is another kind of body, a subtle body that partakes of both spirituality and physicality and fills the subtle space between spirit and matter. It may seem strange now, but the soul used to be known as the light found in darkness. In troubled times, it's important to know that the soul is undaunted by the conflicts and divisions that seem about to overwhelm human society.
When life becomes more polarized than it need be, and things become more divided than they should be, it is the way of the soul that is missing and desperately needed in order to heal the divisions and make things whole again. The good news is that soul awakens as things seem to fall apart and soul would have us each find our unique part in life’s ongoing drama. Having awakened souls and making more soul in the world is essential for changing life on earth.
Through soul we can connect to the most ancient knowledge as well as the most immediate inspirations of life. For, like gold hidden in the earth, the human soul has deep resources and a great capacity to find meaningful paths that rationality cannot discover. Finding soul and making soul involves a certain kind of courage, a kind of trust in the living world, and a sense that when everything else becomes more divided, soul knows where and how we are each intended to reconnect to the spirit of life.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “The Soul’s Great Adventure” on Saturday, September 23. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this workshop and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 560 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode addresses the increase of anxiety at both the collective and individual levels of life. Each day we face extreme weather changes and extreme politics, but also the exaggerated feelings that develop inside people as well. As irrational influences and undue pressures become common it becomes difficult to avoid intense feelings, edgy thoughts and the alienating presence of anxiety.
“In simpler times, people used to say that they were under stress. But the amount of stress in the world at this time is so great that it makes sense to say that we feel caught in anxiety or about to be overwhelmed with our anxiety. In times like this, it's important to know that the stress in the world manifests as collective anxiety that adds to our sense of personal angst. Another important idea is that anxiety is a measure of the distance between the ego or the little self, and the greater or deeper self within us.
When we find ourselves feeling increasingly anxious, we can give in to the overwhelm or turn inwards to find a connection to the deeper self, which has essential resources that are part of the natural inheritance of humanity. Surprising as it may seem, when the ego self is overwhelmed with fear and anxiety, the greater self within us is closer to awakening. When all seems lost, the only way out is a greater revelation of what and who we are already at the core of ourselves.
People drown in the seas of change because they cling to abstract notions, or conventional patterns that lack true buoyancy. The weight of life’s troubles seeks a solution at a deeper level. When crisis becomes the common way of being and troubling emotions can arise at any moment, it becomes important to have a genuine art or a practice that helps keep the fears and the doubts and the existential dread at bay. For, the practices that help us grow an inner life continue whether we find ourselves in the heights or in the depths.
A practice is different from a skill because we can learn skills without meaningfully changing our character. Through a practice we become more genuinely established in ourselves, we gain an emotional seating, a place to dwell and return to again and again. A genuine practice means loving something enough to be with it again and again in all the moods of our soul and in all the waves of emotion that can flow through us body and soul. The pilgrimage of life has always been aimed at the center and deep self and soul within each person. A genuine practice will deepen and expand our inner life; it can ease our soul, but also affect the world around us.”
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “The Soul’s Great Adventure” on Saturday, September 23. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this workshop and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 570 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth takes up the issue of deep inner fears that keep us from finding our way in life. Rapid changes in nature and culture cause an increasing loss of context in life and that gives rise to greater levels of fear, both collectively and individually. Typically, our inner patterns of fear derive from early life feelings of abandonment and from early experiences that suggest the world is too overwhelming for someone as insignificant as us.
Later in life we continue to harbor and live out our infantile fears. Whenever genuine change is required of us or being truly honest is necessary for us, our inner fears become like demons or hungry lions we must face. At opportune moments we can suddenly be overwhelmed by fears of feeling inadequate or fears of being ultimately abandoned and left alone. We become self-rejecting and self-abandoning unless we somehow face those fears and trust that something meaningful and valuable is trying to live through us.
For, it isn't simply that fear is in the way, it's more that fear is part of the way. What we fear most will not simply go away, because it indicates what we must go through in order to awaken, in order to become more genuine, in order to live more fully as ourselves. Ultimately, our greatest fears are connected to our deepest sense of self and the hidden purpose of fear involves accessing the deep resources of our own soul.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “The Soul’s Great Adventure” on Saturday, September 23.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this workshop and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 560 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode brings a focus to the need for having a calling in life and the idea that as the world seems to fall apart there can be an acceleration of calling. The human heart carries an indelible expectation of being called to a greater sense of meaning and a revelation of our true aims in life. In the old sense of a rite of passage, the deeper point is not simply to grow up and take more responsibility in society, but rather to awaken to the story trying to unfold from within oneself. The point is to open up, to break out and to feel the feathers of the heart in full flight.
No one knows when an opening to spirit might come and change the trajectory of their life. Something as light as a feather, as bright as an idea or as fleeting as a dream comes into our life and essential aspects of our souls become revealed to us, at the same time that the mysteries of nature and the realms of spirit speak directly to us.
Without a calling we can feel lost throughout our lives. Without a genuine purpose, we can turn bitter, drifting without genuine passion and withering without the blessing of the spirit of life. Yet, the spirit of life within us does not age as we grow older. The inner genius continues to be on the verge of awakening and our calling keeps calling no matter what age we are, no matter what position or condition in life we may have. Because what calls to us is timeless, the calling can come at any time in life.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 560 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode begins with the idea that at critical times all of life can just hang by a thread. Michael Meade then describes the ancient rites of passage that involved the “upavita” or thread of life. The upavita was imagined as the red thread of passion that runs within the blood of every being. It was also envisioned as the green thread of existence that is dancing through the endless windings of the vegetal realm. Either way, it's the vine of eternity that secretly unites all living tendrils and embodied souls to the eternal web of life.
When tied onto young people as part of a rite of passage, a red thread or cord indicated that each life is sacred and symbolized the capacity of each person to awaken to how and where they are threaded to the eternal chain of being. The upavita thread symbolically pulled each novice away from the concerns of daily life in order to connect them to something deep inside themselves that also connected them to something deep and enduring in the world.
At this troubled time on earth, when life itself seems to be unravelling, we are all in a collective rite of passage and need reminders that we are each secretly tied to the web of life in a meaningful way. We each have an inner thread of spirit or genius that connects us to a calling and a purpose that makes our lives meaningful, no matter what the conditions of the world might be.
The symbolic thread of life reminds us that we are all in this together; but also that meaningful change comes from following the inner thread of imagination woven within us to begin with. Like initiates in ancient rites, we can follow our thread and become messengers of the unseen, able to bring forth both ancient understandings and new ideas when everything seems to be hanging by a thread.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 560 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth begins with the report on the increase of perfectionism in the world. Whether caused by comparisons found on social media or notions of meritocracy, young people especially suffer from perfectionism. Beginning with the idea that something perfect is finished, and therefore closer to death than to life, Michael Meade turns our attention instead to the value of trouble. Not just any trouble, but the importance of getting into the right trouble, the kind of trouble intended to grow our souls. The right kind of trouble serves to awaken inner capacities we didn’t know we had and draws upon resources we didn’t know were there. Recent studies in education indicate that the right kind of struggle makes all of us more resilient, creative and less anxious in general.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 550 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode considers the record breaking heat waves that are currently plaguing many parts of the planet and how easily we can feel overwhelmed and helpless in the face of worldwide crises.
“In radical times like this, great emotions can fall upon us in a similar way that massive storms and heat waves now settle over entire areas of a country. The overwhelming facts about disasters in the world around us can quickly become overwhelming emotions inside our individual psyches. We can suffer increasing levels of stress and anxiety, even if the place where we are living is not one of the hotspots in the moment.
Collective anxiety is a real thing that connects to our primal sense of fear, and like fear, anxiety can be contagious and spread. Over time, collective anxiety tends to exacerbate our sense of feeling insignificant and impotent in the face of radical changes in the world. How can a single, fragile person do anything to affect or change conditions that are so big and beyond our control?
The German word weltschmerz translates as “world pain” or “world weariness.” It carries the sense that while we feel inadequate in the face of world troubles, our individual pain is linked to the pain of the world. What troubles the world also troubles us and we don't have to be in tragic circumstances ourselves to feel how others are suffering.
We can be deeply affected by the pain and grief in the world because basic empathetic qualities are part of being human. We feel heightened levels of stress and worry when we see a loved one suffering, but also to some degree when a stranger is suffering or in fear. In terms of weltschmerz, we not only sympathize, but we can realize that all humans are inextricably linked to each other, and that each person's suffering easily could become our own suffering.
On a psychological level, we each have our own unique experiences of fear and anxiety that arose early in life, when we were in fact helpless in many ways. The trouble with emotions like fear and anxiety is that they don't simply go away. If they are ignored or denied, they tend to take up residence somewhere in the body. One way or another, we continue to carry our own sense of fear and anxiety about being left alone and being helpless in the face of things beyond our control.
In spite of some prevalent ideas, emotions turn out to be part of the natural dynamics intended to keep us awake and resilient in the face of ever changing conditions of life on Earth. Engaging with our deepest emotions turns out to be a necessary part of the transformations that need to happen both individually and collectively. Emotions are part of the great outflowing of life, without which we cannot truly live or meaningfully change and grow.
It is the role of feelings and emotions to reveal the inner stirrings of the human heart and soul. In that sense, emotions are the necessary and mysterious turbulence without which we cannot truly tell if we are alive or not. Emotions serve as a vital link between body and mind, between spirit and soul. They move us because they carry massive amounts of energy. And in that sense, emotions can be understood as messages coming from a deeper sense of self and soul within us. Thus, ignoring or repressing an emotion amounts to shooting the messenger and missing the message coming from the deeper self that knows what we need and how we must change.
The ancient idea that transformation is the aim of the soul rests upon the understanding that there is something essential within each of us that we can turn to, and continually learn from, that we can draw upon repeatedly and grow from continuously. When this knowing self within us becomes more conscious, a surprising sense of inner stability can be experienced, even amidst the chaotic circumstances of life. At the same time, inner resources previously unknown to us can become available.
And that's why ancient poets and thinkers could say, hold on to your particular pain and suffer your anxiety for those too can bring you in touch the inner spirit and knowing self that has been secretly present within you all along.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 550 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth is about accepting elements of fate in order to find the threads of destiny that are woven within our own lives to begin with.
“Each child must be born to a particular family, yet the purpose of each soul rises from a different conception and aims at a different destination. Each has a family legacy of some kind, yet each also has a deeper birthright waiting to be discovered. Elements of fate and destiny press upon us from within and also call us from outside the walls of the family complex. Unseen threads and inner designs secretly pull us into the crossroads where meaningful choices must be made.
There are many paths and endless plot lines in the great skein of life and therefore many instructive stories. Two of the great tales from ancient India describe the different ways in which the Buddha and Lord Rama found their path of destiny. In the marketplace of life, Prince Siddhartha had to first encounter death before the Buddha waiting within him could be born. For Rama, being a ruler in this earthly realm was his true destiny. But he had to become homeless and wander far before he could find a truth that was within him all along.
An eternal thread has been woven within each of us. It secretly ties us to a path of meaning that can lead to a way of being that is our true inheritance in life. In order to find that holy thread, we must experience a brush with death or some other fateful encounter that allows our greater life to grow. Encounters with fate and brushes death are intended to awaken people to the exact value of the gift of life that they have been given. Not the life given by one's parents, not usually the life defined by the marketplace, not even the life attributed to famous spiritual guides or cultural leaders.
The point is to find the path already set within one's own soul from before the time of birth. The point is to be willing to undergo a little death in order to find the genuine thread that can lead to one's natural destiny. A wise sage once said: ‘The search for truth is really a search for one's true self. When people truly understand who they already are, they realize that they are part of the Divine. This understanding cannot come from the intellect alone, nor can it be given to you by others. It must come from a place deep inside you. All truth comes from within. The search for truth is really the search for one's true self.’”
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 550 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
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If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode begins with excerpts from an article entitled “Men Are Lost.” The writer describes how many “young men struggle to relate to women, don't have enough friends…and lack long term goals.” In addition, recent data shows that “men now account for almost three of every four deaths of despair that come from suicide, alcohol abuse, or overdose.” In what seems to be “a widespread identity crisis,” the question becomes: What does it mean to be a man? The article concludes with the notion that “people need codes for how to be human. When those codes aren't easily found, they'll take whatever is offered. If left unaddressed, the current confusion of men and boys will have destructive social outcomes in the form of even greater resentment and radicalization.”
Michael Meade suggests that “throughout history, there have been many different and even divergent answers to the question of what a man might be. There are levels to the question and therefore, levels to the answers. I fear that, in the midst of radical cultural changes, trying to solve the confusions about masculinity at the level of a collective agreement on terms, might result in greater divisions rather than unifying solutions.
At a personal level, our deepest fear can be that there is nothing inside us, that we have no real meaning and can have no purpose in this world. That kind of deeply felt sense of meaning and purpose cannot simply be gained from collective ideas or societal definitions. When faced with the need to support and guide young men facing an uncertain and often unwelcoming world, or young women for that matter, the issue becomes not simply how they might be defined by the outer world, but what they might discover in their own inner world.
At a level which is deeper and also more specific, the core issue becomes awakening to the inherent values in the individual soul. In this old way of understanding what's at the core of each person, what is really missing in moments of despair is a lack of connection to one's own soul. Soul is the connective tissue of life that keeps mind and body together and soul secretly connects the masculine and the feminine in each of us.
We are most lost and feel most abandoned when we have lost touch with our own souls, with our innate style and way of being. Since it is likely that the current confusions and polarizations that trouble the world will get worse before they get better, the answers most needed are likely to be found in the depths of our individual souls. For, the soul is the part of us that is not simply overwhelmed by the challenges, disappointments and confusions of life.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 550 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth deals with perfectionism and the inner dynamics of gifts and wounds in the human soul. Some people were told as children that they had to be perfect; others were told they were somehow defective and could never be perfect. Either way can cause a kind of spell and a life-long struggle with perfectionism. And sadly, the stress of trying to be perfect can lead to great feelings of anxiety and aching feelings of low esteem, to eating disorders, sleep disturbances and an overall dissatisfaction in life.
The ancient Egyptians had a saying that a beautiful thing is never perfect. In other words, the pursuit of perfection diminishes the amount of beauty, not just in the person, but also in the world. So, ancient artists would often place a defect in their creative works to honor the necessary imperfections of life on Earth. In making earthenware they would leave an area unglazed or allow a small crack to be seen. This imperfection in the vessel made each piece unique, a one of a kind creation never to be repeated in all of time, made more valuable and more beautiful by virtue of the imperfection. Similarly, we each inherit some inner gold that can only shine through the cracks and faults that also exist within us.
In the strange balance that exists on earth, we are each unique and gifted in some way and we are each born with a wounded side, like a limp that holds us back or a weak wing that makes taking off in life more difficult. Being a whole person turns out to include accepting the holes and the faults in ourselves.
In the end, our wounds are intimately bound up with our gifts. In accepting our inner wounds and learning to carry them, we find parts of ourselves that are not wounded. And then it turns out that the wound becomes a kind of womb from which we can continually be reborn.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael live by joining his new free online event “The Deep Self Within” on Thursday, July 13.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 540 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
Michael Meade uses current scandals in politics along with the recent discoveries in science to show how we live in revelatory times. We are in the midst of a cultural, political and emotional catharsis, yet for those willing to look behind the veil, an apocalyptic period can mean a time of revelation on many levels. The archetype of apocalypse involves a “lifting of the veil” in which many scandals and misdeeds become uncovered, while at the same time both ancient wisdom and new knowledge can be discovered.
We are living through a period of great change that involves uncovering things that have been concealed and discovering or re-discovering things that have been hidden from sight. In mythological terms, we are caught in a cosmic moment of time turning over in which both destruction and creation are involved and one can turn into the other in a moment. Familiar structures may collapse and once vital systems may fall apart, yet forgotten patterns and barely imagined designs can be on the verge of being revealed.
We live in two worlds and belong to more than one dimension of life as our souls are secretly attuned to other levels of reality. One level is visible and observable to the human eye, while the other level is mostly invisible and seemingly ephemeral. And yet this second level is essential to our wellbeing, and critical to our understanding of life on earth.
Something ancient and knowing about this world, that has survived many catastrophes, is trying to catch up with us and become known by us again. We are in a struggle, not simply for the future of time, but rather for the presence of eternity. If we are to help uncover and discover ways that allow the earth to renew itself and help human culture to be reimagined, we must become capable of eternity again.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael live by joining his new free online event “The Deep Self Within” on Thursday, July 13.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 535 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
Despite the narrowing of mind and loss of imagination that characterize much of modern life, we each still have an old knowing mind within us. Not the mechanics of the brain that contemporary science seems obsessed with, but the ancient mind untouched by the passage of time, the intuitive and instinctive mind, which knows both basic survival and great consciousness and awareness. This original mind is logical in its own way, that is to say it is mytho-logical, it is psycho-logical, and it is cosmological at the same time. Mind is not simply the brain, but a poetic unity in the soul of each person born.
We are each involved in a unique life experiment, the meaning of which is hidden exactly where people prefer not to look - in the surprising inner life of our self and soul. Part of becoming conscious of this original mind and indigenous inner self includes an instinctive sense of belonging, belonging to great nature, belonging to the song of creation and the hum of the cosmos itself. Just as a fish utterly belongs to the sea, our original self belongs at once to the great sea of heaven and to the deep ocean of the unconscious. An expansion of individual human awareness is the basis upon which meaningful changes and a potential renewal of collective society ultimately depends.
The original mind tries to become known to each of us and keeps trying to return things to their origins, in order to find original ways to survive the disasters of life and the confusions of culture. When we fail to live out the knowing presence deep within ourselves, we also deny the presence of the living world and that causes the world to have less presence and appear to be slowly dying.
When we imagine the uniqueness of each soul as part of a greater unity, we can see how true consciousness of the part leads to a greater awareness of the whole. The original self within us is the source of forgiveness that keeps offering us second chances to awaken no matter how long we have been lost on the roads of confusion. Waking the individual self and soul also awakens some potential in the world. When the inner light of the soul awakens us from within, something also comes alive in the world around us.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael live by joining his new free online event “The Deep Self Within” on Thursday, July 13.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 525 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode begins with the surprising story of a spiritual seeker who meditates and fasts and abstains in order to know the divine and serve something that transcends the common fate of human experience. After many austerities, the god Vishnu grants his wish and gives him a mission. Somehow, on the way the seeker forgets the divine errand he was on and becomes immersed in the dramas and delights of earthly life. It will take a shocking wake-up call to return the seeker to his conversation with the divine.
“Life is the necessary illusion from which we drink, as well as the turbulent waters in which we drown again and again. That is the truth as well as the illusion of it. We are each on an errand for god. And the great beauty of this world requires that we both forget and at times remember it.
The two worlds are close to each other. And a person can cross from one to the other in a single step. That kind of crossing over can happen at any moment, and can be precipitated by seeing beauty or waking with a compelling dream. It can come as a sudden shock or a hard knock. At times, it can also be found through spiritual devotion and practice.
Each wake-up call is an opportunity to return to our soul’s conversation with the divine. Strangely, we may be closer to an awakening and a true turning point when we reach the end of our rope and feel that all has been lost. At that point, we either fall apart or else find again the thread of destiny that pulls everything together and opens the path before us.”
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael live by joining his new free online event “The Deep Self Within” on Thursday, July 13.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 525 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
Surviving modern life requires learning to navigate a clash of worldviews. People look at the same facts, yet draw radically different conclusions. On one hand people carry different worldviews; on the other hand, many people remain unconscious of the fact that they carry a limiting worldview.
Collectively we find ourselves in uncharted waters in terms of the future of the planet and in unmapped territory in terms of human culture. In that sense, the biggest problem we face involves the need to change our entire way of viewing the world and our place in it.
We need a better worldview at the collective level, but we can't simply make one by good intentions or by trying to forge general agreements. When we are deprived of the symbols and patterns needed to shape a coherent worldview, we are thrown back upon ourselves. And that can be the calling within the crisis. Any renaissance of imagination and great vision must first arise from the depth of the individual soul, so that the collective vision is formed by the awakening of many souls inside the collective.
A genuine awakening involves not just a change of mind, but also a change of heart that leads to a place of awareness that had been previously beyond our comprehension. This deep sense of transformation involves the understanding that there is something essential within us that we can turn to and learn from, that we can draw upon and grow from continuously. We are being called to be part of a transformation of life on Earth that is already secretly underway. For, the story of the human soul has not fully been written, and the future of the Earth has not been decided.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 525 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners atpatreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
On this excerpt from a Living Myth Premium episode, Michael Meade explores how inside of each of us is a mostly hidden, mostly golden and mostly eternal image and aspect of being similar to the gold that is buried in the Earth. In seeking out this inner gold, we meet egoic resistance and must find ways to break the ego’s shell to tap the deeper wisdom within. Along the way, part of what opens this territory is a courageous act of facing death, for a death of the ego is required in order for the deeper self to emerge.
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On this episode, Michael Meade turns to a myth from Mesopotamia that tells how the genesis of mistakes, as well as the source of conflicts comes from the shadow of doubt felt by the primal god at the beginning of creation. Surprisingly, the origin of what troubles the world to this day comes not from an original sin by a creature, but from a seeming mistake on the part of the creator.
At this troubled time when people feel painfully polarized and come to believe that we live in different worlds, we are actually living in the same story. Creation stories typically show how division was part of the world from the very beginning. In mythic terms, the tension of opposites hints at a hidden third element that not only relieves the tension, but also renews life at a deeper level.
The effect of elemental tension is to stimulate life itself, the purpose of the opposing energies is to keep creation continuing. In following the old myth, it becomes clear that even the presence of great doubts about the future can be seen as part of the creative tension needed to regenerate life in terms of both nature and human culture.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 500 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners atpatreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode illustrates how myths are not intended to be believed in, but exist to be learned from. Myths are forever things that offer endless meanings to those willing to open their hearts and minds to the living mystery of life. Yet, even though it is the original language of our soul, myth has become the forgotten language.
The “once upon a time” incantation that often begins a story is an evocation of a pregnant moment that can open to things eternal that ever wait near the doors of our perception. Awakening to the stories woven into our souls can turn us into seers and soothsayers able to receive knowledge from the past and able to perceive guidance for the future. When we awaken to our true nature, we also awaken to the myth trying to live through us.
When we break the spell of time's insistent march, we can slip back into the timeless realms behind the waterfall of the present where both nature and myth speak in ancient and surprising ways. We find once again that the language of myth can be oracular and speak to us directly with insights into ourselves and with inspirations about the world around us.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 500 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth begins with the idea that as everything around us falls apart, the deeper Self and ancient soul within us moves closer to the surface and seeks to become known. For whatever shatters the common patterns of daily life also opens us up to psychological and mythical levels of unusual depth that are not overwhelmed by the divisions and disruptions in the world.
The elements of great imagination and deep spirituality that have become lost in the modern world cannot simply disappear. Rather, what is sorely missing in the outside world waits to be found in the inner realm of being, in the greater sense of Self that is the natural inheritance of each human soul.
The centering and guiding power of the deep Self gives us our innate sense of meaning and instinctive sense of purpose. Without this inner, unifying factor, any meaningful sense of change can become fraught with excess fears and anxiety. Since the world will not quickly settle, we have to look deep inside for a true source of coherence, for meaningful guidance and for finding our true aims in life, which are not deterred by the troubles of the world.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 500 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
Michael Meade turns to what many consider to be the oldest known story, the Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh. The ancient tale offers guidance for these critical times, not from the heroic battles or kingly powers of Gilgamesh, but from his later life search for spiritual renewal and the plant of immortality.
The primordial plant is described as “the thing that gives immortality” or as “the flower of life that renews vitality,” can only be found in the depths of the ocean. Thus, a great descent is required in order to find the roots of renewal and the touch of the eternal.
In critical times we all need a taste of that plant that might rejuvenate us and renew the spirit of our lives. Down, back and below us, the ocean of the unconscious holds the treasure of the deep self and soul, the source of our inner life and origin of our spiritual longings.
