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.

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 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.

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. 

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 520 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, 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

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.

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.