Originally, the Vedas existed in the form of chants and hymns with the root sound Om being the original tone emitted from the womb of the cosmos. The potent chant known as the Gayatri Mantra was considered the first hymn to come forth from the root sound Om. Thus, Gaya or Gaia whether in sound, in image or in name brings a long lineage that echoes back to the origins of life and resonates with the hidden unity of the world. 

Michael Meade tells an old story from India about the creation of the world.  In it, an ancient sage named Markandeya is caught in the tension between creation and wonder, despair and loss.  His existential crisis speaks to the world we live in now with its increasing levels of fear and despair.  Addressing the two great fears - fear of abandonment and the fear of being overwhelmed – Meade talks about how easily we can get lost in despair if we don’t know there is something essential in the ground of our being.  He suggests that this story, and all the old stories, remind us that every soul born comes in with genius capacities, natural gifts and a unique way of being – a fundamental quality that serves as medicine and antidote to feelings of discouragement, fear and anxiety.  

Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Facing Fate, Finding Destiny” on Saturday, May 11. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events. 

You can save 30% on this new 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 625 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 and thank you for your support of our work.

This episode of Living Myth considers how a total solar eclipse can have the effect of reinforcing the now common idea that we are each but a mere speck on a small planet orbiting a relatively unimportant star within a random and meaningless universe. Or it can be a revelation that reassures our souls that we are secretly connected to the whole living cosmos.

A total solar eclipse has the paradoxical quality of hiding the sun, while also revealing aspects of its true nature. At totality, the sun appears as it truly is, a star amongst the other stars. At totality, it looks more like a living, breathing thing, rather than a bright, solid orb.

Despite the increase of cynicism, and the rise of nihilism, our souls have an inborn expectation to have profound experiences of luminosity and the hidden unity of life. The numinous appears as something uncanny and mysterious that gives us a sense of the presence of the Divine and awakens a deeply felt intuition of the rightness of a situation or an event. Within such a moment, the habitual distinction that we make between inner and outer, between subjective and objective, between dream and reality breaks down to reveal the living cosmos and our own lives under one eclipsed light.

For a moment of indefinite duration, our attention is pulled away from the increasingly divided and polarized state in which we live, and the world suddenly makes sense. On one level, we barely matter. On another level, what matters most to us turns out to matter to the world as well.

Epiphanies are occasions of unexpected benediction and blessing during which meaning can flood us with a felt sense of the wholeness and the holiness of life. As wise people used to say, the whole world reveals itself to be a form of living truth. An eclipse of the sun can be seen as a gift, as a collective moment of eternity waiting and wanting to be seen by the inner eyes trying to open from within each and all of our souls.

Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Facing Fate, Finding Destiny” on Saturday, May 11.

Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events. 

You can save 30% on this new 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 625 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.

On this episode of Living Myth, Michael Meade contrasts two creation myths that feature the original division that becomes the source of all subsequent divisions in life. One ancient tale makes clear that healing and transformation are the secret aims of the tension of opposites that exist inside each person, inside each society and inside life itself.

“At critical moments in the life of individuals and societies, the basic elements and energies of existence polarize. While the two poles of a polarity seem to be irreconcilable opposites, they are secretly one. In a true polarity, one side cannot exist without the other; for existence itself is an essential unity appearing as a duality. Yet, at the level of pre-systemic thought, the mystery of totality underlies all the conflicts and divisions in life, both personal and collective. We suffer what divides us in order to find ways back to the wholeness before all the dividing began.

Something ancient in us bends us towards the origins of the whole thing, so that what troubles us takes us down to the bottom of what troubles us and back to the beginning before the original unity was divided. The word healing means “to make whole again.” Healing, health, wealth, wholeness all hail from the same etymological roots. To heal is to make whole and what continually requires healing is the original split. No healing without a return to origins, no healing that does not in some way touch the original split.

Without stories that remind us of the hidden wholeness and the hidden holiness of the world, all that is left are the pressing problems and threatening divisions that seem increasingly impossible to solve.”

Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “The Creative Middle Way” beginning on Thursday, March 28.

Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events. 

