Mitra Politi (left) with his SunDancer pendant from The Winged Ones collection by Parashakti (right).
When one imagines the characteristics of a Healer, they typically envision a soothing voice, a balanced presence, and a tranquil demeanor. Mitra Politi is a force of nature who embodies all of these qualities, and they’re just as powerfully felt in the text of his new book, “Insights: Steps to Truth.”
In this book, Mitra covers lessons learned in his 20 years as a Spiritual Guide, Doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and Spiritual Director at Rythmia Life Advancement Center in Costa Rica, where our paths crossed for the second time. Our first meeting took place 15 years ago, when I was co-leading a retreat at PachaMama in Costa Rica.
To truly hear the message of their Soul, one is invited to embark on a vision quest that can be guided in many different ways, such as Mitra and I have done together at Rythmia. It has been a great honor to learn, witness and recently step into assisting in Mitra’s powerful and transformative ceremonial teachings. At the retreat center, he leads thousands of Souls through life-changing experiences.
“The name of the book captures the essence of the work, which is to provide glimpses of understanding into our mental, emotional, and spiritual side, to evoke an evolution and an awakening,” Mitra says. “It is to bring a person to a place where old energies are liberated. [Healing trauma] is about discerning how to remove that block gracefully. Not focusing on the problem, but the purpose. I want to guide people into their potential.”
Insights into “Insights”
Mitra’s profound ability to develop a deep, personal connection to one’s Spirit shines bright in “Insights: Steps to Truth.” The book is divided into 36 relatable, pertinent, and comprehensive chapters about various life circumstances, including Change, Pain, Happiness, Freedom, Healing, Relationships, Harmony, and even Death. It illuminates all aspects of the human condition, from innate fears to greatest pleasures.
The front and back covers of Mitra’s first book “Insights: Steps to Truth”, published Sept. 26, 2020.
“Within the book, there are layers,” Mitra explains. There are a lot of hidden instructions for the spiritual path and how to help ourselves navigate this vast journey, otherwise known as the road back home.”
Perhaps most prominent in the tone of Mitra’s book is his dedication to utmost integrity. He does not pander via the “motivational speaker” role, rather he humbly converses with the reader in a way that feels divinely personal.
“I want people to know their own being and to have the courage to look from within, but beyond the story of the past and the future,” he says. “I want them to develop this specific intimacy with their own soul, their own being, to explore that gift creation gave us that we forget to have contact with. My wish is that people start to discover that phenomenon within themselves.”
Mitra believes that meditation plays an integral role in forging a connection to creation and to our inner being. In many ways, his book even acts as a roadmap for those seeking guidance on their meditation journey.
“An insight is an event that happens in our consciousness that changes us forever,” says Michael B. Beckwith, author and founder of the Agape International Spiritual Center. “Mitra, a gifted healer, not only facilitates insights in others, but continues to be available to his own inner revelations as well. This book is evidence of both. They are recorded insights that shifted him, put in a form that will shift others, including you. Now dive in and be transformed again and again.”
Embracing its versatility, the book is capable of serving as a touchstone for a beginner’s daily meditation practice or as a universal guide for experienced meditators who perhaps want to reacquaint themselves with the purpose for their practice.
For Mitra, the latter largely served as inspiration for his writings.
“I was writing the book to myself actually, that’s how the idea started,” Mitra reflects. “It was supposed to be a notebook in which I could write different insights that would bring me to truth and understanding. I would open the book, read it, and meditate with it.”
Mitra on Meditation & Mindfulness
Mitra’s journey as spiritual guide began as early as his 20s, when he took a trip to India with the hopes of finding meaning through introspection, immersion in ancient methodology, and cultural exposure.
“Many aspects of my personality fell apart from my interaction with reality there, but at the same time I saw my ego dissolve and something else appear,” Mitra remembers. “I didn’t know what was happening. I experienced it but couldn’t explain it, so I started to dive more into meditation, Chinese medicine, acupuncture.”
And so began a 25-year-long (and counting) journey toward developing integrative mindfulness methods, discovering new truths, and disseminating these worldly teachings.
To date, Mitra’s mantra for how to differentiate the importance of meditation from that of other forms of conscious communication is as follows: “Prayer is talking to the creator. Meditation is listening to creation. In the deep sense of it, it creates a dialogue. The dialogue is a subtle layer inside of us.”
As a supporter of the Dance of Liberation™ movement therapy practice and carrier of our token SunDancer Winged Ones power object, he acknowledges the various forms of meditation available to us as well.
