Episode 411 - The Necessity of Gratitude

Living Myth

Michael Meade

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

4.9 • 944 Ratings

🗓️ 26 November 2024

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Living Myth podcast with Michael Mead,
0:12.0	where this shifting, changing world is looked at from a mythic perspective.
0:18.9	On this episode, Mead answers questions about the sources and meanings
0:23.7	of grace and gratitude. Gratitude used to be called the parent of all virtues, and its presence
0:30.9	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
0:40.0	world, and when we feel genuine gratitude for the life we have been given, no matter how hard
0:46.5	or how dark the world around us has become. In this way, expressing gratitude helps to bring grace back into the world. How is gratitude and grace or how are gratitude and grace related to courage, justice, mercy, and peace?
1:24.2	Well, let's see. I think they're different than courage, certainly than justice. So one of the great things about mythology and myth, mythical systems, is they give, they have spirits or deities, gods, and goddesses representing the various energies in the world.
1:46.0	People misunderstand that cultures that had many deities didn't, it didn't mean that they didn't understand
1:53.0	that everything was at some essential level united or everything was one.
1:59.0	But we live in the realm of the one and the many.
2:02.6	And so I think those things are related, gratitude and grace, related to courage, justice,
2:11.6	you know, because they're part of this mythos, this psychological, mythological realm. Mercy and peace can be seen to be
2:20.6	much closer, the gratitude and grace. So let me just go back to these deities. One of my favorite
2:29.2	deities is Kuan Yin. Kuan Yin is the goddess of mercy and peace, but also forgiveness and grace.
2:39.4	And so it's not that there is a Kuanian, it's not about history, it's not about believing in things,
2:47.0	it's just like the imagination of it. So I have, when you enter my house, you pass by two statues of Kuan Yin.
2:57.6	So every time I go out, every time I go in, I'm reminding myself of mercy, peace, and grace. And so imagine ancient people lived that way. They had rituals and they had
3:13.6	deities. And it wasn't that they were foolish and they didn't know how to measure things.
3:19.8	It was more that they had a living internal life and they knew how to imagine things.
3:25.3	So I don't know, courage has to do with heart in a way, but the heart does many, many
3:31.7	things.
	...

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