You can save 30% on this new course 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 600 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 is about how the inner tension between the limits of fate and the call of destiny manifests uniquely in each person’s life. It is also about how a dark night of the soul can serve as the liminal stage of a life-changing rite of passage. Finally, it is about how we are currently in the midst of a collective rite of passage that involves the destiny of humanity and the fate of life on earth.

Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “The Creative Middle Way” beginning on Thursday, March 28.

Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events. 

You can save 30% on this new course 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 600 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 Socrates’ idea of the difference between two types of lies. The first type of untruth is the “noble lie” best understood as stories or myths that are not factual, yet are foundational because they reveal important truths and wisdom. The other kind of untruth is the “lie of the soul” that is taken into a person's being and becomes treated as if it was the truth. This is the most dangerous kind of lie because it has a destructive effect on a person's core being and soul.

The rise of political strongmen in many parts of the world is typically based upon lies of the soul that cause wide divisions and great animosities amongst people. Unfortunately, many modern people have become infected with lies of the soul, which then become like a collective poison that can corrupt people in positions of power as well as entire institutions. Just as the lie of the soul separates a person from any kind of inner truth, it can also separate a society from the very truths upon which it was founded.

Currently, we are living through our own harrowing version of the loss of essential truths and the rise of lies that divide people and threaten the stability of the world. As a partial antidote to the spread of lies that damage the soul, Michael Meade turns to the epic myth of Churning the Milk Ocean from ancient India. We all are caught in a tug of war that keeps dividing people and threatens to pull everything apart. Yet, one of the functions of myth is to show that this has happened before and further reveal that the increased tension of the opposites can also generate the energy and consciousness needed to raise forgotten truths and generate the healing needed to restore balance and meaning to life on earth.

Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “The Creative Middle Way” that begins on Thursday, March 28. 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 600 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 we are living in flood times again as we face overwhelming changes at most levels of life. Deluge and flood stories have been found even in landlocked places, as if to make clear that it is not simply the literal seas that can overflow, but also the psychic waters of the unconscious that can overwhelm an individual or an entire culture.

In the old story of Noah, a great ark serves as a life preserving vessel in the midst of great loss and worldwide flooding. In the tale of Jonah, the life enhancing vessel turns out to be a whale which acts as a kind of cosmic womb. In this archetypal vision, the belly of the whale becomes a place of revelation of the mysteries of life and a source of knowledge and wisdom that is missing at the surface of life.

In the symbolic womb, what is worth saving in the individual soul becomes saved; while what is misconceived, misguided and riddled with fear becomes dissolved. Emerging from the belly of the whale depicts a passage from the darkness of primordial chaos to the light of creation. This kind of redemption from below becomes the source of a genuine hope that comes from facing darkness and despair and finding a psychological rebirth and spiritual regeneration.

Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can learn more about how stories can awaken us and give deep insight into our lives by taking Michael Meade’s new in-depth course “Finding Stories to Live With”. Purchase and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/store. 

You can save 30% on this new course 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 600 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 tells a story to illustrate the idea that sometimes we must go where we fear to go. Fear is an old word that derives from the same roots that give us “fare,” as in “thoroughfare.” Although it often causes people to run away from troubling situations, at a deeper level, fear means “to go through it.” When we fail to recognize how fear works in the world, we become ruled by it. The point is not to become paralyzed with foreboding or be caught in the panic that can grip the collective and cause people to run blindly in the wrong direction. The point is to willingly go where most fear to go and follow where the fear might lead.

Fear used to be called “the awakener,” for healthy fear intends to awaken us to our inner nature and the meaning and purpose embedded in our souls. When faced with danger or disintegration, fear would have us respond from the depths of our soul, where the core pattern of life tries to grow and guide our way. In the end, what we fear will not go away, for it indicates what we must go through in order to awaken, become more genuine, and live more fully.

Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can learn more about how stories can awaken us and give deep insight into our lives by taking Michael Meade’s new in-depth course “Finding Stories to Live With”.

Purchase and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/store. 

You can save 30% on this new course 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 600 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 an ancient tale about a lost message from the god of creation to consider the contemporary dilemma in which many people become blind to the truth. The old Sanskrit word avidya can mean “ignorance,” but also “delusion.” Avidya is a fundamental blindness about reality, not simply a lack of information that can be resolved with some new facts, but a veiling of the truth that can befall, not simply individuals, but entire groups of people.

