"Regardless of the conditions of the outside world, we are each here to transform our own lives from the inside and become a full expression of our unique soul." So says Michael Meade when he talks about one of his favorite stories, The Tiger's Whisker. This episode of Living Myth includes a full telling of the famous tale of a woman who must face a living tiger in order to cure what ails her soul. What begins as a small village tale opens up to become the endless territory of the human heart that harbors an old sage, a fierce tiger and the need to find a cure for alienation and the lack of love.

Ancient stories depict how each person born carries a precise medicine in their soul. In order to find and activate the inner medicine we need to face and even embrace our inner wounds. Genius is said to hide behind the wound and accepting our early life traumas opens the path to finding our greatest gifts.

Our psychic wounds secretly connect us to the transcendent function in the soul, so that what wounds us also initiates and transforms us. In that sense, the inner wound can be seen as a womb. In going through the wound, we become reborn as an initiate on the path of healing. In a world troubled with collective anxiety and growing fears, it is helpful to know that on a path with heart, fear is the guide and what you truly love is the cure.

Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online event "Kairos Time" on Thursday, June 18.

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 750 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

Along with these free weekly podcasts, you can now read free weekly essays and long form posts by Michael Meade on Substack. Learn more and subscribe at: michaeljmeade.substack.com

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.

In this episode, Michael Meade considers how there are always two stories going on in life. The ongoing drama of what we call the world and the story of the individual soul trying to awaken to a life of meaning and purpose. The two stories are secretly related and become more intensely connected and dramatic during times of upheaval and radical change. When the way we have been taught to view life no longer explains the world in which we live, we are being called to awaken to a greater imagination and deeper understanding of the world around us.

In mythological terms, while one world is collapsing another is secretly forming and waiting to become known. And because we are involved in both stories, we become witnesses to the collapse and potential contributors to the renewal. That kind of imagination does not align with most modern science, which believes that entropy will simply drag us all down in the end anyway; nor does it fit with religious ideas that declare that the end might be near.

In times of chaos what we need to recall and better understand is that the mystery behind it all is the story of collapse and renewal. Mythological stories offer a framework for the essential and necessary process of re-creation. Just as a forest renews when the great trees fall and decompose before the next version can grow. Knowing about this process of collapse and renewal does not make experiencing it less painful or even less confusing. It does give us a mythic and imaginative framework that can help us cope with a world gone wrong, while also developing practices for assisting in the process of rejuvenation and renewal of life on Earth.

Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online event "Kairos Time" on Thursday, June 18.

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 750 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

Along with these free weekly podcasts, you can now read free weekly essays and long form posts by Michael Meade on Substack.

Learn more and subscribe at: michaeljmeade.substack.com

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.

In this episode, Michael Meade explores how each soul born bears a personal story that involves natural gifts intended to be given and an original agreement of the soul that includes an inherent sense of purpose in life. At the same time, each family has fateful issues and inherited plotlines that strongly affect the dependent and defenseless child. The good news is that at each critical time in our lives, we have opportunities to awaken to the original agreement of our soul. The more difficult issue is that we must untangle ourselves from the limits of our family fate.

While all agreements and entanglements with our families can be made more conscious and can be renegotiated; the original agreements of our souls involve the threads of our destiny and are therefore non-negotiable. When the outside world becomes increasingly conflicted and chaotic, we are thrown back upon ourselves. If we are willing to face the fateful elements and early wounds of our life, we find the twist of fate that reveals the destiny that our souls were aimed at all along.

Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online event "Kairos Time" on Thursday, June 18.

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 750 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

Along with these free weekly podcasts, you can now read free weekly essays and long form posts by Michael Meade on Substack. Learn more and subscribe at michaeljmeade.substack.com

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.