Polyphasic: a favorite new word (new for me, a couple of months ago). It’s a quick way to say complicated things about multiple layers of reality (many phases of existence) – in an individual or in a whole culture.
It came up when I was listening for what to say at the beginning of a new calendar year. I looked back at what I’d said in previous years, and was struck by the radically different tone and focus of different pieces. They all came together under the banner of polyphasic: the ponderous work of untangling old ideas and decisions (Resolution Means Flow), the detached exhilaration of sensing a blank slate (The Complexity of Now), and the soft meditative quality of feeling the expansive depth of everything (Midwinter Dreamscape). These are not mutually exclusive, which is the beauty of being polyphasic. Letting the heart-mind move up and down the scale of experience, feeling them all as a single chord, makes a symphony of every experience.
Fully absorbing the polyphasic idea – the material, conceptual and subtle levels of every phenomenon – expands reality. The most mundane mechanical duties can take on a transcendent glow when felt as part of a larger dream. The most unattainable-seeming heart’s desire, whether a direct desire or a wish for freedom from something undesired, can become grounded, enacted, enlivened, in the first step – even if the desire, paradoxically, is to become free of the hooks of desire (the mirror of fear). Hard-edged calculations soften in the larger light, still playing their creative role but not overwhelming the centered peace in everything else. It’s a mind-body-spirit coherence, a commingling of resolution-contemplation-exhilaration, a way to move purposefully and gracefully, from a place of inner changelessness.
I’ve heard “Happy New Year” so many times in my life, it’s hard to hear it fresh, in full benevolent energy, especially in times so crowded with possibilities for anxiety, fury, and despair. But that’s exactly what I wish to say, at every level. Truly: Happy New Year. The beauty can bloom from the tiniest inner seed. May your heart’s most beautiful wishes bloom – for your own joy and for the waves they make in our shared world.
Photo credit: Darren Danks via stockxchange