The veil of avidya causes a kind of trance state in which people become increasingly distanced from their own deeper self as well as the underlying realities of life. The loss of shared truths in the outer world must be balanced by a greater sense of inner truth being uncovered in the hearts and souls of individuals. This kind of awakening involves a conscious connection to a deeper sense of self, which then becomes the unifying factor in each life. When the center cannot hold in the outside world and everything becomes divided, we need to tap the deep resources of our own self and soul, which can connect us to the endless energies 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 over 600 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.

Unlike religious narratives or scientific theories, folk myths don't require that we believe in them. They simply prefer that we continue to learn from them. Sometimes, the ancient wisdom needed for surviving and transforming our lives comes in the form of animals. This episode of Living Myth centers upon an old teaching tale about how a wise fish, a half-wise fish and one who is simply unwise deal with the nets intended to entrap them. Amidst a consideration of all the current crises that can entrap and incapacitate us, a bird appears with three pieces of wisdom about avoiding being trapped by the past as well as being caught in present fears and dangers.

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 600 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.

Increasing tensions throughout the world pit the effects of modern culture against the instinctive practice of becoming a genuine individual. Yet, the heart of the human drama concerns whether we are becoming a greater vessel for the flow of life. Either we are following spirit and growing more soul or we can find ourselves shrinking from life.

Downward movement personalizes and upward movement eternalizes. Thus, the genuine way is made by answering both the call to spirit and the pull of soul. Spirit continually calls us to awaken to a greater sense of self, while soul would have us connect more deeply to the world.

When in touch with the soul’s mythic thread we can find the arts and practices, the aims and meanings that allow our souls to grow deeper, our imagination to expand and our spirits to awaken.

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 600 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.

As the world rattles around us and the soul trembles, balancing symbols and archetypal energies stir deep within us. If we can hold the tension of the immediate limitations, we can connect to the soul’s power of redemption and life’s natural energies of renewal.

Archetypes, like instincts, are part of our inner inheritance. They hold all the potentials of life and can initiate creative responses to the challenges and dilemmas we face. As the outside world becomes more divided, the sense of creation coming from within repeats and renews the origins of life as when the sky and earth were separated and the world began.

The archetype of creativity connects us with the deepest roots of humanity and the ancient roots of renewal. The emergence of imagination and inspiration from within is a revelation of our undaunted soul and a little redemption as each act of creativity brings something new and meaningful into 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 600 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.

Under the rule of the ego or little-self, we live on the fringes of our natural potential and our genuine purpose in life. A core pattern exists in each soul intended to shape the unique project of that life from within. Whenever we experience a life transition or personal crisis, the esoteric pattern and latent genius within us tries to awaken.

At each turning point in life, we must face our deepest fears in order to grow. The path of discovery will inevitably raise the exact fears that hold the heart captive. If we don't respond to fear, that's when we get stuck and paralyzed by fear. Fear is a message to the instincts and the intuitions of a person to move towards a greater awareness.

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.

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 600 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.

Currently, the world is beset by a cascade of crises that seem impossible to solve. Yet, the situation can also be seen as what the ancient Greeks called a kairos period, a betwixt and between time in which the course of history changes and all of reality seems to be altered. Things become both impossible and more possible at the same time as life transforms on many levels.

A kairos period often begins with crises that break time open and break down our usual patterns of life. Although radically disorienting, such moments can be transformative, even revelatory as hidden potentials of life become more visible. In that sense, kairos can be seen as “awakened time,” moments in which we can awaken to a greater sense of the world and our place in it.

Moments of awakening become “lived time” in which genuine transformation can occur at all levels of life. We have entered such an extended moment of radical change and alteration, one that is life-defining as well as life-changing. When the whole world turns upside down, it is the soul at the bottom of everything that is trying to become known again.

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 600 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 takes up the issue of healing from the ancient idea of the Sacred Fifth, or Secret Fifth, that represents the hidden center of the world, the original source of wholeness and renewal. Following the Navajo myth of the Fifth World, Meade describes how a small reed can become the connective link to the axis of the world that then leads to the hidden center that remains the living source of life.  The ancient myth becomes a way of recovering from and shifting the burden of the otherwise overwhelming dilemmas of the modern 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 nearly 600 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.

