Carry That Weight: On Mythic Burdens and Cosmic Supports

There is a weight to modern existence — perhaps you've felt it. In a world in which social and environmental crises only seem to be deepening and our familial, communal and spiritual support systems are steadily crumbling, individuals are buckling under the weight. This weight is not simply metaphorical. When the web of relationships that traditionally hold human culture together is fractured, then sociocultural, ecological, and even cosmic burdens are funneled to individuals to carry. We often try to tackle these burdens on our own — but they are far too big for one person to bear. Traditional cultures, by contrast, tend to be constructed around networks of support — not only in their sociocultural and spiritual systems, but in their understanding of a cosmological and ecological mandala of animate forces, gods and goddesses and spirit helpers that literally bear weight. So animate traditions invoke various weight bearers, from turtles to elephants to the great mother goddess herself — who is known as the 'support' of everything that is. Such figures invite us into a deeper vision of support that is not generated or borne by us alone and that requires that we rethink the human role in the web of life. In such relational visions, people are not gods. They have responsibilities to the web of life, but they are not responsible for bearing everything. The tendency of the modern individualist mind to put itself at the center of the cosmos and try to bear universal burdens on its own has roots that go back to the creation story that lives at the heart of western history, a story that imbues individual beings with the greatest burden of all — the burden of salvation. If we look closely this unconscious burden is still at play everywhere, across the social and political spectrum, in wellness narratives and psychotherapeutic narratives, and even in the stories we tell about how it's our imperative to 'save the world.' Perhaps it's time to unpack this deeply rooted burden and regrow it as something else. Featuring a beautiful telling of the story of Sky Woman by Mohawk Chief Beverly Cook, and original music from Beya, Balladir, Olivia the Bard, Hummbbugggg, Victor Sakshin and Marya Stark, This episode dives deep into the roots of the cosmic burdens that individuals in modern culture bear, and explores what it means to redistribute the burden as we find cosmic, ecological, and communal support.

Support the show