On this episode, Michael Meade responds to elements of nihilism when it comes to the future of human life on earth and to pretentious claims of individual freedom that are not based in an awakening of individual souls. Meade uses an ancient Mayan story to make a defense of the gift of life that makes each soul born both unique and gifted and aimed at something meaningful.   “False demands for freedom and liberty are a substitute for genuinely seeking a unity of self intended to be found within. The real courage to seek freedom is connected to the sense that something is trying to be revealed in each soul born, in each child going to school and in each of us trying to awaken.   This deeper education of the soul has always been the root of the effort of learning; the attempt to bring each girl, each boy to the point of awakening to their inner nature and the gifts they were given at birth. That is the universal birthright and the deeper root of freedom; not simply the freedom from, but the freedom to be part of creation, to be part of a genuine awakening, rather than a faux revolution.”   Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast.  You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium.  Members have access to the full archives of over 355 episodes, receive a 30% discount on all online events, courses and products and receive 3 bonus episodes each month.    Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.

Living Myth

Episode 250 - In Defense of the Gift of Life

This episode of Living Myth begins with a dream of being in the waters of uncertainty that leads to a discourse on ancient understandings of the necessity of entering and crossing the river of life.   “We are all standing on the banks of the great river of life as it floods with energies of disruption and change. In the course of time, the river shifts and the ground shifts, and new crossing places must be found, as the common world begins to drain of meaning, beauty and wonder. In that sense, it is not just the shared facts of the daily world that have been lost, but also something much greater, a deep connection to the source of life has been lost again.   The uncertainty of life has risen, and the future of the planet is severely at risk. Like ancient peoples, we must find a fording place from which to depart and find our way across to the other shore and a different view of this world. The other shore has been called by many names, the Far Bank, the Mystic Reach, the Dreamtime, all reflections from the living waters of the stream of life.”   “We cannot make the crossing to a healthier, more whole world simply by new inventions or just by adopting solutions from the past. It is the creative efforts of the old makers which we must emulate, not an imitation of the way that they are said to have gone, but rather a creative effort of our own that reveals the way we are intended to go. We must face the river of life, find our own reflections in the troubled waters, and make the crossing anew.”   “Finding genuine solutions requires a dissolution of fixed attitudes and collective delusions that restrict us from swimming in the waters of change and renewal. In this alchemy of “solutio”, what is not worth saving becomes dissolved as we find the deeper self in our own souls.   The ego fears that it will die or disappear in the deep waters, but the soul knows that any descent in life can be a baptism that can return us to the full potential at the origin of our lives, back there at the beginning, down there near the source, where the underlying unity of the deep self waits to be found and be touched again.”   Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast.  You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium.  Members have access to the full archives of over 350 episodes, receive a 30% discount on all online events, courses and products and receive bonus episodes each month.    Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   We appreciate you leaving a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast player and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.

Episode 249 - Crossing the River of Life

On this episode, Michael Meade begins with the mythic idea that the fateful event of being wounded early in life creates the need for a deep healing process that also becomes the path of awakening for each person.   Here on Earth, everything is a little wounded, a little broken or cracked. Ancient artists often placed a defect in their creative work to honor the necessary imperfections of life on Earth. In making earthenware, they left an area unglazed or allowed a small crack to be seen. The imperfection in the vessel made each piece a one of a kind creation, never to be repeated and all the more valuable because of that.   Human beings are also vessels for the energy of creation and for the energy of healing. So each soul carries, and at critical times, exhibits an inner defect or sacred affliction. This necessary wound makes us truly human, a little cracked, a little weird. For, we must be cracked enough for the eternal to find a way in and for the dream of life to find a way out.   The point has never been to become perfect or be completely healed. The point has always been to become holy, meaning complete with our vulnerabilities and our wounds. Thus, the old saying was that the afflicted are holy.   Accepting how we are wounded leads to recognizing that our personal wound is also the archetypal wound. Facing the ways we are wounded opens us to parts of ourselves that are not wounded, but are in fact gifted. Without the pretensions of invulnerability, we become wounded healers and thus able to find medicine within ourselves and bring it to the suffering world.   You can hear Michael Meade talk more about the wounded healer by joining his online workshop “Waking the Inner Healer” on October 9.  Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.    You can save 30% on these events and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.

