Envelope

 

A few days ago, I saw a young woman in remarkably high heels, “dressed to the 9’s”. It reminded me of being in my 20’s when I would sometimes dress to the 9’s, heels and all, and go out to dance with my women friends. I still remember how full of delight that envelope of my life was. But now it would be empty, a flattened-out envelope if I were to try to recreate it.

 

In my 30’s we had babies and made a home that became an envelope full of love and protection and potential. It stayed that way for years. We called that envelope the “pink house” (because the house was pink!). Eventually, the energy, (shakti) of the pink house envelope flattened out and it was time to move on. If we were to try to go back to it somehow, it would be a bit ridiculous, trying to squeeze who are now into that envelope of then.

I could draw the same envelope analogy about career, business, teaching, pastimes, and practices. Like everyone else, I have been co-creating envelopes that fill with shakti, envelope me, and eventually flatten out.

Maybe because it is the New Year (or the Christmas after-party) I’ve been contemplating “what do I love, now?” What envelope or envelopes does my heart want to maintain, create, or re-create now? I have had so many heart-made and shakti filled envelopes in my life.  Some are still full, and some emptied out long ago. What are the longings of my heart now? I know the envelope of my heart itself felt a bit flattened out by 2020. And I want it full again. I long for a renewed fullness of heart.

The Saiva-Shakta philosophy that underpins Anusara Yoga says that longings are God / Shakti (operating in me, as me) yearning to create and fill envelopes. The Invisible longing to make Herself visible by slowing, contracting, enfolding, and encoding Herself to become embodied life. She creates an envelope of Herself and fills it with Herself. 

She creates “mom-velopes”.  My mom used to hand me envelopes full of cash when we lived in the pink house and never had enough money. When we would get together, she would slide an envelope to me (she seemed to think I should keep it a secret, which I kind of loved doing for some reason). She was being “mom” – generous and unstinting. Now I think of the Divine Feminine / God, as a bestower of mom-velopes. (And, for the record, I now give my sons mom-velopes)

The next part of this post is philosophy. It is fascinating – to me at least - but stop reading here if that is not your love. And go create or maintain some good envelopes and fill them with the wild generosity of your heart. Keep it simple and doable. Call a friend. Clean your house and make it beautiful. Pour yourself into a creative project. Like that. It is time for all of us to momvelope the world. 

OK – back to the Big Picture painted by Tantra. Shakti steps down through a vibratory spectrum, from pure energy to root and bone, to become our manifest world, to become you and me. This philosophy tells us that we are unbounded light with a gravity laden root.

As an analogy, consider Joan Ruvinsky’s interpretation of Sutra 6 from the Recognition Sutras:

Way up north in the Arctic there is a huge bay called James Bay at the mouth of which there are mega hydroelectric dams that capture an astronomical amount of energy that gets sent through miles and miles of thick high-tension wires that deliver the power to step-down transforming stations all over the countryside with tall cylinders and insulators that are fenced in and decorated with “danger high voltage “signs. And there are smaller wires that lead out from here along the highways and byways and then to the road right outside your house where there is a pole and a little gray canister which itself has a wire leading out of it right into your house and you plug in your toaster, make toast, plug in your washing machine, and do the laundry, charge your cell phone and computer to communicate with everybody everywhere. And we call this reducing valve Maya it would be all over for you and your cell phone if you plugged it in at the mouth of James Bay. Without Maya’s reducing valve action, the teacup would be shattered by the ocean.

Unbounded light and love, like James Bay, or a vast Ocean of Light, uses Maya as a contracting valve to step down and modify and moderate Her flow all the way down to my feet and toes at the bottom of the of the tattva chart where I live and breathe.

 Just so shakti reduces herself, folds herself into a multitude of momvelopes most wondrous. Including you and me.

She flows into the rivulets and arteries and lymphatic channels of my body. Condenses into central channel, sushumna, slender as a spider thread, brilliant as a million moons. She modifies Her hugeness so that me and my cell phone don’t blow into 1 million pieces. So that the teacup of my embodiment is not shattered by the ocean. So that Her Love is encoded and enfolded into a manageable envelope of embodiment.  In this way I can begin to see my small-self humanness as a kindness and a goodness rather than seeing myself as a mistake, an accident on the earth, a problem to be solved.

 

Here is another way to think of it: when a high frequency sound is slowed to a lower frequency, we can hear it and enjoy it as music, language, poetry and so on. Just so, when the Sacred Mystery slows Her vibration, it allows the sky to touch the earth, it lets the earth hear the sky. These two, like lovers, continually and perennially meet at the “place in the middle,” (the hridaya) said to be located at the heart center of each of us.

 “The soul reveals itself to itself through gesture of hand, foot, spine, face and body. The invisible loves the visible.” (Radiance Sutras)

This process of enfolding into manifest physical form takes tremendous vitality. It is no casual thing to fold the sky into a root. It is no small feat to genetically code pure energy into conception and new life. The vitality and vast energy of the sky that is coiled within us is always yearning to expand to the freedom of unbounded light and flight. That is the essence of the story from Hindu mythology, about Garuda. the eagle-god who is Vishnu’s mount. In the great epic Mahabharata, Garuda first bursts forth from his egg and appears as a huge cosmic energy, so vast it frightens even the gods who beg him for mercy. Garuda hears their plea and as an act of love (for God so loved the world) reduces himself in size and energy, steps down to a manageable dimension.

Often, we live and breathe in a very narrow band of the vibratory spectrum. Small envelopes. Or envelopes that long ago flattened out but we still shuffle them around on the desk of our life. Or maybe we just stopped trying to r-e-a-c-h past inertia and fill an envelope that is still alive and waiting for attention.

I have had fun contemplating the year ahead in this way. Asking myself “what envelopes of possibility are waiting for me to co-create, renew, refill? Is there a new “never-before-seen” envelope that is drawing my curiosity and excitement? Or an envelope that wants to be renewed – but needs some love and attention? 

Asana practice can be a powerful method to push out the edges consistently and repeatedly of what we think we are. Much bigger than “this body only”. And yet, this body too is a miracle of a momvelope.