The soul knows that the full potential of life must be sought back at the beginning, down at the source, where the underlying unity of life waits to be found and be touched again. Our ancestors, going all the way back to before recorded time, found the sacred founts of renewal in forest pools, in the rivers and at the shores where the spirit of life waits to be found again and again. When we allow ourselves to be touched by the deep waters that came from the primordial beginning, time stops, life becomes holy again, and we become capable of wisdom that the old knowers knew.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “Gifts and Wounds” that begins on Thursday, May 18.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this series and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 500 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth uses deeper meanings of the word catastrophe to frame the tragedies and disasters that currently plague both culture and nature. We are in a deeply wounded cultural condition in which current and historical conflicts that are not fully faced will continually lead to ever greater tragedies. The flood of mass shootings, along with environmental disasters cannot simply be contained by the individual psyche, nor can they just be dismissed. In times of tragedy and upheaval, it is not simply a new world that we need; it is a new worldview that we must find. Catastrophe can mean “a sudden end” or “a reversal of what was expected.” In ancient theater, catastrophe defined the crucial turning point in the last scenes of a drama. Before the final curtain could fall, the veil would lift to reveal all kinds of plot twists and undercurrents that had been present, but were hidden. Even when all aspects of the plot clearly pointed to an inevitable, tragic ending, a reversal could already be secretly underway. In other words, catastrophic conditions can lead to turning things around rather than a complete tragic ending. The idea is not to deny the presence of tragedy and loss, but to realize that the great drama of the world includes twists of fate that cannot be predicted and revelations that only appear when the end seems near. Even at the edge of despair we can awaken to a deeper vision and greater understanding that has been trying to become conscious all along. In these catastrophic times, events can go either way. Either they can lead to a fatal downfall or else to a surprising turn of events in which the saving elements and hidden capacities for renewal become revealed on both individual and collective levels of life. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “Gifts and Wounds” that begins on Thursday, May 18. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events. You can save 30% on this series and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 500 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode focuses on the tension between fear and Eros, between widening societal divisions and our innate instinct to connect and find unity. The struggle between fear and Eros or fear and love is an old one, for one would separate where the other would unify. When fear becomes the dominant collective emotion, it can permeate an entire culture and divide all the people. When we feel surrounded by fear, the danger is that our souls will shrink and life itself will be diminished. An excess of fear separates us from each other, but also divides us within ourselves. We become isolated and cut off from our inner nobility and from the creative capacities of our souls. When people fail to live the life of their soul with its instinctive Eros connections, the world becomes diminished and the garden of life becomes overburdened with the remains of unlived lives. When the enemy becomes fear itself, only boldness, imagination and Eros can save us from it. Eros or love is the antidote to fear and the way in which people can find a deeper sense of imagination, and a greater vision of what is needed both for survival and for feeling connected to each other again. What we love as well as who we love connects us to the life-enhancing energy of Eros and to the original force of creation that wishes to continue. An old proverb states: What we love is the cure. That we love is our connection to ongoing creation. We are being called to imagine the world anew and to open to how our own souls can grow and blossom in greater ways that might contribute to the re-imagination of community and the healing and renewal of the earth.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “Gifts and Wounds” that begins on Thursday, May 18.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this series and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over500 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners atpatreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
There are certain, critical moments that say directly to us: You must change your life. Collectively, we are in time when great changes are necessary; yet the idea of truly changing is too fearful for most people. On this episode of Living Myth, Michael Meade tells a surprising story from ancient India in which a fearful tiger suddenly awakens to its true inner nature and becomes transformed.
It turns out that learning about one's true self can be like approaching a tiger. The authentic self has beauty and unique markings. It has power and an intensity of presence similar to the fierce brightness of a tiger. Awakening the deeper self also reveals an inner sense of nobility that can shift fear to awareness and replace uncertainty with a living sense of purpose.
In mythological terms, the less people awaken to who they are in essence, the greater the amount of fear in the world becomes. If we are to find some way through the cascade of crises that currently threaten the world, we must face our deepest fears, open our hearts and begin to see with the visionary eyes of our tiger self. When the inner eyes of our hearts and souls open, we begin to see the world as we were intended to see it, and in so doing, find ways of transforming our lives that also help to transform this troubled world.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 500 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode offers an honoring of the living Earth as a continuous source of nourishment for the soul and the spirit as well as the body. It begins with recent scientific discoveries about ultra-low frequency sounds coming from all corners of the earth. This phenomenon, termed the “hum of the earth,” fosters a ceaseless droning at a level too low to be heard by the human ear.
When viewed through the lens of mythology, rather than the theories of science, many origin stories depict a living world that is conceived in sound with each thing having its own vibration. In the beginning was the sound that became the song of the earth, which continues in the whispering of the trees, in the winged nation of birds singing in the skies and in the mysterious incantations of whales in the oceans deep.
One ancient chant in particular has great bearing on the story of Gaia as the living world and on the recent discoveries of the hum of the earth. Being both a sacred chant and an origin story in the oldest language on earth, the Gayatri Mantra connects each soul to the ever-sounding song of creation and to the hidden unity of the cosmos. Repetition of this mantra was said to inspire wisdom and beauty in the heart of each person and help bring awakening and fulfillment.
In this ancient way of seeing and singing, we each become part of the hum of existence and the song of the Earth, which is part of the hymn of the spheres and the endless song of the cosmos that continually renews the living world. The ancient knowers used all kinds of methods and arts to remind us that we are but one step or one song or one breath away from finding the thread to the center of ourselves and to the center of the Earth. And because the center turns out to also be the beginning, we are always on the verge of tapping into the original resonance of creation and the ongoing song of the living Earth.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 500 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode examines the ongoing plague of mass shootings and growing tragedy of gun violence in America. Michael Meade uses a teaching tale from ancient Africa to show what happens to a culture when people refuse to face up to dangers that can turn any public place into a site of tragedy and unnecessary death. An old idea states that it is the same to live in a tragic time as to be in a tragic place. We live in tragic times, but by now, anyone can find themselves in the midst of gun violence and great tragedy in any place in the United States. Mass shootings have happened in banks and in grade schools, in churches and in movie theaters, in nightclubs and in synagogues, at universities and at concerts, in shopping malls and dance halls and the list goes on and on. It is our mutual fate to be alive in tragic times; yet when we fail to grasp the nature of our fate, we become ruled by it. If we deny or try to escape our fate, we simply contribute to the hardening of it. And right now, America is going through a hardening of minds and hardening of hearts in which some people come to value guns over children and choose continued violence over safety and healing. A culture that begins to deny the tragic presence of death will end up denying the value and meaning of life. Unless we change, our mutual fate will be ever more tragic. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Rites of Passage: Ancient and Contemporary” on Saturday, April 15. Register and learn more at: mosaicvoices.org/events You can save 30% on this workshop and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 500 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at: patreon.com/livingmyth.
Michael Meade turns to old myths of Proteus, the Greek deity from whom we get the term protean, which can mean “changeable” but also “primordial.” To say that we live in times of change is an understatement; to say that we live in “protean times” can be accurate and prophetic. In Greek myths, Proteus was a wise old sea God, both a shapeshifter and a source of prophecy. He was able to rapidly transform himself into many shapes and would only reveal hidden truths to those who could capture him and hold him fast. As the original source of prophecy, Proteus knew all things past, present and future. For the genuine prophet can bring back lost truths and ancient wisdom from the past, as well as provide revelations of the unseen future. Paradoxically, deep memory includes the future and true prophecy involves the past. We live in times of upheaval and loss and we also live in prophetic times. As the world around us goes through many disturbing transformations, it is helpful to know that the next world is hidden inside this one and that lost wisdom and hidden truths wait to be revealed. The stories of Proteus offer metaphors for working with mythic imagination and the archetypal energies that can reconnect the wisdom of the ancients to the moments in which we live. When that happens, the wholeness that is the antidote to the fragmentation of the world can be found again and the origin potentials of life can be restored. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Rites of Passage: Ancient and Contemporary” on Saturday, April 15. Register and learn more at: mosaicvoices.org/events. You can save 30% on this workshop and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 500 episodes and special discounts on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at: patreon.com/livingmyth.
This episode of Living Myth begins with a consideration of the value of folk tales that remind us how easily that which can rejuvenate our souls, and reveal inner wisdom can become lost in the churning seas of time. Ancient wisdom tales survive the upheavals of history and can provide esoteric threads that trace back to the original sources of awakening, rejuvenation and revelation. Beginning with elements of folk myths that appear in epic tales like Gilgamesh and teachings found in the Bible, the Torah and the Koran, Michael Meade follows threads that lead back to the mysterious figure of Khidr, known as the Green One or the Verdant One. Khidr represents the sea of inward knowledge and was called the long living one, who continually rejuvenates himself. As such, Khidr can be seen as the embodiment of archetypal powers of imagination and wisdom, and as a personification of the process of spiritual transmission. Some stories say that every saint is visited by Khidr, while other tales say that everyone will be visited by Khidr at least once in their life. Khidr stands for the archetypal energy inside each person which can lead them to their own experience of revelation and awakening. Whoever follows Khidr, they used to say, can seek freely amongst the many teachings that exist in the world, but can also find their own way to the place where the two seas meet, a place also known as the center of one's own heart, where the energy of one world pours into the other, the place where the opposites can meet, the place where creation began, and ever seeks to begin again. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Rites of Passage: Ancient and Contemporary” on Saturday, April 15. Register and learn more at: mosaicvoices.org/events. You can save 30% on this workshop and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 500 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at: patreon.com/livingmyth.
Michael Meade considers ancient understandings and practices related to the Spring equinox as well as deeper meanings of the word “balance.” What ancient people intuitively knew that modern people need to rediscover is that the balance of the earth and the cosmos is tipped towards ongoing creation and a renewal of life at both predictable points and at critical times. While many ancient people felt aligned with cosmic rhythms and nature’s ways, modern people tend to be cosmologically disoriented and primarily connected to history. This loss of the instinctive connection between the cosmos and the human soul has profound effects on life on Earth at this time. Without a felt sense for a living cosmology, life can seem increasingly random and pointless. The sense of cosmological dislocation diminishes our sense of self as well as our reverence for life. Rituals of renewal, some of which were enacted at the time of the equinox, sought to stop the loss of energy and imagination that leads to a decrease in the quality of life. Rather than being a fixed point of balance, the Spring equinox would also be a crack in the wall of time and an opening in the cosmos, through which people could assist in the renewal of life, not simply by celebrating, but also by helping raise the quality of life energy on Earth. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Rites of Passage: Ancient and Contemporary” on Saturday, April 15. Register and learn more at: mosaicvoices.org/events. You can save 30% on this workshop and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 500 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at: patreon.com/livingmyth.
On this episode of Living Myth, Michael Meade describes how “entering the modern world at this point is like entering a rite of passage that is already underway. In that sense, we are in a “liminal phase” that requires a transition, not simply from one place to another, but from one way of seeing the world to another way of seeing and being in the world.”
Liminal refers to a betwixt and between period in which we become radically disoriented and repeatedly confused. Yet, in a liminal condition we can also find aspects of ourselves that are otherwise hidden. We can open our eyes and our hearts to the possibility of becoming not just a different person but a greater, more conscious, more creative person.
Whether we call it the “bardo realm” that we fall into, or the liminal phase that we step into, at critical times in life we are called to encounter life's essential mysteries that wait to be found again, and need to be learned anew. If we frame the radical changes and deep uncertainties that we are all currently experiencing as a rite of passage, we may have a greater chance of finding and integrating a deeper sense of ourselves, as well as the greater values and true ideals of humanity.
If we accept that we are in the liminal stage of a collective rite of passage, our fears and uncertainties can become doorways to meaningful callings and transcendent visions. We are being called to leave an old way of seeing the world behind in order to arrive at a new world view and a renewed sense of imagination that can realign human culture with great Nature and the living Earth.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade talk more about rites of passage by joining his new online workshop “Rites of Passage: Ancient and Contemporary” on Saturday, April 15.
Register and learn more at: mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this workshop and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 500 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at: patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth begins with a surprising tale from ancient Africa that involves an eagle and a child. The story reveals how what ultimately soothes our souls is an innate connection to Spirit. Whether we call it the Great Spirit or the great Self within, something greater than ourselves, and yet secretly connected to ourselves, keeps trying to enter the world through our lives. This greater spirit for life has no choice but to enter through the hearts and souls of those living at a given time. As the world all around us rattles and seems to fall apart, we have the opportunity to see the world with what ancient traditions called the eyes of the heart. It makes sense that when the eyes of the heart try to open, the wounds from early life, which also reside in the heart, become stirred. In that sense, the way of the heart in troubled times involves healing wounds carried within us, while also finding visions trying to enter the world and bring healing on a greater level. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of 500 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth. If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode considers the ancient idea that during extreme times the earth becomes plagued with an overshadowing of the light and a darkening of the way that blocks the path to awakening and dims the dream of life. “When we reach the point where we cannot turn back because the world as we knew it is already gone, then we are standing at the edge of time, on the verge of the unknown. At that point, the only way to continue is to cross over to what the ancients called the Far Shore, the Mystic Reach or simply the Otherworld. What we desperately need now is the same thing that ancient seekers sought; that is the connection to the otherworld and place of origins that has been lost again and again. We can learn many things from the methods and the ways that ancient people found for crossing the river of life. Yet, we cannot simply use the same crossing places or borrow wholesale the methods that they devised. For, the point is not simply to seek the paths of the ancients; but rather to seek that which the ancients sought. While this has happened before, each age must bring forth living symbols that connect the time bound world with the realm of the eternal. When the Wheel of Time turns over the danger of collapse and dissolution grows greater in the daily world and at the same time a balancing imagination and energy for healing and renewing tries to awaken in the human soul. At the edge of time, even a small effort in the direction of the Otherworld has a greater effect in tipping the balance of life than at any other time." Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of nearly 500 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
This replay of a popular episode focuses upon the idea of destiny as an essential part of humanity through which each soul is called to follow its own star and true aim in life. However, the consideration of the word destiny also leads to some confusion about its historical associations and its original meaning. One thing leads to another as concepts about etymology or the study of words become entwined with ideas of mythology and the study of stories. Michael Meade suggests that language has its own genius and that each word can also be a story that branches out from root meanings to many associations with other words and other concepts. Similarly, each person has their own genius, the inner spark and speck of star that forms the original constellation of their soul. This inner spark connects us to our natural way of being, but also to our North Star that secretly tries to guide us further on the path of our own destiny, as we all participate in the spinning of the world, the turning of the spheres and the song of the stars of creation. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of nearly 500 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth. If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
Michael Meade considers the current threats to nature and the earth from the perspective of an ancient re-creation myth from the Mantaco people of the Amazon. After the entire world has been burned to ashes, the only survivors of the catastrophe struggle to revive life on earth. Surprisingly, they are able to resuscitate life by drumming upon a piece of charcoal and dancing until a green tendril emerges from the charred remains of a tree. The tendril turns out to be the “original ancestor” or Tree of Life from which the forests quickly grow back and eventually all of life returns.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of nearly 500 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
On this episode of Living Myth, Michael Meade addresses the paradox of time and timelessness in response to the latest Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. The annual bulletin uses a Doomsday Clock to measure the proximity of worldwide catastrophe on earth. For the first time, scientists report that we have reached a point just 90 seconds away from the stroke of midnight, the closest we have ever been to the time of Apocalypse on Earth. The doomsday clock is not a computer-driven report, but a symbolic statement from scientists about the urgent risks we all face. It shows only the last quarter of an oversized clock, indicating how much time has already been lost and how near we are to the supposed end of time. Yet, the clock as symbol goes far back to ancient traditions where the circle of time represents the wholeness of life. When time is only counted as linear and literal, it can be seen to come to a final end. Yet, the circle of time involves a greater imagination that includes the eternal source from which all of life and time originate. In that view, time repeatedly comes to an end, only to start over again. We may well be close to the end of an era and suffering the demise of a world view; but in mythological terms we are not simply at the end of time. Over the course of time the sense of “apocalypse” has been literalized and now popularized to the point where it characterizes our darkest fears and fantasies. Yet, as an archetypal image apocalypse presents a time of great extremes and a tension of opposites that includes both end and beginning, both collapse and renewal. The time that people cannot find these days must be sought in moments of timelessness through which time itself renews. It is in such moments that ancient wisdom can be found and new world views can appear. For, it is not simply a better world that we urgently need, but also a better world view. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 485 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth. If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
On this episode, Meade addresses how "the callous death of yet another unarmed black man at the hands of police has torn the age-old wound of racism open and revealed the process of dehumanization in American culture.” Humanity is not a cloak that one group of people can claim or deny to others. Humanity is the word we use for people as a whole, as in “we the people” and all the people on earth. If some people are denied their part in the whole, that leads to a deterioration of the whole and a diminishing of all the people. During the same time that videos of Tyre Nichols being brutally beaten by police were released to the public, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida was cynically attacking African American study courses that are critical for understanding the pervasive and deadly effects of systemic racism. Surprisingly, during the same moment of crisis the world's largest organization of geneticists made a public apology for its role in promoting eugenics, the false theory used to claim that one race is biologically superior to all others. The apology from geneticists came amidst a rise in hate crimes and mass killings, often inspired by false narratives of white supremacy. It came after the Human Genome Project produced a scientific consensus that all humans worldwide carry 99.9% of the same genetic material while sharing a common origin about 300,000 years ago in Africa. As human beings we live and we die in the context of the stories we tell about ourselves and the world. The acknowledgement and apology for condoning and promoting a false idea and belief about the nature of humanity can be seen as a step on the path of learning at what can be a turning point in our mutual story on the road of awakening and healing. Humanity is not a cloak that one group of people can claim or deny to others. Humanity is the word we use for people as a whole, as in “we the people” and all the people on earth. If some people are denied their part in the whole, that leads to a deterioration of the whole and a diminishing of all the people. We are being called upon to use the essential threads of our own lives to reweave a culture that becomes genuinely inclusive of all of humanity. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 480 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth. If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
On this episode, Michael Meade shows how a dream can be diagnostic and prescriptive, as well as predictive. A dream of facing a threatening series of waves leads to a consideration of living in a “liminal space” created when a flood tide of changes strikes both nature and culture at the same time. Denying the extreme conditions troubling the world at this time does not stop the waves of change crashing all around us. And thinking or feeling that we cannot handle it does not spare us from the effects that penetrate, alter and rattle us personally as well as collectively. Part of the prescription for surviving times of radical change involves learning how to bend and bow when facing overwhelming changes coming from the outside. Another part involves finding our own inner rhythm, natural way of being and genuine way of seeing when the world around us suffers waves of change and repeated upheaval. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 480 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth. If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
Ancient stories depict how each person born carries a precise medicine in their soul. In order to find and activate the inner medicine we need to face and even embrace our inner wounds. This episode explores how each soul is called to awaken more fully and each meaningful path eventually leads to the territory of gifts and wounds. Genius is said to hide behind the wound; living soulfully involves accepting our wounds as the source of our greatest gifts. Our psychic wounds secretly connect us to the transcendent function in the soul, so that what wounds us also initiates and transforms us. In that sense, the inner wound can be seen as a womb. In going through the wound we become reborn as an initiate on the path of healing. The imagination of initiation becomes a source of curative powers that can serve to awaken the soul of humanity and help us reconnect to the heart of nature. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 480 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth. If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
On this excerpt from a premium episode, Michael Meade follows a myth from ancient Ireland and weaves together cosmology, psychology and philosophy in order to open the soul's vision and catch the fish of wisdom. Rather than being abstract knowledge, "embodied wisdom" is shown to be both immediate and eternal, both spiritual and soulful. You can hear the full episode and receive additional podcast content by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 480 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
On this episode, Meade explores how as the outer world suffers conflicts and collapse, a balancing imagination and energy for healing seeks to awaken in our individual souls. This in-born code of the soul provides us with a gradient or guideline that can aim our energy as well as protect our lives.
The soul’s gradient is a mythic umbilical that plumbs to the ground of our being, but also connects us with the soul of the world. When in touch with this guiding line we can draw upon the resources and creative imagination of our souls. When out of touch with the gradient, we not only lose the natural vitality of our being, but can also suffer a loss of soul.
Each life calling involves a deeper connection to the inner-woven thread of destiny that leads us to the paths with heart and helps to aligns us with our natural dharma, our way of contributing to life and serving the world.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 475 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
On this episode, Michael Meade considers how each time we unlock the original pattern within us we align with our inner gradient and find a path with heart and soul. In contrast to the sense of a heroic journey that leads to treasure in the outside world, the road of awakening involves a pilgrimage to the genuine center of the deep self. What is so often sought in the outer world waits to be discovered in the soul’s inner realm. As things fall apart all around us, we have to find the center of the deep self within us. Meade then tells the story "The Tiger’s Whisker", a famous tale of a woman who must face a living tiger in order to cure the ailment in her soul. What begins as a small village tale opens up to become the endless territory of the human heart that harbors an old sage, a fierce tiger and the need to find a cure for love. In a world troubled with collective anxiety and growing fears, it is helpful to know that on a path with heart, fear is the guide and what you truly love is the cure. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 475 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth. If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode begins with an ancient myth from a tribe along the Amazon River. The story tells how the inner soul of each person travels at night all the way the center of the cosmos. Once there, the soul receives a message that is brought back and shared with the tribe as a dream. Meade draws on this link between the individual soul and the cosmos to describe how ancient cultures imagined each person to be born with a speck of star hidden in their soul, buried in their heart, just waiting to become a person’s “guiding star.” Each person is intended to contribute presence and meaning to the world and liberation happens each time we become conscious of the contents of our soul. We are here to awaken and learn how to express the uniqueness of our souls, and if we do that we add presence, being and creativity to the world and we become irreplaceable. If we don’t find the meanings hidden in our souls, the world loses presence and people who have no idea who they are come to dominate society. Rumi wrote that: “The world inside is bigger than the world outside.” Meade argues that in this time of darkness and conflict, hatred and bigotry, we have to revive the sense of the inner magnanimity and enduring brilliance of the individual soul. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 475 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth. If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth begins with a review of how cosmology used to refer to all of the ways that humans could imagine the creation of the world and the subtle connections of the human soul to the living cosmos. “As above, so below” is the ancient mantra that places humankind in the middle of the cosmic story as an essential link in the chain of being. As individuals we may properly feel frail and small; yet we belong to more than one dimension of life. And the dark time of the year is the traditional time to recall the interconnection between each of our souls and the starry universe around us. The word solstice means the “sun stands still” and ancient people imagined that the extremes of darkness harbored a timeless moment of stillness as the sun seems to stop just in time before the gloom becomes too great to recover from. Traditional cultures all over the world imagined that the midwinter sun needed conscious help from human beings in order to turn things around and bring back the light. These are not simply the dark days of winter; but the dark times for everyone; especially for those who truly care for the souls of other people, and for the well-being of the sacred earth we all live upon. Even as we can feel more physically separated from each other, and just when we can feel even more frail and small in the face of all the worldwide troubles we face, there may be no better time to light a candle, make a prayer, find a song to sing in the midst of the darkness, in order to help bring the light back. In facing the darkness together in a spiritual sense and in the ancient way, we can also find again and realign with the divine spark of life we each carry. For the soul has its own inner light and each soul is secretly connected to the song of the earth, to the Soul of the World, and to the indelible spark of life and light that can only be found in the darkest hours and the darkest times. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 475 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth. If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth addresses the whirlwind of feelings that can be stirred when the complications and uncertainties of contemporary life become accelerated by the growing darkness, the holiday season and the end of the year. Beginning with the idea that “making beauty gives us a place to stand,” Michael Meade weaves together a nest of poems that invoke the breath inside the breath, the stillness at the heart of being and the ancient soul of the world. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his upcoming online Solstice ritual “In This Darkness Singing” on Sunday, December 18. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 460 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth. If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode begins with a consideration of darkness as a necessary precondition for the creation of the lighted world. The symbolism of endless dark waters in creation myths represents the pre-formal, amorphous darkness that is also the hidden source of all life and all light. In cosmological terms, the presence of eternal night and the coming of the light are the primordial pairing. They are the twin generative principles that formed the origins of creation and continue to shape the living world.
“Yet, in the modern world, the almost universal presence of artificial lights virtually turns night into day. Instead of surrendering to the return of primordial darkness each evening, a manufactured realm of superficial illumination triumphs over natural darkness. Instead of appearing as an essential, uncanny, potentially spiritual presence, night becomes reduced to being the temporary absence of incessant incandescent light.
In this surface oriented, secular world of continuous light, the ancient sense of night as a necessary realm of reality that meaningfully alternates with the edge bright empire of day becomes lost, specifically lost in the light. Ancient people had an instinctive connection to darkness as a place of potential creation, revelation and divination. Thus, night was often seen as the most spiritual time, the dreaming space that cleanses the light before it returns to light up the day again.
As we find ourselves facing the darkest time of the year again, we also find our true selves in the dark times on earth again. At the same time, darkness is the essential background for the process of birth, death, and renewal, which is the underlying mystery of life in the cosmos, in nature and in our own souls. This greater understanding of the importance of darkness was part of all ancient cultures. In many traditions, Winter Solstice involved a willingness to stand in the darkness in a prayerful attitude in order to help bring the light back to the world.”
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his upcoming online Solstice ritual “In This Darkness Singing” on Sunday, December 18. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 460 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
On this episode, Michael Meade turns to ancient stories of the Titans in order to understand all the tragic events and extreme behaviors that keep making the world a darker and more dangerous place.
There are times when myth and fact coincide, when events in the common world become mythical in shape and scope. In such radical times, myths can offer ways of understanding what otherwise appears as completely unprecedented events and impossible dilemmas. In mythological terms, we are facing the end of an era during which everything can seem to collapse back into chaos and darkness before a regeneration of the dream of life can occur.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade talk more about the themes and ideas in this podcast by joining his new online series “Light Within Dark Times” that begins on Thursday, December 1. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this series and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 460 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
On this episode, Michael Meade answers questions about the sources and meanings of grace and gratitude. Gratitude was called the parent of all virtues and is connected to the natural nobility of the soul. We are most human and most alive when we allow ourselves to be touched by the beauty of the world and when we feel genuine gratitude for the life we have been given, no matter how hard or how dark the world around us may become.
Gratitude involves a flowering of the soul in which even a small sense of gratefulness can generate a full sense of abundance. In this way, feeling grateful and expressing gratitude helps to bring grace back into the world. Occasions of grace and gratitude, however small they may be, can rekindle our spirits and ease our souls.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “Light Within Dark Times” that begins on Thursday, December 1.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this series, and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 460 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth begins with a report that shows that younger people, voting in larger numbers, made the difference in an election that many viewed as a struggle for the future of democracy and the direction of modern culture. At the same time, a large study found that as people become older they tend to go from being optimistic about the future to being realistic about the present, and from there to being pessimistic about the future.
The tendencies towards pessimism become more pronounced in times of uncertainty and radical change, as many seek to return to idealized visions of the past. The trouble now is that the radical changes affecting and threatening all levels of nature and all aspects of culture make a return to the past, not just unwise, but also impossible.
