Episode 463 - Gratitude and Grace
Living Myth
On this episode, Michael Meade considers the sources and meanings of grace and gratitude, two words that are connected and come from the same ancient roots. Gratitude is like a flower rooted in the heart that seeks to blossom from within us. Grace is a state of awe that can fall upon us unexpectedly and reveal the hidden beauty and wonder of creation. The instinct to give thanks seeks moments of wholeness that help bring a sense of grace back to the world. The presence of grace brings mercy and forgiveness that can reconnect us to the underlying wholeness of life, even...
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Episode 462 - The Child of Joy
Living Myth
This episode begins with the idea that all the troubles in the world at this time bring a great weight and pressure down upon, not just humanity as a whole, but also each individual soul. Since our souls are secretly tuned to the world, the widening divisions outside us tend to activate inner splits within us, specifically in the form of early life feelings of being abandoned, rejected and overwhelmed. Fears of abandonment and overwhelm return each time we face great obstacles or the need to truly change, not because we are inherently bad or simply ill-fated. Rather, a...
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Episode 461 - The Golden Self Within
Living Myth
As the world around us becomes increasingly divided into opposing forces, the tensions and conflicts within us also intensify. In psychological terms, the division most in need of being healed is the split between the ego or “little self” and the deeper, knowing self within us. In fairy tales a golden ball often appears as a symbol of the inner unity and wholeness we felt, at least for a moment, as children. The old rule is that everyone has at least one experience of the presence of the deep self, typically felt as something golden within us. This...
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Episode 460 - From Blindness to Renewed Vision
Living Myth
This episode of Living Myth is about blindness, both individual and collective, and about the need for genuine visions and visionaries. Western culture, enthralled with the heroic and trapped in the limits of egotism, continues to turn a blind eye to the deeper sense of self and soul that alone can give a renewed sense of vision that can see beyond modern ideas that have come to threaten the future of the Earth. As long as we see through the lens of the heroic ego, we are likely to remain stuck in the territory of the same old willfulness and predictable blindness that...
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Episode 459 - The War on Empathy and Vertical Imagination in the Soul
Living Myth
This episode begins by examining the rise of “vertical morality” that appears in both Christian communities and conservative politics and has given rise to a “war on empathy.” Whereas Jesus famously preached love, mercy and care for the oppressed, vertical morality measures righteousness, not by goodness to others, but rather by something more simplistic and more divisive. Vertical morality declares that human behaviors are right or wrong based upon what the higher power says. As proponents put it: "Our ethics and behaviors have a duty to please God alone. We must...
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Episode 458 - From Chaos and Trauma to Cosmos and Renewal
Living Myth
The episode of Living Myth begins with a study on how our brains and our bodies respond to traumatic events. Apparently, our brains do not fully distinguish between something traumatic happening to us directly or something we observe that is harmful to someone else. To our brains a threat is a threat, whether we are actually experiencing it personally or are witnessing it on a personal device. Because humans are essentially social and typically empathic creatures, the same instincts that help connect us to each other can cause us to feel stress and pain by watching almost any kind of...
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Episode 457 - Open Moments in the Heart
Living Myth
The theme on this episode is the loss of eros and a sense of interconnectedness in the contemporary world. Eros is the elemental principle of connection, the touch of soul that binds us to this world but also connects us to our own essence. The feeling of eros or love is the soul's inner verification of its own genuine existence. When this elemental sense of eros and connectedness is lost, people can more easily be turned against each other, because inside they are turned against themselves. In Greek myths, Eros is the original, archetypal source of all attractions and all...
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Episode 456 - The Real Enemy Within
Living Myth
This episode begins with the old psychological idea that warns that when the conflicts inside us are not made conscious, they must be experienced outside us as fate. It has become our mutual fate to live at a time when it is not just that nations attack each other with obliterating force, but also that people within nations become increasingly divided and see each other as the enemy. Each day brings another twist or turn in the increasingly tragic story of humanity becoming divided against itself. Throughout history there have been people in positions of power who seek to...
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Episode 455 - A Mythic Inoculation
Living Myth
This episode begins with the idea that myths of creation are also intended to be understood as re-creation tales that reveal the world’s capacity to renew itself. Critical to this old understanding of the potential for a renewal of life on Earth is the primordial idea that humans are mythic by nature. It is our mutual fate to be denizens of history and be limited by the restrictions of time and place; it is also our destiny to be tied to eternal things. By virtue of being human we live in two worlds and at critical times we can become vessels through which the eternal seeks to enter...
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Episode 454 - We Are All Called To Stand For Something
Living Myth
This episode takes us back to the origins of the theater in ancient Greece where many of the ideas of democracy also originated. Tragedy began with a lament for the fatal flaws in human character, while comedy used the cutting edge of humor to expose the hypocrisy of those who misuse power. Throughout history, satire has served as an instrument of the powerless against the powerful and as a necessary expression of freedom of both imagination and speech. The term stage comes from roots that mean “to stand or to take a stand;” not to simply be a stand-in, but to play a...
info_outlineThis episode begins with the idea that all the troubles in the world at this time bring a great weight and pressure down upon, not just humanity as a whole, but also each individual soul. Since our souls are secretly tuned to the world, the widening divisions outside us tend to activate inner splits within us, specifically in the form of early life feelings of being abandoned, rejected and overwhelmed.
Fears of abandonment and overwhelm return each time we face great obstacles or the need to truly change, not because we are inherently bad or simply ill-fated. Rather, a genuine crisis will activate our early life experiences of rejection and loss in order that we find ways to heal our inner wounds and at the same time reveal our deepest gifts. Part of what seeks to become reclaimed as part of our natural inheritance used to be known as the child of joy, the source of natural buoyancy as well as inner resiliency.
Our innate connection to joy can be a meaningful antidote to the weight of the world and the increasing anxieties that entrap us. However, finding again this kind of soul connection requires that we work through the exact wounds that keep us from feeling fully alive to begin with. The problem turns out to be not simply that there was an original betrayal that leaves us wounded, but also that we keep betraying ourselves in the same way. Eventually, the issue is not simply who did what to us and why, but rather how we manage to stop abandoning ourselves each time we feel fearful, on the edge of overwhelm or stuck in life again.
Genuine change and renewal, on both individual and collective levels, require that we touch the original splits again and heal the wounds that separate us from the inner source of existence and the innate sense of joy that naturally attends the gift of life. For it is this soul connection and inner resilience that seeks to be found, that waits to be felt again and that wishes to be nourished, despite and because of the troubles that now plague the world.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining him for three online events: “Living with Awe, Joy and Gratitude”, a free event on November 20 and “Your Genius is Calling”, an in-depth workshop on December 6 and “In This Darkness Singing” a free Solstice ritual on December 20.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
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