Avsnitt
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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.
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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. -
Saknas det avsnitt?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
- Visa fler