On this New Year’s podcast, Michael Meade begins an exploration of the myths of creation and tales of re-creation that allow time to renew and the world to begin again.  Any serious consideration of creation must also include the energies of chaos that continually dissolve and disintegrate  what creation establishes in the world.  An ancient story from India describes the “two hands of creation” through which the world recreates itself from emptiness  as well as from abundance, from sorrow as well as joy and from despair as well as wonder. 

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 590 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 approaches the darkest time of the year through the creative tension between time and eternity and between darkness and the light. Prior to the hardening of time that is so characteristic of the modern world, the eternal was understood to be part of the present moment, as well as being part of the distant past.

The mystery of renewal is woven into the fabric of being and into the cycles of nature, so that moments like winter solstice represent the core process of creation ongoing. In the far reaches of night, the sun stops for a pregnant moment in which timelessness renews time and brings the light back from the darkness. When seen symbolically, it also represents our innate ability to move from the darkness of unconsciousness to being more aware, or as people say, enlightened.

On one hand, we are time-bound creatures, on the other, we are secretly tied to eternal things. Because we live in such dark times in terms of all the conflicts in the world and the threats to the living systems of nature, it becomes more important that we relearn the secret connections between time and timelessness and between the darkness and the light.

The essence of solstice involves stopping, even if only for a moment, so that a touch of the eternal can restore our sense of the holiness and sacredness of life at the very time when the darkness is at its deepest. The instinct for warmth and care for love, and also for generosity in the dark of the year, arises naturally from the souls longing to feel the holiness and the interconnectedness of all of life.

In making beauty at the darkest time on Earth, we stand in relation to the natural beauty and the natural wonder of this world. We stand in connection to the radiance of the cosmos as anything from a single candle to a glowing shrine or a great bonfire can become a symbol of our longing to help bring the light of spirit and the touch of healing and holiness to life on Earth.

On a personal level, solstice creates an opportunity for each of us to let go of what holds us back in life before starting anew as the sun does each year. When the light of the soul grows within us, it contributes the light of imagination and the spirit of inspiration needed to bring greater understanding to the world.

In facing the darkness together, we can rekindle the divine spark of life in each of our souls and can help each other renew the sense of human community being essentially connected to the light of creation, to the breath of inspiration and to the ongoing process of creation and renewal on Earth.

Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online solstice ritual “In This Darkness Singing” on Thursday, December 21. 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 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.

Currently, the common understanding of “streaming” means “listening to music or watching video in real time as part of a continuous stream of data.” An older idea describes a cosmic stream of essential knowledge constantly pouring through the world. This much needed knowledge about life on earth flows freely, but at such a fast rate of speed that most people cannot catch it or even see it.
 
On this episode, Michael Meade suggests that when it comes to finding ways to respond to the climate crisis and all the humanitarian issues in the world, we may have to find ways to slow down and tap into the ancient stream of wisdom.

Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online solstice ritual “In This Darkness Singing” on Thursday, December 21. 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 600 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 of Living Myth begins with scientific studies of the ways that ants can be capable of incredible feats during times of crisis. A single ant will quickly drown in the turbulent floodwaters of a hurricane. Yet, a group of ants can instinctively create water repelling rafts that allow them to float for weeks without drowning. Flotillas of ants are an example of “swarm intelligence,” a collective creative capacity that allows ants and other species to solve complex problems.

In the strange way that facts and myth can meaningfully coincide, the Hopi First Nations people of the American Southwest have compelling stories of how the Anu Naki or Ant Friends were the saviors and original guides of the first people. When the entire world was threatened by fire and great floods, it was the Ant People who showed the first humans how to find refuge and sustenance and survive life threatening changes.

The Ant Friends also showed people how to create Kivas as underground spaces for community rituals and prayer. The old word Kiva has two parts with ki meaning ant and va meaning a dwelling place. A Kiva could be a place of refuge and retreat from the pressures of the daily world. It was also a place of connecting with Earth energies that can bring healing and centering to the entire community.

Indigenous peoples from all around the world typically learned about survival and adaptation in times of radical change by reading the texts of nature. Ancient myths and the resilience of other species can both serve as guides to how we survive the cataclysms occurring in the world at this time. For, both can be sources of essential insights into what was once understood as the Earth wisdom embedded in the living texts of nature.