Episode 248 - A Holy Affliction

On this episode of Living Myth, Michael Meade tells an old story of someone who follows a dream that leads to being stripped down and stuck, before it unfolds a path to healing and wholeness. “Stories and dreams are about the mysteries of life. And penetrating the mysteries requires a different kind of vision and a different understanding than what we use to negotiate the common world.”   “By now, most people can agree that we are living in a broken world at both the levels of nature and culture. What still seems difficult to accept is that the way to find solutions involves accepting our own participation in the woundedness of the world. The presence of the wound makes healing necessary; it is also the presence of the wound that makes healing possible.”   “The current moment of stripping down institutions and dissolution of familiar patterns of life may be the exact condition in which we begin to see with other eyes and find the threads of the dream of life again. But, in order to find ways to awaken to the meaning of life again, we have to accept our own woundedness.”   The world needs healing on so many levels, that there cannot be a single idea, simple process or common belief that ends all the conflicts and begins the healing. The missing ingredient, the deep medicine, the inner gold is hidden in our own hearts. Until we can loosen the stones that we have constructed to protect our vulnerable selves, we can't find the inner medicine or the inner wisdom of the soul.   Only through that kind of process can we find genuine ways to become wounded-healers and bring some healing back to the world. If enough people would do that, then enough medicines would be found that we could contribute to the healing of ourselves, and at the same time, be humbly, but creatively helping to heal the world.   Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online events that continue through October 9 and explore the theme of the wounded healer.  Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.    You can save 30% on these events and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.

Episode 247 - Dreams of Healing

This episode of Living Myth begins when the local power grid suddenly goes down in the middle of the evening telecast about all the conflicts and troubles in the world. Michael Meade finds himself plunged into a darkness of a different order: “Suddenly, the procession of polarizations, conflicts and tragedies stopped. And I was left in an old place of darkness that was different than the darkness of the broadcast news. Suspended in timeless silence between candles beginning to flicker in the room and the stars flickering in the sky above, an old idea came back like a refuge suddenly found.”   The idea that sparked like a light in the darkness comes from the mythology of a small tribe in South America who imagine that each soul is secretly connected to the center of the cosmos and the source of life. The presence of a “good word” or wise word in each soul, we could say, is the good news. Each person born arrives with gifts and inner knowledge waiting to awaken and be shared.   The bad news is that each person also has a “word placed crosswise” on their soul. In this old understanding, the word crosswise is the true source of human conflicts that leads to all the troubles in the world. Not simply a lack of knowledge, but an inborn, contrary element that blocks our vision, works against our best interests and resists our efforts to become more self-aware and learn to heal.   At this time on earth it seems that crosswise and unwise elements dominate life in ways that threaten both nature and human culture. Yet, in this old story of the soul, there is a third component that can tip the whole story towards finding genuine meaning and healing. The “word held in waiting” is the key to unlocking the opposition between that which is wise and all that is crosswise within us and in our culture. If people are willing to face that which is crosswise on the soul, both personally and collectively, the “waiting word” can appear as the light hidden in darkness, as the living word of healing and wisdom we have been waiting for.   Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series and workshop beginning on September 24.  Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.    You can save 30% on these events and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.

Episode 246 - Finding the Healing Word

This episode is about living through this dark time on earth by finding and making more medicines from eros, love and soul. Michael Meade weaves together the myth of Eros emerging from primal darkness with poems of Rumi and Hafiz that reveal the initiatory nature of love.   “When we refer to how everything seems divided and people are turned against each other, we are also saying there is a lack of Eros, a lack of love, a loss of the bestowing soul that otherwise would remind us that we are in this together.”   In Greek myth, Eros was a divine figure born out of the darkness and chaos before creation began. Eros or love had to be born first, for without it the created world could not come together or hold together. The same is true when everything seems about to fall apart. In terms of ongoing creation, the amount of eros and love present in each of our lives determines the state of our individual souls, but also affects collective life on earth.   When life becomes chaotic, it is hard not to feel fear and anger, even despair. It also makes sense to let those emotions run through us. After they have passed through, it turns out that we are not left empty or simply in dark despair. If we are true to our own souls, we arrive at the gates of surrender where eros, love and inspiration wait to open the way forward.   Each person is but a frail being compared to the immense crises facing the world. Yet, each is also a living link in the great chain of being that sustains collective life on earth. If we do not risk opening the gates of surrender and finding our intended personality, if we forget that we are also the agents of Eros come here to keep creation ongoing, then consciousness falters and the genuine paths of knowledge and devotion become weakened.   Eros was there at the very beginning, hidden in the darkness and Eros is waiting to be found now in the chaos of the troubled world in which we live. What we love is where we make medicine and can find cures. Loving becomes a kind of initiation in which we become our self in a deeper way, while also giving ourselves away in service to something greater.   Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series and workshop beginning on September 24.  Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.     You can save 30% on these events and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.

