This episode begins with the idea that in traditional cultures worldwide the search for wisdom would be a necessity for developing genuine leadership. It would also be a primary practice for those who would become elders. Genuine elders were considered a valuable living resource, without whose guidance entire societies could become trapped in short term thinking, mired in materialistic aims and in danger of entirely losing their way.

 

Traditionally, elders lead by remembering further back than others and by seeing more clearly ahead. Although growing older can involve a loss of short term memory, elders remember the essential values and the enduring truths that people keep forgetting. Thus, they are less likely to be strictly political leaders and more likely to be cultural and spiritual guides. In this archetypal sense, elders serve as seers who can see behind and beyond the politics of the day, and perceive more accurately the needs of the future.

 

The passing of time makes everyone older, but not necessarily wiser. The qualities needed to be a true elder involve more than physical changes. There is something metaphysical, psychological and spiritual involved. As William Blake put it, "Wisdom combines insight with experience and vision with maturity. If maturity expands vision, it leads to wisdom. And if it does not, maturity simply becomes degeneration." As someone else once said, "You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely."

 

The archetype of the elder exists in the depths of each person’s soul where it is connected to the deepest ideals of humanity. When the world becomes dark and foreboding and even the future of life on Earth becomes uncertain, the inner elder and wise sage can awaken in each of our souls. When that kind of awakening occurs, something ancient and enduring, something visionary and creative can enter the world through us and provide the wisdom we most need.

 

Thank you for listening to and supporting the Living Myth Podcast. 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 nearly 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 an unassuming teacher finding herself in a public controversy for refusing to take down posters that state that everyone is “welcome, important, respected, encouraged, valued and equal” in her classroom.  As she said in an interview, "I would do anything to protect my students. I love all of them unconditionally, and as teachers, we protect them from danger, quite literally. This is the one small thing I can do to stand up for them, to protect them from being affected by racist sentiments that are affecting their classroom and our culture."

 

There's an old idea that says that at critical points in the course of life, we find ourselves in situations in which we have to become worth our salt. For, there are truths set within each soul that can become a medicine and an antidote against the rampant falsehoods and political manipulations being used to create fear, to drive divisions and to cause people to abandon their own genuine selves.

 

The greatest challenge has always been the risk of becoming our genuine selves in a world that tries to turn us into everyone else or scare us into believing things that are simply untrue. Genuine change begins in the depths of the individual soul, and this is the struggle that we came here for.

 

We are the students of life trying to awaken further and we are the potential teachers and leaders and healers trying to tap the wisdom of the sage set within our own hearts. Each time we allow ourselves to be touched by the beauty of the world and by the roots of truth, we take another step in the direction of generosity and inclusion; we go further on the path of the soul and come closer to understanding how we are all in this together. Whether we diminish our lives out of fear or grow more soul and live in truth depends upon how much we become worth our own salts.

 

Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online event “Radical Resilience” on Thursday, March 27. If you’re in the Boulder, Colorado area, you can join Michael for 2 events on April 4 and 5.

 

Register and learn more about all these events 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 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 by tracing the evolution of propaganda from the creation of a papal agency entitled The College of Propaganda just over 400 years ago to the current process of “flooding the zone” to gain “full spectrum dominance of the news.” What is described as “rapid fire propaganda” aims, not simply to reframe the collective narrative, but rather to drown out all other narratives.

 

In addition to being emotionally and psychologically exhausting, the flood of emotionally charged language, outrageous claims and crude accusations serves the goal of turning people against each other, using the age-old divisions of right vs wrong, us vs them and good vs evil.

 

Since there is no simple way to stop the rapid-fire propaganda project that is well underway, one question becomes, how do we find a place to stand when we find ourselves, not just in a time of increasing uncertainty, but also in a storm of unreality? Michael Meade turns further back than the origins of propaganda to the sources of universal truths that cannot simply be drowned out or be canceled because they are indelibly rooted in the innate nobility, radical creativity and ancient wisdom of the human soul.

 

Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online event “Radical Resilience” on Thursday, March 27. If you’re in the Boulder, Colorado area, you can join Michael for 2 events on April 4 and 5.

 

Register and learn more about all these events 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 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.

At this critical time on Earth, we are caught in storms of change that involve the shattering of norms and a loss of orientation as unprecedented events tear at the heart of humanity and ravage both the body politic and the face of the earth. The sense that we might just turn away from the troubling news of the day does not simply save us, for the polarization and fragmentation that trouble the outside world are also felt deeply within us.

 

As the rational mind reels from the cascade of irrational events, we are thrown back upon ourselves, so that the illusion that the troubles are simply outside us can keep us from finding solutions that reside deep within ourselves. When we find ourselves on the edge of uncertainty and near the road to despair, we have an essential choice. We can succumb to anxiety and fear and become a smaller self increasingly alienated from life or we can turn inwards and find connections to a deeper sense of self that naturally resides within us.

