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Living Myth

Mosaic presents Living Myth, a podcast with Michael Meade, renowned mythologist and storyteller. Meade presents mythic stories that offer uniquely insightful and wise ways of understanding the current dilemmas of the world we live in. Living Myth proposes that genuine solutions to the complex and intractable problems of our world require both transcendent imagination and cohering, transformative narratives.
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Now displaying: 2023
Mar 15, 2023

On this episode of Living Myth, Michael Meade describes how “entering the modern world at this point is like entering a rite of passage that is already underway. In that sense, we are in a “liminal phase” that requires a transition, not simply from one place to another, but from one way of seeing the world to another way of seeing and being in the world.”

Liminal refers to a betwixt and between period in which we become radically disoriented and repeatedly confused. Yet, in a liminal condition we can also find aspects of ourselves that are otherwise hidden. We can open our eyes and our hearts to the possibility of becoming not just a different person but a greater, more conscious, more creative person.

Whether we call it the “bardo realm” that we fall into, or the liminal phase that we step into, at critical times in life we are called to encounter life's essential mysteries that wait to be found again, and need to be learned anew. If we frame the radical changes and deep uncertainties that we are all currently experiencing as a rite of passage, we may have a greater chance of finding and integrating a deeper sense of ourselves, as well as the greater values and true ideals of humanity.

If we accept that we are in the liminal stage of a collective rite of passage, our fears and uncertainties can become doorways to meaningful callings and transcendent visions. We are being called to leave an old way of seeing the world behind in order to arrive at a new world view and a renewed sense of imagination that can realign human culture with great Nature and the living Earth.

Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade talk more about rites of passage by joining his new online workshop “Rites of Passage: Ancient and Contemporary” on Saturday, April 15.

Register and learn more at: mosaicvoices.org/events.  

You can save 30% on this workshop and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 500 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. 

Learn more and join this community of listeners at: patreon.com/livingmyth.

If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

Mar 8, 2023

This episode of Living Myth begins with a surprising tale from ancient Africa that involves an eagle and a child. The story reveals how what ultimately soothes our souls is an innate connection to Spirit. Whether we call it the Great Spirit or the great Self within, something greater than ourselves, and yet secretly connected to ourselves, keeps trying to enter the world through our lives.

This greater spirit for life has no choice but to enter through the hearts and souls of those living at a given time. As the world all around us rattles and seems to fall apart, we have the opportunity to see the world with what ancient traditions called the eyes of the heart. It makes sense that when the eyes of the heart try to open, the wounds from early life, which also reside in the heart, become stirred.

In that sense, the way of the heart in troubled times involves healing wounds carried within us, while also finding visions trying to enter the world and bring healing on a greater level.

Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth.  You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of 500 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.

Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.

If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

Mar 1, 2023

This episode considers the ancient idea that during extreme times the earth becomes plagued with an overshadowing of the light and a darkening of the way that blocks the path to awakening and dims the dream of life.

“When we reach the point where we cannot turn back because the world as we knew it is already gone, then we are standing at the edge of time, on the verge of the unknown. At that point, the only way to continue is to cross over to what the ancients called the Far Shore, the Mystic Reach or simply the Otherworld. What we desperately need now is the same thing that ancient seekers sought; that is the connection to the otherworld and place of origins that has been lost again and again.

We can learn many things from the methods and the ways that ancient people found for crossing the river of life. Yet, we cannot simply use the same crossing places or borrow wholesale the methods that they devised. For, the point is not simply to seek the paths of the ancients; but rather to seek that which the ancients sought. While this has happened before, each age must bring forth living symbols that connect the time bound world with the realm of the eternal.

When the Wheel of Time turns over the danger of collapse and dissolution grows greater in the daily world and at the same time a balancing imagination and energy for healing and renewing tries to awaken in the human soul. At the edge of time, even a small effort in the direction of the Otherworld has a greater effect in tipping the balance of life than at any other time."

Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth.  You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of nearly 500 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.

Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.