Michael Meade turns to old ideas that show how a culture renews itself from both the dreams of young people and the visions of the elders. Traditional societies around the world had the idea that youth and elders were secretly connected through a deep sense of imagination that can hold past and future together. Seen that way, finding visions that heal the divisions in society and help realign human culture with nature cannot be the sole burden of young people.
When older people act out of self-interest or fear, they fail to have foresight and genuine vision. They also fail to make the kind of sacrifices that connect them on one hand to young people, and on the other hand to wise ways of thinking and understanding. The idea is not simply to age well, but to become wise in ways that draw upon the archetypal knowledge that sustained our ancestors and can also provide guidance for the future.
When we find ourselves at the end of an era, when even the young can feel older than they otherwise would be, it becomes important to reconnect to the capacity for genuine vision that exists in each person. For, imagination can go places that logic does not know and that fear fails to find. Youth and elders meet in places where imagination blossoms and the inner eyes of the soul open to genuine visions that can unite the old with the new, the past with the future.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “Light Within Dark Times” that begins on Thursday, December 1. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this series, and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 460 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth begins with the fact that what was once known as “election day” has become a stormy election season as social polarization leaves many outcomes too close to call. The political balance hangs in the troubled air as if to make palpable the sense that the world itself is divided. It is our mutual fate to be alive during a period of extreme divisions and radical changes that endanger the balance of nature as well as the stability and sanity of human culture.
In troubled times, everyone is affected by the storms of life as what happens in the outside world also stirs the internal depths of our own psyches. The deeper self or soul within us knows that politics alone cannot solve the global issues that threaten both culture and nature; yet avoiding the political storms and cultural divisions can secretly add to the collective turmoil.
Michael Meade tells an ancient myth that places the first human ancestor right in the middle of the tension between self-interest and serving something beyond oneself. The circumstances may change, but life has always been hanging in the balance with humanity implicated in the outcome. Once again, humanity faces the elemental tension between simply consuming the resources of life and becoming a true friend of nature and the earth.
The ancient story shows that at crucial times a small change can lead to a great effect that can shift the underlying patterns of both nature and culture. When we listen to the subtle voices that can come from any area of life, it becomes possible to awaken more fully to the creative impulses that sleep within our souls.
Despite feeling overwhelmed by the dramas and challenges of change, our hands are never far from finding again the old practices that help us weather the storms, while keeping our hearts open to the language of nature, and the inspiration and imagination trying to enter this troubled world through each of our souls.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new free online event “Gratitude and Grace” on Thursday, November 17. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 450 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode begins with a report on the radicalization of a radio station where extreme political views began to be mixed in with the local weather and local news. Ironically, the name of the town was Normal, as if to underline the sense that “normalizing” extremist movements and disinformation causes any sense of what might be normal to be a thing of the past.
The dramas and conflicts happening locally are also occurring throughout the world as the rise of social media, where anything goes, becomes added to the strong arm politics of gaining power by any means necessary. In the midst of all the misinformation, fear mongering and rabble rousing, people don't know what to believe or who to trust. To be alive at this time means to be a witness, willingly or unwillingly to the upheaval of the world.
The conditions in which we find ourselves are the conditions through which we must find our true selves and the genuine purpose of our lives. If we accept that we live amidst a great metamorphosis that involves all levels of life, we can become more able to tolerate and endure the troubling and tragic events that threaten both nature and human culture. In times of upheaval we are being called, not to return to normal, but to find a greater imagination as well as a deeper understanding about life on Earth.
As things fall apart in the outside world, a deep sense of purpose and meaning seeks to awaken within us. The inner alchemy of the human soul includes a settling self-center, but also resilient resources of great vitality and transcendent creativity. Ancient traditions held that the individual soul could be the source of “vertical imagination” that allows us to reconnect the inner with the outer, the upper with the lower, the older with the younger, each other with one another, and help bring human culture and great nature back into balance.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new free online event “Gratitude and Grace” on Thursday, November 17. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 450 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth begins with Michael Meade turning back to an ancient myth and a five thousand year old fragment of writing in order to find wisdom that is missing in the modern world. Both the myth and the words of the ancient scribe offer solace and encouragement to people feeling helpless and hopeless about contemporary life.
“Like the ancient writer, we live in tormented and troubling times, as all of life's conflicts and uncertainties seem to surface at the same time. Like the anguished scribe, we cannot deny the turmoil of the world. And yet we cannot simply bear the weight of it as frail human beings. As was the case for the ancient scribe, this time of cultural upheaval is also the time of a struggle for the presence of the human soul and a battle for the soul of the living world.
The counterweight to the feeling of having the weight of the world on our shoulders and being subjected to collective fears and anxieties, involves an awakening of the inner soul. For, the soul is always on the verge of some great awareness and on the edge of awakening to more meaningful ways of being. As the underlying and unifying force of life, the human soul carries an inheritance of resiliency, and a capacity for innovation in the face of disaster.
The idea of drawing on our own inner resources and from there contributing to the healing and renewal of the world is essential to avoid feeling powerless, and helpless in the face of the storms of life and the radical changes of the worldwide upheaval at this time.”
You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “Heart and Soul: Living Wholeheartedly in a Troubled World” that begins on Thursday, October 27. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this series and further support the podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 450 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and we thank you for your support of our work.
In conjunction with Michael Meade’s new online series “Heart and Soul”, we are replaying a popular episode that relates to the timely issues and themes of the medicine of the heart and the redeeming energy of the soul. Each heart can be mined for courage and each soul is imbued with creative imagination. Often we must be driven to our deepest inner resources by fear, grief and despair. Yet, what the heart loves is the cure and what cures the human heart can also help heal a broken world. The realm of heart and soul is the source of all the arts and spiritual traditions. Meade reminds us of the old idea that “therapy treats my condition and art treats the condition of the world”. What follows is an intricate weaving of poetry and ideas that leads to the kinds of medicine waiting to be found in the depths of the soul. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “Heart and Soul: Living Wholeheartedly in a Troubled World” that begins on Thursday, October 27. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this series and further support the podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 450 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and we thank you for your support of our work.
On this episode, drawn from a live event, Michael Meade explores an old idea that genuine maturity depends upon our ability to withstand and understand the tension of the opposites. The word individual means “un-divided,” not divided on the inside and thus able to remain true to ourselves when under great pressure from the outside world. Although we can feel crucified by opposing sides and torn between conflicting ideas, transformation is the secret aim of the tension inside life itself.
For just when everything seems to fall apart, what seeks to become more conscious is the eternal youth in the soul that sustains the dream of life and the wise old sage in the heart of each person that serves as inner teacher and guide. Inner wisdom involves a creative unity in which the eternal youth and wise elder within us help us hold together the past and the future and find meaningful ways forward.
You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “Heart and Soul: Living Wholeheartedly in a Troubled World” that begins on Thursday, October 27. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this series and further support the podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 450 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and we thank you for your support of our work.
On this episode, edited from a live event, Meade considers how as accepted patterns dissolve and uncertainty grows, we become more vulnerable to feelings of insecurity, anxiety and fear. While the rational mind reels from the irrational blows, it becomes necessary to find a sense of wholeness within ourselves.
Wholeness and unity are what all healing seeks, but a genuine transformation requires a descent to the underworld of the soul. There we find that our woundedness is not a static state, but rather a dynamic condition through which we incarnate more fully. In going through the wound the greater self within us is revealed.
When we allow ourselves to be vulnerable we become more open and a deeper wisdom can come to us and live through us.Each act of healing our inner splits contributes to the healing of our divided world.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 445 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
As a metaphor for human nature, the Acorn Myth suggests that each person comes into the world with an innate shape and an inborn style intended to grow a particular character. Thus the soul, rather than being a blank slate, tends to be more like a garden already planted and seeded in a certain way.
On this replay of a popular episode, Meade suggests that the inner seed of the soul arrives already packed with knowledge. Specifically, it knows something of its own way of being and, if the shell of the seed can be cracked, the nature and shape and aim of a person's life can become revealed. Call it a myth, an open secret or an eternal truth, the sense of each soul having a seed story it came to live resonates throughout the cultures of the world.
As the world around us becomes increasingly unstable and chaotic, we need to turn to the inner shape and core imagination of our own soul to find stability, meaning and purpose.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 445 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
On this excerpt from a premium episode, Michael Meade talks about key issues that affect transformation in our lives. He considers core complexes in family and culture and wades into the territory of deep emotions. The word complex is trying to point out that when we have a particular kind of interior trouble, the issues are complex. Deep down, we all want to change, he says, and each crisis and obstacle we encounter serves to spark the initiatory transformation our soul longs for.
If we change one small thing in our lives, we affect everything and everyone around us. In following our deep calling in life, we naturally encounter struggles. Yet it is these exact struggles that become the turning point for our lives to become bigger, for our wounds to find healing and for our destiny to be revealed.
You can hear the full episode and receive additional podcast content by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 445 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
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This episode begins with the idea that “each family acts as a vessel of fate with an inherited plot that begins all over again each time a child is born. For the infant is not born into a vacuum as much as dropped into a particular stage of a family drama that has been playing out over generations.” Meade considers the issues of “family fate” that can restrict and obscure, but ultimately provoke the discovery of the threads of fate and destiny in each person’s life.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 445 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode considers that when the world seems to be falling apart and life seems increasingly polarized, it becomes necessary to tune to the inner voice that is secretly connected to the pulse of nature as well as to the realm of the divine. The problem is not that there is no resonant voice inside us, not that there isn't something trying to awaken in each of our souls; rather the problem is the issue of tuning in.
The old idea is that once we tune in to our own inner nature, we also become aligned with the world behind the common world, with the realm of the Muses who are sending us signals that turn into music or songs and poetry, or ideas waiting to be found and be shared to bring greater understanding. Through tuning in we become the living instruments whose breath is needed, whose song is required in the struggle for meaning and love. Not because we are inflated or believe we are simply special; but because we are tuned in to life and attuned to our own hearts and souls. Soul is the connective tissue of life. Without a sense of soul, our own lives can fall apart, the inner parts turning discordant, the song of our being becoming silenced.
Yet, when inspired by the eternal youth within us and encouraged by the old sage in our heart, we learn how to become instruments for healing and finding love. Then, we use our breath and our voices to shape places of genuine communion where we can all come together, even with our uncertainties and fallibilities which strangely contribute to the resonance of the healing song trying to be found.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 440 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode considers the problem of resistance to change from psychological and mythological viewpoints. While we are facing radical changes that threaten both nature and culture, we are also challenged by the dilemma of human resistance to change at both personal and collective levels. The issue is not simply a lack of commitment to change. Rather, resistance arises precisely where we have the best intentions to change. The problem becomes all the more difficult as we may not be aware of our resistance because it occurs at an unconscious level. Attempts to meaningfully change can feel like an internal struggle between opposing parts of ourselves; one part that overtly wants change and another part that covertly works against it.
What some psychologists call an internal “competing commitment” or a subconscious “immunity to change” was once known as the fatal flaw that leads us away from our soul's natural goal of transformation and spiritual realization. In terms of mythic imagination, each soul has an original intention waiting to be found and a life dream waiting to awaken. And each soul also has its fatal flaw, a kind of reverse attitude that works against that original intention.
Genuine transformation develops from the inside out. Thus, when change becomes essential, not just for ourselves, but also for life on earth, we are called to awaken to the true aims of our authentic selves as well as to the fatal flaws that work against meaningful change, both personally and collectively.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 440 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
Michael Meade tells two ancient tales about what keeps our hearts captive and restricted rather than being open, loving and wise. Our hearts can be capable of great love and true courage; yet when opportunities come for us to change and grow, old fears awaken and the inner walls tend to tighten as the ego or little-self within us restricts our hearts from opening more fully. In the same way that something greater than ourselves once wounded us, something greater than ourselves seeks to awaken through us, but some practices for letting go may be required for true awakenings to occur.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new free online event “Re-creation and Renewal on Earth” on Thursday, August 25. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 435 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
Heraclitus said, “It is while we are trying to change that we find purpose.” On this in-depth episode, drawn from an event recording, Michael Meade suggests that because we live in a time of change, if we can allow ourselves to participate in the change, then we can find meaningful purpose that awakens the heart and leads us in the right direction in the world.
The idea of a threshold is something that exists before one state and another, before one place and another. Most of us are collectively on that threshold betwixt and between the letting go of the old view of the world and the full stepping into the new world.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new free online event “Re-creation and Renewal on Earth” on Thursday, August 25. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 435 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth begins with a Celtic myth about the mythic mother that attends each human birth and the ways we each can be “spellbound” is specific ways. “Spells appear in the important areas of our lives; especially in the areas where meaning and purpose must also be found. Fate marks the spot where the limitations in our lives insist on being known, but also where the deep imagination of each soul resides. Breaking an inner spell allows us to be touched by the grace of the world. It releases vital life energy that otherwise remains trapped and reveals creative imagination that makes us able to serve our deeper self as well as the world.
When a person becomes self-denying, self-rejecting or self-neglecting, they have fallen into an inner spell and forgotten core connections to their inner radiant self. Each person suffers their own version of being a motherless child, each an orphan in search of a meaningful task or a path of awakening that can lead to a genuine transformation. In the strange way of the world, it is the orphan part of us, the long abandoned, often rejected element of our own soul that finds the true inspiration of our lives. From the dark cave of confused feelings and traumatic memories comes the next phase of the story trying to unfold from within us. If we can accept and even forgive ourselves, we can be redeemed by the gift of Mother Nature in the form of the inner Milk of Inspiration.”
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new free online event “Re-creation and Renewal on Earth” on Thursday, August 25. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 430 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
On this episode, Michael Meade uses the ancient metaphor of the pearl that begins as an irritant inside an oyster, that grows from within to become the treasure worth diving deep to find. “When the world fragments and falls apart on the outside, the underlying unity of life has to be found in the depths of the individual soul. Soul is the missing ingredient that has to be found again or the Spirit of life itself can seem to drain from the world. The iridescent pearl can symbolize both the life trying to grow from deep within us and the mysterious force that begets all of life to begin with.
An old Latin word for pearl means “unique,” attesting to the fact that no two pearls are identical. But also pointing to the fact that no two souls are the same as each soul born is unique and valuable in its own way. Those who claim to be perfect and have no visible defects are like manufactured pearls. Their glow does not come from the mystery that turns blemishes into beauty or inner wounds into gifts. Those who desire pearls must dive into dark waters and risk the isolation and confusion of the depths. Similarly, those who would find the inner pearl of the self must enter the deep waters of soul and face the darkness found within. They must crack the hard shell of the little-self and come to know themselves from the inside out. Ascent and upward movement can eternalize, while the downward movement of conscious descent personalizes and makes things real.
Finding the inner pearl of the soul requires great vulnerability, thus many fear and avoid the cracking and breaking open process. Yet, each time the shell of the little-self opens further, the inner radiance and iridescence of the soul can shine through. The deeper the connection to our inner self becomes, the stronger our connections to both nature and the divine also become. When the inner pearl of the soul becomes revealed, something also comes alive in creation. That's how things change here on earth, from the inside out, as the revealed value of the individual soul contributes great value and vital energy to the transformation of life trying to happen on Earth.”
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 430 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
On this episode, Michael Meade revives two ancient myths about the origins of death in order to consider the core mysteries of life on earth. “Little deaths occur throughout the course of life; attending to them and learning from them adds to the vitality of one's own soul, but also to the vitality of the world. The presence of death is a tactic of life, and a little death is needed whenever life would grow greater.
The world is a mystery trying to be revealed. How we solve the mystery of the world and how we solve the mystery of our own lives matters. And each matters more at the end of an era, when all aspects of life and come into question. It's as if we need an ecology of both life and death in order to help sustain the delicate balance that allows both great nature and human culture to continue.”
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 430 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth begins with the fragmentation and breakdown of political parties and social lives currently happening in countries around the world. Michael Meade then takes the issues of upheaval in both nature and human culture to the deeper levels of psyche and soul where archetypal energies of transformation and healing try to enter the world though each of us.
In accepting that we are in the midst of a great turnaround that involves a shift of the underlying archetypes of life, we become more able to tolerate and understand the tragic events that threaten both nature and human culture. The question becomes whether the pattern of collapse and renewal takes place simply through the raw energies of the unconscious or does a transformation of life on earth develop with the conscious awareness and assistance of people living at this time.
In times of radical change, a different kind of courage is required, not simply the courage of our convictions, for that can contribute to the polarization of opposites that grips the daily world. Rather, what is needed is the courage of our imagination, which is considered to be the deepest power of the human soul and which secretly is connected to the original potentials of life and the living Soul of the World. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “Finding Stories to Live With” that begins on Thursday, July 21. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this series and further support the podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 430 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this growing community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
On this episode, Michael Meade draws upon a story about the fall of the earth into darkness that is thousands of years old, yet strangely parallels and can help illuminate the worldwide crises that currently trouble all of our lives. Churning the Milk Ocean is a vast myth depicting how beauty, meaning and wisdom become drained from the world as all levels of life become more divided and chaotic.
The story focuses upon two important things that become lost and cause the earth to diminish and the world to grow dark. On one hand Lakshmi, the goddess of wisdom, beauty and abundance has disappeared from the earth. On the other hand, “amrit,” the eternal elixir and source of all healing has fallen to the bottom of the ocean of existence.
Churning the ocean is a surprising tale of lost and found on a cosmological scale, intended to remind us how the most important things can disappear, yet not be completely lost. It is an eternal drama in which only a strange cooperation between the opposing forces of dark and light can bring back the lost powers of creation and the medicine needed to sustain both nature and culture.
It's a grand tale about the struggle between the forces of dark and light at a cosmic level. It involves a pantheon of ancient gods and a horde of demons, as all levels of life become caught in a struggle to find again, and sustain, the balance of creation.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “Finding Stories to Live With” that begins on Thursday, July 21.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this series and further support the podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 430 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this growing community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This replay of a popular episode of Living Myth begins with a consideration of how contemporary patterns of polarization can lead people to feel discouraged and defeated when it comes to meaningful change. Although “the twin offspring of this age of polarization may be radical uncertainty and rampant absolutism,” Michael Meade approaches the problem, not by trying to reduce it, but by making it bigger in order to better understand it.
“Back at the beginning of creation, the original polarization was between cosmos and chaos. And in some sense, each occasion of polarization is connected to that original tension of opposites. Understanding it at any level requires understanding it at that original level. Rather than seeming like the impending end of life, the tension of opposites secretly hints at a hidden third that not only relieves the tension but also renews life at a meaningful level.”
The hidden third or middle way that can shift the tension of opposites to a creative level is not the same as notions of a middle path that avoids excess and extremes by following reason and moderation in all things. Nor is it simply the path of negotiation, bi-partisanship and compromise. The old imagination of a middle way involves a living center, a moving middle and golden mean that can loosen the restrictions of time and place and opens us to moments of wholeness and renewal.
“While the two poles of a polarity may seem to be irreconcilable opposites, they are secretly parts of a hidden unity. Existence itself is an essential unity appearing as a duality, and thus genuine change and transformation are the secret aims of the tensions inside the opposites and inside life itself.”
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “Finding Stories to Live With” that begins on Thursday, July 21. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this series and further support the podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 425 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this growing community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth begins with the recent Supreme Court decision to take away the rights of women to make their own reproductive choices. The current insistence on extreme abortion bans and restriction of human rights, not only favors one religious viewpoint over many others, it also misrepresents the origins and history of abortion and reproductive rights.
Michael Meade traces the issues of abortion, “personhood” and women’s right to choose back to ancient ideas of “ensoulment in the womb” and the surprising roots of religious thought and practices in early Judaism and Christianity.
Since ancient times the core mystery of life has been symbolized as the womb of the cosmos or of mother Earth, that is also embodied by each woman. We have all been born into the mystery known throughout time as “birth, death and rebirth” or as “life, death and renewal.” Despite the narrowing of minds, the hardening of hearts and the harrowing of wombs that some insist upon, life remains a mystery that does not seek to be simply defined or controlled or be reduced to fixed dogmas or intrusive laws.
As the poet Goethe once wrote, "so long as you have not experienced this, to die and so to grow, you are just a guest on this dark earth." This is not the time to allow those who would take away the rights of others and presume to judge for everyone to make decisions about life and death for the rest of us.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “Finding Stories to Live With” that begins on July 21.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this series and further support the podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 425 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this growing community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
Amongst the increasing number of divisions that we now find in the contemporary world, one of the most damaging separations develops where the modern world becomes separated from, and at odds with, the realm of nature on one hand and what people used to call the “world behind the world” on the other hand. The old wisdom shared by many traditions stated that what is broken or wounded in this world can only be healed by the Otherworld, the realm of spirit and great imagination. In denying or dismissing the nearby realm of the otherworld, modern cultures wind up, not just fenced in by fixed ideas and failing ideologies, but also blindly separated from the very sources from which healing might come.
As humans we are mythic by nature, living on the verge of wonder and but a step from the otherworld all the time. We visit it in sleep and become the bearers of dreams. We fall into it whenever we fall in love. We ascend to it when we allow ourselves to be inspired and lose touch with its grandeur and deep wisdom whenever we insist that things be seen as only factual, measurable or simply rational.
The betwixt and between, intermediary realm appears in all kinds of myths and stories when the main character has become disoriented or lost and does not know which way to turn. Typically, that is the place the helping animals or the wise old woman or the bird of spirit appear as guides, teachers and healers and Intermediaries from the otherworld. As characters in our own stories, we find ourselves in a time of great upheaval and in the betwixt and between condition that comes at the end of an era. If we accept the condition of “not knowing” and being vulnerable, we move closer to the otherworld which has always been the source of imagination, healing and potential renewal.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 425 episodes and 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
On this excerpt from a Living Myth Premium episode, Michael Meade considers how when the certainty of the world collapses around us, the danger of cynicism, isolation, and becoming numb inevitably increases. In looking for antidotes to these feelings of overwhelm and separation, he draws on themes and ideas including cosmology, genius and our inner gifts and wounds.
If you would like to hear the rest of this episode, and receive additional podcast content, you can become a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 425 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
Currently, the common understanding of “streaming” means “listening to music or watching video in real time as part of a continuous stream of data.” An older idea describes a cosmic stream of essential knowledge constantly pouring through the world. This much needed knowledge about life on earth flows freely, but at such a fast rate of speed that most people cannot catch it or even see it.
On this in-depth episode, drawn from an event recording, Michael Meade suggests that when it comes to finding ways to respond to the climate crisis and all the humanitarian issues in the world, we may have to find ways to slow down and tap into the ancient stream of wisdom.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 425 episodes and 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode brings a focus to the danger of feeling discouraged or overwhelmed by the pressure and weight of all that troubles the daily world. Something that is both primordial and enduring is trying to catch up to us, trying to inspire us and rejuvenate us so that we can become conscious keepers of the dream of our own souls and contributors to the healing of life on earth. In the dark times, when it's easy to become discouraged or lose our sense of self, we have to find our connections to the otherworld of great imagination and the underlying spirit of life itself.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Myth and Emergent Truth” on Saturday, June 11. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this workshop and further support the podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 420 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and we thank you for your support of our work.
On this episode, Michael Meade laments the agonizing loss of 19 innocent children’s lives in the tragic school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. The shocking report of at least 12 more mass shootings during the long weekend that followed reveals a growing flood of needless deaths that signal, not just a loss of innocence, but an increasing loss of the value of life itself. Sadly and tragically, those who manufacture, market and use politics to sell guns intended for war are part of a deadly cultural script that predicts an ongoing funeral march. And behind that script is a growing nihilism, as if the automatic weapons are shooting darkness from a void of inner emptiness that masquerades as power. Sensible gun laws are needed to stop the flood of killings; but also as a way to begin restoring a collective sense of the meaning and the value of each individual life.
Each mass shooting broadens and deepens the river of sorrow. Each mass casualty event marks a tragic turning point in which we either choose to continue the collective funeral march or take steps to substantiate a greater sense of the meaning of life. The only meaningful outcome of all the needless deaths and tragic loss of life can be that we find our way back to a deeper sense of compassion, to a more inclusive sense of humanity and to a greater sense of the meaning and value of the gift of life.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Myth and Emergent Truth” on Saturday, June 11.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this workshop and further support the podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 415 episodes and 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and we thank you for your support of our work.
This episode considers the darkness and division which permeates so much of contemporary life through the lens of the liminal or betwixt and between stage of a traditional rite of passage.
We live betwixt and between a past world that is fast disappearing and a future that looks increasingly dark. When the outside world becomes full of darkness and uncertainty, the soul expects us to turn inward as we would in the soul-searching way of a vision quest.
When a society won't stop and face the darkness it has created; when a culture won't face up to its internal wounds and patterns of divisiveness, not only does it go blind to healing ways, but a distortion and diminishing of life itself occurs. We are in the dark phase of a collective rite of passage in which the meaning and the nobility of human life must be found and become known again.
In the dark times it is not the simple sense of civility that our souls long for; rather it is the older sense of “communitas” in which we see the deeper self in each other that we desperately need. Just as the spirit of hope must repeatedly be found in the depths of our souls, the lost sense of shared humanity must be retrieved from the darkness around us in order for age old wounds to be healed and meaningful visions of the future to arise.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Myth and Emergent Truth” on Saturday, June 11. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this workshop and further support the podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 415 episodes and 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and we thank you for your support of our work.
This episode begins with how easily we can feel overwhelmed and discouraged as each day seems to bring more fraying of the fabric of culture. As tragic violence keeps recurring and the weaponizing of religious beliefs and political ideologies increases, it becomes ever more important for us to find and hold the inner thread of life. “Amidst all of the unraveling, we have to each find a thread and figure out how to help re-weave the world.”