Since we find ourselves, once again, facing both intense heat and great floods, we need to learn more about truly resilient systems that involve creativity as well as survival. That includes “swarm intelligence” as well as the kinds of Earth wisdom that can help us survive the uncharted waters, the hurricane seasons, and the rogue waves that currently threaten the ecosystems of nature as well as the social systems of human culture.

Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Ritual, Healing and Transformation” that on Saturday, December 9 and his free online solstice ritual “In This Darkness Singing” on Thursday, December 21. 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 600 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 ancient idea that nothing exists until it passes through imagination. Imagination is not simply a subjective inner capacity; rather, it is a genuine force of life. In this old way of seeing, the increase of conflicts and intensification of hate in the world can be seen as a loss of soul and a lack of genuine imagination.

At a time when modern cultures can be seen to be unraveling and the sense of the shared suffering of humanity so quickly turns into hatred for whoever can be deemed as the “other,” genuine imagination is not just increasingly important, but can be seen as the redeeming factor for both the individual human soul and for human culture as a totality.

Although viewing life in literal terms has become a habit for many, it ultimately gives us a false sense of security and keeps us blind to the knowledge we most need when the world around us keeps changing. In the ancient world, myth could mean emergent truth and mythic imagination was understood to be the primary way in which the human mind and the human heart could connect or reconnect to the universal truths that underlie all of reality.

Lacking a renewed sense of genuine imagination, the modern world will continue to divide and fall apart. For what is missing in most cases is not simply a lack of the resources needed to change things, but a tragic lack of the imagination required to awaken to a greater, more inclusive visions of reality. For, it is the intermediating function of imagination that makes it possible to unite otherwise opposing states, such as the objective and the subjective, religion and science or any pair of antithetical ideologies.

Imagination has always been the unifying force in the human psyche, the inherent function that precedes thought, but also follows the body's inner ways of knowing and being. Imagination is the key that opens us to all that is immeasurable, creative, and healing in life. For that reason, imagination has been called the deepest power of the human psyche.

The power of imagination, which is part of the natural inheritance of each soul, has surprising and indelible capacities for creativity and renewal. By the virtue of imagination, we see with penetrating insights and creative vision, not the delusions of fantasy, but the surprise of revelation. The point is to allow the immediate powers of myth and imagination to give us a poetic grasp of our own lives and the events of the world. Without such a mythic sense, the world becomes increasingly divided and we can become overwhelmed by conflicts both inner and outer. As the collective sense of unity collapses, the uniqueness within each person's soul becomes the essential source of the unifying imagination needed to sustain and renew life.

Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Ritual, Healing and Transformation” that on Saturday, December 9. 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 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 an ancient Mayan myth about the first human ancestors being shaped from corn. Far from being random creatures, humans were created to bring missing ingredients to the world. The missing ingredients included: a conscious awareness of the wonder of creation, a sense of gratitude and thankfulness, and a potential for imagination and genuine vision.

Central to the role of humans was the capacity to be thankful for the gift of life. Thus, people all over the earth have created ceremonies and practices of gratitude and thanksgiving. The idea of giving thanks and the word thankfulness comes from the old root word grazia, which gives us gratitude as well as grace. In that sense, what we seek in giving thanks are moments of gratitude that can bring a sense of grace back into the world. And this can happen in small ways that do not require large gatherings, an abundance of food, or any pretension that everyone might agree on life's great issues.

More than ever, we need occasions of grace and gratitude, however small they may be. We need moments of wholeness to rekindle our spirits and to ease our souls. We need to feel that life, despite all the existing divisions and heated conflicts, remains a holy place, a place where healing remains possible.

When the world keeps turning upside down, it can be time to look and feel deeper inside in order to find the people and aspects of life that we are most grateful for. Sometimes that's all we need to do in order to reconnect to and contribute to the holiness of life. In doing that, we can ease the burden of our own hearts; we can also connect to the original sense of humanity and enable more grace to enter the world.

Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Ritual, Healing and Transformation” that on Saturday, December 9. 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 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 looks at both the need to transform and our resistance to change through the lens of the metamorphosis of butterflies. The fact that the Greek word psyche means butterfly implies how we are secretly connected to the essential dynamic of transformation in life. As if compelled by the primordial poetics of transformation, scientists named the cells that carry the potential for a true transformation of the caterpillar “imaginal cells.”

The capacity of the imaginal cells to develop into a butterfly and transform life completely is related to the inner capacity of the human soul to also transform repeatedly in the course of life. In the same sense that the imaginal cells hold all the information and energy for the butterfly to be, there is core imagination and deeper self trying to awaken in the soul of each person.

At the same time, something within us resists changing, even when the time for transforming our lives has come. In the mysterious way of the world, the metamorphosis of the butterfly also offers ways to understand why we resist the exact changes we most need in order to transform ourselves and help change the world. In simple biological terms, an exchange of one kind of cell for a different kind of cell changes a crawling caterpillar to a winged butterfly. In terms of understanding the essential dynamic of change in the world and at the core of the human soul, a great mystery is revealed that can be called the wisdom of the butterfly.

Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Ritual, Healing and Transformation” that on Saturday, December 9. 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 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.

On this episode Michael Meade turns to Greek myths about the Furies in order to imagine ways that deeper understanding and healing might be found amidst the tragic events engulfing Gaza and Israel and the “unbearable losses and blood-dimmed blindness that currently plague humanity as a whole.”

The Furies appear as primordial spirits of vengeance and retribution that can rise from the underworld when people violate the rules of nature, when innocent blood is wrongfully spilled on the earth and when age-old feuds are provoked.

Once stirred to a frenzy, the Furies enter the daily world in many shapes and forms, causing people to act out vengeance in ways that are deeply personal, but are also the expression of unhealed wounds and grievances that go back to ancestral roots. In Homer's Iliad the Furies frequently cloud people's judgment and cause them to act irrationally. However, the prolonged presence of the Furies can shift fierce passions to violent rages and beyond that to untold madness; for the Furies were known to punish people by driving them mad.

The Furies are stirred by acts of violence that violate nature and shed innocent blood and there is a kind of primal, albeit blind justice in that. Yet, there is also a greater sense of the sacredness of life and a level of justice that exists deep in the soul of humanity, that can reveal ways to greater understanding and make true healing and forgiveness possible. 

When the Furies threatened to torment all inhabitants of the Earth and make the land toxic and unlivable, the goddess Athena persuaded them to relent and break the cycles of blood vengeance. The wisdom of Athena includes a deep knowledge of the difference between protecting life and being caught in tragic battles that can only continue the violence and vengeance that drives people apart, that can drive them mad and destroys the Earth in the process.

As goddess of wisdom and protector of civil society, Athena gave the Furies a place of respect in her own temple. Instead of simply being the hard hand of retribution, they could also contribute to finding mercy for the suffering of people. Vengeance and retribution could not simply be removed from the world; however, a balancing capacity for mercy and forgiveness was revealed to be a necessary part of finding justice and preserving life.

Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new free online event “Living in a Time of Overwhelm” that on Thursday, November 16. 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 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 begins with recent scientific research showing how having purpose can lower levels of stress and contribute to longevity for older people. Michael Meade suggests that in troubled times finding a genuine purpose is also necessary for young people who can easily become discouraged and despairing about life. The ancient Greek term telos refers to the kind of purpose that gives us, not simply a sense of aim, but the potential for fulfillment. Connecting to that kind of inherent purpose gives us a deeper sense of self and also a capacity to respond spontaneously to critical turning points in life.

A true life purpose is not an optional choice or an outline of goals we might accomplish, but rather something inherent and expectant seeded within each heart and soul. In that sense, being purposeful does not simply mean being goal oriented, but being connected to the inner meaning and core pattern of our self and soul.

Finding a genuine purpose gives us a sense of being centered and dwelling deeply within our true self, while also being more able to respond spontaneously to a rapidly changing world. Whether the awakening to genuine purpose happens as part of a longevity process for older people or appears as the beginning of a meaningful life for young people, facing great uncertainty, finding and living our soul's purpose is the way that each of us, in our own way, can contribute to the making and shaping of the next version of the world.

Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new free online event “Living in a Time of Overwhelm” that on Thursday, November 16. 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 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.