Feb 22, 2023

This replay of a popular episode focuses upon the idea of destiny as an essential part of humanity through which each soul is called to follow its own star and true aim in life. However, the consideration of the word destiny also leads to some confusion about its historical associations and its original meaning. One thing leads to another as concepts about etymology or the study of words become entwined with ideas of mythology and the study of stories.

Michael Meade suggests that language has its own genius and that each word can also be a story that branches out from root meanings to many associations with other words and other concepts. Similarly, each person has their own genius, the inner spark and speck of star that forms the original constellation of their soul. This inner spark connects us to our natural way of being, but also to our North Star that secretly tries to guide us further on the path of our own destiny, as we all participate in the spinning of the world, the turning of the spheres and the song of the stars of creation.

Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth.  You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of nearly 500 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.

Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.

If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

Feb 15, 2023

Michael Meade considers the current threats to nature and the earth from the perspective of an ancient re-creation myth from the Mantaco people of the Amazon. After the entire world has been burned to ashes, the only survivors of the catastrophe struggle to revive life on earth. Surprisingly, they are able to resuscitate life by drumming upon a piece of charcoal and dancing until a green tendril emerges from the charred remains of a tree. The tendril turns out to be the “original ancestor” or Tree of Life from which the forests quickly grow back and eventually all of life returns.

Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth.  You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of nearly 500 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.

Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.

If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

 

Feb 8, 2023
On this episode of Living Myth, Michael Meade addresses the paradox of time and timelessness in response to the latest Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. The annual bulletin uses a Doomsday Clock to measure the proximity of worldwide catastrophe on earth. For the first time, scientists report that we have reached a point just 90 seconds away from the stroke of midnight, the closest we have ever been to the time of Apocalypse on Earth.

The doomsday clock is not a computer-driven report, but a symbolic statement from scientists about the urgent risks we all face. It shows only the last quarter of an oversized clock, indicating how much time has already been lost and how near we are to the supposed end of time. Yet, the clock as symbol goes far back to ancient traditions where the circle of time represents the wholeness of life. When time is only counted as linear and literal, it can be seen to come to a final end. Yet, the circle of time involves a greater imagination that includes the eternal source from which all of life and time originate. In that view, time repeatedly comes to an end, only to start over again.

We may well be close to the end of an era and suffering the demise of a world view; but in mythological terms we are not simply at the end of time. Over the course of time the sense of “apocalypse” has been literalized and now popularized to the point where it characterizes our darkest fears and fantasies. Yet, as an archetypal image apocalypse presents a time of great extremes and a tension of opposites that includes both end and beginning, both collapse and renewal.

The time that people cannot find these days must be sought in moments of timelessness through which time itself renews. It is in such moments that ancient wisdom can be found and new world views can appear. For, it is not simply a better world that we urgently need, but also a better world view.
 
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth.  You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 485 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.

Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.

If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
Feb 1, 2023
On this episode, Meade addresses how "the callous death of yet another unarmed black man at the hands of police has torn the age-old wound of racism open and revealed the process of dehumanization in American culture.” Humanity is not a cloak that one group of people can claim or deny to others. Humanity is the word we use for people as a whole, as in “we the people” and all the people on earth. If some people are denied their part in the whole, that leads to a deterioration of the whole and a diminishing of all the people.

During the same time that videos of Tyre Nichols being brutally beaten by police were released to the public, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida was cynically attacking African American study courses that are critical for understanding the pervasive and deadly effects of systemic racism. Surprisingly, during the same moment of crisis the world's largest organization of geneticists made a public apology for its role in promoting eugenics, the false theory used to claim that one race is biologically superior to all others.

The apology from geneticists came amidst a rise in hate crimes and mass killings, often inspired by false narratives of white supremacy. It came after the Human Genome Project produced a scientific consensus that all humans worldwide carry 99.9% of the same genetic material while sharing a common origin about 300,000 years ago in Africa.

As human beings we live and we die in the context of the stories we tell about ourselves and the world. The acknowledgement and apology for condoning and promoting a false idea and belief about the nature of humanity can be seen as a step on the path of learning at what can be a turning point in our mutual story on the road of awakening and healing.