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his upcoming free online event “Hope and Imagination in Dark Times” on Thursday, May 19.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 415 episodes and 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode begins with the uproar occasioned by the Supreme Court draft opinion on overturning Roe v Wade. Michael Meade turns to ancient stories in order to find ways to imagine breaking the spells of division and find ways that ”we each can bring a piece of lived truth and learn ways to more consciously inhabit the same story again.”
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his upcoming free online event “Hope and Imagination in Dark Times” on Thursday, May 19.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 410 episodes and 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
On this episode, Michael Meade looks at the current climate of polarization, fear and division and considers how we can navigate current challenges. In considering the root meanings of fear, Meade shows how in facing where we fear to go, we can find a greater sense of calling as well as a deeper connection to the soul of the world.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his upcoming free online event “Hope and Imagination in Dark Times” on Thursday, May 19.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 410 episodes and 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
“We live in a world in which it is easier to divide things than unify them. Politics and polarization are both connected to the root word ‘pole’ which can appear as a unifying central pole, as in a tent, but can also divide into opposite poles. The unifying energy is there, but is not visible because it is not yet conscious.”
So begins this replay of podcast in which Michael Meade considers the essential dynamic of opposition leading to a new state of unity. In order to uncover the deeper sense and meaning of opposition and polarization, Meade goes to an ancient practice from a small tribe near the Amazon River. The ideas about the wise and the crosswise aspects of the soul helps elucidate the sense that in our individual lives and our collective experiences we are often looking for and longing for the third thing that is the medicine we most need.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 400 episodes and 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of considers how Earth Day and the oldest traditions of Easter are secretly connected. “One of the open secrets trying to be rediscovered at this time is that a deep capacity for renewal exists in the depths of our own souls, just as it resides in the unseen depths of the earth itself.”
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 400 episodes and 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
Welcome to the Living Myth podcast with Michael Meade, where this shifting, changing world is looked at from a mythic perspective.
This episode of Living Myth considers the increasing sense of weight and pressure that comes from all the tensions and conflicts in the world. Michael Meade uses ancient ideas of fate and destiny to shift the way we might understand our collective fate at this time and also open the sense of individual calling and destiny.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 400 episodes and 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth begins with the sense of incurable wounds found in both the tragic war in Ukraine and within the embattled issues of ever-growing, worldwide climate crisis. Michael Meade turns to ancient understandings of both seemingly incurable wounds and the way new paths of healing are found.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his upcoming free online event “Coping in a World Gone Wrong” on Thursday, April 7.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 400 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth begins with the sense that “most stories about the future of the world have become fatalistic” and “some great confusion and mass forgetting has fallen like a shadow over the earth.” It then dives into the ancient waters of the soul in search of the source of deep memory and great imagination that was connected to Mnemosyne, once known as the Well of Rejuvenation and the Mother of the Muses.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his upcoming free online event “Coping in a World Gone Wrong” on Thursday, April 7.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 400 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
On this episode of Living Myth, Michael Meade addresses the question of how can we hold things together when the world around us is falling apart. He finds surprising insights and compelling answers in the ancient tales of the recreation of the world known as Earth Diver myths.
We live in a world that is falling apart; climate crisis says that, the brutal war in the Ukraine says that, and the fact that almost anything can divide people says that in a painful way every day. It makes sense that it can be hard for any of us to “get it together” during these turbulent times. So, what does it mean to get it together when everything around us is falling apart?
One answer comes from the tradition of alchemy where Coagulatio refers to the element of earth and the process for bringing things together through creative practice. It makes sense to look to things that are stable, like the solid earth beneath our feet. Yet, part of what unsettles us now is that the Earth itself is in danger. How do we, as frail beings in this upside down world, get it together when it is not even clear that the earth itself can hold together?
Surprisingly, coagulatio describes how the creative process begins with facing the chaos and consciously descending into darkness to find the source of renewal. In mythology, the process of conscious descent into darkness appears in the themes of the Earth Diver stories found in traditions from ancient India to Native North America.
Some versions of the Earth Diver myths appear as tales of a second creation or a re-creation that occurs when the created world has become worn and corrupted. Amongst the first peoples of North America, some variants tell of a time when a rend or tear in the world caused a young woman named Earth to fall from the heavens. As she fell there was nothing below except the dark primeval waters; but the birds and animals arranged for her to land on the back of a turtle. Then, the woman who fell from the sky instructed the animals to dive down into the dark waters and find some mud that could be used to continue creation.
Many animals descended to find the mud of creation, but all failed until a muskrat managed to bring a little ball of mud from the darkness below. Then, the woman who fell from the sky took the mud and spread it out in all directions until it became the earth. After that she directed the process through which the earth was seeded with trees, grains and vegetables and other plants.
It is significant that Mother Earth comes from the heavens above, but also generates the creative energy that arises from the darkest, deepest place. When seen as a collective dream of humanity, Earth Diver myths depict the emergence of creative energy and greater consciousness that comes from below. The earth itself, as the source of life ongoing, shows us how to serve creation and preserve life by descending into the unknown or unconscious depths in search of more bits of “prima materia.”
In alchemy, prima materia signifies the primal materials and core energies from which life on earth is formed. Prima materia was also the name of that bit of hidden matter in the psyche of each person which, if brought into conscious awareness, turns out to be what truly matters when the world turns dark. In the other words, something meaningful is trying to emerge from the very confusions and conflicts inside each person’s psyche or soul.
The emergence metaphor continues when the mud of creation is handled by someone at the surface; it becomes activated and begins to grow and spread. In these troubled times, when darkness has fallen over the earth, each of us are potential earth divers. If we would descend into our own psyches, we would find something to bring from unconsciousness into conscious awareness. In that sense, we each have something to offer that can spread in its own way and contribute to bringing things back together again.
Another important aspect of Earth Diver stories occurs where the animals who take on the mission of diving into darkness are not themselves heroic. They possess no supernatural powers and even those who succeed only manage to bring up a bit of the mud of creation. In other words, helping creation to continue on earth is not a matter of willful heroics. In this time of upheaval and collapse, no one is required to save the world. Yet, we each are implicated in the process of diving down and bringing back our bit of the mud of creation, our contribution to ongoing creation on earth.
In some versions of the myth, the woman who fell from the sky was pregnant with twins intended to assist in the continuing process of creation on Earth. Yet, it turns out that the twins are opposites, sometimes described as “good mind’ and “bad mind.” Whatever the good twin does to enhance life, the bad twin does the exact opposite; so that life on earth involves conflicting energies that can become intensified.
Eventually, the twins must face off against each other. At the point of almost losing, the good twin is encouraged by the voice of Mother Earth speaking directly to him, encouraging and reminding him of the importance of continuing creation. Inspired and strengthened by the energy coming to him from below, the good twin wins the battle. Thus, creation can continue; but not even the best intentions or good deeds can cancel the opposing energies and darker thoughts of his twin from being part of the world.
At times on earth, the dynamic balance between light and dark falters. The darkness in the world grows and begins to shift things back towards the primal chaos at the beginning. During such a shift, the earth becomes plagued with an overshadowing of the light as the forces of arrogance and ignorance expand. There comes to be a darkening of the way that blocks the living path, a faltering of the dream of life ever trying to be born in the depths of each human soul.
In one sense, Earth Diver myths serve as warning tales about the dangers that can upset the entire world. On another level, they offer ways of understanding times like these when the troubles have already become so great as to be worldwide, and so deep as to be existential. On yet another level, Earth Diver stories become teaching tales intended to awaken, to inspire and to embolden each human soul.
Diving down to make conscious our deepest inner gifts shows how we must surrender to a path or a project that requires all our goodness and positive energies, while also bringing to light all the negatives and oppositions within us. In order to be fully alive, we must bring up our best and worst selves, as being tossed back and forth by extreme changes and conflicting issues serves to awaken the sleeping potentials in each person's life.
In that sense, we either add to the growing darkness in the world or else become agents of creation and help bring back to consciousness the essential life forces and the healing energies that have become lost. In that kind of consciousness making process, we rejoin creation. We learn again how to serve the Earth, which is secretly trying to inspire and embolden us to become part of a radical transformation in which the earth revives and the world renews itself again.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his upcoming free online event “Coping in a World Gone Wrong” on Thursday, April 7.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 400 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth begins with the deepening of the war in Ukraine and the growing sense of anxiety in the world. Michael Meade turns to depth psychology to consider instinctive ways of coping with insecurity, uncertainty and the tragedies of life.
"If a person wishes to be sure of the road they tread, they must close their eyes and walk in the dark." That statement comes from St. John of the Cross, who also coined the phrase “the dark night of the soul.” Often, I wake up thinking about the hordes of people who now find themselves treading through darkness, like those caught in the ever-deepening tragedy of the war in Ukraine.
An old tension exists between the presence of tragedy and the loss of innocence. And there's a way in which this clearly unnecessary, coldly destructive and brutal war enacts a daily assault on human innocence. When the Russian army heavily bombed a maternity hospital, people all over the world saw images of a very pregnant mother being hurriedly carried through smoking rubble on a makeshift stretcher. The sense of tragedy deepened when desperate attempts to save the mother failed and both innocent lives were lost.
At times, I try to turn away from the ongoing tragedy, but mostly I cannot manage to turn away. It's as if averting my eyes might add to the anguish and abandonment of all those who are suffering. Part of me wants to see all the video clips of the thousands and thousands of children being hurried fearfully into an unknown, uncertain future. And part of me wants to witness with my own eyes the filling in of mass graves in the city of Mariupol, where an actual witness said that “the land is now soaked in blood, bitterness, and despair.”
When I do close my eyes, I continue to see some of the tragic images. I also see and feel the darkness that fell over me and our country during the Vietnam War. I was torn open at that time and become torn again each time an unjustified war turns the living world upside down. When I hear the dark propaganda and the massive misinformation coming out of Russia, I viscerally remember the distortions and lies used to deny the actual death tolls and the massive destruction unleashed during the Vietnam era.
To this day, I feel compelled to witness war coverage and often fail to know when I've seen enough or how I might find a way of withdrawing and escaping the numbing presence of mindless war. Yesterday, I was at the point of feeling torn between witnessing and turning away when an interview with a Ukrainian man, who lives in war torn Ukraine but is Russian in origin, caught my full attention. He spoke passionately about trying to inform his parents in Russia about the horrors of Putin’s war. He then described how distressing and enraging it was to have his own parents tell him that he was not telling the truth when he described all of the destruction and unnecessary death that is tearing Ukraine apart.
His parents get their news from Russian state television and believe that the Russian army entered Ukraine to drive the Nazis out and create humanitarian corridors to safety. After expressing outrage about the fact that the Russian army had actually attacked those trying to use the humanitarian corridors, his passion shifted to a sense of compassion for those trapped under the spell of many years of propaganda.
He explained that he came to realize how important it remains, for both Ukrainian and Russian people, that he and others find ways to communicate the ongoing tragedy to their parents and older relatives. He described how they were continuing to reach out and expressed genuine hope that the Russian people could awaken from the heavy spell of propaganda. I found myself released from the immediate tensions and searing presence of the war. I also realized why Karen Horney’s theories about human anxiety and instinctive coping strategies had been on my mind.
Horney was an early follower of Sigmund Freud, but broke away in order to consider the psychology of infants and parents, which she thought had a great bearing on how we cope with fears and anxiety later in life. She suggests that each infant must develop a strategy for coping with “basic anxiety.” She also argues that we tend to use the same coping strategy from our infancy when we encounter crises later in life. In other words, there is a psychological connection between intense fears and anxieties that overtake us in life, and the way we survived traumas early on.
A big surprise came when Horney pointed to “parental indifference” as the root cause of basic anxiety early in each life, but also a key factor in neurotic conditions later in life. A child doesn't have to be treated harshly or be severely rejected in order to experience anxiety and insecurity at a basic level. Indifference on the part of parents at critical points is enough to trigger a deep sense of anxiety that seems to be an inevitable human condition.
That kind of parental indifference seemed to be present in the experience of the man in Ukraine whose parents would not accept their own son's evident feelings of fear, anxiety and loss. In the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the attitude of indifference must be present in millions, including the parents and relatives of those actually under attack. At the same time, that kind of indifference appears in people all over the world who manage to deny the evident tragedies and rampant injustice that characterize all of the human suffering in these troubled times.
Horney states that the first reaction to parental indifference tends to be frustration and anger. Being frustrated by the sense of abandonment causes a child to protest the injustice by crying out. If the parents respond to this angry cry, the child has found a coping strategy that is likely to become their habitual response to life's trials and troubles.
When a child’s “aggressive reaction” does not bring the help they need, they are thrown back into basic anxiety and fears of abandonment. In order to survive, the child must then suppress the anger and somehow win the over the parents. If this strategy works, “compliance” becomes the preferred means of coping for that person. If neither the aggressive strategy nor the compliance strategy works, children cope with basic anxiety by means of withdrawal. In coping with anxiety by withdrawal, the child moves away from the parents, retreats inwardly and tries to become self-sufficient.
The child that adopts the strategy of anger and aggression concludes that “if I have power no one can hurt me.” The child using the strategy of compliance or connecting carries the sense that “if I can make you love me, you will not hurt me.” The child who must cope with a strategy of withdrawal follows the idea that "if I withdraw, nothing can hurt me."
The three ways of coping with basic anxiety can also be seen as three distinct conceptions of a child's inner self. The first being, I am as big as or bigger than the world. The second being, I must adjust to the world. And the third being, I must appear smaller in the world.
These psychological insights ring true, partly because they parallel defensive strategies found throughout the animal realm in patterns of fight, submission or flight in the face of danger. Being conscious of these deeply ingrained attitudes becomes more important as the world around becomes more troubled and both collective and personal anxieties increase.
Part of what intrigued me with the Ukrainian son trying to communicate with his parents in Russia, was that he seemed to go through all three strategies. At first, he was angry and frustrated and outraged that his parents were indifferent to his suffering and the suffering of all the other people in Ukraine. After that, he went through a sense of withdrawal before realizing that over time a way of compassion would be needed to reestablish some kind of basic connection with parents and other relatives.
As someone who learned the aggressive coping strategy early on, I do not instinctively go to a withdrawal strategy to get some respite or relief from tragic events. But, I do remember that in the midst of intense protests that used aggressive strategies against war, the compelling cry of "make love, not war" would arise as if on cue from the collective psyche. There had to be a limit to strategies that were solely against war. There needs to be a conscious strategy to stay connected to love and mutual care, even in the midst of war.
It seems highly unlikely that Putin or Trump or any of the other overly forceful characters on the world stage, who continually double-down on raw aggression will adopt one of the other modes. However, the rest of us who must suffer through and struggle with the great crises and sorrowful tragedies of these dark times will need to learn ways to keep finding love and building interconnectedness, even while we stand up against the war on humanity, freedom, and justice.
We need to learn new ways to retreat and find refuge for our own souls, just as we pray for those being forced to tread in the darkness of this troubled world. At this critical point in the collective life of humanity, when we are all subject to a cascade of worldwide, anxiety-inducing issues like the climate crisis, the Covid crisis and the crisis of wars against our basic humanity, we each need all three strategies to survive, to heal and to help transform the world.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support the podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Along with a discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles, members receive access to the full archives of nearly 400 episodes and bonus episodes each month.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
On this episode, Michael Meade addresses the war within the war being waged on Ukraine. In order to justify the cold-hearted attacks on civilians and mindless destruction of towns in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has waged an insidious war on truth in the minds of the Russian people.
There are times when it becomes clear that there is more overt suffering in the world. There are times when the suffering of some people equals the suffering of all people. There are times when all of our good intentions and hopes that things will get better are at odds with the world as it is. There are times when helplessness and hopelessness cannot simply be driven from the door.
I feel a great sadness for all the suffering and heavy losses befalling the people of Ukraine. I also feel a deep respect for the way so many Ukrainians are standing for the ideas of freedom, facing down the engines of war with a kind of nobility of spirit that can only come from the part of the human heart that values truth, beauty and the meaningfulness of life.
As the Ukrainian people suffer from the rain of bombs and reign of terror that Vladimir Putin has unleashed upon them, it can be shown to be not just an invasion of Ukraine, but also an attack on democracy, on the ideals of freedom and on the soul of humanity. For, there is another war, a war within the war, an insidious war that came before the invasion began and that will continue after the current battles are over.
As millions seek safety from the mindless destruction of towns and cities, Putin is persecuting other people and prosecuting another war. The war within the war is being waged inside Russian territory and inside the minds and hearts of the Russian people. The warfare undertaken before the invasion involved a massive effort to indoctrinate an entire nation and set them against the world.
The shocking military assault could not have begun unless the blitzkrieg against truth had penetrated the psyches of a majority of the Russian population. In the parallel universe where many Russians now reside, Putin's propaganda machine grinds night and day to convince the Russian people that Ukraine and NATO provoked the invasion, that his “special military operation” is actually a liberation campaign to purge Ukraine of Nazis. Truth has always been the first casualty in a war; now wars against truth are waged long before any battles begin.
As safety has become ever harder to find throughout Ukraine, truth has become ever more scarce inside Russia. Recently, Putin issued a draconian law that criminalizes any speech that contradicts the official Kremlin line which insists that the deadly offensive against Ukraine is not a war at all. Merely referring to it as a war can put a person in prison for 15 years, making them a casualty of the war on truth.
Putin’s state has become a testament to how authoritarian leaders can stage manage false narratives and big lies as the first stage in wars against humanity. Many Ukrainians recount stories of their older relatives in Russia expressing profound disbelief about the war; saying that there is no shelling of Kyiv and that Russian forces are only in Ukraine to help people. The campaign against truth does not spare innocent children either, as those in grade schools receive sessions reinforcing the official government line that the war is not a war, but a special operation intended to save lives.
Researchers say that those creating propaganda in Russia understand the grievances and the tendencies of their audience. They know how to make their stories dramatic, but also entertaining. The sad truth that they do embrace is that when people see the same false message repeatedly, it becomes easier and easier to believe it.
Being alive at this time, we all suffer a cascade of crises that weigh heavily on our souls. The climate crisis affects the entire planet, the Covid pandemic affects everyone to some degree and the many crises of social injustice affect all of humanity at this time. Yet, the root of our troubles can be seen in the crisis of truth and meaning which can both obscure as well as deepen all other crises. In the war on Ukraine we can see the crisis of truth and meaning being coldly converted into rockets and bombs and methods of destruction that must chill the heart of humanity.
Some people talk about a post-truth world as if the repetition of big lies and misinformation can erase the longing for truth and meaning that has been an essential part of humanity from the very beginning. The core ideals of humanity are intended to serve as a light to follow, especially when the dark times come round and we become more exposed to the extremes of life and to the winds of despair. And, we are the current inheritors of the deep human longings for truth, for beauty and for the life sustaining capacity to truly transform.
An old idea states that nothing but truth can hold the truth. In other words, we can only hold to ideals like truth, beauty and justice, if we find ways to embody the truth of our own lives. Finding antidotes to the epidemic of falsity, to the onslaught of misinformation, and the weaponizing of big lies, means being willing to be open to radical changes in our lives while finding ways to live in truth.
It is not that we each have to be heroic; rather that we each somehow must find ways to stand in the truth of our own lives, in the truth of our own being. In doing that, we begin to rewrite the story of humanity at a time when the entire planet needs a renewal of truth, beauty and the meaning of life.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his upcoming online workshop “Creative Paths in Chaotic Times” on Saturday, March 12. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this workshop and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Along with a discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles, members receive access to the full archives of nearly 400 episodes and bonus episodes each month. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth focuses upon Vladimir Putin’s tragic invasion of Ukraine and the archetypal pattern of the “negative senex” or sick and dying old king. Psychologically, the negative old ruler represents a dominant position in consciousness which has outlived its usefulness and has become an obstacle to, and even an enemy of, a greater sense of consciousness.
It is the same to live in a tragic time as it is to be in a tragic place, a poet once said. And we now live amongst growing tragedies the world over with the latest being the war in which Russia targets innocents and aims to terrorize everyone in Ukraine. Because we live in a time of mass communications as well as mass casualties, we are all witnesses to the carnage and the madness of war. In that sense, we are all subjects of a cold-hearted attack on all who hold human liberty and human dignity to be essential to human culture.
There is a manifestation of the nobility and courage of the human soul coming from the people in Ukraine, who not only choose to fight to save their homes and their sense of liberty, they also enter a battle to save their sense of self in the face of a darkness that can cause despair. And, we are all implicated in that battle; for we all live on the border of uncertainty, that can in a moment, become the edge of despair.
Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine demonstrates a wicked truth about the human condition. For, a single person, should they have enough power and enough darkness in their heart, can dream up a war and impose that nightmare on everyone. Other nations can send weapons and supplies and set sanctions against Putin and Russia, but there is no effective mechanism to stop someone from misusing power, even if they announce their intention to wreak unholy havoc on humanity and the world.
I am not criticizing political responses or the meaningful efforts being made to stop mass destruction and potential genocide. Rather, what strikes me in this tragedy is how the psyche and the pathology of one person can hold everyone hostage and then coldly unleash darkness and terror on a massive scale.
Before the war started, those who study Putin questioned which side of the autocratic leader would take charge. Would it be the cold, strategic side of Putin’s mind or the ideological, nationalistic side of him that would decide the fate of Ukrainian as well as Russian people?
Once the invasion began, the question rapidly shifted to whether Putin was of stable mind. Had he become mentally unstable and paranoid after being isolated by COVID-19? Was he diminished because he had turned 70 years old or was he simply crazy? Some of those conditions may be present, however dismissing Putin’s behavior as crazy obscures important psychological issues and collective energies that are playing out throughout the world at this time.
Putin and other would be autocrats can be seen to be caught in the archetypal patterns of the “negative senex,” the sick and dying old king. In mythology, this dark side of Saturn or Cronos appears as the oppressive autocrat who exploits every crisis precisely to acquire more power. The shadow side of this psychological complex appears in the crushing patriarchal figures who seek to cling to power at any cost, just as Cronos ate his own children in order to avoid losing power and control.
Throughout history, autocrats have sought to manipulate and control a fearful populace with promises to restore idealized conditions of the past, while restricting freedoms in the present. Tragically, mass communications and weapons of mass destruction have made the powers of manipulation as well as the levels of destruction much greater.
Psychologically, the negative old ruler represents a dominant position in consciousness which has outlived its usefulness and has become an obstacle to, and even an enemy of, a greater sense of consciousness. There is a symbolic coincidence in which Putin individually represents the archetype of the sick, reckless, autocratic ruler; while at the same time, the negative side of the archetype manifests in other would be rulers and in extreme political parties.
Part of the darkness of these dark times involves the negative patriarchal energies that threaten the health and safety of the entire world. This cynical senex energy rejects the feminine capacity for relatedness as weakness, as it has lost touch with intimate feelings and all sense of human compassion and love. The absence of the feminine can be seen and felt in the dryness and coldness of a consciousness that only wants to be in touch with power, while increasingly becoming out of touch with life itself.
And yet, the archetype of the controlling and dividing ruler can be initiatory, in the sense that it indicates the nature of changes trying to happen in the human psyche as a whole. The dark side of Saturn-Cronos, with its willful lust for and abuse of power, challenges us to connect with our own deepest feelings of nobility, unity and care for the earth we share.
What is playing out dramatically and tragically on the world stage is also being played out as a struggle in the heart of humanity. The instinctive feeling of connection to and support for the vulnerable people of Ukraine is connected to our collective vulnerability at this time. What Putin cannot grasp and will not understand is the expansion of consciousness that is needed to dissolve the rigid, vengeful forces that entrap his soul, the souls of many of his people, and at some level, all of our souls.
In the dark times the eye begins to see, said a poet. At the dark edge of fear for the future of humanity and for the earth, a vision tries to form as past and future seek to clarify at the same time. The hope to be found at the edge of despair must involve new ways of seeing the world and our place within it. For, we are also standing at the edge of nobility and despair, in the collective shadow of not knowing what might come next.
Although it cannot diminish the suffering and loss occurring to the people of Ukraine, I want to end with a poem from Hafiz. "I have come into the world to see this, the swords drop from man's hands, even at the top of their arc of anger, because we have finally realized that there is just one flesh that we can wound.
Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “A Self in Training” on Saturday, March 12. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this workshop and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Along with a discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles, members receive access to the full archives of nearly 400 episodes and bonus episodes each month. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth begins with a current controversy over mistakes made in baptism ceremonies in a Catholic church. Michael Meade then considers the origins of baptism and need for reconnection to “…the spirit of life and the transformative powers of nature that is more a matter of lived experience, than abstracted belief.”
A recent news article describes how years of baptisms performed at a Catholic Church in Arizona have been declared invalid. Church leaders discovered that a priest had misused the prescribed text by saying “we baptize you” instead of “I baptize you.” Although the mistake was unintentional, the result is not only that thousands of baptisms are now invalid, but also that all subsequent sacraments for those involved were also invalidated, including confirmations and marriages.
The religious ceremony of baptism can involve a prescribed creed or system of fixed beliefs that must be followed literally and precisely. Yet, an old idea contrasts fixed creeds with the sense of wonder and awe that has more to do with direct, conscious experiences of the spirit of life. By its nature, a creed is dogmatic and fixed, whereas awe and wonder involve immediate, revelatory experiences and epiphanies of the spirit.
Originally, baptism was not a one-time event connected to a religious doctrine, nor was it a matter of anointing the forehead of a newborn child. To baptize means “to immerse or dip in water” and typically this meant full immersion in a living body of water. Baptismal rites go back to ancient times and were intended to connect individual human souls with the spirit of life and the transformative powers of nature. And that is more a matter of lived experience, than abstracted belief.
