This episode is available to members of Living Myth Premium. Subscribe today and receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full Living Myth archives of over 480 episodes and a 30% discount on all online events, courses and audio/book titles.

On this episode, Michael Meade brings a focus to issues of trust and betrayal in a time when truth and meaning can be hard to find.

“We live in a time of great challenges and frequent betrayals. When the weather becomes extreme, the political climate is too poisonous to be trusted, and many don't even trust that the world will continue, it is hard not to feel betrayed by life. Because betrayals arise from so many levels and layers of life, more and more people are left, either in the bitter camps of the cynics, in isolating places of denial, or in the fear that there is nowhere left to turn.

Yet, the levels of betrayal are not intended to be the end of the story. Rather, they are the part of the story where we have to turn another way, go deeper into life. Because only through a descent into the depths of our own souls can the sense of betrayal turn back into trust.

When trust and truth go missing in the surface of life, they must be sought at the level of our individual souls. Psychologically, we're being pulled down to the depths of our own souls. Not so that we feel an even deeper sense of loss, but in order that we might let go of false expectations and find the essential truths and the innate aims hidden in our own lives.

Part of the hard truth of the harsh times in which we live involves the realization that many hard attitudes, fixed beliefs and false expectations must be dissolved. Betrayal may be a bitter pill to swallow, but in the alchemy of the soul, it is a medicine that can dissolve infantile expectations, fixated attitudes of the ego, and false expectations about the world and other people.

We experience betrayal in order to find a deeper sense of truth; that is the only way we can turn betrayal back into genuine trust. That is the secret of betrayal, that the treacheries we experience in our lives are secretly intended to bring us to a place of deeper, greater trust in our own selves. And it is by being willing to descend through the tests and trials of betrayal that we arrive at the place where we can trust ourselves and genuinely say we have become part of the truth.”

SUPPORT MOSAIC

Please consider a donation to Mosaic to support the podcast and help us continue our creative efforts to use myth, story and imagination to find ways to heal, renew and restore both culture and nature.

LIVING MYTH PREMIUM

LISTENER COMMENTS

“I cannot recommend this podcast more highly. It is true art/poetry/story medicine and an antidote for the divisive messages surrounding us.” 

"I'm so grateful to have found this podcast.  The way Michael Meade weaves myth and applies it to the current times we live in really helps me to navigate the challenges I've faced."

"The wisdom and deep perspective that flows through Michael Meade is medicine for me in these times of radical change and uncertainty."