We live in a time when seemingly all possible conflicts and oppositions come crashing all around us. Each day leaves us more exposed to raw emotions and rocked by the harsh energies of life. The tragedies and calamities of this era leave us in the lurch of history as antagonisms harden into stone and life seems increasingly stuck.

In order to imagine ways to pass through the dire straits of these troubled times, Michael Meade turns to ancient myths which can offer a third way to see when we find ourselves caught between opposing ideas and hardened ideologies.

The old myth of Jason and the Argonauts includes the quest to recover the Golden Fleece, the symbol of justice, authentic authority and balance needed to bring peace back to the world. The tale also involves facing the famous obstacle of the clashing rocks that represent the danger of being crushed between the rocks and the hard places. The story illustrates that some greater imagination must be found, and something must be consciously sacrificed, or else more people will become unconsciously and unnecessarily sacrificed.

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 650 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.

On this episode of Living Myth, Michael Meade suggests that in times of change, just as in periods of personal crisis, there can be an intensification and an acceleration of calling. Whether it comes as a daunting challenge or a crushing blunder, a big dream or a cutting loss, each major life event has within it an opportunity to awaken to the call of the deeper self and the resident genius of the soul.

What calls us calls for the giving of the inherent gifts and natural talents we brought to life to begin with. What calls to us calls to the dream set within our soul before we were born. Answering the call opens pathways of genius and imagination that can lead to finding one’s “dharma” or natural way of being in life and serving in the world. We are each called to become more fully ourselves and our transformation liberates our spirit, but it also serves something beyond ourselves. In transforming each of us, genius also transforms the world.

Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael speak more about the themes in this podcast by taking his new in-depth course “Healer, Mentor, Elder, Guide”. Purchase and learn more at courses.mosaicvoices.org.

You can further support this podcast and save 30% on this new course by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 650 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.

On this episode of Living Myth, edited from a Shift Network Summit on mysticism, Michael Meade suggests that we each arrive at turning points where the map we have been given does not match the territory we find ourselves in. Because each soul is unique, each life journey leads to the pathless path where we must awaken to the dream of our own life. When we open the eyes of the heart, we find the ways of the mystic souls and visionary seers, the outsiders and wounded healers who hold the threads to the underlying unity of life.

In seeking after what the soul desires we become pilgrims with no home but the path the soul would have us follow. As the old proverb says, “Before you begin the journey, you own the journey. Once you have begun, the journey owns you.” After all, what good is a dream that doesn’t test the mettle of the dreamer? What good is a path that doesn’t carry us to the edge of our capacity and then beyond that place? A true calling involves a great exposure before it can become a genuine refuge.

Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael speak more about the themes in this podcast by taking his new in-depth course “Healer, Mentor, Elder, Guide”.

Purchase and learn more at courses.mosaicvoices.org.

You can further support this podcast and save 30% on this new course by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 650 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 begins with the sense that the recent presidential debate and the series of radical Supreme Court decisions add to the long line of broken moments that leave us in a deepening state of loss about the present and in an increasing condition of uncertainty about the future. Michael Meade turns to ancient ideas about how the process of elevating people to positions of power and authority is related to the web of life. At critical times the web of life becomes more fragile and we find ourselves in danger of losing that which secretly holds us together.

One of the great dangers in the modern world involves the accumulation of great power in the hands of few people without a corresponding education of the people regarding the inevitable shadow sides of power. The more power a single person or a single group can wield, the more damage they can do to the delicate threads of humanity and the subtle web of things. The manner in which power becomes misused or mishandled relates directly to the character flaws of those being elected. For, being elevated to high office inevitably intensifies the shadow side of whoever handles power.

Because of human nature, whoever is given great power will have specific ways in which they become attached to power and become inflated about their own importance in the given situation. Those handling power become tempted, not only to misuse their authority, but also to hold on to it in order not to suffer a loss of a sense of self.

The oldest meaning of the term “king” involved a sense of sacrifice, and the sacrifice means “to make things sacred.” Ancient rites of elevation to high office were intended to be a reminder of what is sacred in life, and also be a renewal of the ideals and core values that bind us all to each other and connect humanity to the web of life.

Each occasion of electing a leader is an opportunity to recall how handling power corrupts in predictable ways and that the ways that we empower people or use power ourselves either contributes to the vitality of the web of things, or the web of life, or else it diminishes, unravels, and can destroy the web of life.

The word crisis refers to “a point in the treatment of an illness or a disease where things can go one way or the other.” We live in truly critical times amidst a series of shocking events and broken moments that are likely to continue. We are in a collective rite of passage that requires that we find deeper ways to understand the shadows of power and greater ways to reimagine the meaning of leadership and sacrifice in service of the ideals of humanity and the living web of life.

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 650 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 begins with the idea that the task of finding symbols and stories through which we discover the meaning of our lives is as old as human consciousness. In that sense, Carl Jung was rediscovering ancient knowledge when he wrote: “What we are in our inward vision can only be expressed by way of myth. Each human life is…like a plant that lives from its rhizome. Its true life is invisible, hidden in that root.”