The issue is not simply that we are in a fallen world that lacks the presence of the divine; but rather that we become caught in fallen visions that collapse the ever-changing wonder of life into that which is simply literal, factual, and historical.
Rather than a single formal event, ancient baptisms might be enacted whenever a person became stuck in life or suffered a disorienting loss. Water was universally considered to be the original source of life, an essential element for cleansing and blessing, but also the reconciling element of nature.
We are at the end of an era and in the midst of worldwide disorientation. As institutions collapse, people have less and less to trust in and believe in. It’s as if belief itself seems to collapse. That can be troubling and disconcerting; yet it is helpful to know that what we most need in times of upheaval is not another system of belief, but genuine felt experiences of the spiritual and soulful dimensions of our lives.
In a sense, we either drown in the splits, conflicts and confusions of our lives or surrender to something greater than ourselves in order to reconcile what divides us within. Like devotees entering the Ganges River and traditional people throughout time, we can immerse ourselves in something seen and felt to be sacred and transformative. We originally came from the waters of the womb and instinctively seek a return to the cleansing waters of reconciliation that can dissolve the hardness of the heart and allow our inner life to flow freely again.
Primary to the awakening of an individual soul is a felt connection to the heart of the living world. There is no one way, no single path for arriving at the point of transformation, that can involve both stillness and change, both loss and renewal. Once we surrender, the water of our deepest troubles can become the water of our own solution. In a mysterious way, our life is re-solved, reconciled and therefore renewed.
There's an old saying that we have each come to life to bring the wonder back. That implies that the wonder natural to life keeps being lost and also that part of our mission in life is to find it again. Of course, one of the quickest ways to lose the sense of awe and wonder is to reduce the living mystery to a system of fixed belief that takes us out of the flow of life, instead of deeper into it.
When the time of collapse and upheaval comes around again, something ancient in us longs to touch the origins of life. No one can prove it, and no one has to believe it, but something in us can return to a still point where our first breath once formed. In that invisible, inner center life can renew itself, and we can become imbued with a breath of wholeness and thereby connect to our original life potentials again.
Thank you for listening to and supporting the podcast. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his current online series “Lead into Gold” and upcoming online workshop “A Self in Training”. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on these events and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Along with a discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles, members receive access to the full archives of nearly 400 episodes and bonus episodes each month. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode begins with a fairy tale in which a wondrous tree grows in a palace garden at the center of a realm. The tree at the center produces golden fruit; but each night a golden apple mysteriously vanishes. The culprit turns out to be a golden bird that drops a shining feather before also disappearing. The rest of the tale involves searching for various elements that represent the golden self within us that is the natural inheritance of the human psyche.
In the story, the connection to the golden bird appears as light as a feather. Yet, if we do not pick up the feather of our own lives, we can miss our calling and fall out of the story of our own soul. What was once as light as a feather can become a heavy psychic load, leaving us stuck in depression, in self-rejection or feeling lost. Yet again, the idea of an inner alchemy depends upon the potential for human transformation, which is symbolized by turning the lead in our lives into gold.
You can hear Michael Meade talk more about inner gold and the alchemy of change by joining his new online series “Lead into Gold” that begins on Friday, February 18. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this series and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Along with a discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles, members receive access to the full archives of nearly 400 episodes and bonus episodes each month. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode begins with a shocking controversy in which threats from extremists and conspiracy theorists force the National Butterfly Center to close down. Michael Meade connects the nightmare scenarios of current life with the dark stages of dissolution that precede the transformation of butterflies.
There is a great mystery in the metamorphosis that brings a lowly caterpillar to the majesty of the winged creature that emerges from a chrysalis. Since ancient times, humans have used the emergence of butterflies to symbolize the wonder of life's capacity to completely transform. For thousands of years, humans have looked to butterflies as a reassuring symbol in times of change.
Yet at this moment, when the entire Earth is in the throes of an uncertain transformation, butterflies have become a symbol of loss rather than renewal, an evidence of collapse rather than redemption. Monarch butterflies migrating south from California must now pass through areas where native habitats are already 95% diminished by modern culture and human interference.
Many migrating butterflies find refuge at a nature preserve that sits at the southern tip of Texas, facing the border with Mexico. For decades, the National Butterfly Center has served as a nature sanctuary along the banks of the Rio Grande River. Nature enthusiasts travel great distances to watch the delicate creatures float over the wildflowers in what many have called a magical place.
In recent years however, the butterfly center has been thrust into the news and caught in the storms of conflict over immigration policies at the border. Strange as it may seem, it has now also become a landing place for wild conspiracy theories that border on insanity.
The troubles began when then president Trump ordered a section of border wall to be built right through the National Butterfly Center in order to the migration of “illegal aliens.” What began as a legal battle over this “butterfly wall,” has recently morphed and escalated as extremists began posting and pushing conspiracy theories about the nature center. The new attack claims that the butterfly refuge is secretly run by “left wing thugs with a sham butterfly agenda.”
Extremist groups have asserted, without any evidence, that pedophilia and rampant sex trade were taking place on the property along with illegal migration. A rapid escalation of online and in-person harassment of the sanctuary staff soon followed. Recently, increasing threats of violence by far right extremists and Qanon conspiracy followers have caused the butterfly center to close indefinitely.
It seems hard to exaggerate the distortions occurring when butterflies become the center of a controversy promoted by those who deny reality and refuse to accept the need for meaningful cultural change and healing at this time. Part of the irony includes the fact that butterflies are not migratory in the sense of human migrants who might, for any number of reasons, be crossing borders and boundaries. Rather, the migration of butterflies demonstrates the interconnectedness of everything and everyone as well as the capacity of life to continually transform and renew.
Those so fiercely threatening violence at the gates of the butterfly center may be caught in a nightmare of their own making. Yet, there is also a nightmare quality to being alive at this time when radical changes place extraordinary stress upon each person. Reports of climate crisis and all manner of cultural upheavals cannot simply be contained by the individual psyche, nor can they simply be dismissed. As the web of life loosens amidst rapid changes, everything can become psychically charged, as if some collective process of shedding and recovery has to happen before a meaningful transformation can occur.
The word psyche, often used to indicate the human soul or spirit, derives from a Greek root that means butterfly or night moth. Just as butterflies go through phases of darkness and even disintegration before they can manifest their intended beauty and wonder, the psyche of humanity now seems to be suffering stages of darkness and dissolution on the way to a greater awakening.
Butterflies can appear to be delicate and changeable like the human psyche; yet they are also hardy and determined as they undertake epic migrations. Indigenous tribes of the American Southwest particularly revered butterflies whose exquisite presence was considered a miracle, not just of transformation, but also resurrection. The current journey of humanity involves returning to essential connections to our own nature and thereby to great nature; but also to the core mystery of life, death, and renewal, symbolized since ancient times by the metamorphosis of the butterfly. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series and workshop that begin on Friday, February 18. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on these events and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on iTunes or wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode begins with a dream of two fathers and an ancient tale that opens up the complicated territory that fathers and sons are bound to enter.
Fathers and sons can find themselves caught in the deep patterns and sweeping energies of mythological as well as psychological dynamics. Human fathers unwittingly join a long line of paternal figures that can appear as distant and out of touch or else as demanding, dominating and rejecting. Ancient Greeks had the gods Ouranos and Kronos to represent these extremes of fathering, while Romans called them Jupiter and Saturn.
In psychological terms, they can be called the absent father and the devouring father. Not that there aren't many other fatherly characteristics; but more that in critical moments, one or the other type of energy tends to appear. As inevitable tensions and confusions arise between father and son, a father will often feel pulled to extremes that seem out of proportion to the situation.
At one extreme the Ouranos or Sky father tends to escape the grasp of his children through vague, cloudy answers, disappearing into abstract principles, hiding behind the veil of a newspaper, a computer screen or a personal device. This kind of father may be easygoing, but also tends to disappear at critical times. Like old Ouranos, the absent father elevates above it all, leaving a gap between himself and his children. And that leaves them feeling abandoned and uncertain, unprotected and overexposed when facing the world.
The spirit of Kronos or Saturn pulls the human father the opposite way into tendencies for dominance, angry conflicts, even devouring rages. In myths, Saturn sees his children as a threat to his downfall. In this pattern the child is not avoided, but can be attacked or punished simply for reaching out to father or towards a reward in life. Before the son can even get going, the father snaps at him or cuts him down, having the effect of devouring his natural ambitions and efforts to enter life more fully. If a father refrains from attacking his child, he can still hold the Saturn position through acidic waves of cynicism or the cutting edge of sarcasm.
One type of father moves through the lives of his children like a mysterious cloud pattern they cannot hold on to, disappearing just when they need him near. While the other father type storms about, suddenly snapping and stomping through the lives of his children, so that they feel that they cannot get away from him. The sons of Ouranos can't quite get going in life, while the sons of Saturn are punished for trying to get things going on their own.
Even when father and son relate well, a single bitter occasion may cut the intimate connection from one to the other. How often is it heard that a man hasn't spoken to his father in many years or that a father can’t find a way to communicate with his son since a certain event occurred or a kind of curse passed between them. All or nothing can be how things go with fathers and sons, as what happens between them can suddenly lead to severe disappointments, to alienation and mutual exile.
As the old stories try to remind us, there are spirits involved; there are deities in our lives and in our closest troubles. There is something that goes further back and deeper down than father or son, parent or child might expect. To become a parent, just as to become someone's child, means to become part of a mystery that reaches back to the beginning of time. We are each born into a mystery that can only be solved by finding the natural nobility of our own souls. In doing that, we become more truly human and thus more able to forgive ourselves and see how others are caught in the mysteries of their own lives.
You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “Lead to Gold” that begins on Friday, February 18. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this series and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on iTunes or wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth considers how we must find our way amidst the collapse of norms and rise of extremes that come at the end of an era. The collective situation we are now in is overburdened with conflicts and oppositions; but also subject to sudden changes and extremes of all kinds. With each issue that becomes a source of conflict, we see how fragile life is, how the threads that weave things together can easily unravel. Increasingly, we see how the life maps we have been given do not match the terrains of confusion and places of upheaval we keep falling into.
Part of what drives people to extreme beliefs and behaviors is that many of our received ideas and common beliefs turn out to be unequal to the radical events we are witnessing. In the face of radical changes, people not only become disoriented, but can feel a loss of personal identity. This is especially true where people have over-identified with a collective point of view, a national identity or a particular ideology.
Normally suppressed feelings of insecurity, anxiety, and even dread become heightened as people feel more helpless and less able to have a meaningful plan or any sense of control of the course of their life. Yet, the situation we find ourselves in requires each individual to become consciously aware of far more aspects of reality that anyone expected. An expansion of self-identity as well as a deepening of understanding is required in order not to become part of the chaos or slip into a sense of psychic exhaustion, helplessness and despair.
Accepting that we are caught in the midst of a great turnaround that comes at the end of an era helps make sense of the tumultuous events and discordant feelings that surround us on a daily basis. It is also helpful to know that, at a psychological level, whatever tends to limit and restrict us will produce adverse reactions and extreme emotions when we face radical changes. Wherever we feel most constricted, we will feel most threatened by the presence of the archetypal energies of collapse and renewal that accompany the end of an era.
An old idea states that creation is the only outcome of conflict that can satisfy the human soul. In that sense, the stability and coherence we most desire involves a deeper connection to our own soul. And our souls require that we find ways to become part of a re-visioning of life and a re-creation of the world.
Rumi, that old master of understanding advises, "Look at birds, they make great sky circles of their freedom. And how do they learn to do that? They fall, and in falling, they are given wings." We are like those birds, and we are falling, not of our own choosing, but because of the archetypal dynamic that begins with falling and collapse before it can find its way to a new sense of unity and renewal.
Sometimes we must find our way by falling. If we deny or resist the sense of loosening and falling that comes at the end of an era, we not only risk being caught in social or political extremes, we also risk losing our wings and the spirit of our own lives. And we can lose the possibility of becoming more conscious agents of a re-creation that is also trying to happen in the midst of all the uncertainty and upheaval that accompany times of change.
Thank you for listening to, and supporting, Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members have access to the full archives of over 385 episodes, receive a 30% discount on all online events, courses and products and receive 3 bonus episodes each month.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on iTunes or wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well-being in this new year and we thank you for your support of our work.
Myth involves the underlying stories and secret histories of the soul. It helps reveal, not the facts of the matter, but the facts of life. Myth makes meaning of our life experiences. In that sense, myth is both ancient and immediate; it involves both remembering and making anew. When our experience increasingly involves feeling caught in confusions, restrictions and maddening twists and turns, mythic imagination can give us a poetic grasp of our own lives a s well as the world we live in.
Ancient myths of the labyrinth depict both being trapped in a complicated maze and following a thin thread that leads the way out. At this point, the contemporary world can seem a topsy-turvy labyrinth of confusion that we are all caught in. At the same time, Ariadne is always nearby, eternally offering us the thread of our own soul, which is the clue to how we find our way through life's obstacles and confusions.
Part of the worldwide labyrinth we are all caught within involves a pair of universally present, yet deeply contrasting myths. One saga involves epic tales of progress with the human species seen as climbing up from a primitive state to an enlightened condition. This “myth of progress” becomes a story of steady triumph over all obstacles with a goal of reaching a place of freedom from all limitations. When combined with ideas of evolution, many people simply believe that this heroic storyline is the essential human birthright and all that we need to know.
Yet, here on Earth, where things are paired like light and dark or up and down, there is a contradictory myth. The “myth of decline” begins with an ideal, golden age followed by a fall into descending periods of darkness and disorder. Under this narrative, all that people can look forward to is a collapse of the current civilization and its ruling ideas and a loss of order and civility as the energy of the world wears down, and the lights of creation go dim.
Each story can be seen as archetypal, each forming part of the natural inheritance of human imagination. Is there progress of some kind? Or is the whole thing going to hell in a hand basket? The answer is: Yes. For, each narrative depicts something essential about life on earth. We are the inheritors of both narratives and we are being asked to become conscious of both stories at the same time. That is part of the revelation of now, part of the apocalypse of now, and in many ways, part of awakening to the story of now.
If we willfully insist on the myth of progress, we are closing our eyes to all of the pain, loss and dissolution being suffered all over the earth at the level of climate crisis and the COVID crisis, at the level of the social disparities and the crisis of truth and meaning. If we take the myth of decline as a kind of nihilistic philosophy, that allows us to say there's nothing we can do, it's all just going to end any way. Then we are turning a blind eye to the presence of Ariadne's thread, and the continual invitation to find another way to see the dilemma and become part of the reweaving of the next version of the world.
From the place where our own souls try to awaken again and again, we can contribute to making meaning of the world we are in, no matter how chaotic it becomes. For chaos is connected to the imminence of creation. In the realm of myth, chaos is both the state that occurs at the end and also the state that occurs before things begin anew. We are being asked to be part of the creative tension of opposing energies and opposite stories that can lead to revelations about the living world and our role in assisting it to both come to an end and begin again.
Thank you for listening to, and supporting, Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members have access to the full archives of over 385 episodes, receive a 30% discount on all online events, courses and products and receive 3 bonus episodes each month. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on iTunes or wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well-being in this new year and we thank you for your support of our work.
The word text can mean the definitive “written word,” as in scriptures considered to be the word of God. At this external level, texts are often taken literally, some even written in stone. However, root meanings of text are closer to a sense of “weaving, joining, fitting together.”
Whereas literalized texts tend to divide and polarize people; esoteric texts can carry subtle textures and symbolic threads that can weave things together at deeper levels. The text within the text can offer living textures for reweaving and rejoining all that has been literalized, polarized and torn asunder.
The trap of literal, exoteric texts came to mind when I read an article about a recent search to find Mount Sinai where the Bible tells how God spoke to Moses from within a burning bush. Hundreds of scientists and seekers set off on the solstice for a remote mountain in the desert in southern Israel. They hoped to witness a phenomenon that might prove to be the actual location of the burning bush at which Moses was appointed to lead the Israelites out of exile in Egypt.
The expedition included a 90-year-old archaeologist who had been seeking the historical location of the burning bush for decades. As he stated, "this is the story of the history of humankind." Another way to see it, an esoteric way to view it, is that this is part of an obsession with history, an example of the trap of the literal and the exoteric. When texts have to be taken literally and historically, revelatory events become trapped in the remote past and that tends to remove the divine from the present world. The more profound meanings and deeper connections to the divine and to the mystery of nature become lost.
Part of the wonder of the original event was the sense that the bush was on fire, yet was not consumed by the flames. When seen on a deeper, esoteric level, the burning bush can be any bush, any tree, almost anything that strikes us deeply, opens the eyes of our souls and allows us to see through the surface text to the deeper textures which include the mystical sense that everything in the world is burning in its own way. Any event can become an epiphany for the person who allows their soul to be struck by the presence of the divine in the things of this world at this time.
Nature can be seen as having its own esoteric language that can speak directly to our own inner nature. In that sense, the ecology movement may not change how people see and relate to the world unless it finds deeper, more esoteric levels of meaning and understanding. A genuine reweaving of human culture with great nature may require a more profound sense of the essential connection of the human soul to the living text of nature in which each moment is potentially an epiphany.
Ancient ideas of the cosmos include the sense of continual revelation, the world seen as a living text, as the open book of the divine word of creation ongoing. In losing our connection to the esoteric realm, we lose the vertical imagination that connects us with both heaven and earth. In the modern world, with its exaggeration of the statistical, the technological and the historical, the soul itself is exiled.
Imagination is the key to the esoteric levels of understanding and is also the true spark of the divine in each soul which can suddenly connect us to the heart of nature, as well as to the presence of things divine. The divine spark within us is like the flame inside the burning bush. It is a gift of life, a burning birthright through which we each share in the illumination of stars, in the burning heat of animal life, and in the cool inner fire of trees and the blue smoldering of water that used to be known as the Green Fire and the Blue Fire.
The flame that burns at the center of our heart and soul is our own inner nature seen in its fiery form. Because this inner flame can take many forms, it goes by many names - spirit, imagination, purpose, consciousness, soul, genius.
In order to truly see the world, in order to genuinely help this troubled world, the eyes of the soul need to open and see, not simply the exoteric level of life, but to the profound levels of the esoteric in all of life. When we see the world that way, everything can light up, anything can flare with beauty and spark our inner joy and remind us that we are part of the mystery of creation, the eternal living flame that manifests through the constant changeability and mutability of existence.
Thank you for listening to, and supporting, Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members have access to the full archives of over 380 episodes, receive a 30% discount on all online events, courses and products and receive 3 bonus episodes each month. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on iTunes or wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well-being in this new year and we thank you for your support of our work.
At the beginning of the third year of the Covid Pandemic the point can’t simply be that once a cure is found, everything goes back to normal. After two years of the pandemic, the uncertainty about it persists and may even continue to grow. And we can be seen to be riding up and down on waves of information in a topsy-turvy world where everything can seem uncertain and everything can change in an instant.
The breaking of the current cycle involves breaking the spell of normalcy itself. For an important realization at this point in the history of the world is that there cannot be a return to normal; that everything has already changed and that uncertainty may have to be accepted as a conscious element of reality.
The pandemic, and all of the uncertainty that surrounds it, can be seen as a demonstration of how the “information age” is not simply conducive to good information. New technologies make it easy to collect information and data and distribute it rapidly. However, assessing information and especially understanding it still depends on old fashioned human judgment. Information can go viral and be available in an instant; but actual knowledge and true understanding take much more time to develop.
Genuine knowledge comes from reflection and patience; but also requires that we accept the presence of uncertainty. An ancient idea states that maturity in the human psyche means an increased capacity to hold opposite ideas at the same time. The ancient Greeks called it being double-minded or even many-minded. The point is that if a person only holds a single idea, it's like seeing the world with one eye. And seeing with only one eye can bring a person closer to becoming blind to what's going on.
We could say that the thread of life is leading us further into the tension between all that we used to believe was so certain and the increasing waves of uncertainty that are penetrating all levels of the world right now. Part of finding our way in the midst of all the trouble involves being able to see the world differently and learning to hold contradictory ideas or competing notions at the same time.
The point becomes not so much about what happens in the end, as much as how to be present in the midst of the dramas, tensions and challenges. The real danger is losing the natural human capacity to hold a creative tension until life changes and renews itself. The point becomes how to hold our attention long enough to recognize the unseen third thing that is trying to emerge from the increasing tensions and polarizations of life on Earth.
The real risk in this world has always been becoming one's true self amidst all the uncertainties of existence. The “little self” or ego self feels that it can’t handle life’s uncertainties. Yet, the soul or deeper sense of our self is never simply defeated by the confusions of life. The knowing soul within us knows why we came here, and what we are intended to live for. Learning to live the life of the soul aligns us with paths of true meaning. While we are on those paths, we not only can survive the tensions of life, but we find ourselves able to contribute to the healing and renewal of life.
Thank you for listening to, and supporting, Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we send you peace and blessings in this New Year and we thank you for your support of our work.
Michael Meade describes myth as being ancient and immediate at the same time. Whereas most people imagine myth to be something old and of a past time, Meade explains how myth serves to break the trap of linear time and can return the human soul to a living sense of connection to both the cosmos and the deep self. “We are in a mythic condition again and myth makes meaning,” states mythologist Meade as he shows how the shedding of forms in the world can bring us closer to the origins of life and the sources of renewal and recreation.
Thank you for listening to, and supporting, Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we send you peace and blessings for the New Year and we thank you for your support of our work.
On this replay of an episode on the winter solstice, Michael Meade states at the beginning: “This is not just the dark time of the year, but increasingly dark times for everyone, especially for those who care for the souls of other people and for the well-being of the earth we all live on.” He goes on to describe how ancient symbols and practices at the Winter Solstice served as a reminder of the cosmological connection between the human soul and the hidden unity of life.
Symbols have the power to bring the mind and the heart together and connect us to the deepest truths of life. A Christmas tree can stand for the Tree of Life, as it represents both the still point at the center and the power of life to change and renew itself. Simply lighting a single candle in the midst of darkness can be a reminder of the eternal process of renewal and restoration that is an essential, yet easily forgotten aspect of all of life.
This has been a dark year, yet, despite all the increasing divides in the world, we are all secretly connected, and we are each a part of the living substance of creation. Solstice coming at the darkest time of the year is a reminder of this cosmological connection between the human soul and the hidden unity of life.
Thank you for listening to, and supporting, Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we send you peace and blessings for the New Year and we thank you for your support of our work.
This episode is a tribute to the life and work of Malidoma Patrice Some, a spiritual teacher and healer who brought the wisdom traditions and ritual practices of West Africa to the Western world.
The name Malidoma can mean “to make friends with the stranger or enemy.” Following that sense, Malidoma served as an ambassador from the tribal realms of Africa to the world of modernity. He had access to traditional practices of wisdom and healing, and also had a rare intelligence that made him able to shape meaningful pathways between ancient ways of knowing and the needs and longings of contemporary cultures.
There were many elements of his natural genius; of course, his ability to use ancient ways of connecting to nature and spirit; but also the courage to bring healing rituals to the modern world. His radical intelligence could spark at any moment, quickly becoming a forceful fountain of ideas that could include insights into the human psyche as well as visions that could open the realms of nature and spirit.
You could say that the fire element of his genius involved his great intelligence as well as a way of seeing that connected to the ancestral realm. But, his genius was also connected to water as natural element of his soul. At times, he would seem to become water, as he could be fluid and gentle, like a forest stream. And from that stream of inner water would come a great generosity and a deep sense of care.
Once he said that "…the quest constantly imposing itself upon me has been more of a search for a home in the hearts of people." In that statement, you can sense of his presence as a gentle spirit, but also as a person on the eternal quest to find a genuine home. In that regard, Malidoma was uniquely attuned to the electricity that comes from the invisible wires strung between the common world and the otherworld of spirit, imagination and the ancestors.
I am eternally grateful for the friendship we had and the many ritual collaborations and times spent talking and singing and drumming together. Now, in his terms, as in the ancient understanding of things, I imagine Malidoma as having stepped onto the road that road leads back to the ancestors. On the path that will carry him back to the hidden unity of humanity and the place that is a true home for the spirit and soul of someone who remained connected to and inspired by the otherworld.
With prayers and songs I am imagining Malidoma finding the waters of peace and a deep sense of home in the otherworld that his soul and spirit had known all along.
You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online solstice ritual “In This Darkness Singing” on Sunday, December 19. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
We’d love to hear your feedback on the podcast. You can leave a review wherever you listen or send a question or comment to info@mosaicvoices.org. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.
This episode considers the increasing modern condition of feeling lost and disconnected in relation to ancient understandings and practices of myth and ritual.
"Part of being modern involves seeking the latest thing or the newest thing, while at the same time losing touch with the most enduring, most endearing things. The modern condition requires that we imagine ourselves as subjects with everything else separated into objects. Being continuously reduced to linear time, literal meanings, and material things can leave us feeling out of time and out of place; trying to find a sense of home and a sense of meaning, especially in ourselves.
One of the ancient ways of re-connection involved finding genuine stories. When people have a story, everyone can be in the story. Unfortunately, the story we are all in together is the story of the collapse of ecosystems, the demise of cultural institutions, and the falling into desperate polarities.
Yet, the loss of so many meaningful things is not simply intended to leave us in some existential, eternal darkness. In mythic terms, being lost is secretly aimed at being found; in that sense, only those who accept feeling lost, can be found.
Another ancient way, that has been mostly lost, involves finding ourselves again through the process of ritual. One of the functions of creative ritual is to break time open so that we become open to the timeless, to the eternal, which is always trying to enter the world, strangely enough, through us. We may be lost here in the modern world, but in ancient terms, we are here to find ourselves awakening to a greater sense of ourselves.
