Episode 443 - Facing Inner Fears

Living Myth

Michael Meade

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

4.9 • 944 Ratings

🗓️ 9 July 2025

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On this episode of Living Myth Michael Meade tells a fairy tale about a realm that is rapidly becoming a wasteland because its king has become seriously ill and there is no simple cure. The only way to heal the realm is to find the Water of Life. Doing that requires the seeker let go of all arrogance and accept the condition of not knowing. For only then will the mysterious dwarf provide the guidance and resources that are needed for the quest.

Part of the essential guidance involves learning how to face our deepest fears. And that inevitably brings up each person’s abandonment issues as well as feelings of being inadequate and overwhelmed by what life requires of us. Ultimately, it is only the youngest part of each psyche, the eternal youth and inner initiate that is able to access the wisdom and resources needed to find the Water of Life and return the flow of life to the psychic realm.

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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.
0:21.3	On this episode, Mead tells a fairy tale about a realm that is rapidly becoming a wasteland
0:27.9	because its king has become seriously ill and there is no simple cure.
0:34.2	The only way to heal the realm is to find the water of life.
0:38.3	Doing that requires the seeker let go of all arrogance and accept the condition of not knowing.
0:45.3	For only then will the mysterious dwarf provide the guidance and resources that are needed for the quest.
0:51.3	Part of the essential guidance involves learning how to face our deepest fears,
0:57.3	and that inevitably brings up each person's abandonment issues, as well as feelings of being inadequate
1:03.7	and overwhelmed by what life requires of us. Ultimately, it is only the youngest part of each psyche, the eternal youth and inner initiate,
1:13.6	that is able to access the wisdom and resources needed to find the water of life and return the flow of life to the psychic realm.
1:47.3	Mythic stories depict the universal themes and challenging dilemmas that keep recurring at both individual and collective levels of life. One of the great recurring themes involves images of the wasteland,
1:56.7	in which the barrenness of the land and loss of the sense of the abundance of life
2:04.0	is connected to a curse that has fallen over the people or to the spiritual impotence of a false
2:12.3	leader who has risen to power. The wasteland stands as a symbol for any time in which force far exceeds the
2:22.4	presence of love, and when the narrowing of ideas and diminishing of imagination leaves both the beauty
2:30.2	of the earth and the meaning of human culture in danger of wasting away.
2:36.3	In these mythic terms, we are in a modern wasteland, where human life can easily go to
2:43.7	waste while nature becomes exploited and devastated time after time.
2:50.4	Modern mass culture not only diminishes the importance of the individual human soul,
2:57.1	it also lays waste to the land and drains the earth of all its resources.
3:03.9	In the old stories about the wasteland,
3:07.3	the idea was that the king or the queen or ruler of a society
	...

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