Living Myth

In this episode, Michael Meade explores how each soul born bears a personal story that involves natural gifts intended to be given and an original agreement of the soul that includes an inherent sense of purpose in life. At the same time, each family has fateful issues and inherited plotlines that strongly affect the dependent and defenseless child. The good news is that at each critical time in our lives, we have opportunities to awaken to the original agreement of our soul. The more difficult issue is that we must untangle ourselves from the limits of our family fate.
 
 
While all agreements and entanglements with our families can be made more conscious and can be renegotiated; the original agreements of our souls involve the threads of our destiny and are therefore non-negotiable. When the outside world becomes increasingly conflicted and chaotic, we are thrown back upon ourselves. If we are willing to face the fateful elements and early wounds of our life, we find the twist of fate that reveals the destiny that our souls were aimed at all along.
 
 
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online event "Kairos Time" on Thursday, June 18.
 
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 750 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
 
 
Along with these free weekly podcasts, you can now read free weekly essays and long form posts by Michael Meade on Substack. Learn more and subscribe at michaeljmeade.substack.com
 
 
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 considers how until modern times, people have relied on ritual practices to heal the wounds of culture, draw upon the renewing energies of nature and rejuvenate the life of both individuals and the community. Ritual gives a place for constricting attitudes to loosen, for emotions to flow and for the reservoir of genuine hope to renew.
 
 
Creative rituals can help release the burdens of our lives and can remove ego attitudes that block the flow of feelings and vital energy. Transformative rituals have the capacity to reconnect our minds and hearts in ways that reduce fear and anxiety and ease the grief of isolation.
 
 
On the ground of ritual, undiscovered parts of ourselves can awaken and strengthen our sense of meaning and purpose in life. All the arts were originally used as vehicles of vision and aspects of ritual and ritual is its own expressive art. In drawing upon the primal elements of nature and the inspiration of spirit, we can access spontaneous sources of healing, vision and renewal for both the individual and the community.
 
 
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online event "Kairos Time" on Thursday, June 18.
 
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 750 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
 
 
Along with these free weekly podcasts, you can now read free weekly essays and long form posts by Michael Meade on Substack. Learn more and subscribe at michaeljmeade.substack.com
 
 
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.

People increasingly question whether there is any hope for the world at this time. In this episode of Living Myth, Meade suggests that it is the nature of hope to become lost, before being found at another level of life. In the myth of Pandora, hope only appears after all possible troubles have been unleashed upon the world. There is a deeper sense of hope that can arise when "all hope is lost."
 
 
At critical times things must seem hopeless before the "second level of hope" can be found again in the depths of the human heart and soul. This sense of "active hope" depends upon the power of the soul to imagine meaningful changes that can help renew the force of life on earth.
 
 
The underlying spirit of life and the true resiliency of the soul are connected to the power of vertical imagination that rises from the original ground of being. In the dark times, when it seems that Pandora's Box is open 24 hours a day, it is a deeper sense of hope and a greater sense of imagination that we long for and that the world needs in order to transform and become renewed.
 
 
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online event "Kairos Time" on Thursday, June 18.
 
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 750 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
 
 
Along with these free weekly podcasts, you can now read free weekly essays and long form posts by Michael Meade on Substack. Learn more and subscribe at michaeljmeade.substack.com
 
 
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 explores how as the world becomes a more chaotic and conflicted place, turning to creative practices can help us find ways to settle and center and grow a greater sense of self and soul. Throughout the ages, meaningful practices have served as primary pathways for psychological and spiritual growth, as well as for finding moments of wholeness and inner unity.
 
 
Traditional roads of practice typically appear as the inward path of meditation and deep reflection and the expressive path of creative arts such as music and dance, painting and writing. Both primary pathways can help us become more vital and resilient and be more able to "spring back" no matter what befalls us.
 
 
Whether through creative arts, contemplative practices or a combination of both, we need ways to keep renewing our spirit, opening our hearts and finding inner coherence. A heartfelt practice can help inspire, heal and transform our lives; it can also help us contribute to a world in need of healing and renewal.
 
 
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 750 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
 
 
Along with these free weekly podcasts, you can now read free weekly essays and long form posts by Michael Meade on Substack. Learn more and subscribe at michaeljmeade.substack.com
 
 
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.

To be alive at this time means to be present as many familiar patterns simply dissolve. One major crisis quickly replaces another, so that both collective and personal levels of uncertainty grow day by day. It turns out that uncertainty is a powerful energy that makes us feel deeply vulnerable as well as susceptible to more intense levels of anxiety.


It is also true that what shatters familiar patterns can also awaken us to a greater sense of imagination and lead to more authentic ways of seeing and being. When faced with meaningful challenges and great uncertainty, we are actually closer to finding the key that unlocks the psychic house and gives us greater access to our inner gifts and the way our soul would have us go in the world.


While we may feel isolated in these troubled times, we are not simply alone. Rather, our souls are the natural source of ancient wisdom that keeps being forgotten and of archetypal energies that can guide and embolden us. In the end, the real risk in life has always been becoming our genuine self amidst the troubles and uncertainties of existence.
 
 
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 750 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
 
 
Along with these free weekly podcasts, you can now read free weekly essays and long form posts by Michael Meade on Substack. Learn more and subscribe at michaeljmeade.substack.com
 
If you enjo
y 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.