Episode 245 - At the Gates of Surrender

This episode begins with pressing questions about the outer dangers and the inner devastations caused by the climate crisis. Michael Meade responds to questions about the collective fate of humanity and the future of the world by turning to ancient myths of Sophia and the Soul of the world.   “In terms of mythic imagination, the word world is not simply a reference to the measurable earth that we live upon. Rather, it is a term for the complex, intricate, ever renewable interrelationship of all the beings and all the energies on earth. In losing an instinctive sense and intuitive imagination of both the multiplicity and the underlying unity of life, modern societies continue to lose connections with the living world and the mystery of ongoing creation.”   The ancient imagination of Sophia represented a way of connecting to the intricacies and surprising potencies that create and sustain the living world. Sophia, as the energy of creation, was seen as the mother of all the forms of life. Sophia as daughter represented all the potentials that reside inside each person, inside the earth, and within all the living relationships that make up the world. Sophia, as the Soul of the World, symbolized the wisdom hidden within the multiple elements of life, but also the essential unity that underlies the body of the world.   Nothing is real until it has been imagined and re-imagining the essential connections between the individual soul and the living Soul of the World becomes a key to understanding how life on earth can be re-visioned and balance can be restored. A transformation of collective humanity is needed to help heal and transform the world. However, the collective only changes through the awakening of individual souls, who in turn help awaken the hidden potentials of life, once known as Sophia or the Soul of the World.   Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series and workshop beginning on September 24. These events explore the archetype of the wounded healer. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.    You can save 30% on these events and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.

Episode 244 - Waking the Soul of the World

This episode begins with a news report about a political candidate threatening to “…go into school boards with 20 strong men and give them an option. They can leave or they can be removed." He suggested that forcing school board members to resign over a rule designed to help public safety would “make men men again.” In order to consider the nature and the danger of this kind of behavior, Michael Meade turns to ancient myths of the Titans.   “The exaggerated sense of self, the broad insolence and the delusion that men become real men by threatening people and enacting violence made me think of the Titans. The manifestation of faux outrage and false heroics is not an indication of inner power, but more of a revelation of inner hollowness. And that is the nature of the Titans, who appeared in times of chaos that came before civilized culture began and appeared again during periods of cultural upheaval, and collapse.   The idea of bringing in powerful strong men to solve the intricacies of public health and the complexities of public education is foolish on its face, but also a dangerous representation of what happens when someone loses their sense of soul, and denies their own vulnerability and insecurity. As with the Titans, an inner emptiness drives the blind sense of excess, which includes breaking boundaries, destroying institutions, and pretending to be all powerful.   As the common understandings of society seem to disappear, and the holding institutions no longer hold things together, there is a rise of primal energies and raw emotions from the depths of the unconscious. The less developed a person's sense of self might be, the more available they are to archetypal, un-socialized, uncivilized energies.   Titanism describes what happens when humans deny common decency, morality and even mortality, and seek to be seen as gods. Titanism arises where unconsciousness prevails, where people refuse psychological shadings, where a lack of emotional growth passes for genuine passion. The less a person knows about the suffering of other people and the less they admit to their own inner woundedness, the more they become available to become possessed by energies of the unconscious.”   Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast.  You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium.  Members have access to the full archives of over 350 episodes, receive a 30% discount on all online events, courses and products and receive 3 bonus episodes each month.    Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.

Episode 243 - Return of the Titans

On this episode, Michael Meade uses an ancient version of the Grateful Dead theme to show how when faced with impossible tasks we must draw vitality and wisdom from the deep ground of being where life can renew itself. Rather than a typical hero’s journey, the story involves a compassionate youth who gives all that he has to properly bury a corpse that was left unburied. Eventually, the corpse comes back to life and becomes a wise guide and soulful companion as the youth faces great challenges.   In working through the story, Meade raises the idea that the corpse that revives and returns to help guide us could be myth itself. He shows how myth can be a direct source of lost knowledge and how mythic imagination may be essential for understanding the current world crises and gathering a sense of how life on Earth continually renews itself.   “Myth may have come back from the dead and into some awareness in modern culture; but the result has been more of an over-identification with the myth of the hero, than a revelation of the redeeming and transforming powers of myth overall. The mythic approach is a perspective, a way of seeing the world, not a program. We can be caught in heroic visions and suffer heroic blindness that can keep us from perceiving ways to see the world with greater imagination and deeper compassion.   In this time of dramatic challenge and radical change, we need a therapy, not of the hero, which often relates to the ego of a person, but a therapy of the soul, which can become a therapy of the earth as well. The bad news may be that myth, the great source of imagination and vitality has often been buried deep in the earth. The good news is that, like the grateful dead, it is nearby and waiting for us to redeem it, and then learn how to be redeemed by it.”   Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast.  You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online event “Mythic Imagination and Climate Change” next Thursday, August 26. Register at mosaicvoices.org/events.   You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium.  Members have access to the full archives of over 345 episodes, receive a 30% discount on all online events, courses and products and receive 3 bonus episodes each month. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.

