Episode 406 - Men, the Soul and the Search for Truth

This episode begins with the word polarization being chosen as the dictionary word of the year and ironically being the one thing that both sides of the political spectrum agree upon. The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines polarization as “a division into sharply distinct opposites in which opinions and no longer range along a continuum, but become concentrated at opposing extremes.” When polarization becomes the key word, extreme levels of tension are being experienced, both on the collective level and in the psyche of each individual person.   At critical times on Earth, the basic elements and energies of life polarize. We become crucified by seemingly irreconcilable aspects of a conflict that was under the surface all along. When that happens, simply choosing one side or the other in order to avoid the tension and the uncertainty simply causes the dilemma to reform in another area or at a different level. At that point, it becomes important to know that a tension of opposites is the precondition for creation and for any meaningful change.   While the two poles of a polarity seem to be irreconcilable opposites, they are secretly one. For in a true polarity, like light and dark or up and down, one side cannot exist without the other. Like night and day, existence itself is an essential unity, appearing as an oppositional duality. Seen that way, meaningful change and true transformation are the secret aims of the tension inside life itself.   While great uncertainty and fear can cause people to quickly choose one side of each dilemma, maturity, a word which can mean both “ripe and timely,” is related to our ability to withstand and understand the tension of the opposites. When we hold the tension of opposites long enough a surprising third way can appear that allows a truly creative solution that renews the energy of life itself.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online Solstice ritual “In This Darkness Singing” on Friday, December 20.   Register and learn more: 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 700 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 recognition that, what the United Nations calls “the biggest election year ever recorded,” has left most countries on Earth more divided and less free. Any issue that arises quickly becomes another example of two opposing attitudes or conflicting views of life. As increased polarization fractures any sense of civil society, people come to believe that they literally live in two different worlds that are essentially unreconcilable.   Following a line from Shakespeare, Michael Meade considers the idea that we are in “a prison of our own making” if we believe we are simply living in two different stories. Rather, it is our mutual fate to be alive at a time when the underlying tensions of life rise to the surface. We are all in the same story which can either lead to a meaningful transformation of life on earth or leads us further down the road to oblivion.   Although people commonly now feel that we live on opposite sides in a divided world, the deeper divide and the more damning prison of our own making occurs when we forget that as humans we have always lived in two worlds. The heart of humanity has always been stretched between the ground of Earth and the endless expanse of the heavens. Humanity has always dwelt in the betwixt and between, the liminal space between the throes of hard reality and the wonders of great imagination.   We are most human when we suffer the tension of the opposites in order to find again the threads to the ongoing story of creation and the renewal of the world. The trouble is that genuine visions and meaningful revelations of the way out of the darkness tend to appear only after all the more rational, familiar and predictable ways of seeing and being have failed.   In truly critical times, we can’t solve our problems at the same level in which they were created. We become more trapped in time, more stuck in blind beliefs and more caught in despair when we have no other level of life to turn to. If there is no otherworld of spirit and imagination, there can be nowhere to turn to when everything around us becomes more irrational, more dehumanizing and increasingly chaotic.   As has happened at other critical times here on Earth, the keys for unlocking this prison of our own making have to include an awakening to the sense that there is an otherworld that exists right beside this world, that extends far beyond the political world, a realm that is not ruled by the blind march of time, but rather is connected to and can reconnect us to things eternal. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online Solstice ritual “In This Darkness Singing” on Friday, December 20.   Register and learn more: 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 700 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.

