This episode of Living Myth is about blindness, both individual and collective, and about the need for genuine visions and visionaries. Western culture, enthralled with the heroic and trapped in the limits of egotism, continues to turn a blind eye to the deeper sense of self and soul that alone can give a renewed sense of vision that can see beyond modern ideas that have come to threaten the future of the Earth.

As long as we see through the lens of the heroic ego, we are likely to remain stuck in the territory of the same old willfulness and predictable blindness that cannot see ways to arrive at a deeper ground of understanding or a greater way to envision the living world. As the philosopher and humanist Erasmus said: "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king." As the naturalist and poet Thoreau once stated: "I would give all the wealth of the world and all the deeds of all the heroes for one genuine vision."

Genuine change requires that we open our inner eyes and see from a deeper place. For, the new shape of the world only comes into view and becomes conscious to us when a vision arises from the darkness around us and from the unseen depths of our own unconscious. It is this kind of transformative vision that breaks through the blindness that both binds and polarizes us.

Something ancient and knowing is trying to catch up to us. And if our souls can stand deeply enough in the river of time, we can receive lost truths and wisdom from the deep well of memory as well as visions of the mostly unseen future. This combination of imaginative vision and deep memory has been the ongoing source of vitality and renewal that visionaries, seers and wounded healers throughout time have drawn upon to give us our true bearings even when the world itself seems to have lost its way.

Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining him for two online events: "Living with Awe, Joy and Gratitude", a free event on November 20 and "Awakening Genius, Living with Purpose", an in-depth workshop on December 6.

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 725 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles.

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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.

This episode begins by examining the rise of "vertical morality" that appears in both Christian communities and conservative politics and has given rise to a "war on empathy." Whereas Jesus famously preached love, mercy and care for the oppressed, vertical morality measures righteousness, not by goodness to others, but rather by something more simplistic and more divisive.

Vertical morality declares that human behaviors are right or wrong based upon what the higher power says. As proponents put it: "Our ethics and behaviors have a duty to please God alone. We must obey by furthering the will of God, no matter the cost to other people." In a religious context, the higher power is God, in politics, it can become an authoritarian leader. As this viewpoint desensitizes people, true believers can justify demonizing all immigrants as criminals, defaming gay and trans people as predators, and condemning political opponents as, not just wrong, but evil.

In direct contrast to vertical morality, Michael Meade proposes vertical imagination as a mostly lost quality of the human soul that would reconnect us to the heights of inspiration, but also keep us connected to the depths of genuine feeling. For the issue is not simply making a steady ascent on the ladder of morality. Rather, the point is for the soul to fully awaken to the process of ascent and descent that keeps Heaven and Earth connected, while it also connects us to the suffering souls of other people and to the all-embracing Soul of the World.

When oriented from the deep sense of self and soul within us, our choices can become truly meaningful and our experiences genuinely unifying, rather than be divisive and traumatizing. In extraordinary times the soul expects to find extraordinary and enlivening experiences, not some final salvation based upon the ladders of morality, but rather many little redemptions found in moments when Heaven and Earth, the eternal and the time bound meet in the wisdom of our waking souls and merciful hearts.

Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online events "The Heart Within the Heart" on October 30 and "Living with Awe, Joy and Gratitude" on November 20.

Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events

You can support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 700 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

If you enjoy this podcast and find it meaningful, 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.

The episode of Living Myth begins with a study on how our brains and our bodies respond to traumatic events. Apparently, our brains do not fully distinguish between something traumatic happening to us directly or something we observe that is harmful to someone else. To our brains a threat is a threat, whether we are actually experiencing it personally or are witnessing it on a personal device. Because humans are essentially social and typically empathic creatures, the same instincts that help connect us to each other can cause us to feel stress and pain by watching almost any kind of traumatic event.

A key issue is that in consuming mass media coverage of the flood of traumatic events that now plague the world, we cannot simply resolve the sense of threat and fear of harm that penetrates us and causes our brains to trigger our fight or flight responses. Our body remains convinced that we are in some kind of danger, yet we can neither completely escape by flight nor effectively engage with fight. As the world becomes more and more chaotic and this process repeats, we become intensely activated, but with nowhere for all the energy to go. We can feel increasingly on the verge of overwhelm as well as physically and emotionally worn down.

Psychologists who were consulted offered helpful suggestions such as setting boundaries on news consumption, calling friends or family members who can have a settling effect on us or spending more time in nature. However, the report also included the statement that under the pressure of repetitive traumatic stress a person's worldview might radically change. This greater fear involved the sense that in the midst of all the chaos people would conclude that life has no real meaning or purpose. However, the idea of an altered worldview can also be seen as our psyche's instinctive way of seeking genuine healing and finding meaningful ways to change the course of both our personal and collective lives.

Ancient wisdom along with ideas of depth psychology suggest that in order to truly change we must start right where we are and accept the mess we are in if we would find deeper understandings and wiser ways of being. For it is precisely in the dark nights of the soul that we can experience revelations of both our deeper sense of self and the regenerative energies that are essential aspects of both nature and the cosmos.

Chaos as disorder and cosmos as regenerative order are the two huge energies that continuously make, unmake and remake the world. As things fall apart, the knowing self within us moves closer to the surface and seeks to become more conscious to us. Seen through the lens of the deeper sense of self and soul, the traumatic events that we experience and/or witness are not simply intended to defeat us or overwhelm us or make us numb, but rather, they are secretly intended to awaken us to a greater understanding of our own inner capacity to change and be part of the life-enhancing, life-creating dynamic through which chaos turns into cosmos, through which we can individually be redeemed from our own darkness and also find ways to contribute to a re-imagination and re-creation of a more coherent, inspired and interconnected sense of human culture.

Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his free online event "The Heart Within the Heart" on Thursday, October 30.

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 700 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

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.