How can we go through the journey of transforming reality? In this episode of Disrupt Reality, host Tonya Dawn Recla is joined by guest Monica Harris as they talk about transforming reality and challenging what we have been fed to believe is true. Monica shares her unique experience as a gay black woman and how reality has been distorted on multiple levels for her. Despite her experience, Monica emphasizes how we have so much in common, and it’s up to us to start rejecting the distortion of our reality and the lies and come together. Join Tonya and Monica in today’s episode to know more about transforming reality.
Hello, everyone. This is Tonya Dawn Recla, your Super Power Expert. And I am excited about today’s episode. I love my job. I get to talk to the coolest people and today’s absolutely no exception. I’ve been excited about this conversation. Today we’re talking to Monica Harris about transforming reality. Now, this is so perfect, folks, really. Her book is Reality Bites: Insights on Bridging the American Divide. She sits in this beautiful space. She’s a self-admitted recovering lawyer and really challenging that, this disruption kind of dialogue, challenging what we’ve been fed to believe is reality. And we could get into all kinds of conspiracy theories on it. But as you know, from my show, you know the personal responsibility in that is our willingness to say, “Wait a second. This doesn’t feel good. I don’t know that it has to be that, or why does it have to be that way? Or who says it has to be that way? And what does that serve?”
You can see how those kinds of transforming reality threads start to emerge when we look at those things. And Monica’s existence is really to challenge both those bounds. She challenged the bounds and then to be able to speak to that, what does that mean? What does that walk look like? And all of that fun stuff that we talk about here at Super Power Experts, because it takes real courage to turn around and look your world in the face and say, “Yeah, I don’t know about this. I’m not sure I want to be complicit in the perpetuation of this any longer.” And then, of course, all the growth that comes with that as you try to swim against the tide. That’s the conversation today, is what that walk looks like. Hopefully in that, we can give you some encouragement that it’s well worth it, as we can speak to transforming your reality in a really powerful and very actualized way.
I mean, we’re not talking fluffy, like, “Oh, I just think it’s better.” It transforms in front of your face and what that walk looks like. I’m excited to have Monica share with you her wisdom and her experiences and just this being that she’s cultivated, that makes all of us want to jump in and go, “Yes, more of this, please!” So without further ado, please join me in welcoming to the show, Monica Harris. Welcome, Monica.
It’s a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
It is our pleasure, for sure. We’re going to jump right in with our first question, which is what are your superpowers?
Well, I think my superpower is that I have a unique experience as a gay black woman. I’ve been gifted with the reality to see how our, or excuse me, I’ve been gifted with the perspective to see how our reality has been distorted on multiple levels. Not just with respect to race, but with respect to sex, with respect to sexual orientation. And it’s given me the ability to see that we have so much more in common than we have that separates us. But when we are siloed in our little boxes of I’m a straight white man, I’m a transgender Latino person, I’m a bisexual black woman, when we’re siloed into these different boxes, we don’t see what brings us together.
But the intersection of being a gay black woman, and I’ll say this, I was once a Republican and then I became a Democrat and then I became an Independent and now I’m nothing, so I also have a political cross-section. It’s given me a bird’s eye view of just reality that I don’t think a lot of people have these days because most people are very pigeonholed.
We could unpack this one for probably years. You and I just need to sit together and just talk for hours. There’s so much power in what you’re talking about. And that vantage point only comes when we’re willing to connect into some element of coherence. For some people, it’s oneness. For some people, it’s God. For some people, it’s fear. For some people, it’s the divine. But for others, it’s just energy. We can connect in the fact that we’re all human. We should probably work together, just this general kind of niceness kind of place that I think has been forgotten. When we have that vantage point. I’m sure you’re like me. Sometimes I feel like I’m always looking at people with confused dogs look, like, how are you not seeing this? And explaining it and explaining it.
But really and ultimately, this is what led to my exploration of the multidimensionality, because some things I just simply can’t explain any other way than to say, “Well, all I can say is that this is how it feels.” This is the frequency it feels that you’re speaking at. And this is the frequency it feels like I’m speaking at. And they’re just not matching up and giving some allowances for that. But there’s this whole experience in it that you discovered. I love the fact that you’re speaking to this siloing because I think we’re seeing the result of allowing people to believe that their little version of reality represents the whole. Because then when we hear from other people who are saying, “Well, but my reality is it’s inconceivable for us to fathom”.