Episode 242 - Beyond the Hero Myth

On this replay of a popular episode, Michael Meade 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 this podcast.  You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online event “Mythic Imagination and Climate Change” next Thursday, August 26. Register at mosaicvoices.org/events.   You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium.  Members have access to the full archives of over 345 episodes, receive a 30% discount on all online events, courses and products and receive 3 bonus episodes each month. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.

Episode 241 - The Sacred Fifth

This episode begins with the latest report on the climate crisis from the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. With each fractional increase in global warming, extreme events such as the wildfires burning across Australia, Europe, parts of America and even Siberia will continue to get worse. At the same time, massive floods will become more frequent and sea levels will rise, leaving low lying lands and coastal communities in extreme states of vulnerability.   Michael Meade recounts a cautionary story about the loss of giant kelp forests off the coast of California. The dense underwater canopies can draw down much more carbon than similar stands of terrestrial trees. Yet, these immense kelp forests are being turned into underwater wastelands by sea urchins who, in turn come to starve from the lack of kelp. Rather than seeming like an abstract problem at some distance, our human plight parallels the tragic predicament of the sea urchins and the kelp. We risk becoming agents of our own suffering, creators of our own wastelands, and destroyers of the only home we have ever had.   The new climate report declares that altering the tragic course of life on earth depends upon “transformation at every level of human society.” Meade suggests that such a metamorphosis of human society requires more than logic or reason alone can offer and much more than technological innovation can provide.   “To me, the story isn't simply that nature needs humanity in order to survive, but also that humanity must rediscover its own nature and its connection to the mystery of life, in order to transform. Regeneration is a law throughout the cosmos where the mystery of life involves the process of life, death, renewal. If we are to find our reconnection to the capacity to transform, we must die, in a sense, to the limited understandings of life that now prevail, in order to find a deeper ground of imagination from which to grow a greater more genuine human culture.”   Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast.  You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium.  Members have access to the full archives of over 340 episodes, receive a 30% discount on all online events, courses and products and receive 3 bonus episodes each month.    Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.

Episode 240 - The Mystery of Change

We can suffer an identity crisis at any time in this troubled world, where no one can be certain of what comes next. The pandemic is a painful example of the instability of contemporary life. The variants that create the surge of new cases and illnesses also cause surges of confusion, anxiety, and fear. On a psychological level, the rising intensity of uncertainty and raw emotions threaten to overwhelm the ego or “little-self.” Meanwhile, the deeper self within us imagines that each crisis can also become a life-changing event in which we become wiser, more creative and meaningful.   As uncertainty deepens and crises multiply, the sense that there is a deeper, more knowing self or soul in each person becomes more important. At the same time, we have to have a greater tolerance for the insecurity, the fears, and anxieties of the little-self. Michael Meade uses an old tale of a wise fish, a half-wise fish and an unwise one to show how we must forgive ourselves for getting caught in the nets of fear and anxiety and reconnect to the deep self and soul which has the exact knowledge and wisdom we need, both to survive and to truly grow wise.   Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast.  You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium.  Members have access to the full archives of over 340 episodes, receive a 30% discount on all online events, courses and products and receive 3 bonus episodes each month.    Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you continued well-being and deep community connection during this period of great uncertainty and transformation.

