This episode of Living Myth considers how a total solar eclipse can have the effect of reinforcing the now common idea that we are each but a mere speck on a small planet orbiting a relatively unimportant star within a random and meaningless universe. Or it can be a revelation that reassures our souls that we are secretly connected to the whole living cosmos.
A total solar eclipse has the paradoxical quality of hiding the sun, while also revealing aspects of its true nature. At totality, the sun appears as it truly is, a star amongst the other stars. At totality, it looks more like a living, breathing thing, rather than a bright, solid orb.
Despite the increase of cynicism, and the rise of nihilism, our souls have an inborn expectation to have profound experiences of luminosity and the hidden unity of life. The numinous appears as something uncanny and mysterious that gives us a sense of the presence of the Divine and awakens a deeply felt intuition of the rightness of a situation or an event. Within such a moment, the habitual distinction that we make between inner and outer, between subjective and objective, between dream and reality breaks down to reveal the living cosmos and our own lives under one eclipsed light.
For a moment of indefinite duration, our attention is pulled away from the increasingly divided and polarized state in which we live, and the world suddenly makes sense. On one level, we barely matter. On another level, what matters most to us turns out to matter to the world as well.
Epiphanies are occasions of unexpected benediction and blessing during which meaning can flood us with a felt sense of the wholeness and the holiness of life. As wise people used to say, the whole world reveals itself to be a form of living truth. An eclipse of the sun can be seen as a gift, as a collective moment of eternity waiting and wanting to be seen by the inner eyes trying to open from within each and all of our souls.
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Episode 365 - Kairos Time
Episode 364 - The Sacred Fifth
Episode 363 - Myths of Creation and Re-Creation
Episode 362 - Darkness and the Light
Episode 361 - The Stream of Knowledge
Episode 360 - Ancient Myths, Modern Science
Episode 359 - The Necessity of Imaginatioin
Episode 358 - The Origins of Gratitude
Episode 357 - The Wisdom of the Butterfly
Episode 356 - The Furies in Myth
Episode 355 - The Purpose Seeded in You
Episode 354 - The Light Within Dark Times
Episode 353 - Roots of Inner Peace
Episode 352 - A World on Fire
Episode 351 - Oracle at the Center
Episode 350 - Two Agreements of the Soul
Episode 349 - What the Soul Sees
Episode 348 - Soul on Trial
Episode 347 - Beyond Anxiety
Episode 346 - Facing Inner Fears
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