Something must be wrong with that other person because it doesn’t fit into your reality. That’s psychological toxicity that we can unpack for decades in there. What was your journey like with discovering that?
Well, I think one of the turning points for me was, and I write about this in my book, it’s a parable. I think it’s a Hindu parable, about the four blind men and the elephant. I don’t know if you recall reading that.
I did. It’s one about eating it?
Yes, exactly. As the parable goes, four blind men stumbled upon an elephant. They’d never seen an elephant before. They’re like, didn’t know what this animal was. Each man decided to feel a different part of the elephant to determine what it looked like. The first man felt its tusk and determined that the elephant was smooth and long and pointed at the end. The second man touched its trunk, thought the elephant felt, this animal felt like a giant python. The third man felt its leg, though it was, the animal was a large hairy tree stump. And the fourth man felt its tail and thought, “Oh, an elephant is a thin snake with a brush on the end.” My point of this is that each man had an accurate perception of an individual part of the elephant. That goes to your idea of siloing.
To give a very specific example of race, as a black person it’s easy to put yourself in a silo and tell yourself that the world is extremely racist. White people are extremely hostile to the civil rights of black people. And, to a certain extent, that’s true. There is racism. I have felt it throughout my life. I continue to feel it. Not as much as I did when I was growing up. That’s another part of this story, though. But the bottom line is that is a reality. That is a piece of the elephant. But like the blind men, that is only one piece of our reality. You see, they had an incomplete picture of the entire elephant because they hadn’t touched all of its parts. What I like to do is I like to tweak this parable and say, “What if instead of feeling the elephant for themselves, the blind men asked someone else who was gifted with vision, who wasn’t blind, to just describe the elephant to them?”
Now, imagine what would happen if the person describing the elephant to these blind men was careless and told them about every piece of the elephant’s body, except its tail. The blind men would go around thinking, “Oh, I know what an elephant looks like. It has these three parts.” But they wouldn’t know about the tail. And if someone like you or me came along, years later, after having our awakening, leaving one part of our lives and moving into another part of our lives, and we realize, “Hey, there’s something else going on in this reality. There’s a tail out there.” Hell, people, they wouldn’t want to believe you. They couldn’t allow themselves to believe you.
Bringing it back to the race analogy, as a black person I have seen so much anger and so much passion in the Black Lives Matter movement, which is, it’s valid. It’s absolutely valid. But it’s just one small part of our reality because I have learned now as a black woman who’s living in Montana, a state that’s 95% white, I’ve learned that there’s so much more to the experience, our racial reality than we’re being told. The world is not a scary place for black people. Racism is just, it’s a small portion of the experience that we have, or should be having, as black people. I think that was a turning point for me, coming to Montana and realizing that my racial reality has been distorted.
Similarly, as I’ve tweaked that parable to the blind men whose reality was being distorted by someone who carelessly didn’t describe all parts of the elephant and I think right now, I hope I’m not digressing, but I think the media is distorting our racial reality. They’re making us believe that white people and black people simply cannot get along and that the divide in this country is insurmountable. I refuse to believe that because I’m living proof. I see it every day, that our reality is being distorted. We are one people. We have so much in common. It’s up to us to start rejecting the distortion of our reality and the lies and come together.
Well, amen, sister. That’s what I’m hearing right now. You’re speaking my jam in every cell of my being. I love the elephant story. Justin and I taught that to counter-intelligence agents when we taught at the Counter-Intelligence Special Agent Course. I’ll share that story here in a second. We’re going to go for a quick break. But Monica, before we do, where can people go to find out more about you to learn more about your transforming reality journey?
You can visit my website at letsgetunplugged.com. And my book, Reality Bites: Insights on Bridging the American Divide is available on Amazon. It will be available on other platforms later this year, but for right now, I’m stuck with Amazon.
Beautiful, beautiful. Folks, stay with us. We’re going to be right back. We’re talking with Monica Harris today about transforming reality. Stay tuned.
To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.
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