Episode 472 - Moments of Truth
Living Myth
This episode begins with the recent shooting in Minneapolis in which an intensive care nurse named Alex Pretti was shot ten times by ICE and border patrol agents. There are fateful occasions when a tragic event becomes a moment of truth for both individual life and the collective meaning and core values of a culture. Michael Meade suggests that: “We are now, and may be for some time, in a collective tragedy that involves a battle for truth and meaning, but also the need for a transformation of culture that is aimed not only at the need for political change, but also at a transformation of...
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Episode 471 - The Importance of Creative Practice
Living Myth
On this episode of Living Myth, Michael Meade turns to the realms of art and practice as ways to avoid overwhelm and find coherence in an increasingly chaotic world. Since the world will not settle soon, the unity and wholeness so sorely missing must be found within us. Fortunately, as fears and uncertainty grow, a balancing imagination and healing energy tries to awaken within our souls. The creative arts and spiritual practices are the traditional paths that can lead us to the deep resources and inner resiliency of our self and soul. The two traditional roads of practice...
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Episode 470 - Lifting the Veil
Living Myth
This episode begins with the differences between paradigm shifts that replace old theories with new ones and a shifting of the archetypes that can transform all levels of life. The origins of apocalypse involve an archetypal shift that begins with a period of chaos and collapse before it leads to creation and a renewal of life. The initial phase of an apocalyptic period also involves a “lifting of the veil” that reveals what has been concealed behind closed doors and uncovers what has long been covered up. The United States, in particular, has entered a stage where the...
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Episode 469 - World Upside Down
Living Myth
This episode looks at the shocking beginning of the new year in which the U.S. government invades Venezuela, extracts the sitting president and announces that it will be “running the country” that has the largest reserve of oil in the world. A dream that follows what appears to be the dissolution of the international order, that has mostly prevailed for the past eighty years, depicts the confusions and fears of a world turned upside down. It also shows how in the maelstrom of reckless conflicts and cultural betrayals, something ancient and enduring about the world is trying to be...
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Episode 468 - The Soul's Great Adventure
Living Myth
Michael Meade explores how the soul’s great adventure tries to surface throughout life, so that any moment can become a true turning point if we leave the maps that others have made, follow the soul’s original calling and enter life more fully and more meaningfully. He suggests that ultimately it involves a “gnosis,” a deeper way of knowing that uncovers our inner resources and reveals the unique powers and gifts of our soul. We are repeatedly asked to choose: either we accept the life that has been given to us or we undertake the greater adventure of the soul. Thank you...
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Episode 467 - How Healing Songs Began
Living Myth
This episode of Living Myth begins with a Native American story of the origin of healing rituals. In telling the tale Michael Meade emphasizes a remarkable point in the story when knowledge, healing and songs all enter the world at the same time. The songs become central elements in the original healing ritual which brings those that are sick or wounded to the center of the community. Having established the importance of healing songs, Meade introduces an excerpt from Mosaic’s recording . Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can...
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Episode 466 - Bringing Back the Light
Living Myth
This episode of Living Myth begins with a review of how cosmology used to refer to all of the ways that humans could imagine the creation of the world and the subtle connections of the human soul to the living cosmos. “As above, so below” is the ancient mantra that places humankind in the middle of the cosmic story as an essential link in the chain of being. As individuals we may properly feel frail and small; yet we belong to more than one dimension of life. And the dark time of the year is the traditional time to recall the interconnection between each of our souls and the starry...
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Episode 465 - The Spell of Perfectionism
Living Myth
This episode brings a focus to the problem of perfectionism and how it can silence our natural spontaneity, turn our innate passions into stone and cancel the imagination and creativity that are natural to our souls. Perfectionism can be paradoxical in the sense that it can foster an egotistical sense that we are better than others or plunge us into feelings of inferiority and inadequacy. Michael Meade uses an old tale to show how the quest for perfection is a hopeless endeavor that operates as a kind of spell that continuously leads us away from our deeper sense of...
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Episode 464 - The Importance of the Otherworld
Living Myth
This episode brings a focus to the importance of recognizing that we live in more than one world. Before modern times, it was commonly understood that there was another world next to the daily domain of facts and figures and that this other world is real in its own way. What traditional societies called the Otherworld turns out to be the primordial center, the place of origins and the essential source for changing and healing the daily world. Thus, the problem is not simply that damaging things have been done in the course of history. Rather, the greater issue is the fact that so much has...
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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...
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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