One purpose of creative ritual was to experience the connection to “the other” as well as a deeper connection to oneself. That's why ancient people would say: that ritual made me, made me more aware of how I'm connected to life, to the earth, to the spirits, to the song of creation, and made me more aware of who I am inside, at the level of my own being. What we've lost is partly the sense that we are each connected to the whole thing, that each human soul is secretly connected to the living soul of the world.
One of the aims of many of old rituals was to restore the connections that were damaged, and thereby renew the possibilities of life. And we are here, in a sense, to be redeemed; not in religious terms where the redemption comes after you die. But in the ancient sense of story and ritual that suggests that we can redeem ourselves a little at a time while we are here on Earth. And at this troubled time, redemption is needed not just for ourselves, but for the Earth itself.
And so, in the midst of being lost in the darkest time of the year, in one of the darkest times of human culture, the way we avoid feeling and being lost is by connecting to the deeper sense of our own soul, which is secretly connected to the earth, which is itself a star and from there to the heavens above and to the cosmos. For, it is about interrelatedness and being present, and being part of things that are momentous, that are transcendent and yet somehow include us. And it was the dark times that ancient people understood to be the right times for finding our true selves and making more soul and redeeming life not just for ourselves, but for the Earth itself.”
You can hear Michael Meade talk more about ritual by joining his free online solstice ritual “In This Darkness Singing” on Sunday, December 19 and an evening event on Friday, December 10 on the return of ritual. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this series and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
We’d love to hear your feedback on the podcast. You can leave a review wherever you listen or send a question or comment to info@mosaicvoices.org. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.
This episode of Living Myth honors the spirit and soul and great imagination of the poet Robert Bly, who passed on to the otherworld on November 21st of this year. Michael Meade begins this honoring with a quote from the Spanish philosopher and poet Miguel de Unamuno: “Our greatest endeavor in this life must be to make ourselves irreplaceable, so that no one else can fill the gap that will be left when we die. Each of us is unique and irreplaceable; our soul that is, not simply our life.”
“I first read those lines by Unamuno shortly after meeting Robert Bly and it was immediately evident to me that he was one of those living so fully, so uniquely, that he was on the path of being irreplaceable. Robert had a sense of the immediacy of the soul, that rare sense that the next moment can break open. And that we must, not simply allow that, but we have to marry it, step into it and become ourselves in that moment of opening and awakening. If we fail to do that, then we have not fully participated in the world. Then, the awakening that is needed, the blossoming that was possible, fails to occur and there is a loss of soul.
I want to celebrate the soul of Robert Bly and acknowledge his capacity to open the old roads of spirit and lead the way to awakening and wonder, as he did with his poems and his translations of the poems of others, and his willingness to be vulnerable and open and allow the soul to speak.
In the Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart, Robert wrote that: “… a therapy of the psychic roots of culture involves an opening of the doors of the soul that allow the angels to come back into the world.” He wrote of the cultivated heart as “an extension of the garden of the soul, where deep things are cultivated, and the depths of love and care are grown. The heart is a place of tenderness… that can be imagined as a house with many rooms or as a walled garden with rare flowers and solitude, a place of deep intimacy with another. It represents an extreme effort to move towards achieving a cultivated heart before we die."
Robert spoke often of the necessity of grief and wrote that "personal grief can lead a person to the sorrow of the world. The growth of a person can be imagined as a power that expands downward into the hurt feelings, then further downward into compassion and further downward into the vast rooms of melancholy under the Earth where we are more alive the older we get, more in tune with the Earth and the great roots."
That's close to what Unamuno meant about how a person becomes irreplaceable. And now that he's gone to that other world, I want to imagine him having caught up with Kabir and Rumi, Rilke and Neruda and all the great poets that he translated and companioned with, I want to imagine him in the company of them now and having what Kabir called “the face of satisfied desire.”
Robert lived uniquely and gave more and more of himself; going beyond himself and becoming irreplaceable. And I want to remember him that way, working his way into the realms of the blessed and being there long enough to become able to bless. I know that he blessed me and was able to bless many other people. And in the strange ways of poetry and beauty and passionate affection, those blessings remain alive in the hearts and souls of all who knew Robert Bly.
You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “Soul’s Hidden Wholeness” that begins on Friday, December 3. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this series and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
We’d love to hear your feedback on the podcast. You can leave a review wherever you listen or send a question or comment to info@mosaicvoices.org. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.
On this replay of a popular episode, Michael Meade considers how “gratitude is a sign of nobility in our souls” and yet “gratitude can also be difficult to express because it comes from a deep place in the heart where pain can also dwell.” Thus begins Michael Meade’s mythological consideration of the essential place of gratitude in human consciousness and at the core of human nature.
A potent telling of the Mayan creation myth leads to a surprising array of images and the idea that unless the human capacity for technological invention can be placed in service of the ongoing story of creation, we will continue to turn the natural world against us.
We are most human and most alive when we allow ourselves to be touched by the beauty of the world and when we feel genuine gratitude for the life we have been given, no matter how hard or how dark the world around us may become. In this way, feeling grateful and expressing gratitude helps to bring grace back into the world.
You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “Soul’s Hidden Wholeness” that begins on Friday, December 3. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this series and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
We’d love to hear your feedback on the podcast. You can leave a review wherever you listen or send a question or comment to info@mosaicvoices.org. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.
On this episode, Michael Meade brings a focus to issues of trust and betrayal in a time when truth and meaning can be hard to find.
“We live in a time of great challenges and frequent betrayals. When the weather becomes extreme, the political climate is too poisonous to be trusted, and many don't even trust that the world will continue, it is hard not to feel betrayed by life. Because betrayals arise from so many levels and layers of life, more and more people are left, either in the bitter camps of the cynics, in isolating places of denial, or in the fear that there is nowhere left to turn.
Yet, the levels of betrayal are not intended to be the end of the story. Rather, they are the part of the story where we have to turn another way, go deeper into life. Because only through a descent into the depths of our own souls can the sense of betrayal turn back into trust.
When trust and truth go missing in the surface of life, they must be sought at the level of our individual souls. Psychologically, we're being pulled down to the depths of our own souls. Not so that we feel an even deeper sense of loss, but in order that we might let go of false expectations and find the essential truths and the innate aims hidden in our own lives.
Part of the hard truth of the harsh times in which we live involves the realization that many hard attitudes, fixed beliefs and false expectations must be dissolved. Betrayal may be a bitter pill to swallow, but in the alchemy of the soul, it is a medicine that can dissolve infantile expectations, fixated attitudes of the ego, and false expectations about the world and other people.
We experience betrayal in order to find a deeper sense of truth; that is the only way we can turn betrayal back into genuine trust. That is the secret of betrayal, that the treacheries we experience in our lives are secretly intended to bring us to a place of deeper, greater trust in our own selves. And it is by being willing to descend through the tests and trials of betrayal that we arrive at the place where we can trust ourselves and genuinely say we have become part of the truth.”
You can hear Michael Meade live by joining him for upcoming online events. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on all online events and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
We’d love to hear your feedback on the podcast. You can leave a review wherever you listen or send a question or comment to info@mosaicvoices.org.
On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.
This episode begins with a report on the effects of the climate crisis on young people throughout the world. The survey shows that youth find the future to be frightening, find the present to be full of heavy sadness and feel increasingly anxious.
Youth may carry the seeds of the future, but they also must suffer the troubles and burdens of the present moment in human culture. The combination of being alive at the end of an era and living when the earth itself is under threat, young people are older than they would otherwise be.
Whereas in traditional cultures, youth enter a rite of passage of some kind; young people now find themselves stepping into an existential gap that includes a desperate need for a reorientation of human culture in general. There is a danger of young people taking on too much of the weight of tragedy and loss in what has become a collective rite of passage for humanity.
In traditional cultures, it would be understood that youth and elders both contribute to the process of finding the next vision for life. If we are going to find ways to help young people survive the abandonment and betrayals that characterize modern societies, there must be a genuine awakening of elders.
The image of elders helping to understand the visions and struggles of young people is not simply a structural part of rites of passage. On a psychological level, it is a representation of the secret connection between youth and elders.
Elders and youth are opposites that secretly identify with each other. For, both are secretly attuned to the timeless cycles of nature, but also to a capacity for deep imagination that can redirect and revitalize human culture. Together they become the vessel in which the imagination needed to face the impossible tasks, and the courage needed to survive the troubled times can become conscious.
We are living at the end of one era and the beginning of another. The ancient sense of an underlying unity between elder and youth becomes the way we can hold end and beginning together. Youth and elders each carry aspects of an essential and timeless force of life that only becomes evident when the two parts are joined. When the oldest and the youngest parts of the soul come together, we can awaken the living force of nature and draw upon the underlying unity of life.
You can hear Michael Meade live by joining him for two upcoming online events. His new online workshop “Healer, Mentor, Elder, Guide” takes place this Saturday, November 13 and on Thursday, November 18 he will be offering a free online event called “Gratitude and Grace”. Register and learn more about both events at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on these events and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
We’d love to hear your feedback on the podcast. You can leave a review wherever you listen or send a question or comment to info@mosaicvoices.org.
On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.
This episode of Living Myth begins with the sense that it is part of our mutual fate to be living in radical times, when the extremes are activated and the center cannot hold at the level of politics or society.
“When the heavy winds of change blow, what is underneath the surface of life becomes revealed. Part of the revelation is that people who have based their sense of self upon outer forms can be rapidly radicalized and become living expressions of the splitting of the collective psyche. Under pressures of radical uncertainty and rapid change, people more readily abandon the difficult search for truth in favor of the type of security found by identifying with a group.
Some will give up all sense of a meaningful inner identity in order not to feel a deep sense of insecurity. Being part of a group that claims righteous superiority can help suppress feelings of deep insecurity and powerlessness. However, the cost of self-betrayal involves becoming increasingly disconnected, not only from provable truths, but also from common reality.
Modern notions of an accidental universe, combined with the belief that the human soul is a blank slate, leaves people feeling increasingly isolated and empty, and therefore powerless to change the tragic course of life on Earth. People may be vehemently opposed to each other in the outside world, but when it comes to what is within each person, most modern people feel empty on the inside.
By now, most people do not even know that there is a deeper self and soul within hem. In that sense, our problem is not only the need to awaken to the nature and aim of our own lives. We now have, by historical necessity and by collective fate, the problem of redeeming the sense of each soul being unique and meaningful on both the personal and collective levels. For, the unifying center that cannot be found in the outer world must first be located in the depths of the individual soul.
What has been mostly forgotten is that the inner message and defining pattern of our souls must be uncovered if we are to become genuine individuals. Individual means someone undivided on the inside and awakened, to some degree, to a sense of meaning and purpose in life. Unless we can find ways of being undivided on the inside, there is no way for collective society to find a sense of unity in the outside world.
Each of us has the most to give, and can contribute most meaningfully, when we become who we already are at the core of our lives. That is the inside story and the hidden message that has been etched in the soul of humanity and needs to be rediscovered and brought back into current imagination and understanding.
You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Healer, Mentor, Elder, Guide” on November 13. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on these events and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
We’d love to hear your feedback on the podcast. You can leave a review wherever you listen or send a question or comment to info@mosaicvoices.org. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.
This episode of Living Myth offers a reflection on time and timelessness and the deep understandings behind ancient rituals that marked the beginning of the dark season of the year.
To be modern means to be lost and running out of time; to be careening towards an uncertain future and increasingly dislodged from the past. Originally, time was not simply linear, but an alteration of darkness and light, of night and day, like ocean tides that swing to and fro over the body of the earth. Once separated from the tides and lunar cycles, time began to march on rather than flow.
Having lost any connection to the eternal, time becomes a process of loss, a losing proposition, wherein each passing moment simply disappears, lost forever, dismissed by the next moment as time floods faster and faster, with no hint, much less a promise of any redemption.
As we approach the time of turning the clock back a single hour, what we really need is to turn back far enough to touch timeless things again. That's what ancient people used to do at the beginning of the dark time of the year. Since darkness was there at the very beginning, turning to darkness meant returning to the moment when light appeared and time began.
Between the light half the year and the beginning of the dark half, there fell a timeless moment, a little drop of eternity that could begin the next cycle of life. That's what was hidden in the darkness, an unlimited space, a moment of dark gestation that was able to renew time and revitalize life again. So, people would turn to the mystery of darkness and to timeless rituals whenever the earth grew dark again.
Not turning the clock back an hour, but turning people’s imagination all the way back to the beginning of time to touch the mystery of darkness turning into light and of death turning back into life. The dark season was when the spiritual world became more visible to humans. Darkness shaped the doorway to the Otherworld which opened wide as the spirits and the soul of the dead mingled with the presence of the living.
That was the origin of Samhain (sawain), the remains of which people now call Halloween. We see wispy remnants of the ancient connections between the dead and the living in the costumes of children dressed as ghosts or skeletons or even the Walking Dead on Halloween night. We can see it with greater clarity in the bone memories and intense creations of Dia de los Muertos. Celebrations of the Day of the Dead go back over 3000 years in Mexico and Central America and now appear, seemingly revitalized, in North America. As if some ancient understanding is trying to catch up to us and reconnect us to the mysteries of darkness and light, to a deeper sense of life and death and timelessness.
Ancient peoples from around the world saw death, not simply as a dead end, but also as part of the continuous, indelible cycle of the renewal of life. Even now, the sense of the light hidden in darkness remains so close that it takes but a moment to connect to the ancient mysteries. Simply allowing the movement of sorrow in the heart and in the body can open the doorway between the worlds. The simple act of accepting loss can connect us to the “dark interval” where light and shadow, life and death become reconciled as the song goes on, resonant in us, beautiful in the earth, tender in the sorrow of songs and in the dreams that keep pouring timelessness into each moment of life on earth.
You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Healer, Mentor, Elder, Guide” on Saturday, November 13. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events. You can save 30% on this workshop and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
We’d love to hear your feedback on the podcast. You can leave a review wherever you listen or send a question or comment to info@mosaicvoices.org. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.
On this episode, Michael Meade responds to elements of nihilism when it comes to the future of human life on earth and to pretentious claims of individual freedom that are not based in an awakening of individual souls. Meade uses an ancient Mayan story to make a defense of the gift of life that makes each soul born both unique and gifted and aimed at something meaningful.
“False demands for freedom and liberty are a substitute for genuinely seeking a unity of self intended to be found within. The real courage to seek freedom is connected to the sense that something is trying to be revealed in each soul born, in each child going to school and in each of us trying to awaken.
This deeper education of the soul has always been the root of the effort of learning; the attempt to bring each girl, each boy to the point of awakening to their inner nature and the gifts they were given at birth. That is the universal birthright and the deeper root of freedom; not simply the freedom from, but the freedom to be part of creation, to be part of a genuine awakening, rather than a faux revolution.”
Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members have access to the full archives of over 355 episodes, receive a 30% discount on all online events, courses and products and receive 3 bonus episodes each month.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.
This episode of Living Myth begins with a dream of being in the waters of uncertainty that leads to a discourse on ancient understandings of the necessity of entering and crossing the river of life.
“We are all standing on the banks of the great river of life as it floods with energies of disruption and change. In the course of time, the river shifts and the ground shifts, and new crossing places must be found, as the common world begins to drain of meaning, beauty and wonder. In that sense, it is not just the shared facts of the daily world that have been lost, but also something much greater, a deep connection to the source of life has been lost again.
The uncertainty of life has risen, and the future of the planet is severely at risk. Like ancient peoples, we must find a fording place from which to depart and find our way across to the other shore and a different view of this world. The other shore has been called by many names, the Far Bank, the Mystic Reach, the Dreamtime, all reflections from the living waters of the stream of life.”
“We cannot make the crossing to a healthier, more whole world simply by new inventions or just by adopting solutions from the past. It is the creative efforts of the old makers which we must emulate, not an imitation of the way that they are said to have gone, but rather a creative effort of our own that reveals the way we are intended to go. We must face the river of life, find our own reflections in the troubled waters, and make the crossing anew.”
“Finding genuine solutions requires a dissolution of fixed attitudes and collective delusions that restrict us from swimming in the waters of change and renewal. In this alchemy of “solutio”, what is not worth saving becomes dissolved as we find the deeper self in our own souls.
The ego fears that it will die or disappear in the deep waters, but the soul knows that any descent in life can be a baptism that can return us to the full potential at the origin of our lives, back there at the beginning, down there near the source, where the underlying unity of the deep self waits to be found and be touched again.”
Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members have access to the full archives of over 350 episodes, receive a 30% discount on all online events, courses and products and receive bonus episodes each month.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
We appreciate you leaving a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast player and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.
On this episode, Michael Meade begins with the mythic idea that the fateful event of being wounded early in life creates the need for a deep healing process that also becomes the path of awakening for each person.
Here on Earth, everything is a little wounded, a little broken or cracked. Ancient artists often placed a defect in their creative work to honor the necessary imperfections of life on Earth. In making earthenware, they left an area unglazed or allowed a small crack to be seen. The imperfection in the vessel made each piece a one of a kind creation, never to be repeated and all the more valuable because of that.
Human beings are also vessels for the energy of creation and for the energy of healing. So each soul carries, and at critical times, exhibits an inner defect or sacred affliction. This necessary wound makes us truly human, a little cracked, a little weird. For, we must be cracked enough for the eternal to find a way in and for the dream of life to find a way out.
The point has never been to become perfect or be completely healed. The point has always been to become holy, meaning complete with our vulnerabilities and our wounds. Thus, the old saying was that the afflicted are holy.
Accepting how we are wounded leads to recognizing that our personal wound is also the archetypal wound. Facing the ways we are wounded opens us to parts of ourselves that are not wounded, but are in fact gifted. Without the pretensions of invulnerability, we become wounded healers and thus able to find medicine within ourselves and bring it to the suffering world.
You can hear Michael Meade talk more about the wounded healer by joining his online workshop “Waking the Inner Healer” on October 9. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on these events and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.
On this episode of Living Myth, Michael Meade tells an old story of someone who follows a dream that leads to being stripped down and stuck, before it unfolds a path to healing and wholeness. “Stories and dreams are about the mysteries of life. And penetrating the mysteries requires a different kind of vision and a different understanding than what we use to negotiate the common world.”
“By now, most people can agree that we are living in a broken world at both the levels of nature and culture. What still seems difficult to accept is that the way to find solutions involves accepting our own participation in the woundedness of the world. The presence of the wound makes healing necessary; it is also the presence of the wound that makes healing possible.”
“The current moment of stripping down institutions and dissolution of familiar patterns of life may be the exact condition in which we begin to see with other eyes and find the threads of the dream of life again. But, in order to find ways to awaken to the meaning of life again, we have to accept our own woundedness.”
The world needs healing on so many levels, that there cannot be a single idea, simple process or common belief that ends all the conflicts and begins the healing. The missing ingredient, the deep medicine, the inner gold is hidden in our own hearts. Until we can loosen the stones that we have constructed to protect our vulnerable selves, we can't find the inner medicine or the inner wisdom of the soul.
Only through that kind of process can we find genuine ways to become wounded-healers and bring some healing back to the world. If enough people would do that, then enough medicines would be found that we could contribute to the healing of ourselves, and at the same time, be humbly, but creatively helping to heal the world.
Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online events that continue through October 9 and explore the theme of the wounded healer. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on these events and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.
This episode of Living Myth begins when the local power grid suddenly goes down in the middle of the evening telecast about all the conflicts and troubles in the world. Michael Meade finds himself plunged into a darkness of a different order: “Suddenly, the procession of polarizations, conflicts and tragedies stopped. And I was left in an old place of darkness that was different than the darkness of the broadcast news. Suspended in timeless silence between candles beginning to flicker in the room and the stars flickering in the sky above, an old idea came back like a refuge suddenly found.”
The idea that sparked like a light in the darkness comes from the mythology of a small tribe in South America who imagine that each soul is secretly connected to the center of the cosmos and the source of life. The presence of a “good word” or wise word in each soul, we could say, is the good news. Each person born arrives with gifts and inner knowledge waiting to awaken and be shared.
The bad news is that each person also has a “word placed crosswise” on their soul. In this old understanding, the word crosswise is the true source of human conflicts that leads to all the troubles in the world. Not simply a lack of knowledge, but an inborn, contrary element that blocks our vision, works against our best interests and resists our efforts to become more self-aware and learn to heal.
At this time on earth it seems that crosswise and unwise elements dominate life in ways that threaten both nature and human culture. Yet, in this old story of the soul, there is a third component that can tip the whole story towards finding genuine meaning and healing. The “word held in waiting” is the key to unlocking the opposition between that which is wise and all that is crosswise within us and in our culture. If people are willing to face that which is crosswise on the soul, both personally and collectively, the “waiting word” can appear as the light hidden in darkness, as the living word of healing and wisdom we have been waiting for.
Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series and workshop beginning on September 24. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on these events and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.
This episode is about living through this dark time on earth by finding and making more medicines from eros, love and soul. Michael Meade weaves together the myth of Eros emerging from primal darkness with poems of Rumi and Hafiz that reveal the initiatory nature of love.
“When we refer to how everything seems divided and people are turned against each other, we are also saying there is a lack of Eros, a lack of love, a loss of the bestowing soul that otherwise would remind us that we are in this together.”
In Greek myth, Eros was a divine figure born out of the darkness and chaos before creation began. Eros or love had to be born first, for without it the created world could not come together or hold together. The same is true when everything seems about to fall apart. In terms of ongoing creation, the amount of eros and love present in each of our lives determines the state of our individual souls, but also affects collective life on earth.
When life becomes chaotic, it is hard not to feel fear and anger, even despair. It also makes sense to let those emotions run through us. After they have passed through, it turns out that we are not left empty or simply in dark despair. If we are true to our own souls, we arrive at the gates of surrender where eros, love and inspiration wait to open the way forward.
Each person is but a frail being compared to the immense crises facing the world. Yet, each is also a living link in the great chain of being that sustains collective life on earth. If we do not risk opening the gates of surrender and finding our intended personality, if we forget that we are also the agents of Eros come here to keep creation ongoing, then consciousness falters and the genuine paths of knowledge and devotion become weakened.
Eros was there at the very beginning, hidden in the darkness and Eros is waiting to be found now in the chaos of the troubled world in which we live. What we love is where we make medicine and can find cures. Loving becomes a kind of initiation in which we become our self in a deeper way, while also giving ourselves away in service to something greater.
Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series and workshop beginning on September 24. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on these events and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.
This episode begins with pressing questions about the outer dangers and the inner devastations caused by the climate crisis. Michael Meade responds to questions about the collective fate of humanity and the future of the world by turning to ancient myths of Sophia and the Soul of the world.
“In terms of mythic imagination, the word world is not simply a reference to the measurable earth that we live upon. Rather, it is a term for the complex, intricate, ever renewable interrelationship of all the beings and all the energies on earth. In losing an instinctive sense and intuitive imagination of both the multiplicity and the underlying unity of life, modern societies continue to lose connections with the living world and the mystery of ongoing creation.”
The ancient imagination of Sophia represented a way of connecting to the intricacies and surprising potencies that create and sustain the living world. Sophia, as the energy of creation, was seen as the mother of all the forms of life. Sophia as daughter represented all the potentials that reside inside each person, inside the earth, and within all the living relationships that make up the world. Sophia, as the Soul of the World, symbolized the wisdom hidden within the multiple elements of life, but also the essential unity that underlies the body of the world.
Nothing is real until it has been imagined and re-imagining the essential connections between the individual soul and the living Soul of the World becomes a key to understanding how life on earth can be re-visioned and balance can be restored. A transformation of collective humanity is needed to help heal and transform the world. However, the collective only changes through the awakening of individual souls, who in turn help awaken the hidden potentials of life, once known as Sophia or the Soul of the World.
Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series and workshop beginning on September 24. These events explore the archetype of the wounded healer. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on these events and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.
This episode begins with a news report about a political candidate threatening to “…go into school boards with 20 strong men and give them an option. They can leave or they can be removed." He suggested that forcing school board members to resign over a rule designed to help public safety would “make men men again.” In order to consider the nature and the danger of this kind of behavior, Michael Meade turns to ancient myths of the Titans.
“The exaggerated sense of self, the broad insolence and the delusion that men become real men by threatening people and enacting violence made me think of the Titans. The manifestation of faux outrage and false heroics is not an indication of inner power, but more of a revelation of inner hollowness. And that is the nature of the Titans, who appeared in times of chaos that came before civilized culture began and appeared again during periods of cultural upheaval, and collapse.
The idea of bringing in powerful strong men to solve the intricacies of public health and the complexities of public education is foolish on its face, but also a dangerous representation of what happens when someone loses their sense of soul, and denies their own vulnerability and insecurity. As with the Titans, an inner emptiness drives the blind sense of excess, which includes breaking boundaries, destroying institutions, and pretending to be all powerful.
As the common understandings of society seem to disappear, and the holding institutions no longer hold things together, there is a rise of primal energies and raw emotions from the depths of the unconscious. The less developed a person's sense of self might be, the more available they are to archetypal, un-socialized, uncivilized energies.
Titanism describes what happens when humans deny common decency, morality and even mortality, and seek to be seen as gods. Titanism arises where unconsciousness prevails, where people refuse psychological shadings, where a lack of emotional growth passes for genuine passion. The less a person knows about the suffering of other people and the less they admit to their own inner woundedness, the more they become available to become possessed by energies of the unconscious.”
Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members have access to the full archives of over 350 episodes, receive a 30% discount on all online events, courses and products and receive 3 bonus episodes each month.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.