Michael Meade answers questions about the sources and meanings of grace and gratitude. Gratitude used to be called the “parent of all virtues” and its presence indicates the natural nobility of the human soul.   We are most human and most alive when we allow ourselves to be touched by the beauty of the world and when we feel genuine gratitude for the life we have been given, no matter how hard or how dark the world around us has become.  In this way, expressing gratitude helps to bring grace back into the world.   More than ever, we need moments of wholeness and unity to rekindle our spirits and to ease our souls. We need occasions of grace and gratitude, however small they may be. We need to feel that life, despite all the existing divisions and conflicts, retains a sense of holiness, so that occasions of gratitude, however small they may be, can enable more grace to enter the world. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining him for two free online events: “Living Authentically in Uncertain Times” on Thursday, December 5 and his online Solstice ritual “In This Darkness Singing” on Friday, December 20.  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 700 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 old idea that emotions travel in pairs. Sorrow tends to travel with joy, so that if we allow sorrow to penetrate us, it will pull us to a deep level of our soul where joy can provide a renewal of spirit that lifts us back up. On the other hand, when we deny the grief and sorrows that enter our lives, we wind up losing our capacity for joy. Another natural pairing of emotions occurs with hope and despair. While despair can mean to “lose all hope,” it is not simply a blind alley or a dead end. Rather, the dark territory of despair becomes the place from which a deeper sense of hope can arise.   In response to the dark times in which we live, Michael Meade revives one of the oldest stories ever recorded. On the tattered remains of a papyrus scroll from over four thousand years ago, an unnamed poet describes a deeply unsettled country where people suffer from increasing chaos and an erosion of ethical values. He reports how wide scale injustice and the excessive greed of powerful people has induced the spread of mindless violence and brought him to the depths of despair. In his darkest hour his soul speaks and advises him to turn to the original potentials of his life and live in authentic ways despite and because of the troubles that have befallen everyone.   In times of darkness and loss, it becomes more important to know that there is a deeper sense of hope that can be found by experiencing some of the depths of despair. This hope found after hopelessness involves inspiration and the kind of vertical imagination that can reclaim the deepest values of humanity and envision meaningful ways to, not simply survive, but to revive the meaning and purpose of our lives. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining him for two free online events: “Arts and Practices: Antidotes to Overwhelm, Sources of Resiliency” on Thursday, November 21 and “Living Authentically in Uncertain Times” on Thursday, December 5.  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 700 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.

Michael Meade turns to an ancient myth from India to show how elections can have such dire consequences that the rule of law becomes replaced with the “law of the fishes.” In the great oceans the big fish endlessly devour the little fish and the same drama is often replicated in the realm of culture, where every pond has its big fish and the small fry continually become fodder for the big shots. The law of the fishes was used by ancient people to describe periods of cultural disorder when there is no genuine leader, but only those seeking to wield power.   Raw power lacks morals, lacks principles and only has interests. And the interests of those who are seduced by power become endless longings for more wealth, more personal fame and more dominance. When those elected to positions of authority are committed to the idea that there are only winners and losers, the big fish not only make all the rules, they also break the rules and do so for personal gain at the expense of everyone else. It is not simply that an excess of power corrupts, but that the desire for great power attracts those who are most corruptible.   The chaos that ensues from the lack of genuine leadership leads to increasing divisions amongst people and to the loss of norms that otherwise would protect common folk. If leaders are dishonest, unjust and not dedicated to serving the people as a whole, if they are too narcissistic and power driven, the society will fall into the realm of the fishes. Under the law of the fishes, as governing falls into the hands of a powerful few the rich become richer and the poor become poorer. Society becomes more lawless, people turn against each other and minority communities live at the mercy of those who hold power, but do not know what to use it for.   In the ancient story, as at this troubled time on Earth, everything hangs in an uncertain balance as humanity is required to choose between the chaos of the “survival of the fittest” and the greater sense of awakening to the force of meaning and truth and the presence of an underlying unity of life. In the midst of fear and division people can learn to reconnect to the origins of life, which mysteriously leads to becoming interconnected with all other levels of life and to being reconnected to life's inner power to renew itself. The drama of the world turns out to have more than one level of understanding, so that at opportune times, a small change can lead to a great effect and can even turn everything around.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining him for two free online events: “Arts and Practices: Antidotes to Overwhelm, Sources of Resiliency” on Thursday, November 21 and “Living Authentically in Uncertain Times” on Thursday, December 5.    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 700 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.

