This episode begins with the idea that our original agreement with life involves the inner dream of our soul and the unique pattern that brought us into being in the first place. At birth the soul enters a series of secondary agreements that involve accepting the world as we find it and learning to negotiate between our soul and the “facts of life,” between our deepest desires and the reality of one’s circumstances.
Our true guide is the deepest image in our soul, the divine spark and core imagination that is also the renewing force of our being. Each soul lives on the verge of remembering the forgotten agreement and original dream that it carries within. In that sense, the real struggle in life has always been to become that which we already are at our heart’s core.
At each critical turning point in life the first agreement of our soul tries to become more conscious to us. Either we are growing more soul and becoming a greater vessel for the flow of life or we are shrinking from life and secretly feeding blind instincts and the hungry ghosts.
Although we are never far from our original agreement and divine connection, it often seems the farthest thing from us. Recalling the soul’s original agreement provides us a return to the underlying unity of life and a sense of genuine purpose in the world. The most genuinely human moments are moments in which the soul awakens to its original dream of life.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 580 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.
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 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.