Poetic Revelations: Taking in the Grand Vista

Every now and then, let in the Big

“Our body is a riverbed that our light is just waiting to flow through.”
— Monisha Mittal, on behalf of the Body Voice

This is a weekly publication for heart-centered warriors, swimming through this thing called life. Keeping our hearts and voices intact and open.

SELECTED POEMS

• The Endlessness, Ada Limon

• The Carrying, Ada Limon

Dear Embodied Hearts and Dancing Souls,

There is Giving Thanks and there is Receiving. This week I am receiving the Embrace of girlfriends, receiving the support of neighbors providing pet care, and the hominess of waking up to good friends. May you let your heart Receive all that’s available to come in For You. No Dance Chapel tonight.

On the Spiral. Hit a rough patch the last two weeks as an authority figure in my job raised the temperature on a project to such a high degree that I felt like a lobster in a boiling pot of water. Though I tried keeping my aplomb, fear permeated my mind and kicked a fear response into high gear. I immediately began “over doing” it. Its similar to how the fear of not having enough money can make me over save. I wasn’t listening to the larger energies at play or working in harmony with them. My thrusting and shaping were subconsciously about control.

I stopped when I noticed myself getting exhausted, and the fear still lingering. When I did, I noticed the whole project was stuck. A sign that maybe there were larger forces at work, beyond my control. So why exert the unnecessary energy?

Pausing to take energetic stock is one of the sanests and wisest acts I can take as a professional woman. I am not in control when people with power create a threatening environment. Phooey on me for falling for it.  I let it scare me. The second I stopped and assessed the most useful, whole-body, heart-centered course of action for me (which was to focus on developing the team through communication), the outer energies started to change. We are starting to find movement, and now as a team. 

Is this what ‘Upleveling’ feels like? It was difficult for me to see or feel how this situation was “for me.”  Yet there were subtleties. The weird professional chess game I was in would previously have made me Cower and run away. I would have believed an old story where I didn’t have personal power, value or worth. And I might have tried the whole cycle all over again at another job. This pattern of defeatism has dogged me for 25 years. That’s OK. That’s all I could manage then.

This time, I could see and feel that potential choice point, but I was aware of it without feeling powerless. I kept breathing, finding from center, acting from my Inner Ease. I don’t want to run away now. I want to meet the situation, and ask “What’s in this For me?” The hot temperature is simply acting as an accelerant to clarify this for me. This is progress on the evoluationary spiral.

I have UpLeveled into a new frequency. There is complexity and turbulence but its just “new” and I’m finding my way.

Accepting my Big. So many times, it is our lots as humans that we cannot see the bigger pictures of our lives unfolding. I don’t think we are necessarily meant to see it, by design.

In his book, Zen Mind Beginner’s Mind, Shunryu Suzuki talks about the Bodhisattva’s way of single-minded dedication to experiencing and appreciating your true nature as a railroad track. You are in the railcar riding along.  Your sincerity is the tracks. But then he says:

If you look at the track, you will become dizzy. Just appreciate the sights that you see from the train. That is our way. There is no need for the passengers to be curious about the track.

To me, this is the difference between living our life and getting lost it in “figuring it out” or “getting it right.” But everynow and then, we are given a glimpse of the grand vista. This is happening for me now.

• As I gather with heart friends and we exchanged recent experiences, my voice began putting together my unfolding story. The stillness I went through was a mark of completion. I was no longer willing to put my energies into striving to fill a sense of “bereftness.” Everything is simply happening; I expeirence things I desire All the Time.

• The fire is bringing in aspects of myself I haven’t expressed in a long while. My strategic and analytic acumen for one. The ability to marshall resources for a larger vision is another. This time, I am learning to do this in a team of humans, rather than alone within guarded gates.

• In Vocal Play, my teacher sits up. “There is something different about the expression streaming from you tonight, Monisha,” she says. Usually there is a Divine Child that arises but today I am sensing a Maturity.”

Earlier in a day, in a guided meditation session, it was so easy to finally grasp the essence of the thing. For so long, I pretended I was Small. I couldn’t imagine that I could have something Big in me. But I’ve stopped pretending. Its too much work. I’ve accepted that I have something Big inside.

This is what I want to say to you.

There is a Mystery inside you that is Living you. It is not limited by the knowing you have about yourself.

There is more to us than we can even imagine, let alone “know” about who we are. Its Bigger than our comprehension.

We don’t have to know where it is leading us. We just have to learn how to Dance with it. We pass the leading back and forth, by the way, between the Mystery and ourselves.

Stay #heartwoke. To your exquisite unfolding,

Monisha

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NOTES:

1. No Dance Chapel tonight, 11/21/2023