It is our mutual fate to live in a time of such disorientation and upheaval that the institutions we hoped would protect us cannot keep up with the flood of changes pouring through both nature and human culture. It makes sense that we could feel lost when the present is full of chaos and fear, while the future looks increasingly uncertain. In the long run, we are not simply in a battle between Democrats and Republicans or conservatives and liberals, but rather we are in a struggle for meaning and truth, in a battle between nobility and mendacity, which means a struggle for the authenticity of individual life and the soul of human community.   Each time the world takes a darker turn, it becomes easier to feel lost and begin to fearfully imagine that one loss is just going to lead to another loss until the whole thing becomes lost. Yet, the sense that everything and everyone has become divided into two opposing parties or mutually exclusive beliefs is not simply proof that everything is polarized, but rather is the painful evidence that what we are desperately needing and secretly looking for is a genuine sense of unity that can only come from a place that is deeper and more true than all of the things that divide us.   As has happened before, the world has been darkened by the shadow of those promoting falsehoods and being willing to “live in lies” in order to gain political power. The truth is that a government that is built upon falsities becomes captive to its own lies. Meanwhile, everyone who manages to refuse the system of lies threatens the power of falseness and helps in some way to break the spells of ignorance and self-delusion. In the growing climate of great uncertainty, amidst the storms of misinformation and the flood of extreme emotions, the important thing is not to lose our own sense of soul and our own instincts for authenticity.   The antidote to the collective poison of living in lies is found where each of us finds a way to live in truth. Despite the chaos and confusions of the modern world, we are the current inheritors of the deep human longings for truth and beauty and the life-sustaining capacity to grow from within and help transform the world. Each time we take another step in the search for meaning and purpose, we are living in truth.   Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new free online event “Arts and Practices: Antidotes to Overwhelm, Sources of Resiliency” on Thursday, November 21. 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 700 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 excerpts from a new psychological survey that a majority of American adults are worried that the upcoming presidential election could be the end of democracy in the United States. More than 7 in 10 people fear the results could lead to widespread violence. While it is clear that the political stakes are high, the levels of uncertainty and fear are even higher.   Across the board, people feel less able to predict and control things, much less integrate the flood of emotions that come from all of the upheaval. Caught between the extremities of nature and the extremes of contemporary politics, people can become inundated by fear, flooded with worries, and overwhelmed by the radical presence of uncertainty. In the radical times in which we live, human intolerance for uncertainty has increasingly become an intolerance for other humans.   Michael Meade offers an ancient story that suggests that simply turning away from the storms of life or trying to deny their effect upon our psyches does not protect us from the corrosive conditions of our human community. When the world becomes stuck and deeply divided, the solace we desperately need and the sense of unity we have so clearly lost must be sought in the unseen realm of great imagination and in the healing haunts of nature.   Traditionally, the medicines needed to heal this world have been found in the Otherworld in the form of imagination, visions and dreams and in the shape of nature with its many ways of offering healing and refuge for the human spirit.   When the realm of human culture becomes unwelcoming and toxic, whatever it might be that stirs a sense of eros and deep connectedness can quickly become the antidote to the storms of uncertainty and the currents of fear and anxiety. As many ancient stories try to remind us, the indelible spirit of life keeps trying to enter the world and can only enter it through those people who are alive at a given time.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new free online event “Arts and Practices: Antidotes to Overwhelm, Sources of Resiliency” on Thursday, November 21. 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 700 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 addresses the issue of the “strongman” in politics and the way it exemplifies and contributes to a loss of authenticity, a lack of integrity and a loss of soul in modern cultures.   “As a storyteller and someone who studies mythology, I carry stories around, maybe in the same way that someone might carry food or medicine or equipment in a backpack in case a need arises. To follow the metaphor, I need stories for nourishment. I need stories for medicine. And stories equip me with ways of dealing with trouble or tragedy or trickery that I otherwise wouldn't have. When something strikes me as troublesome, a story often comes to mind. That's what happened when I read news reports about the current presidential election in the United States coming down to gender issues and what it means to be a man.   Observers and pollsters are pointing out that while a high percentage of women say they will vote for Vice-President Kamala Harris, an even higher percentage of men say that they will vote for former president Donald Trump. Polling data also indicates that younger men are increasingly being persuaded by Trump's posturing as a strong man. And sadly, that leads him to double down on crudely demeaning the first woman to become a vice president in the United States, while also threatening to punish members of the media and anyone else who opposes him.   