On this episode, Michael Meade uses an ancient version of the Grateful Dead theme to show how when faced with impossible tasks we must draw vitality and wisdom from the deep ground of being where life can renew itself. Rather than a typical hero’s journey, the story involves a compassionate youth who gives all that he has to properly bury a corpse that was left unburied. Eventually, the corpse comes back to life and becomes a wise guide and soulful companion as the youth faces great challenges.
In working through the story, Meade raises the idea that the corpse that revives and returns to help guide us could be myth itself. He shows how myth can be a direct source of lost knowledge and how mythic imagination may be essential for understanding the current world crises and gathering a sense of how life on Earth continually renews itself.
“Myth may have come back from the dead and into some awareness in modern culture; but the result has been more of an over-identification with the myth of the hero, than a revelation of the redeeming and transforming powers of myth overall. The mythic approach is a perspective, a way of seeing the world, not a program. We can be caught in heroic visions and suffer heroic blindness that can keep us from perceiving ways to see the world with greater imagination and deeper compassion.
In this time of dramatic challenge and radical change, we need a therapy, not of the hero, which often relates to the ego of a person, but a therapy of the soul, which can become a therapy of the earth as well. The bad news may be that myth, the great source of imagination and vitality has often been buried deep in the earth. The good news is that, like the grateful dead, it is nearby and waiting for us to redeem it, and then learn how to be redeemed by it.”
Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online event “Mythic Imagination and Climate Change” next Thursday, August 26. Register at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members have access to the full archives of over 345 episodes, receive a 30% discount on all online events, courses and products and receive 3 bonus episodes each month. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.
On this replay of a popular episode, Michael Meade takes up the issue of healing from the ancient idea of the Sacred Fifth, or Secret Fifth, that represents the hidden center of the world, the original source of wholeness and renewal. Following the Navajo myth of the Fifth World, Meade describes how a small reed can become the connective link to the axis of the world that then leads to the hidden center that remains the living source of life. The ancient myth becomes a way of recovering from, and shifting the burden of the otherwise overwhelming dilemmas of the modern world.
Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online event “Mythic Imagination and Climate Change” next Thursday, August 26. Register at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members have access to the full archives of over 345 episodes, receive a 30% discount on all online events, courses and products and receive 3 bonus episodes each month. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.
This episode begins with the latest report on the climate crisis from the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. With each fractional increase in global warming, extreme events such as the wildfires burning across Australia, Europe, parts of America and even Siberia will continue to get worse. At the same time, massive floods will become more frequent and sea levels will rise, leaving low lying lands and coastal communities in extreme states of vulnerability.
Michael Meade recounts a cautionary story about the loss of giant kelp forests off the coast of California. The dense underwater canopies can draw down much more carbon than similar stands of terrestrial trees. Yet, these immense kelp forests are being turned into underwater wastelands by sea urchins who, in turn come to starve from the lack of kelp. Rather than seeming like an abstract problem at some distance, our human plight parallels the tragic predicament of the sea urchins and the kelp. We risk becoming agents of our own suffering, creators of our own wastelands, and destroyers of the only home we have ever had.
The new climate report declares that altering the tragic course of life on earth depends upon “transformation at every level of human society.” Meade suggests that such a metamorphosis of human society requires more than logic or reason alone can offer and much more than technological innovation can provide.
“To me, the story isn't simply that nature needs humanity in order to survive, but also that humanity must rediscover its own nature and its connection to the mystery of life, in order to transform. Regeneration is a law throughout the cosmos where the mystery of life involves the process of life, death, renewal. If we are to find our reconnection to the capacity to transform, we must die, in a sense, to the limited understandings of life that now prevail, in order to find a deeper ground of imagination from which to grow a greater more genuine human culture.”
Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members have access to the full archives of over 340 episodes, receive a 30% discount on all online events, courses and products and receive 3 bonus episodes each month.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.
We can suffer an identity crisis at any time in this troubled world, where no one can be certain of what comes next. The pandemic is a painful example of the instability of contemporary life. The variants that create the surge of new cases and illnesses also cause surges of confusion, anxiety, and fear. On a psychological level, the rising intensity of uncertainty and raw emotions threaten to overwhelm the ego or “little-self.” Meanwhile, the deeper self within us imagines that each crisis can also become a life-changing event in which we become wiser, more creative and meaningful.
As uncertainty deepens and crises multiply, the sense that there is a deeper, more knowing self or soul in each person becomes more important. At the same time, we have to have a greater tolerance for the insecurity, the fears, and anxieties of the little-self. Michael Meade uses an old tale of a wise fish, a half-wise fish and an unwise one to show how we must forgive ourselves for getting caught in the nets of fear and anxiety and reconnect to the deep self and soul which has the exact knowledge and wisdom we need, both to survive and to truly grow wise.
Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members have access to the full archives of over 340 episodes, receive a 30% discount on all online events, courses and products and receive 3 bonus episodes each month.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.
Michael Meade uses elements of myth to consider the origins of the pilgrimage to the Olympic Games and the essence of the human dramas that unfold when people go seeking for the gold.
“In these troubling times, institutions all over the earth are rattling and shaking, and becoming unable to keep up with all the changes and complications that are underway. During times of great change, the symbolic level of things becomes more important, as the literal levels of life become more chaotic and confusing, and the psychological levels become more intense and demanding. And that pattern would include those who have made appearing at the Olympics the pilgrimage of their life.
On the path to arrive at the Olympics and compete for the gold, everyone will have a misstep, and some can literally slip and fall off an apparatus or just be off their game. That doesn't mean something has gone deeply wrong. Rather, falling and failing is actually a step on the way to finding the genuine gold.
Olympic hopefuls are likely to encounter deep moments of despair, not because they have done something wrong, but because we have to lose our naive and simple sense of hope in order to tap into something that is much deeper and more important than simply winning in literal terms. Sometimes, we must be willing to enter the waters of change, and in a metaphysical version of sink or swim, simply manage to not abandon ourselves.
The trick in this realm of high aspirations and deep disillusionment is to learn what really carries us when the seas of life get rough. Psychologically, it becomes more important to understand that the actual goal is the inner gold. And that the moment of awakening can happen anywhere along the way; it can happen after we fall or fail to accomplish what we aimed at.
In other words, the genuine aim and purpose of a pilgrimage is to arrive at the center of oneself. The reason for a practice, any practice, is to awaken to the essence of oneself. Those who would be seekers need to know that the source of buoyancy and vitality, as well as the knowing center of life must be found inside. Because in doing that, we begin to recognize what brought us to life to begin with. And we also find what secretly carries us all along the way.”
You can hear Michael live by joining his new online workshop “The Soul of Change” this Saturday, July 31. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this workshop and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and join this growing community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, you can also support this podcast by leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we thank you for being part of this podcast and we wish you well during this period of great change.
In this episode of Living Myth Michael Meade responds to questions generated by the idea that we are on a great threshold that requires change on personal, collective and global levels.
“One of the tragedies of current life is that we have fallen out of story; so that many people can no longer imagine that we are all in the same story together. It is not simply that we are changing the world, but that the world is changing, and we must change with it. A psychological way to consider it is that the archetypal background of life on earth is changing.
Archetype means “an ancient or original form” that sometimes manifests fully and sometimes goes quiet. Archetypes are like riverbeds where sometimes the water of life pours through one and then drains out of that riverbed and flows into another. The archetype of apocalypse begins with collapse and chaos, then passes through a middle ground of liminality and uncertainty. It resolves with a renewal of the vitality of life and new forms of life. This archetype is present in a way that it wasn't years ago. Now the water of life is rushing through it and we are being carried along by it.
Some of the water of life tries to enter the world and flow through each of us. So that the collective and personal crises which all are facing now may threaten our habitual ways of being and acting on one level of life, while opening the doors of vision and understanding on other levels. Part of what happens in the midst of all the uncertainty and liminality, because we are changing in ourselves, our relationships change, and we can find new ways of relating to other people, but also to nature and also to the divine.”
You can hear Michael live by joining his new series of online events that further explore ideas and themes about the threshold of change. The online series continues this Friday, July 23 and the workshop takes place on Saturday, July 31. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on these events and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and join this growing community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, you can also support this podcast by leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we thank you for being part of this podcast and we wish you well during this period of great change.
As human cultures seem increasingly at odds with the rhythms of nature and modern societies succumb to inner conflicts, people of all ages can feel that there is no longer any purpose in life. Although we all may be suffering a modern predicament, Michael Meade suggests that we are also in an archetypal mythic condition.
Like characters in an ancient story, we are collectively on a great threshold which can be simply seen as the edge where everything falls apart or be viewed as a great threshold of awakening, where ancient wisdom as well as new visions of life can arise. Meade uses a dramatic scene in an old story to show how the turning point depends upon whether or not we abandon our true selves.
As everything seems to teeter on the edge of destruction or else on the verge of transformation, meaningful change does not come from a social agreement, an ideology or a belief system. Rather, it comes from awakenings of the heart and soul in individual lives. As an old saying reminds, if there is no change at the level of the individual soul, there can be no change at the level of collective culture.
The sense of identity that we need in order to tolerate the great tensions and pressures of contemporary life is not a “social identity” or some kind of collective abstraction. What we are looking for, what humans have always been seeking for, is the precise and unique identity that was written on the walls of our souls before we were born. Seen that way, the edge of our life becomes the place where we connect to missing parts of ourselves and find the hidden “wisdom of the threshold.”
When that type of turning point happens in the lives of enough people, everything can begin to turn around and we can find ourselves on the way home, with home meaning the place where young people find their genius and true dreams of life and older people have meaningful visions that include renewed connections to the living world of nature as well as to the nearby realm of spirit and great imagination.
The wisdom of the threshold is part of Michael’s new series “Thresholds of Change” which includes a workshop on the soul of change. The online series begins this Friday, July 16 and the workshop takes place on Saturday, July 31. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on these events and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and join this growing community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, you can also support this podcast by leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we thank you for being part of this podcast and we wish you well during this period of great change.
This episode of Living Myth is about the need for having a sense of irony and a tolerance for the paradoxical if we are to maintain our sense of self in an increasingly divided world. Michael Meade addresses how difficult it is to build bridges to other people if they have decided that being on one side of a division is exactly the thing that gives them a sense of personal identity.
The radical changes sweeping through contemporary life have caused some people to feel neglected and left behind in their own countries. As patterns of division and disconnection intensify, people can lose their sense of self and fall into a crisis of identity. When that happens, the need to find a savior figure can seem to be the only way out of feeling abandoned and helpless.
Looking back, it becomes clear that a great irony of fate occurred when Donald Trump, descending down his golden elevator, presented himself as bigger than life and as the only one who could fix the growing problems of the country. While what for some was the epitome of narcissism as Trump descended from his golden tower, was for others the arrival of a “self-object” that they could emotionally relate to.
The effects of that event continue to reverberate and cannot simply be explained by political factors nor by historical perspectives; it is likely that it can only be grasped psychologically. Typically, a person will project their sense of self onto someone or some entity that appears bigger than life to them. The psychological aim of such a self-projection is for the outer figure to reflect back to the person the presence of a greater self within their own psyche.
When Trump made his arrogant claims of personal power and blamed all our troubles on “other people,” he became, in psychological terms, the elected “self-object” for many of those already suffering a loss of self-identity.
The trouble is that even after Trump disappears, painful and dangerous issues created by the sense of sense of a loss of self-identity and self-worth will still be present. While part of us may want to help other people change and part of us feels the urgency to change the world; the irony of life and the paradox of existence indicates that the only genuine way that we can change the conditions around us is to change ourselves.
You can hear Michael Meade talk more about thresholds of change by joining his new online series and workshop beginning on July 16. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on these events and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, you can also support this podcast by leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.
An old psychological idea suggests that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it must appear in the outside world as fate. On this episode of Living Myth, Michael Meade connects our increasingly divided world with the need to face and embrace conflicts and divisions within ourselves. “If we are to bring a greater sense of unity to the world, our work must include facing and seeking to resolve the tension of opposites that exists with our own psyches.”
Using ideas and images from alchemy and myth, Meade examines the process of polarization into opposites as an unconscious search for the sense of wholeness and unity that humanity has lost both collectively and individually. When seen in terms of depth psychology and alchemy, “separatio” describes a transformative process intended to lead to both revelation and greater unity.
Seen this way all conflicts and oppositions harbor a hidden lament for the loss of healing and wholeness. All arguments secretly point to the original split in the world, but also to its healing in a “conjunctio” or union at a deeper level. “Something ancient and knowing in us bends back towards the origins of life, instinctively knowing that what we're trying to find is the hidden unity, the lost Eros that is the glue of life, the longing for love and the felt sense of the divine.”
Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series and workshop beginning on July 16. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on these events and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, you can also support this podcast by leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.
This episode begins with a consideration of how contemporary patterns of polarization can lead people to feel discouraged and defeated when it comes to meaningful change. Although “the twin offspring of this age of polarization may be radical uncertainty and rampant absolutism,” Michael Meade approaches the problem, not by trying to reduce it, but by making it bigger in order to better understand it.
“Back at the beginning of creation, the original polarization was between cosmos and chaos. And in some sense, each occasion of polarization is connected to that original tension of opposites. Understanding it at any level requires understanding it at that original level. Rather than seeming like the impending end of life, the tension of opposites secretly hints at a hidden third that not only relieves the tension but also renews life at a meaningful level.”
The hidden third or middle way that can shift the tension of opposites to a creative level is not the same as notions of a middle path that avoids excess and extremes by following reason and moderation in all things. Nor is it simply the path of negotiation, bi-partisanship and compromise. The old imagination of a middle way involves a living center, a moving middle and golden mean that can loosen the restrictions of time and place and opens us to moments of wholeness and renewal.
“While the two poles of a polarity may seem to be irreconcilable opposites, they are secretly parts of a hidden unity. Existence itself is an essential unity appearing as a duality, and thus genuine change and transformation are the secret aims of the tensions inside the opposites and inside life itself.”
Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members have access to the full archives of over 330 episodes, receive a 30% discount on all live events, courses and products and receive 3 bonus episodes each month.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, you can also support this podcast by leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.
This episode of Living Myth considers the difficulties of finding peace in a troubled world. The increasing amount of tension and conflict in the outside world generates a corresponding intensification of conflicts within each soul. Because the individual soul is not separate from the conditions of the world, simply turning away from outside conflicts does not necessarily lead to states of inner peace.
The word peace comes from two deep roots. On one hand, peace can mean “to settle, to find stillness;” on the other hand, it can mean “to reconcile, to make agreements.” Each root meaning involves a deeper understanding of life and each can lead to finding a greater sense of inner peace.
Being at peace can feel like sitting by a still pond, untroubled by anxiety or the stress of daily life. Yet, being at peace with oneself can also mean finding a vital stream of creative expression that connects the deeper self within us with a genuine calling and way of serving the world. Either way, if we can't find inner agreements that help resolve our own conflicts, we won't be able to help solve the great conflicts that now divide the world.
Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members have access to the full archives of over 330 episodes, receive a 30% discount on all live events, courses and products and receive 3 bonus episodes each month.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, you can also support this podcast by leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.
As the world around us becomes increasingly divided into opposing forces, the tensions and conflicts within us also intensify. In psychological terms, the division most in need of being healed is the split between the ego or “little self” and the deeper, knowing self within us.
In fairy tales a golden ball often appears as a symbol of the inner unity and wholeness we felt, at least for a moment, as children. The old rule is that everyone has at least one experience of the presence of the deep self, typically felt as something golden within us.
This deeper self within knows why we are here on earth and what we are intended to do. Yet, the ego, with its fixed attitudes and pretensions of being at the center of life, stands in the way. At each turning point in life this golden self within tries to become more conscious as a source of grounding and centering, but also as a resource of genuine visions, big dreams and vital energies.
In a world filled with conflicts and great uncertainty, the guidance and centering power of the deeper self can save us from feeling anxious and overwhelmed. In order for both individual and collective awakening and meaningful change to occur, a deeper sense of self and soul must become more conscious and available to us.
You can hear Michael Meade talk more about the deep self by joining his new online workshop “Initiations of Self and Soul” on Saturday, June 12. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this workshop, receive additional podcast episodes and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and become a member at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, you can also support this podcast by leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.
On this episode, Michael Meade addresses individual and collective issues that arise when considering how to return from the separations, losses and ordeals of the Covid pandemic:
“When I hear people talking about returning to normal, I find myself repeating the idea that normal cannot know itself. Normal is not a place anyone really wants to be, especially if a person wants to be themselves. Since there is no normal self, the idea of living in normal is truly self-defeating.
Rather, we have a desperate need to figure out how to go forward, which means finding our way to a better place, one that is more inclusive of all kinds of people, but also more inclusive of the various parts of our own selves that are often excluded from the ideas and the practices of normal. There is also a danger in trying to return too quickly in ways that are not healing or reassuring to our own souls.
Part of a return both to self and to community can be found through a meaningful sharing of stories; yet there is a danger of missing the opportunity to be vulnerable and bring to others a true sense of what we lost during our time of separation. From the view of the soul there needs to be a recognition of what has been lost before there can be a celebration of what might be found.
Deep down we are looking for rituals of return that bring us not just reconnection, but soulful restoration; that bring us not just a sense of relief, but a genuine sense of renewal and a greater sense of purpose in our lives. If there is a genuine ritual of return, there can be a renewal of vitality, a sense of being restored to potentials in our lives as well as a deeper feeling of communitas, of genuine human community.
We are invited to practice ways of returning to ourselves and to each other in deeper, more conscious ways. And we are being asked to learn how to return collective culture to meaningful and healing connections to nature. In that sense, we are part of a much greater project of restoration, renewal and return. Our individual attempts to find ways to return to community life at this point, can also be seen as part of a greater learning that needs to happen collectively, for the sake of our humanity and also for the sake of the earth that also waits for our return.”
You can hear Michael Meade talk more about initiation and the ritual of return by joining his new online workshop “Initiations of Self and Soul” on Saturday, June 12. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this workshop, receive additional podcast episodes and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and become a member at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, you can also support this podcast by leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.
This episode is about the breath of life that invisibly moves through each of us, connecting our souls to the forests and the birds and the unseen realm of spirit. Here is an excerpt:
“Typically, our breath is invisible, yet it is the essence and the evidence that life is present. Human breathing mimics the breath of living forests and also connects us to the divine breath of spirit that secretly sustains all of life. This inspirited breath of life can wither when the forests of the earth are diminished or destroyed; but also when humans fail to awaken and genuinely live the spirit of their own lives.
Because of all the troubling issues in the world, it is ever more important that we awaken to the deeper self within us in order that we become inspired to live in meaningful ways. But also so that we become living vessels through which the divine breath of life can enter the world more fully.
Breathing has always been connected to spirit and to hidden aspects of life, and it is those mostly unseen elements that make it true that we are all in this together. For, we all breathe together, literally, naturally, globally, locally, all in tandem with the breathing of the trees and the birds and the pulsing of the earth. All of it mostly unseen, yet present like the unique spirit in each of our lives and the dreams secretly trying to bring us all together.
There can be expanding circles of awakening, learning and becoming that give us more access to the spirit of life and allow us to contribute more living presence to the world. We are all being asked to hear the music of the spheres, the horns of the angels, the voices in dreams and in the life-long callings that keep calling us to awaken to who we are inside, in order that we might live more fully and contribute presence and meaning and beauty to the world.”
Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Initiations of Self and Soul” on Saturday, June 12. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this workshop, receive additional podcast episodes and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and become a member at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, you can also support this podcast by leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.
On this episode, Michael Meade tells an ancient story from India in which a tiger cub is born at a tragic time and becomes abandoned at birth, only to be raised by goats. The young tiger comes to act like a goat and believe it is a goat, until a life-shattering, self-revealing event uncovers its true, inner nature.
We all live in hard times now when tragic events seem about to shatter everything we believe or think we know about ourselves and the world around us. Meade uses the old teaching tale to show how the hidden continuity of stories can relate the animal realm with human experiences and connect ancient wisdom with current events.
When everything seems to be on the edge of destruction we can also be on the verge of great awakenings and life-changing revelations about our own inner nature and ways of contributing to the ongoing pulse of life.
Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Initiations of Self and Soul” on Saturday, June 12. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this workshop, receive additional podcast episodes and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and become a member at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, you can also support this podcast by leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.
Recent studies suggest that the ultimate causes for people being willing to spread disinformation and act irresponsibly derive from underlying insecurities and psychological forces. Periods of radical change and uncertainty always place greater stress upon individuals. Yet, the current era of global crises and cultural upheaval may be the epitome of extreme conditions that threaten the basic sense of identity for many people.
Growing levels of cultural insecurity can trigger many people to use their “social identity” as the primary source for feelings of belonging, but also as the basis for a false sense of security and pretenses of superiority. This felt need for finding in-group security creates a willingness to accept reassuring information even when it can easily be proven to be false.
This process, which some call “outsourcing identity,” helps explain how some people and some groups can completely change character, become suddenly radicalized, and no longer be willing to listen to reason. Once a division into Us vs Them can be established, the entire world can be framed as a place of conflict and danger that pits our righteous in-group against outsiders who can also be blamed for all our troubles.
Because the genuine crises in the world must be faced, and despite the strange practice of outsourcing identity, what becomes most important is an awakening of the deeper sense of self in those who would still search for truth and for meaningful solutions.
When the waves of disinformation and misinformation, and the high tide of big lies and false beliefs have arrived, the search for truth becomes more important. And the meaning we are each called to search for begins with the living truth that can be found in the inner resources and sense of deeper self already present and waiting to be found in the heart and soul of each person.
Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Initiations of Self and Soul” on Saturday, June 12. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this workshop, receive additional podcast episodes and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and become a member at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, you can also support this podcast by leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.
Times of great uncertainty and upheaval provoke an acceleration of calling that includes the call to awaken the elders and the sage within each person's heart. In the old wisdom traditions, elders were considered to have one foot firmly on the ground of survival, and the other in the realm of great imagination. Seen that way, the elder archetype becomes a source of imagination and vision as well as a resource of resiliency and endurance.
Of course, old age alone cannot make the elder, for growing older can simply lead to a return to infantile attitudes and exaggerations of neediness and fear. Collectively, we fail to imagine aging's meaning as well as its hidden beauty if we look only through the lens of physiology. When it comes to waking the elder there is something metaphysical involved, something transcendent and spiritual that is required.
While those who become “olders” tend to contribute to the divisions in society, those who act as elders foster unity above self-interest and harmony over conflicts. Despite inevitable bodily aches and pains, genuine elders become the deepest source of life-affirming energy in a culture.
Being connected to the sage in the heart, elders become instinctive humanitarians who can embody wisdom and serve the highest ideals of humanity. Having survived their own troubles, elders are not shocked or overwhelmed by the crises and conflicts that exist in the world. Having repeatedly seen how things fall apart, elders have also witnessed the uncanny ways in which both nature and culture find roots of renewal. In the dark times, the archetypal energy of the elders tries to awaken and help find ways for creation to continue.
Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his upcoming online workshop. Details will be announced by the end of the week. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members have access to the full archives of over 310 episodes, receive a 30% discount on all live events, courses and products and receive 3 bonus episodes each month.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, you can also support this podcast by leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.
This episode of Living Myth begins with a review of gun culture and gun violence in the United States, which Michael Meade laments continuously put us all in life and death circumstances. “We are in the kind of crisis where it becomes necessary to recognize the growing presence of death in the middle of life; in the middle of what we call public policing and in the middle of political culture wars.”
Part of the agony involves realizing how a culture that develops wealth and power, but does not develop psychologically, must increasingly suffer more from self-inflicted wounds than from attacks by outside forces. One of the most perverse areas of self-inflicted wounds comes from the militarization of, and excessive use of deadly force, by police forces throughout the country.
At the same time, states like Texas consider legislation that would allow anyone over 21 to carry a gun without a license and without having to pass a background check. In order to demonstrate the increasingly deadly outcomes that must result from the tragic path of modern gun culture, Meade traces the origin of guns back to a dramatic mistake that happened over a thousand years ago.
In one of the greatest ironies of history, gunpowder was invented during an alchemical experiment intending to produce an elixir to prolong life. Instead of enhancing life there was a literal backfire, an explosion that threatened the lives of those handling the volatile mixture. Ten centuries later, there is no magic elixir and people keep making the mistake of not realizing how having weapons with great firepower can only lead to a greater presence of death and a greater loss of life.
Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members have access to the full archives of over 310 episodes, receive a 30% discount on all live events, courses and products and receive 3 bonus episodes each month.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, you can also support this podcast by leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.
This episode of Living Myth focuses on the significance of the moment following the reading of the verdict in the George Floyd murder trial. As his tragic death became a worldwide symbol of injustice, the issue was always going to be whether the agonizing truth of what we could see with our own eyes would be acknowledged and validated by the jury and the court.
The word verdict comes from Latin roots that literally mean “to speak or tell the truth.” In that sense, each truth telling verdict stands as an antidote to the plague of Big Lies that callously and cynically pervade so much of our political and cultural lives.
Upon hearing the verdict, we become witnesses again; but this time we are witnesses to the truth being told and justice being, at least partially, served. Although it is not the end of the story, it is vitally important not to miss the meaning of such a moment of truth.
More than a matter of simple relief, a moment of truth can be a kind of medicine. Although not a complete remedy, each moment of truth stops the bleeding and can bring a sorely needed sense of healing. To heal means to “make whole again,” so that each moment can make us more whole as people and as the human community. If we don't stop long enough to take in the medicine, we miss out on the healing value of truth telling.
It doesn't mean that more tragedies won't occur, they already have. Yet, healing is also a revolutionary act, the kind that makes it more possible to stay in the long struggle for greater truth and justice. We need to hold onto the moments of truth and healing because they contain little acts of redemption that renew our sense of trust in ourselves, in each other, and in the deepest sense of human community.
Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members have access to the full archives of over 300 episodes, receive a 30% discount on all live events, courses and products and receive 3 bonus episodes each month.
You can learn more and become a member of this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, you can also support this podcast by leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.
This episode begins with the idea that we are living in a dire time in which the nobility of our own souls is at odds with many of the circumstances in which we live. The latest report on the earth’s oceans predicts even more extreme weather events and a rapid rise in sea levels. At the same time psychologists are concerned about a rising tide of grief and loneliness resulting from the tragic loss of life due to the pandemic surges and the scourges of hatred and gun violence.
The notion that going back to familiar forms or normality will solve the crises we face seems a different kind of madness given the desperate collective state we are all in. We are caught in the turning tides, not just of the ocean, but also the tides of time that occasionally turn over as one era ends and the next seeks to begin. In mythological terms, we are in the throes of a great transition in history, which of necessity requires a transformation of humanity as well.
People drown in the storms of change because they cling to abstract notions or conventional beliefs that lack true buoyancy when the time for transformation comes. Sometimes we have to be willing to enter the waters of uncertainty to find the inner dream, the living story that can keep us buoyant in the tides of change.
Part of the challenge and part of the practice involves accepting that we are on the edge between the known and the unknown, the only place that new knowing can come from. Although not found in the headlines or the many reports of growing dangers, the greatest level of loss involves our loss of things that are timeless, of things that touch the eternal, of things that are sacred to the soul.
For only in timeless moments does time itself renew, as life is reborn and the future becomes revealed. Moments of true awakening become “lived time,” time fully lived into, that alone can lead to a life fully lived out. In the storms of life, the awakened soul becomes the source of vision and creative agency that alone can inspire a collective renewal at both the level of survival and the level of transformation.
Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Personal Myth: Unfolding the Plotline of the Soul” this Saturday, April 17. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this workshop, receive additional podcast episodes and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and become a member at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, you can also support this podcast by leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.
This episode of Living Myth focuses upon the idea of destiny as an essential part of humanity through which each soul is called to follow its own star and true aim in life. However, the consideration of the word destiny also leads to some confusion about its historical associations and its original meaning. One thing leads to another as concepts about etymology or the study of words become entwined with ideas of mythology and the study of stories.
Michael Meade suggests that language has its own genius and that each word can also be a story that branches out from root meanings to many associations with other words and other concepts. Similarly, each person has their own genius, the inner spark and speck of star that forms the original constellation of their soul. This inner spark connects us to our natural way of being, but also to our North Star that secretly tries to guide us further on the path of our own destiny, as we all participate in the spinning of the world, the turning of the spheres and the song of the stars of creation.
Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series and companion workshop “Personal Myth, Cultural Change” that continue this Friday, April 9. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on these online events, receive additional podcast episodes and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and become a member at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, you can also support this podcast by leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.
This episode begins with the idea that the task of finding symbols and stories through which we discover the meaning of our lives is as old as human consciousness. In that sense, Carl Jung was rediscovering ancient knowledge when he wrote: “What we are in our inward vision can only be expressed by way of myth. Each human life is…like a plant that lives from its rhizome. Its true life is invisible, hidden in that root.”
In response to a time of great crisis in his life Jung realized that an inner myth was trying to become conscious and that he had to awaken to it: “I took it upon myself to get to know my myth and I regarded this as the task of all tasks.”
Since collective mythologies no longer generate a sense of existential meaning and coherence, turning inward in search of our own mythic story becomes essential for our health and psychic growth. By tapping the inner mythic root, we can develop a more conscious and creative relationship with our own deep self and soul; but also find our unique way of contributing to a world in crisis.
As was the case with Jung, our personal myth or inner story tries to surface each time we feel we are in a crisis or at a turning point. If we allow the inside story of the soul to awaken and guide us, we become the living word trying to enter the world though us. Like Jung on his radical path of self-discovery and mythic recovery, we are repeatedly being called to find and learn the personal myths trying to be born from our own souls.
Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast. You can hear Michael Meade speak more about personal myth by joining his new online series and companion workshop “Personal Myth, Cultural Change” that begin this Friday, April 2. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on these online events, receive additional podcast episodes and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and become a member at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, you can also support this podcast by leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends.
A wise old idea states that whatever we refuse to face within ourselves, will become a collective fate acted out in the world. The conflicts within people do not simply disappear; rather, when denied or left unattended they eventually erupt and can wreak great havoc on society. Tragically, it is our mutual fate to be alive when a maelstrom of issues long denied erupts into our lives at the same time.
It becomes increasingly clear that conventional ways of looking at life, not to mention contemporary practices in politics, are bereft of any capacity to genuinely respond to the onslaught of violence and the weight of personal and collective tragedies we are experiencing. No amount of data or information can add up to the wisdom needed to understand, much less interrupt the flood of violence and tragedy.
An old proverb advises that we can only go as far forward as we can reach back. When we lose our way we must backtrack to pick up the pathway again. Michael Meade reaches back to ancient ways of wisdom to find threads of meaning and coherence that might shed some light on the darkening shadows of violence and ignorance that threaten modern societies.
When things become stuck, when it seems that life has lost all sense of meaning, when we have lost our collective sense of direction, something dangerously crosswise has fallen over us. At that point, what we are waiting for is not simple knowledge or minor legislation; what we are waiting for is a return of wisdom, the kind of deep understanding that waits to awaken in the depths of the soul.
Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast. You can hear Michael Meade speak more about myth by joining his new online series and companion workshop “Personal Myth, Cultural Change” that begin on Friday, April 2. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on these online events, receive additional podcast episodes and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and become a member at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, you can also support this podcast by leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends.
This episode begins with the idea that an individual word can be like a story that has both history and mystery within it. Michael Meade tracks the meanings of enlightenment from an original sense of “anything that might remove dimness or blindness” to concepts of mystical illumination and spiritual liberation.
On the historical level, the period termed The Enlightenment, which set out to shine the light of reason on everything wound up discovering the enormity of darkness as seen in the discovery of “dark matter,” “dark energy,” and “black holes” in the universe. On the cultural level, Enlightenment ideas about the “sovereignty of reason” over all human endeavors and over nature as well, can be seen to contribute greatly to the current period of “endarkenment.”
Turning to the mythic level, Michael Meade tells an ancient tale of a young seeker eagerly trying to solve the human dilemma and enter enlightenment as soon as possible. A wise old teacher points out that what we seek with all our feverish searching must first be found in the darkness within ourselves, in the inside story where the hidden light of self and soul waits to be revealed and brought to life.
Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast. You can hear Michael Meade speak more about myth by joining his new online series and companion workshop “Personal Myth, Cultural Change” that begin on Friday, April 2. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on these online events, receive additional podcast episodes and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and become a member at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, you can also support this podcast by leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends.
There are parallels between the flowers of spring breaking through the hard ground of a long winter and rising expectations for a return to familiar ways of life as the pandemic appears to be waning. Yet, Michael Meade suggests that the message borne by spring flowers involves much more than a simple return to how things used to be. In mythological terms, creation is ever ongoing as nature continually presents the essential mystery of life renewing itself from the haunts of death. In terms of that ageless story, we are being invited to participate in a return to the original potential that was there at the beginning and continually becomes present again. This greater invitation involves the blossoming of our own souls as well as a potential renewal of culture. In Greek myths, Eros was the first born deity, there at the very beginning, but also present again at the beginning of any new project or meaningful change in life. Eros is the archetypal presence of longing and attraction, the primal energy of connection, the secret glue that holds everything together. Eros is the power that connects each of our souls with the living, breathing soul of the world. Eros is also the connective tissue in social life and all relationships. When this soulful sense of instinctive connection and compassion declines, people turn against each other and life itself is diminished. When we lose our natural sense of longing for beauty and truth and being present to the wonder of creation, we become as if dead to the world. It is our collective fate to live at a time of both tragedy and transformation. It is our mutual calling, not simply to return to the world as we knew it, but to become part of a genuine renewal, a flowering of imagination and a recreation of the sense that we are all connected and part of the mystery and the ongoing creation of life on earth.
Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast. You can hear Michael live by joining a free online Q&A tomorrow, March 11 at 5:00 pm (PST). Check out our Facebook event page for details. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members have access to the full archives of over 300 episodes, receive a 30% discount on all live events, courses and products and receive 3 bonus episodes each month.
You can learn more and become a member at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, you can also support this podcast by leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.
This episode of Living Myth begins with a consideration of the old idea of two arcs that shape the course of human life. The first arc describes the process of growing up, stepping out and making a life in the common world. The second arc involves the inward path through which a person awakens to their inner life and develops a greater sense of both spirit and soul. Whereas the first arc has to do with external things, the second arc involves eternal matters.
Humans have always been called to grow along both the outer and the inner arcs of life. Yet, there are times when the crises of the outer world make the inward arc of realization and great imagination more important to follow.
Despite the modern obsessions with materialism, mass technology and narrow ideologies, a society can only heal and truly grow by tapping the deep feelings and creative energies of the inner arc of life. When everything seems to be falling apart, the inner arc of imagination and creativity is actually closer at hand and the second adventure of the soul is calling for our attention.
Thank you for listening to and support ting this podcast. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members have access to the full archives of over 300 episodes, receive a 30% discount on all live events, courses and products and receive 3 bonus episodes each month.
You can learn more and become a member at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, you can also support this podcast by leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends.
In this episode of Living Myth, Michael Meade considers the familiar notion of paradigm shifts as inadequate for envisioning ways to deal with the worldwide crises we all face. Paradigm is an old Greek word that refers to a “pattern or model” and the common usage of paradigm shift involves replacing an old pattern or model with a newer and therefore better one.
What began as a theory of how scientific revolutions occur has for the past fifty years been applied to everything from social movements and business plans, to education, ecology and beyond. What has typically been overlooked is that the inspiration for the theory paradigm shifts came from psychological studies of growth spurts in children.
Meade turns the consideration of cultural change back to depth psychology and mythology where another old Greek word can bring a greater sense of imagination to modern crises. Archetype, like paradigm, refers to patterns and models. However, archetypes are the original patterns from which all subsequent models derive; as such they can have a powerful effect on human thinking, beliefs and behaviors.
Whereas the sense of a paradigm shift would simply have the old be replaced with the new, the deeper sense of archetype involves new patterns arising from the ancient and original sources of creation. When activated, archetypes connect the ancient and universal forces of life with the immediate issues of the world. When transformation is needed at all levels of nature and culture, it is time to tap back into the endless potential of the origins of life in order to truly change things going forward.
Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast. You can hear Michael Meade speak more about archetypes and inner sources of renewal, by joining his ongoing live series “Hidden Abundance” that continues this Friday, Feb. 26. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this series, receive additional podcast episodes and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, you can also support this podcast by leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends.
Throughout history, epidemics and plagues have stirred deep levels of distrust and fear that have, in turn, thrown entire cultures into upheaval. The current pandemic seems to be a perfect storm of fear that permeates all areas of society and exposes deep divisions as well as wild extremes.
This episode of Living Myth begins with an old teaching story that reveals the many levels of fear that can affect each of us individually and all of us collectively. Michael Meade uses the old tale to show that how we respond to fear determines whether we become more wise or else more foolish, become more centered or more extreme and unbalanced.
Eventually, it becomes necessary to realize that what we fear will not simply go away; rather we must face our fears or else become overwhelmed. It is important to know that the hidden aim of fear is not “fight or flight,” but rather the revelation of untapped inner resources that are trying to awaken in each of us. Healthy fear involves an increase of consciousness that stirs deep instincts and intuitions that can be life-protective, life-saving and life enhancing. In critical times, the greatest safety can be found in becoming wise enough to take the right risk.
Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “Hidden Abundance” that continues this Friday, Feb. 19. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this series, receive additional podcast episodes and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and become a member at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, you can also support this podcast by leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.
This episode of Living Myth begins with the plight of immature clown fish that increasingly become doomed to drift aimlessly at sea because they cannot hear the soundscape of coral reefs calling them home. The call to refuge is interrupted by the extreme volume of man-made noise that now pervades the oceans of the world. Michael Meade considers how the cycle of life for humans also becomes broken by the volume of noise, disinformation and distractions of the modern world.
For humans, the soundscape of home can be imagined as the call of the knowing self within, which has often been depicted as a golden fish waiting to be found. Despite all that separates, isolates and overwhelms us, the profound “soundscape of humanity” continues to call us to awaken to a greater sense of self. Even as the world suffers a scarcity of truth and meaning, and a loss of humane inclusion and understanding, there is an inner abundance and a sense of refuge waiting to be found in the depths of each human soul.
Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “Hidden Abundance” that begins on Friday, Feb. 12. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events. You can save 30% on this series, receive additional podcast episodes and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and become a member at patreon.com/livingmyth. As always, you can also support this podcast by leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends.
On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.
This episode of Living Myth begins in the year AD 96 on a remote island in the Aegean Sea. It was a period of great cultural upheaval, similar to the times in which we now live. Like the present era, extreme beliefs and conspiracy theories were battling with the dominant political systems and traditional religious values.
While in exile on the island, a man who came to be known as John of Patmos recorded a series of radical visions and prophecies about the impending “end of days.” The fiery text began with an old Greek word, apocalypse and the narrative became known as the Book of Revelation.
John had been exiled for rabble-rousing and preaching both revolution and revelation. While in isolation he wove threads of old apocalyptic stories with his own wild visions and prophecies of The End. Although many believed those prophecies at the time, the fiery end of the world never came. To this day however, when people are faced with upheaval and uncertainty the old images of apocalypse stir again, wild visions arise, and fantastic theories abound.
The ideas and the images of a final drama between the forces of good and evil leading to a fiery end of everything is deeply embedded in the human psyche. The problem way back then, which has become an increasingly mainstream issue now, is that people take literally what appears metaphorically and would be better understood psychologically.
Michael Meade shows how understanding the deeper sense of the “archetype of apocalypse” reveals how the world as we know it does come to an end. Yet, as has happened time and again, the world also becomes restored. The message of renewal turns out to be an essential component of radical change and a critical issue for understanding revelation here on earth.
Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “Hidden Abundance” that begins on Friday, Feb. 12. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events. You can save 30% on this series, receive additional podcast episodes and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and become a member at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, you can also support this podcast by leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends.
On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.
This episode of Living Myth focuses upon two contrasting meanings of myth, one being a false narrative and the other as a genuine myth. On one level, myth involves things that can be proven false as when people say that something is “just a myth.” On a deeper, more meaningful level, myth means “emergent truth,” the learning of transcendent truths that can alter both our vision of the world and our immediate understanding of life.
Both the false myth and the genuine myth use the elements of narrative and symbolism to present their core stories. One difference between them is that false myths aim to divide people and turn them against each other, while more universal myths reveal underlying truths that serve to bring people together through greater imagination and deeper understanding.
In many ways, we are in the crux of a growing tension between the two levels and contrasting meanings of myth. The current moment involves the coming together of dangerous false myths in the form of the Big Lie and the Lost Cause. The Big Lie involves the false story line that Donald Trump won the recent election, only to have it stolen from him. The Lost Cause involves the weaving together of false narratives about the reasons for the Civil War with symbols of Christianity and the false myth of White Supremacy.
Those who commit to a big lie or a false myth can rarely be persuaded by the “facts of the matter.” Their commitment is not based on facts; almost the opposite, the blind belief at the core of false myths is based upon a determination not to experience a common reality. Thus, the antidote to the big lie or a false myth involves not just the facts, but the evocation of more enduring and inclusive narratives and symbols of unity and renewal that are the deepest heritage of our shared humanity.
Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members have access to the full archives of over 290 episodes, receive a 30% discount on all live events, courses and products and receive 3 bonus episodes each month, including regular live Q&A events with Michael Meade. You can learn more and become a member at patreon.com/livingmyth. As always, you can further support this podcast by leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends.
On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being, protection and deep community connection during this period of great challenge and transformation.
This episode of Living Myth begins with the roots of the word inauguration, which Michael Meade traces back to “an installation and consecration” that happens when the “omens are favorable.” In ancient times, the date for an investiture would only be chosen after signs indicated an auspicious moment for a new beginning.
The modern world runs on fixed schedules that typically ignore the subtleties of omens and auguries, leaving us looking for auspicious signs within pre-scripted programs. When it comes to inaugurating a new administration amidst a tragic pandemic and widespread uncertainty, the signs and symbols may have enhanced importance.
Beginning with the words "to heal, we must remember," Meade reflects upon the memorial ritual held the night before the formal inauguration began. The symbolic lighting of 400 lamps to honor the loss of over 400,000 souls to the coronavirus presented the kind of healing moment the soul of the nation needs. For many ancient people, the moments “between sundown and dusk” were considered auspicious and symbolic of a time when one thing can turn into another. In that sense, acknowledging our shared losses and wounds makes a path to healing more possible. In the end, what brings us together and makes unity possible is not simply our shared history, but rather the recognition of our shared woundedness and the stirring of the deep longing in each human soul to find healing and pathways to wholeness and renewal.
Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members have access to the full archives of over 290 episodes, receive a 30% discount on all live events, courses and products and receive 3 bonus episodes each month, including regular live Q&A events with Michael Meade. You can learn more and become a member at patreon.com/livingmyth.
On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you and your loved ones continued well-being, protection and deep community connection during this period of great challenge, change and transformation.
Beginning with an inspired interpretation of The Second Coming by W.B. Yeats, Michael Meade addresses how “anarchy was loosed upon the world” and “what rough beast” came round in the violent insurrection at the U.S. capital. Besides the sea of red MAGA hats and the rag tag array of military outfits and gear, the riotous display of symbols emblazoned on flags, banners and clothing bespoke a confusion and collusion of movements and purposes.
As the lines between fans and fanatics, between anger and madness were obliterated, one message that did come through was that we have now entered a more desperate, dangerous phase of collective life.
Meade states that: “Anyone who understands the deep human need for meaning and truth could intuitively know that attacking truth must eventually lead to attacking life itself. Facing this kind of zealotry, fanaticism and terrorism requires understanding the psychological dynamics of dissociation from one's regular identity and possession by unconscious resentments and floods of raw emotion.”
Something is trying to be born, but it cannot be born of false certitude or blindly blaming others for troubles we all share. It cannot be born of hate or abject cruelty. It cannot be born of terrorizing people or destroying the symbols of democracy.
Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members have access to the full archives of over 285 episodes, receive a 30% discount on all live events, courses and products and receive 3 bonus episodes each month, including regular live Q&A events with Michael Meade. You can learn more and become a member at patreon.com/livingmyth.
On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you and your loved ones continued well-being, protection and deep community connection during this period of great challenge, change and transformation.
“An old psychological idea states that if we do not consciously face our inner conflicts, then those conflicts will be lived out in the world as fate.” Michael Meade considers the recent riot in the nation’s capital, the fragility of our institutions and the growing tragedy of coronavirus fatalities as elements of a collective fate that we must witness. If many of the roots of our collective conflicts and traumas can be traced through history, Meade proposes that the way to both survive the current disorders and help heal our many wounds requires turning to mythology for wisdom and guiding images.
This episode of Living Myth ends with an appeal from a wise American poet: “…though we could fool each other. We should consider less the parade of our mutual lives gets completely lost in the dark. It is important for awake people to stay awake, or a breaking line may discourage us all back to sleep. The signals we give each other yes, no, or maybe should be clear. For the darkness around us is deep.”
Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members have access to the full archives of over 285 episodes, receive a 30% discount on all live events, courses and products and receive 3 bonus episodes each month, including regular live Q&A events with Michael Meade. You can learn more and become a member at patreon.com/livingmyth.
On behalf of all of us at Mosaic, we wish you the touch of grace, the sense of gratitude and shared moments of wholeness in this new year. We are grateful for the work you do in the world and for your interest in and support of our work.
On this replay of a New Year’s podcast, Michael Meade begins an exploration of the myths of creation and tales of re-creation that allow time to renew and the world to begin again. Any serious consideration of creation must also include the energies of chaos that continually dissolve and disintegrate what creation establishes in the world. An ancient story from India describes the “two hands of creation” through which the world recreates itself from emptiness as well as from abundance, from sorrow as well as joy and from despair as well as wonder.
Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members have access to the full archives of over 285 episodes, receive a 30% discount on all live events, courses and products and receive 3 bonus episodes each month, including regular live Q&A events with Michael Meade. You can learn more and become a member at patreon.com/livingmyth.
On behalf of all of us at Mosaic, we wish you the touch of grace, the sense of gratitude and shared moments of wholeness. We are grateful for the work you do in the world and for your interest in and support of our work.
On this bonus sharing of the latest premium podcast, Michael Meade begins with a poetic response to the deadening language that at times dominates the discussion about impeaching the President. What begins as a critique of the speech being used to defend the politics of big lies turns into a lament for the loss of language able to carry the truth of the human heart and soul. A procession of poems and commentary ranges from Aime Cesaire seeking “to rediscover the secret of great communications and great combustions" to D.H. Lawrence warning us how big lies and damning mistakes have repeatedly been sanctified in modern times.
The surprise of this intricate response to the lack of presence and imagination in political life arrives through the ancient wisdom of Kabir, who reminds us that truth resides in the surprising territory of awakening where the deep self and soul waits to be found again.
Thank you for listening to this podcast. You can hear more content like this by joining the growing community of listeners who are members of Living Myth Premium. Become a member with a $10/month subscription and receive 3 bonus episodes each month, the full podcast archives and a 30% discount on all products. Become a member at patreon.com/livingmyth.
This excerpt from the latest premium episode offers samples from the new audio book Awakening the Soul, along with expanded content and spontaneous commentary by Meade. The book sample focuses on the chapter “Inner Eyes of the Soul” which includes a story of an orphan left behind by his tribe, who then unexpectedly has a radical awakening experience that leads to a vision that affects everyone in the tribe. The commentary by the author includes autobiographical material as well as psychological ideas about each person’s “orphan self.”
You can hear the full episode and receive additional podcast content by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Go to www.patreon.com/livingmyth to learn more and subscribe.
For $10/month, members of Living Myth Premium receive:
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Q&A episodes where Michael Meade answers member questions
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Autobiographical and anecdotal stories from Michael
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A 30% discount on all products and many events
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Archival recordings from live events and dynamic interviews
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Access to over 125 Living Myth podcasts
Living Myth and Living Myth Premium are products of Mosaic Multicultural Foundation, a 501©3 organization. Your membership helps grow Living Myth and ensures we are able to continue developing and expanding this creative project.
Peace and blessings,
Mosaic Staff
We are pleased to announce that Michael Meade’s latest book “Awakening the Soul” is now available as an audio book. Here is a sample from this newly released title. The audio book can be purchased as a download or CD at mosaicvoices.org/audio.
Members of the Living Myth Premium Podcast can save 30% on this title and all other offerings from Michael Meade and Mosaic. Learn more and become a member of this podcast at patreon.com/livingmyth.
On this excerpt from the latest Living Myth Premium episode, Michael Meade answers questions about the soul posed by listeners. One question is “what is the meaning of the original agreement of the soul?” Another is “why is this first agreement so important that it is indelible in the soul?” Using ancient stories about the origin of the soul, Meade offers a compelling commentary on the soul’s way of bridging the two worlds, the eternal and the time bound.
Rather than being separated from the divine by an “original sin”, old stories depict the separation as an original forgetting of the unique pattern in each soul. The rest of life involves a longing to reconnect to the eternal and live out the soul’s first agreement and original intention in life. This excerpt is from the first of a two-part Living Myth Premium podcast series on the two agreements of the soul.
Hear the full episode and receive additional podcast content by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Go to www.patreon.com/livingmyth to learn more and subscribe.
For $10/month, members of Living Myth Premium receive:
- Q & A episodes where Michael Meade answers questions from Premium members
- Autobiographical stories from Michael
- Archival recordings from live events and dynamic interviews
- Exclusive offers on products and events
- Access to the entire collection of Living Myth podcasts
Living Myth and Living Myth Premium are products of Mosaic Multicultural Foundation, a 501©3 organization. Your membership helps grow Living Myth and ensures we are able to continue developing and expanding this creative project.
Peace and blessings,
Mosaic Staff
On this excerpt from the latest Living Myth Premium episode, Michael Meade reads selected poems from The Rag & Bone Shop of the Heart, the renowned anthology edited along with Robert Bly and James Hillman. The recording includes reflections on the surprising dynamic of creating the anthology along with commentary on the importance of poetic inspiration. This is the first part of a Living Myth Premium podcast series that weaves poetry, spoken word and anecdotal stories about the role of art and creativity and the undying speech of the soul.
You can hear the full episode and receive additional podcast content by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Go to www.patreon.com/livingmyth to learn more and subscribe.
For $10/month, members of Living Myth Premium receive:
- Q & A episodes where Michael Meade answers questions from Premium members
- Autobiographical stories from Michael
- Archival recordings from live events and dynamic interviews
- Exclusive offers on products and events
- Access to the entire collection of Living Myth podcasts
Living Myth and Living Myth Premium are products of Mosaic Multicultural Foundation, a 501©3 organization. Your membership helps grow Living Myth and ensures we are able to continue developing and expanding this creative project.
Peace and blessings,
Mosaic Staff
Hey Living Myth listeners, thank you for being a part of this podcast. We wanted to let you know about the Living Myth Premium Podcast, a new offering from Mosaic that gives members access to additional content beyond the free weekly edition of the podcast. Go to mosaicvoices.org or livingmyth.org to learn more and become a member. Your membership helps grow Living Myth and ensures we are able to continue developing and expanding this creative project. To give you a flavor of the premium content, we have included an excerpt from the first bonus episode.
Michael Meade introduces the role of myth in making sense of our complex and challenging world and he answers the question “Why Myth, Why Now?”.