Episode 408 - To Not Be Lost

Living Myth

Michael Meade

Transformation, Philosophy, Society & Culture, Genius, Education, Myth, Soul, Culture

4.9 • 944 Ratings

🗓️ 7 November 2024

⏱️ 24 minutes

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Summary

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.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Living Myth podcast with Michael Mead, where this shifting, changing world is looked at from a mythic perspective.
0:17.0	On this episode, Mead considers how 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.
0:33.6	Yet, the sense that everything and everyone has become divided into two opposing parties
0:40.3	or mutually exclusive beliefs is not simply proof that everything is polarized,
0:46.3	but rather is the painful evidence that what we are desperately needing and secretly
0:51.3	looking for is a genuine sense of unity that can only come from a place that is deeper
0:57.7	and more true than all the things that divide us. In the growing climate of great uncertainty
1:04.4	amidst the storms of misinformation and the flood of extreme emotions, the important thing is not to lose our own sense of soul
1:14.5	and our own instincts for authenticity.
1:37.4	I'm standing in the aftermath of the presidential election here in the United States,
1:47.6	and I'm getting hit with waves of sorrow and loss, not simply on some political level, but at the level of the soul.
1:55.8	And the sorrow is connected to the sense that a great mistake has been made, a mistake which puts more people severely at risk at a time when most people already feel deeply insecure.
2:04.8	And the sense of loss has more in it than the idea of a missed opportunity
2:10.1	because it already feels like another step along a road of losses that have been occurring and accumulating for quite some time now.
2:25.4	A part of me, I would imagine, as a part of the soul, knows that what we are going through now
2:31.7	has happened before. I mean the sense that meaningful things become
2:37.2	lost, the sense that meaning itself can at times be lost, and the sense that the dark times in
2:45.8	which we now live have just become a shade darker yet. It's not that I feel or believe that darkness is a bad thing,
2:58.8	for I know the old idea that all light comes from darkness. What is sorrowful and regretful
3:06.5	is the way that people falsely claiming to know the truth,
3:12.0	both wittingly and unwittingly, create a blindness that can only produce a further darkness,
3:20.8	a greater ignorance, and deeper pain.
	...

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