Living Myth Michael Meade

This episode brings a focus to ways in which the troubles and tragedies of the world can fall upon us in storms of emotion. When life becomes greatly uncertain, and the daily world becomes deeply unsettled, we can find ourselves subjected to sudden states of fear and anxiety. Michael Meade uses an old Sufi teaching story to open up the emotional territory where fear can become contagious and one emotion can turn into another.
 
Emotions are a necessary and mysterious presence, a flow of energies without which we cannot tell if we are alive or not. Emotions make us vulnerable and volatile, but they also allow us to change and grow. The old idea is not that we should avoid, reject or repress emotions, but rather that we need to learn how to feel them. Raw emotions can be eruptive and disruptive, yet feelings can contain emotional energies so that they become centering, instructive and healing.
 
Fear can awaken instincts and intuitions that we need for survival. Anger can reset personal boundaries when we feel overwhelmed or violated. Sorrow can wash away attitudes that no longer serve us. Emotions turn out to be part of the great outflowing of life, without which we cannot fully live or change or meaningfully grow. When not repressed or denied, emotions serve as the vital links between body, spirit and soul. In that sense, emotions can be seen as messages that keep us connected to a deeper sense of self and to a greater sense of life, especially when the world around us is radically changing.
 
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade talk more about the territory of emotions 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.

On this episode, Michael Meade explores the dynamic between myth and dream and considers the idea that myths are like the collective dreams of humanity. He also speaks to the core idea that each life carries a message and a meaning trying to find its way into the world and each adds a thread in the tale of history being woven as we speak, being shaped as we dream, and potentially being made anew each time we step more fully into the story trying to live through us.
 
The inner dream is the vessel for each uniquely shaped life, and when the seas of change and the times of loss sweep over the world again, it is the inner dream of life that must be awakened. By honoring the ancient wisdom of the past, we can discover where we are in the story of our own dreams, live out those dreams, and contribute towards the renewal and re-creation of the world. 
 
This episode is edited from a 2022 interview for a Shift Network Online Dreamwork Summit.
 
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 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 begins with the idea that we suffer a mutual fate of living in a time of tragedy and trouble, and yet, the way through the troubles of the world must depend upon an individual thread of fate set within each person.  Although the thread of fate implies limitation in each person’s life, it also ties each person to a destiny waiting to awaken.  In order to illustrate the dynamic of limitations and calling, Michael Meade tells the story of how he came to write the book called “Fate and Destiny”.
 
There may be no greater time than these troubled times for understanding how the exact limits of an individual life can lead to the specific destiny that was the aim of that life from the beginning.  As Meade says, “destiny is purpose seen from the other end of life.”
 
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade talk more about fate and destiny by joining his new online workshop “Facing Fate, Finding Destiny” this 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.

On this episode of Living Myth, Michael Meade looks at two contemporary crises involving young people through the lens of rites of passage. One crisis involves the alarming increase in both the numbers of youth who consider suicide and those actually taking their own lives. Teens and young adults across the country report growing levels of sadness, loneliness and hopelessness with youth of color and LGBTQ+ youth increasingly being severely affected.
 
Young people have no choice but to grow up in the collective atmosphere of their culture. At this point in time that means to be more exposed to extreme cultural conflicts as well as the raw emotions and extreme edges of human nature. The other crisis stems from troubling and tragic forces that currently tear at the heart of humanity and form the background for student protests erupting on college campuses.
 
Throughout the world it is typical to find young people at the forefront of movements demanding societal changes. At the same time, the more conservative elements of a society tend to overreact when students and young adults inevitably seek to respond to issues of mass violence, injustice and needless death and destruction. It is natural for youthful aspirations to raise and defend the highest ideals of humanity, especially in the face of inhumane forces and practices. At the same time, modern cultures often lack the presence of genuine elders who can combine a true passion for human ideals with the wisdom to find ways of healing and uniting people in the midst of cultural crises.
 
Although coming of age has come to mean being legally recognized as an adult, traditional rites of passage involved coming upon that which is ageless, timeless and enduring in human life. To truly come of age, especially in a time of undeniable global crises, means to experience both the dreams of what life might be and the agonies that currently plague so many people on earth. The old idea was that the specific struggles of youth become the twists of fate through which they find seeds of meaning and purpose in their own lives, while also trying to face and change the dilemmas and tragedies that afflict their community or society.
 
Living amidst the cascade of crises that continually upend the contemporary world is like entering a radical rite of passage that is well underway, but that remains mostly unconscious. At this critical time, healing and renewal is essential on most levels of life and means facing chaos and uncertainty and accepting the need to struggle with the core issues of meaning and justice and the rights of all people to be able to live meaningfully.
 
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 follows the path of an old tale in which youth and elders have to solve seemingly impossible tasks, outwit a power-driven ruler and help create a more welcoming, wise and just society.
 
Traditional tales from many cultures show how youth and elders are opposite sides of a psychic pairing in which each is necessary to understand the other. Despite cultural gaps between them, youth and elders are secretly connected, and each holds an essential piece of the human inheritance. The eternal youth in each soul carries the original dream of our life, while the old sage in each heart has the wisdom needed to find and follow paths of meaning and purpose.
 
Elders can carry a greater vision because they have developed insight into their own lives, they have faced up to whatever fate has handed them and found ways not simply to survive, but also to understand the struggles and the suffering that are part of each human life. As those who become truly old enough to know better, they also become living depositories of wisdom for the next generation to draw upon. And in that sense, they develop inner authority and authority that knows what needs to be preserved and be remembered in order for human life to be noble and meaningful and properly in tune with nature.
 
When the world becomes increasingly divided, the challenge involves redeeming positive views of both the elder and the youth, and thereby rediscovering how each can help envision a more creative and inclusive world. When enough people can become vessels through which the eternal youth and the wise old sage can enter the world, then there can be an awakening of the collective soul that can turn things around, even in the midst of a period of great conflicts and loss. Human culture is intended to be continuously remade through the genius of youth and the wisdom of elders acting in concert with the capacity of nature and the earth to repeatedly renew life at all levels.
 
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.

On this Earth Day podcast, Michael Meade begins by looking at the Gaia Hypothesis published 50 years ago and then explores the older roots of the name Gaia, which can be traced back to ancient India where Gaya or Gayatri appears as the ancient goddess of creation. Gaya appears in the Vedas or sacred texts as the source of all knowledge and wisdom. As the “mother of all,” she also had the power to heal all ills and nurture all of life, so that the wellbeing of the planet depended upon the presence and support of Gaya.

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. 
 
In that sense, there was something truly intuitive in the idea of using the name Gaia in a modern attempt to revive the sense of the world being a living entity and all of life being secretly interconnected.

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.