As a metaphor for human nature, the Acorn Myth suggests that each person comes into the world with an innate shape and an inborn style intended to grow a particular character. Thus the soul, rather than being a blank slate, tends to be more like a garden already planted and seeded in a certain way.
On this replay of a popular episode, Meade suggests that the inner seed of the soul arrives already packed with knowledge. Specifically, it knows something of its own way of being and, if the shell of the seed can be cracked, the nature and shape and aim of a person's life can become revealed. Call it a myth, an open secret or an eternal truth, the sense of each soul having a seed story it came to live resonates throughout the cultures of the world.
As the world around us becomes increasingly unstable and chaotic, we need to turn to the inner shape and core imagination of our own soul to find stability, meaning and purpose.
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On this excerpt from a premium episode, Michael Meade talks about key issues that affect transformation in our lives. He considers core complexes in family and culture and wades into the territory of deep emotions. The word complex is trying to point out that when we have a particular kind of interior trouble, the issues are complex. Deep down, we all want to change, he says, and each crisis and obstacle we encounter serves to spark the initiatory transformation our soul longs for.
If we change one small thing in our lives, we affect everything and everyone around us. In following our deep calling in life, we naturally encounter struggles. Yet it is these exact struggles that become the turning point for our lives to become bigger, for our wounds to find healing and for our destiny to be revealed.
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This episode begins with the idea that “each family acts as a vessel of fate with an inherited plot that begins all over again each time a child is born. For the infant is not born into a vacuum as much as dropped into a particular stage of a family drama that has been playing out over generations.” Meade considers the issues of “family fate” that can restrict and obscure, but ultimately provoke the discovery of the threads of fate and destiny in each person’s life.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 445 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode considers that when the world seems to be falling apart and life seems increasingly polarized, it becomes necessary to tune to the inner voice that is secretly connected to the pulse of nature as well as to the realm of the divine. The problem is not that there is no resonant voice inside us, not that there isn't something trying to awaken in each of our souls; rather the problem is the issue of tuning in.
The old idea is that once we tune in to our own inner nature, we also become aligned with the world behind the common world, with the realm of the Muses who are sending us signals that turn into music or songs and poetry, or ideas waiting to be found and be shared to bring greater understanding. Through tuning in we become the living instruments whose breath is needed, whose song is required in the struggle for meaning and love. Not because we are inflated or believe we are simply special; but because we are tuned in to life and attuned to our own hearts and souls. Soul is the connective tissue of life. Without a sense of soul, our own lives can fall apart, the inner parts turning discordant, the song of our being becoming silenced.
Yet, when inspired by the eternal youth within us and encouraged by the old sage in our heart, we learn how to become instruments for healing and finding love. Then, we use our breath and our voices to shape places of genuine communion where we can all come together, even with our uncertainties and fallibilities which strangely contribute to the resonance of the healing song trying to be found.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 440 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
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If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode considers the problem of resistance to change from psychological and mythological viewpoints. While we are facing radical changes that threaten both nature and culture, we are also challenged by the dilemma of human resistance to change at both personal and collective levels. The issue is not simply a lack of commitment to change. Rather, resistance arises precisely where we have the best intentions to change. The problem becomes all the more difficult as we may not be aware of our resistance because it occurs at an unconscious level. Attempts to meaningfully change can feel like an internal struggle between opposing parts of ourselves; one part that overtly wants change and another part that covertly works against it.
What some psychologists call an internal “competing commitment” or a subconscious “immunity to change” was once known as the fatal flaw that leads us away from our soul's natural goal of transformation and spiritual realization. In terms of mythic imagination, each soul has an original intention waiting to be found and a life dream waiting to awaken. And each soul also has its fatal flaw, a kind of reverse attitude that works against that original intention.
Genuine transformation develops from the inside out. Thus, when change becomes essential, not just for ourselves, but also for life on earth, we are called to awaken to the true aims of our authentic selves as well as to the fatal flaws that work against meaningful change, both personally and collectively.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 440 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.