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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: February, 2023
Episode 319 - Pulled by Destiny 0
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.

Episode 318 - The Dance of Life 0
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.

 

Episode 317 - Of Time and Timelessness 0
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.
Episode 316 - The Cloak of Humanity 0
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.
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