Welcome to the Living Myth podcast with Michael Mead,

where this shifting, changing world is looked at from a mythic perspective.

Beginning with the idea of die before you die, Mead describes how a little death can lead to a deeper sense of knowledge

and a greater appreciation for life. Our encounters with sorrow, disappointment, and loss can be revalued as ways in which the ego

self dies a little and the deeper self becomes more revealed. Sharing two powerful stories

and a selection of poems, Mead shows how the more thoroughly we shed false aspects of ourselves, the more we can redeem

our lives and sound our unique note in the world. So the idea is that we're supposed to die as we go along, right?

That when we get the last, the exit is called Big D. Death, because you don't come back for a while.

But on the way to Big D. Death,

there's a lot of little deaths, and the little deaths are the illnesses, the loss of a loved one,

the car crashes, the loss of a career, the loss of a marriage, you know, the time when your

children walk away and won't come back, whatever it is that acts like a blow,

it's supposed to be dealt with, accepted as a death.

And what's supposed to die is not ourselves, but an aspect of our ego.

Ego being the fixed attitude that pretended it knew what it was doing and everything was going to be okay

is supposed to from the blows of life go okay I give up I am overwhelmed I can't take this I'm falling into sorrow and slowly that sense of ourselves that's limited is supposed to die

and not that we then become empty, but then the other part of ourselves

comes into life more fully, which the joy of the child. I work with, for years, I've worked with

severely at-risk youth, like South Central L.A. and Chicago and all kinds of places. And these are

kids who are around death all the time and tell the truth that people who kill people.

They have that kind of death too,

because when you kill someone else, you have a death

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