“Dance is what we call ‘dynamic meditation,’ and it serves as a helpful transition for Western understanding,” Mitra says. “Parashakti is the Ultimate Dancer, because to me, the Ultimate Dancer is she who can lose herself completely within the dance. The Ego moves aside, making room for connection to creativity.”
Mitra maintains that meditation unravels layer after layer of our inner narrative, starting with our thinking process, personality, and emotional system. Underneath that is our light and our being, and from there we must shed light on the parts that require healing. Once that is achieved, we can open the dialogue with creation, thus allowing us to hone this divine relationship.
“I wish for humanity to discover the divine particles that are within all of us,” Mitra says. “For each person to reach their divine potential, they must know it exists within them and change will come.”
Life as the Ultimate Teacher
Though Mitra has decades of professional training in acupuncture, Chinese medicine, and spiritual healing, nothing has quite prepared his expertise like life itself. Mitra is surrounded by divine pursuits in all aspects of his life. In addition to his tenure at Rythmia, he has the privilege of belonging to an ecological and spiritual community called PachaMama.
“Living in a spiritual community is to live in a garden that supports oneself to do spiritual work,” Mitra explains of its benefits. “Of course, we can do it anywhere, but sometimes the impact we get from the outside can make it harder. Living in a community, where everyone shares this same goal, there’s more support. We’re speaking the same language.”
As a father to an 11-year-old daughter, he finds some of his greatest lessons come from parenthood itself.
“There are teachings in being a father, how to support the soul that is coming into the world, how to protect it, how not to protect it too much,” he reflects. “In Chinese medicine, they say being a parent is like growing a tree. If you trim the branches too much, the tree will not grow. If you don’t trim them at all, it will grow wild. You need the correct balance so the tree will be strong and fruitful. Being a parent is to walk on that thin line of understanding.”
This combination of life experience and professional practice are what inspire the various chapters of his book. Furthermore, they are what make him a valuable asset to the integrative teachings that define Rythmia.
“Rythmia is on the cutting edge of transformation work,” he says. “It offers an ancient way of healing for Western understanding. It offers a very safe and stable approach to radical, potent healing.”
It is truly such an honor to reconnect with such a kindred spirit and soul brother in my current residency at Rythmia. Mitra and I find flow in the ways our practices complement one another: from the music and movement of Dance of Liberation™ to the stillness and serenity of his own workshops. Much like the trademark teachings of Eagle medicine that my own practice is based around, Mitra finds the bird to be a poignant metaphor for achieving consciousness.
“The bird represents ultimate freedom, an out-of-body experience,” he explains. “Eagle is the bird of the Heavens, there’s something even more celestial about it. As humans, we fixate on detail too often and too much. The bird reminds us of higher perspective.”
Though his book was just released on Sept. 26, Mitra is already looking to the future for his prose.
“I would like to continue to bring more tools from within myself that can support humanity,” Mitra says. “And at the same time, I’d like to do the work I need to do with myself and let it grow parallel. As I tend to my part of the story, then I can see how it is unfolding just by me following the right steps, not by me demanding how it will unfold. This is the process that brought me to my book. It didn’t just happen, it evolved out of me following these steps.”
Mitra’s book, “Insights: Steps to Truth”, is now available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Apple Books.
You can read praise for the book on the website HERE.
Interested in familiarizing yourself more with Mitra’s teachings? Try out his FREE guided meditation, Resting Into Your Life Force.
He is also featured in the recent documentaries “Thrive II” and “The Medicine.”
Mitra offers transformational workshops, as well as private coaching for entrepreneurs and CEOs interested in bringing a holistic focus to their work in the world.
Parashakti’s shamanic healing work is born of more than two decades of experience facilitating workshops, trainings, and retreats around the world, in Los Angeles, New York, Mexico, Bali, Guatemala, Indonesia, Israel, and Greece. As a lifelong dancer, her path as a healer followed a severe injury – a period of what is often called shamanic dismantling, after which her mission shifted towards healing. Over the last 20 years, Parashakti has developed the Seven Foundations and the Dance of Liberation™, as maps for her spiritual practice, living and breathing these foundations in daily ritual. Dance of Liberation™ has been practiced by over 10,000 dancers around the globe. It’s was born of a mission to help people experience ecstasy – without taking it.
Above all, Parashakti is dedicated to serving community and creating a sacred container where people feel safe enough to experience their deepest essences, honor their voices, and shine their brightest light. Join her on the Dance floor: www.parashakti.org