The Mycelial Mat
A poem about our networked Spirit
Focused signal
With all the heart
With all the soul
With all the mind
I am. Ina’ha.
Love alive in yearning
Heavening and earthing
Feedback looping
Circuits of joy-truth
Love gone viral
Let go
Be infected.
Commentary
Bottom line up front: The Mycelial Mat is my favorite metaphor for our uniquely female leadership network that is alive, expansive, invisible, instinctive, and incredibly powerful. Fluid patterns of our hearts and souls connect in the raw energy of the present now. A force of nature. The poem invokes holy scripture and Aramaic of this active force in Spirit.
Longer story: The vast fractal network of women power to me feels like a mycelial mat. Just to level set on this concept, mycelia are the threads of fungi that weave through the forest floor and soil and help decompose all the leaves and dead material and turn it back into food for the plants. These underground networks are the ecological foundation of what we see above ground. We just see the mushrooms – the “fruit” of the mycelial mat. Some folks (not me) were surprised to discover how vast (Largest organism is a fungus) and the fact they communicate (Language of fungi derived from their electrical spiking activity). Incredibly soil geeky stuff!
I know The Mycelial Mat as a network of women power is real, too, even though it is invisible. It is experiential, beyond emotions into the realm of knowing in an embodied way. I bet you can imagine a few of your soul sisters now and even if you have not talked for years, you can feel them in your heart. Your conversation would pick up today like time did not exist. You can send a couple word text and know you are experiencing the same thing. It is beautiful.
So to dig in a bit, I have some favorite earth-geeky visualizations to illustrate how I imagine The Mycelial Mat of female power. See what you think.
The first visualization is a data fractal-networky thing. It is an animation of a small set of soil chemistry data, which is so far beyond over-the-top nerdy I will leave it at that and you can fearlessly click above to see how touchable and cute it is. You can even pull on one of the little nodes and it will bounce back! I imagine this animation in dynamic growth and movement , electrified and multiplying and alive (maybe someone knows of one - please please please show me and post below). Meanwhile, I will check with my soil data nerds and see what we can do! Also, give it a second to load - soil is complex and it is coming from a slightly old system. :-)
The second visualization evokes the raw power of Mother Earth vibe. If you click on Earth on the bottom left, you can mess with the dials and see all kinds of raw complex Gaia power animations. The ocean currents, the waves, wind at various heights above the earth, and more. It is breathtaking to see our planet like that and think about how small it looks on screen and know that little swirling spot of wind way far away could be a Cat 5 hurricane wiping out beaches and changing the landscape. Sometimes when I am feeling particularly “hormonal,” the force of emotions inside me feels like some of those wind animations. Maybe you know what I mean.
So, both of these visualizations together is what The Mycelial Mat feels like to me. The poem paints the dream of what my soul aches for - everyone in Spirit-Truth unity. I am going to do my best to send my electrical impulses of joy into this beautiful networked force of nature we have. The latent power is there if we tap it.
“For all that is secret will eventually be brought into the open, and everything that is concealed will be brought into light and made known to all.” Yeshua, LK 8:17 NLT