Episode 239 - The Wise Self

Michael Meade uses elements of myth to consider the origins of the pilgrimage to the Olympic Games and the essence of the human dramas that unfold when people go seeking for the gold.   “In these troubling times, institutions all over the earth are rattling and shaking, and becoming unable to keep up with all the changes and complications that are underway. During times of great change, the symbolic level of things becomes more important, as the literal levels of life become more chaotic and confusing, and the psychological levels become more intense and demanding. And that pattern would include those who have made appearing at the Olympics the pilgrimage of their life.   On the path to arrive at the Olympics and compete for the gold, everyone will have a misstep, and some can literally slip and fall off an apparatus or just be off their game. That doesn't mean something has gone deeply wrong. Rather, falling and failing is actually a step on the way to finding the genuine gold.   Olympic hopefuls are likely to encounter deep moments of despair, not because they have done something wrong, but because we have to lose our naive and simple sense of hope in order to tap into something that is much deeper and more important than simply winning in literal terms. Sometimes, we must be willing to enter the waters of change, and in a metaphysical version of sink or swim, simply manage to not abandon ourselves.   The trick in this realm of high aspirations and deep disillusionment is to learn what really carries us when the seas of life get rough. Psychologically, it becomes more important to understand that the actual goal is the inner gold. And that the moment of awakening can happen anywhere along the way; it can happen after we fall or fail to accomplish what we aimed at.   In other words, the genuine aim and purpose of a pilgrimage is to arrive at the center of oneself. The reason for a practice, any practice, is to awaken to the essence of oneself. Those who would be seekers need to know that the source of buoyancy and vitality, as well as the knowing center of life must be found inside. Because in doing that, we begin to recognize what brought us to life to begin with. And we also find what secretly carries us all along the way.”   You can hear Michael live by joining his new online workshop “The Soul of Change” this Saturday, July 31. 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. Learn more and join this growing community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   As always, you can also support this podcast by leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we thank you for being part of this podcast and we wish you well during this period of great change.

Episode 238 - Going for Inner Gold

In this episode of Living Myth Michael Meade responds to questions generated by the idea that we are on a great threshold that requires change on personal, collective and global levels.   “One of the tragedies of current life is that we have fallen out of story; so that many people can no longer imagine that we are all in the same story together. It is not simply that we are changing the world, but that the world is changing, and we must change with it. A psychological way to consider it is that the archetypal background of life on earth is changing.   Archetype means “an ancient or original form” that sometimes manifests fully and sometimes goes quiet. Archetypes are like riverbeds where sometimes the water of life pours through one and then drains out of that riverbed and flows into another. The archetype of apocalypse begins with collapse and chaos, then passes through a middle ground of liminality and uncertainty. It resolves with a renewal of the vitality of life and new forms of life. This archetype is present in a way that it wasn't years ago. Now the water of life is rushing through it and we are being carried along by it.   Some of the water of life tries to enter the world and flow through each of us. So that the collective and personal crises which all are facing now may threaten our habitual ways of being and acting on one level of life, while opening the doors of vision and understanding on other levels. Part of what happens in the midst of all the uncertainty and liminality, because we are changing in ourselves, our relationships change, and we can find new ways of relating to other people, but also to nature and also to the divine.”   You can hear Michael live by joining his new series of online events that further explore ideas and themes about the threshold of change.  The online series continues this Friday, July 23 and the workshop takes place on Saturday, July 31. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.    You can save 30% on these events and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and join this growing community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   As always, you can also support this podcast by leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we thank you for being part of this podcast and we wish you well during this period of great change.

Episode 237 - Standing in the Water of Life

As human cultures seem increasingly at odds with the rhythms of nature and modern societies succumb to inner conflicts, people of all ages can feel that there is no longer any purpose in life. Although we all may be suffering a modern predicament, Michael Meade suggests that we are also in an archetypal mythic condition.   Like characters in an ancient story, we are collectively on a great threshold which can be simply seen as the edge where everything falls apart or be viewed as a great threshold of awakening, where ancient wisdom as well as new visions of life can arise. Meade uses a dramatic scene in an old story to show how the turning point depends upon whether or not we abandon our true selves.   As everything seems to teeter on the edge of destruction or else on the verge of transformation, meaningful change does not come from a social agreement, an ideology or a belief system. Rather, it comes from awakenings of the heart and soul in individual lives. As an old saying reminds, if there is no change at the level of the individual soul, there can be no change at the level of collective culture.   The sense of identity that we need in order to tolerate the great tensions and pressures of contemporary life is not a “social identity” or some kind of collective abstraction. What we are looking for, what humans have always been seeking for, is the precise and unique identity that was written on the walls of our souls before we were born. Seen that way, the edge of our life becomes the place where we connect to missing parts of ourselves and find the hidden “wisdom of the threshold.”   When that type of turning point happens in the lives of enough people, everything can begin to turn around and we can find ourselves on the way home, with home meaning the place where young people find their genius and true dreams of life and older people have meaningful visions that include renewed connections to the living world of nature as well as to the nearby realm of spirit and great imagination.   The wisdom of the threshold is part of Michael’s new series “Thresholds of Change” which includes a workshop on the soul of change.  The online series begins this Friday, July 16 and the workshop takes place on Saturday, July 31. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.    You can save 30% on these events and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Learn more and join this growing community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.   As always, you can also support this podcast by leaving a review on iTunes and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we thank you for being part of this podcast and we wish you well during this period of great change.

Episode 236 - Wisdom of the Threshold

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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Living Myth

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