While the notion of a strong man as savior can seem appealing when the world is full of conflicts and uncertainty, the long history of human survival as a species depends upon something other, something more than just claiming to be strong or trying to appear as manly and invincible. The idea of people, especially young men, falling for the posture of strength and the pretense of courage brought to mind an old story from the traditions of Central Africa.   The ancient story of how a powerful hunter becomes a visionary seeker has been handed down from people who were specifically known to be crafty survivors able to withstand hardships and survive the most difficult life circumstances. They knew that in the hard times they had to draw upon their instinctive capacities for toughing it out. They also knew that at critical times the point becomes hunting for a greater sense of meaning in life and responding to the age old calling of truth and beauty, or else everyone might lose their way and wind up both empty handed and hollow inside.   We are living amidst massive storms in nature and confounding storms of conflict and chaos in culture and our survival, as well as life on the planet, depends upon our connection to our own souls, where the instincts for survival and the longing for truth and meaning dwell together. In the depths of our souls we can find the age-old connection to the Soul of the World, which has survived endless numbers of storms and natural disasters. The quest for truth and meaning is as ancient and necessary as the hunt for food and shelter and safety; for truth and beauty provide places of refuge for the heart and the soul of humanity without which we cannot find the true courage or the actual wisdom needed to survive the storms of life.”   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade talk more about finding soul in difficult times by purchasing his new in-depth course “Holding the Thread of Life”. Purchase and learn more at courses.mosaicvoices.org   You can save 30% on this new course 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 680 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 is about the need for living symbols that can give us a sense of unity and wholeness in a divided world. Symptom is an old Greek word that refers to something that “falls upon us or strikes us” in a way that wounds us or divides us against ourself. At this critical time on Earth, almost anything can suddenly become symptomatic and leave us more personally wounded and more collectively divided.   The word symbol derives from Greek roots, meaning “to throw together or bring things together.” A genuine symbol unites unlike or opposite things in a way that reveals the underlying unity of life, but also reveals other levels of reality. When most levels of Nature and culture simultaneously manifest disruptive symptoms, we have a greater need for symbols that can remind us of the origins of life, which are always nearby and able to be tapped for the energies of healing and renewal.   The antidote for the isolation and dissociation that has become so characteristic of modern life lies in finding again the ancient wellsprings of human imagination and the personal thread to the underlying continuity of all of life. In this old way of imagining and thinking, an endless story unfolds from the core of creation, and a living thread of imagination is woven within the heart that connects each of us to that unfolding story.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “The Soul of Change” beginning on Thursday, October 17. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.    You can save 30% on this new series 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 700 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 old terminology of 100-year storms and 1000-year storms makes little sense, since events of that magnitude now happen so often. It becomes difficult to deny that we now live in a world that is more unpredictable, more chaotic, and sadly, more dangerous. As the storms occurring in nature grow greater and move faster, a parallel intensification of cultural conflicts and political storms have also been growing greater and changing with remarkable speed. By now, the two areas of increasing turbulence can be seen to overlap in ways that add more chaos and more unnecessary suffering to those who are caught in the path of the storms.   At the same time that many communities struggle with life-altering losses and remain without water and basic services, the so called “online community” has become inundated with a storm of its own making. The disinformation, lies and conspiracy theories that have become a maelstrom in the political realm, have now been injected into recovery efforts after the recent hurricane in ways that actually endanger rescue missions and make it more difficult for people to get the necessities they need to survive. The aftermath of natural disasters can now include unnecessary and unnatural emotional torment for those already suffering losses of life and livelihood.   As the world increasingly becomes a place of chaos and conflict, we all suffer greater levels of disorientation and overwhelm, even if we are not directly in the wake of the latest natural disaster or shocking missile attack or polarizing statements by those claiming to be leaders. We are all living through a collective loss of soul, for the soul is the missing thing, the unifying element between opposing forces.   The soul is the connective tissue of the world, and without it, the darkness around us can just grow deeper and deeper. Yet, no matter how alienating the outer world can become, the deeper layers of the self and soul remain places of healing and self-forgiveness, that in turn connects us to the unifying source of life that keeps trying to awaken within us and knows how we can each contribute to the healing of a broken world and to the process of renewal that can follow all the chaos.   Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online series “The Soul of Change” beginning on Thursday, October 17. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.    You can save 30% on this new series 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 700 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.