 

In times of radical change and potential transformation, a greater psychological awareness is required, and a deeper understanding of life is needed. Knowledge of a deep self center and source of inner guidance has been known to people throughout time. This deeper sense of self does not suffer overwhelm, but rather has surprising resources and radical resiliency. The deep sense of self knows who we are at our core and how we are aimed at life. This animating inner self makes each of us unique and essentially valuable and it tries to awaken and become more conscious to us precisely when everything else seems to fall apart.

 

Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online event “Radical Resilience” on Thursday, March 27. If you’re in the Boulder, Colorado area, you can join Michael for 2 events on April 4 and 5. Register and learn more about all these events 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 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 focuses on the dehumanizing aspects of autocratic movements. The increasing uncertainties about the future create vacuums that would be dictators and autocrats seek to fill with big lies and fraudulent claims that are presented with a false sense of certainty. The autocratic playbook that they all inevitably follow requires that they enforce forms of economic and informational isolation and instill a siege mentality that depicts the outside world as being hostile, unfair and dangerous.

 

Authoritarian leaders deliberately seek to polarize people and radicalize what would otherwise be civil societies. They intentionally promote divisiveness and force people to take sides, while also demanding undivided loyalty to themselves. Autocrats cannot succeed unless others in power or seeking power assist them in creating an alternative reality. Eventually, those who enable and help justify the authoritarian regime lose their own ability to resist the inevitable descent into brutality, nihilism and violence.

 

When questioning the judgment or actions of a leader equates to blasphemy, when blind loyalty overrides individual ethics and collective values, and when healthcare, science and education become tools for serving the agenda of the self-proclaimed savior rather than for seeking for truth and understanding, then a society has entered a critical phase of a life threatening socio-political disease.

 

Autocratic leaders do not simply undermine institutions and sabotage basic freedoms, they also seek to normalize dehumanizing behaviors that make social and political violence unavoidable. If some people are denied their part in the whole of humanity, that leads to a diminishing of all the people. 

 

Ultimately, history is written in the depths of individual human souls and the story we are in is still being written. If we allow those in power to deny a genuine sense of humanity to some, we can only continue to lose our way and further lose our souls. If we open ourselves to the understanding that we are literally all in the same story, each suffering in our own way, we may find genuine ways to help heal and protect each other and have no need and no room for would be autocrats or self-appointed kings.

 

Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online event “Radical Resilience” on Thursday, March 27. 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 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 a consideration of psychological characteristics of the archetype of the king. In its positive form the king archetype is often connected to the sun which appears as a unifying force that brings warmth and light along with generosity and life enhancing generativity. Since it is the nature of archetypes to manifest negative as well as positive energies, the shadow king manifests the dark side of power, the corrupt side of ruling and the backside of humanity that everyone else must suffer.

 

The dark side of the king archetype appears as the tyrant or dictator who rules by fear and force, who seeks to control everything, while growing increasingly vindictive and destructive. The old term for the kind of arrogance and psychological inflation that causes a person to run amok and violate the natural order of things was hubris. When those stricken with hubris are given power, they display a great insolence and recklessness that leads to a shattering of norms and breaking of laws with callous disregard for any damage done or suffering caused to other people.

 

At a time when the world is experiencing a rise of dictators and autocrats, some psychologists are describing a Hubris Syndrome that shows how destructive patterns intensify the longer an afflicted person is in a position of power. Pride may come before a fall, but overbearing hubris can be said to come before a complete implosion and collapse. It becomes increasingly important for the future of democracy and the well-being of humanity that we all learn to see more clearly how the psychological disorders of those given positions of great power can plunge enormous numbers of people and even entire countries into unnecessary levels of division and disaster.

 

Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Arts and Practices” on Saturday, March 1. 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 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, Michael Meade explores the roots of wisdom and what it means to face the darkness.  The healing and transformation needed now, both individually and collectively, require going into the exact places that look darkest to us. In following this path, we encounter hidden resources and an inner gold that connects us to sources of wisdom. During this time of division and isolation, Meade suggests that whereas simple knowledge tends to divide things, genuine wisdom makes meaningful unity possible.

 

Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Arts and Practices” on Saturday, March 1. 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 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 we are experiencing not just radical changes that happen in quick succession, but a maelstrom that threatens to upend life as we know it. The word maelstrom comes from old roots meaning, “a grinding stream or great whirlpool that sucks everything into its downward spiraling vortex.” Being alive at this radical time when extreme changes engulf most areas of life means that we repeatedly risk being overwhelmed and pulled down by events that can be disheartening and discouraging.