In response to a time of great crisis in his life Jung realized that an inner myth was trying to become conscious and that he had to awaken to it: “I took it upon myself to get to know my myth and I regarded this as the task of all tasks.”

Since collective mythologies no longer generate a sense of existential meaning and coherence, turning inward in search of our own mythic story becomes essential for our health and psychic growth. By tapping the inner mythic root, we can develop a more conscious and creative relationship with our own deep self and soul; but also find our unique way of contributing to a world in crisis.

As was the case with Jung, our personal myth or inner story tries to surface each time we feel we are in a crisis or at a turning point. If we allow the inside story of the soul to awaken and guide us, we become the living word trying to enter the world though us. Like Jung on his radical path of self-discovery and mythic recovery, we are repeatedly being called to find and learn the personal myths trying to be born from our own souls.

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 650 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 is about how our dreams call to something in us that is awake in some other way. Dreams call us to recognize other aspects of ourselves, other levels of awareness and even other realms of being. Dreams are the universal evidence that there is an Otherworld and that we as humans, as dreamers live in both worlds. Each person born is called to become a living bridge where dreams and reality can meet.

Whether we acknowledge it or not, whether we remember it or not, each night we dream. And each night we die to the practical, measurable, logistical world and float on waves of the eternal. We let go of so-called reality, pull on the skyrope of dreaming and whether we know it or not, we touch the source of life again.

We are called to awaken in ways that allow us to hold the two worlds together. For, what is most missing in the common world must be found in the Otherworld. In order to find our way in life and not lose our sense of self, we need both deep sleep and deep dreams. The two go hand in hand and each contributes to the creative presence of imagination and the renewal of life and that can happen while we sleep.

Life is the dream that dreams us up to begin with and that dreams the world on through us. Even when everything around us seems to be falling apart, dreams of a coherent center or a living source of life can appear to remind us that we are secretly connected to the Otherworld, to the center of things, to what used to be known as the Soul of 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 640 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 begins with the meaning of the verb to think. Ever since Descartes declared, “I think therefore I am,” thinking has come to mean to form in the mind, to consider, to reflect upon. Yet, the Indo-European roots of the verb “to think” can also mean “to feel” and even “to imagine.” The sense of thinking having more than one meaning leads back to the ancient idea that there are three realms of life and three ways of thinking about the world.

The first and most evident realm of life appears as what most now refer to as the “real world.” At this level, things tend to be seen as concrete and measurable and thinking tends to be objective, logical, even logistical. The second realm of life involves a greater capacity for psychological thinking as there is a kind of doubling of reality. How we feel is added to the factual details of what we experience. Our inner life expands, a deeper self becomes more present and relationships become more complex and more important.

On the third level of life, we find that behind the logical and beyond the psychological, there exists the realm of the mythological. Seen this old way, myth has its own logic as imagination is added to the powers of thinking and feeling. It has become a common mistake to think that myths are about the past, the deeper truth is that myth is about what happens all the time. It isn't that literal things aren't real, but that they have never been the whole story.

Mythic imagination can reveal the hidden patterns and universal truths that make events meaningful and that can also make life renewable. For, myth has always performed a redeeming function as it can open new ways to envision the world and new paths to follow in life. Myths are vehicles of imagination that are not intended to be believed in, but that exist in order to be learned from.

The deep and abiding truths that nourish the roots of life can never be proven through scientific methods, but must be grasped intuitively. 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 in the world.

Whereas history is said to simply repeat itself, myth connects us to the origins of life where creation constantly renews itself. When life seems to make no sense at all, it is the mythic sense of life that we are lacking. Mythic imagination makes the most sense when the common sense of things has been lost and the familiar ways of thinking and seeing no longer work.

Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael live by joining his free online event “How To Not Abandon Oneself” on Thursday, June 13.

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 635 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.

On this episode, Michael Meade tells two stories about the question we are asked at the end of our lives. We enter the world as seekers and what we most need to find is the uniqueness of our own souls. Each life is a surprising pilgrimage intended to arrive at the center of the pilgrim’s soul.

The figures most revered in the many traditions found throughout the world became memorable because they became uniquely themselves. Whether a spiritual teacher or an artist, a healer or a leader, they had to awaken to an inner vision and find a destiny that was already set within them for the tale of their life to become instructive to others.

Although it has mostly been forgotten in the modern world, each soul bears an inborn purpose and a natural way of being from the beginning. Each person born is intended to bring something meaningful to the world. When everything seems to be falling apart, we must turn all the way inside in order to find the threads of meaning and purpose that are woven into our very being. When we follow our soul’s inner thread it becomes more clear that the changes so urgently needed in the outside world have to begin with meaningful changes in the souls of those born to these troubled times.

Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael live by joining his free online event “How To Not Abandon Oneself” on Thursday, June 13.

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 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.