Humanity is not a cloak that one group of people can claim or deny to others. Humanity is the word we use for people as a whole, as in “we the people” and all the people on earth. If some people are denied their part in the whole, that leads to a deterioration of the whole and a diminishing of all the people. We are being called upon to use the essential threads of our own lives to reweave a culture that becomes genuinely inclusive of all of humanity.

Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth.  You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 480 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.

Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.

If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
Jan 25, 2023
On this episode, Michael Meade shows how a dream can be diagnostic and prescriptive, as well as predictive. A dream of facing a threatening series of waves leads to a consideration of living in a “liminal space” created when a flood tide of changes strikes both nature and culture at the same time.

Denying the extreme conditions troubling the world at this time does not stop the waves of change crashing all around us. And thinking or feeling that we cannot handle it does not spare us from the effects that penetrate, alter and rattle us personally as well as collectively.

Part of the prescription for surviving times of radical change involves learning how to bend and bow when facing overwhelming changes coming from the outside. Another part involves finding our own inner rhythm, natural way of being and genuine way of seeing when the world around us suffers waves of change and repeated upheaval.

Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth.  You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 480 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.

Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.

If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
Jan 18, 2023

Ancient stories depict how each person born carries a precise medicine in their soul. In order to find and activate the inner medicine we need to face and even embrace our inner wounds. This episode explores how each soul is called to awaken more fully and each meaningful path eventually leads to the territory of gifts and wounds. Genius is said to hide behind the wound; living soulfully involves accepting our wounds as the source of our greatest gifts.

Our psychic wounds secretly connect us to the transcendent function in the soul, so that what wounds us also initiates and transforms us. In that sense, the inner wound can be seen as a womb. In going through the wound we become reborn as an initiate on the path of healing. The imagination of initiation becomes a source of curative powers that can serve to awaken the soul of humanity and help us reconnect to the heart of nature.

Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth.  You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 480 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.

Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.

If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

Jan 13, 2023
On this excerpt from a premium episode, Michael Meade follows a myth from ancient Ireland and weaves together cosmology, psychology and philosophy in order to open the soul's vision and catch the fish of wisdom. Rather than being abstract knowledge, "embodied wisdom" is shown to be both immediate and eternal, both spiritual and soulful.

You can hear the full episode and receive additional podcast content by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 480 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.

Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
Jan 11, 2023

On this episode, Meade explores how as the outer world suffers conflicts and collapse, a balancing imagination and energy for healing seeks to awaken in our individual souls. This in-born code of the soul provides us with a gradient or guideline that can aim our energy as well as protect our lives.

The soul’s gradient is a mythic umbilical that plumbs to the ground of our being, but also connects us with the soul of the world. When in touch with this guiding line we can draw upon the resources and creative imagination of our souls. When out of touch with the gradient, we not only lose the natural vitality of our being, but can also suffer a loss of soul.

Each life calling involves a deeper connection to the inner-woven thread of destiny that leads us to the paths with heart and helps to aligns us with our natural dharma, our way of contributing to life and serving the world. 

Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth.  You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 475 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.

Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.

If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.

Jan 5, 2023
On this episode, Michael Meade considers how each time we unlock the original pattern within us we align with our inner gradient and find a path with heart and soul. In contrast to the sense of a heroic journey that leads to treasure in the outside world, the road of awakening involves a pilgrimage to the genuine center of the deep self. What is so often sought in the outer world waits to be discovered in the soul’s inner realm. As things fall apart all around us, we have to find the center of the deep self within us.

Meade then tells the story "The Tiger’s Whisker", a famous tale of a woman who must face a living tiger in order to cure the ailment in her soul.  What begins as a small village tale opens up to become the endless territory of the human heart that harbors an old sage, a fierce tiger and the need to find a cure for love. In a world troubled with collective anxiety and growing fears, it is helpful to know that on a path with heart, fear is the guide and what you truly love is the cure.

Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth.  You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 475 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.

Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.

If you enjoy this podcast, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
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