 

Faced with increasing uncertainty we must find things to hold on to that can keep us from being pulled under. We need the practices, the arts and the methods that allow us to witness the maelstrom but survive the vortex of descent and despair. People in Finland use the term “sisu” to describe an inner ability to push past usual limits when facing great adversity and survive even when the obstacles seem to be insurmountable.

 

Sisu involves an innate quality and latent power that exists deep within each of us, that can be accessed when our limits are tested and our greatest fears are faced. In that sense, sisu involves having the courage to follow what feels right and what feels just, and trust in life's hidden potentials. While sisu bears similarities to notions of resilience, grit and will power, it goes much further. The understanding of sisu includes an underlying sense of individual courage, but it also involves an awakening of the principle and power of a just and inclusive sense of social unity.

 

Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Arts and Practices” on Saturday, March 1. 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 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 idea that we live in times of extreme changes and increasing chaos. When the world around us falls apart the issue becomes not simply a change in lifestyle or shift in politics, but a revelation of the core imagination and original aim hidden within each of our souls from the beginning. Michael Meade tells an old Native American myth about a youth who has a vision of a “singing stone” that gives great medicine to whoever finds it. In order to find the stone and the medicine that can help him and also serve the community, the youth must experience the four distinct quadrants that make up the earth and compose the Circle of Life. Repeatedly, the youth becomes disoriented and feels that he is being tricked. Yet, the real trick turns out to be revealing himself to himself; for the vision that drew him into the far corners of life revealed that his true name was Singing Stone. The medicine he needed to find was inside him all along. On a psychological level, we can call the combination of the inner song and the stone or gem at the center, the deeper sense of self and soul that exists in each person. In that sense, the medicine we most need when the world loses its center and everything falls apart must be found in an awakened sense of our inner self and the natural gifts and true aims that were set within our souls from the beginning. The changes we most desire to see in our collective lives can only come from awakenings that occur in our personal lives. The singing stone, like the philosopher's stone of the ancient alchemists, serves as a living symbol of a sense of inner wholeness that becomes a source of both healing and centering. It is this deeper sense of self and soul that we are each called to find, that can become, not just the redemption of the individual life, but also the medicine needed to effect a transformation of collective life. Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “Arts and Practices” on Saturday, March 1.

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 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 looks at the misuses of power, the dangers of arch narcissism and the ways that the dream of America is now being severely tested. An old proverb states that: Power lacks morals and principles, it only has interests, and the interests of the powerful are often at odds with the genuine principles and the truth and the kind of understanding needed to create community. The troubled times in which we now all find ourselves are the crucible in which we need to learn more about psychology of power in order not to become discouraged and disempowered and fall under the rule of those who only see power as a force of dominance to be used in the pursuit of personal gain at the expense of human community.

 

Before he was elected the first time, Donald Trump declared that he could shoot a person on Fifth Avenue and pay no consequences even for such a violent act. That was not simply an off hand statement of personal inflation, but rather a psychological revelation of an underlying sense of being above the law and beyond being accountable for recklessness, cruelty and even violent crimes. Having been elected to a position of great power again causes him to further identify, not just with being a dictator or a king, but with being like a vengeful deity who can create and destroy at will and being god-like, he cannot be restricted, can do no wrong and cannot be held accountable.

 

Because arch narcissists are psychologically undeveloped, they tend to use black and white thinking and binary codes. Thus a person is either a winner or a loser, and you must either be blindly loyal or you are declared enemy and can be considered evil. In that sense, the use of political power is always personal for Donald Trump. He may use the playbook of dictators and autocrats, but he does it in a dangerously personal way, because narcissism is literally his personal signature as well as his fatal flaw.

 

This kind of imperial narcissism and threats of vengeance and retribution for disobeying were what the founding fathers fought against. And at this critical time when the delusional power seekers and the self-inflated oligarchs seek to replace the dream of unity through diversity with the sad old rule of "to the winners go the spoils," it becomes our calling, as those who seek freedom and justice for all that find ways to unite in diversity, reject the would be dictators and petty tyrants who carry the flag of the false self in favor of the genuine dream that is always trying to re-awaken and become more conscious in the hearts of “We, the people.”

Thank you for listening to and supporting the Living Myth Podcast. You can further support this podcast in the new year 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 and find it meaningful, we appreciate you leaving a review wherever you listen and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and all of us at Mosaic, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our creative work.

On this excerpt from a Living Myth Premium episode, Michael Meade explores how even in the darkest times, the inner abundance of the soul is ever nearby. The problem is that the pathways to our inner inheritance and instinctive vitality are blocked by received ideas and an over-adaptation to early life conditions. The rigid attitudes of our ego or little-self make it difficult to connect to the imagination and vitality of the greater self within us. The deeper self is our true center that can be both a place of stillness and refuge or a place of breaking open and breaking through the limitations of the little self. You can hear the full episode and receive additional podcast content 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