“Love in the Time of Corona”
4/13/20
Wow. What an amazing time to be alive! I’ve been looking hard at my own feeling of ungroundedness inside of Chaos and catching myself to breathe deeply in the Here and Now. How can we embrace this time and be grateful for change especially when the outcome is unknown? By engaging with what arises, can we use this as an opportunity to be present in the face of fear and to be courageous enough to keep our eyes open? Pema Chodron in “When Things Fall Apart” reminds us to be “intimate with our fear.” “Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth. If we commit ourselves to staying right where we are, then our experience becomes very vivid. Things become very clear when there is nowhere to escape.” (1) She asks us to do what her teacher Chogyam Trungpa taught her and to “lean into the sharp points” and “invite in what we usually avoid”.
We are in the midst of cataclysmic shifts in our way of Being. We have choices and this is the moment before we act, where we can take a step back, slow down, listen to the lyrics and decide how we want to live for the rest of our lives. The metal rat year has been apropos of the events unfolding around us. We’ve been scurrying like mice, collecting resources and hoarding away to survive. These struggles could lead to fear-driven stock-piling or creative, intelligent and resilient acts of generosity. It’s a new decade, a new cycle, a new way of being.
In Chinese medicine, the metal phase (five phase-model of energetic physiology) relates to the lungs contracting, bringing back the breath, inspiring inwards. The other side of metal relates to the large intestine, letting go of crap, releasing what’s unnecessary and refining our character. We’ve been collecting toilet paper, fearful of what we may see come out. And then there’s the issue of the shaken-up first chakra needing to be in control too (infant defecation panic-regression). What will be released in this new era are outdated operating systems. This ‘down time’ is our planet defragmenting from un-necessary and non-useful software programs that don’t serve us any longer. It’s time to clean up our hard-drive.
Physiologically, what happens to our planet affects all of us and that is clearer now, than ever before. We had another bad fire season in California. Australia was on fire. Mother earth is inflamed. The Amazonian and Indonesian forests, the lungs of our planet, are being burned and cut down faster than ever before. Our coral reefs, the lungs of our oceans, are dying off. COVID-19, a damp-heat disease, is the reaction to severe dryness from autumn. The elements are searching for harmony. We humans are acting like a virus, reproducing exponentially and killing the living biome of Gaia. In the last century, we've killed off 500 species; her living cells; her other children. In the throes of the 6th mass extinction, we have been given a final opportunity to right our wrongs and steer the ship back to the heart of life itself. What will we choose?
Returning to Pema Chodron, she reminds us to “widen our circle of compassion”. While everything around us seems uncertain and scary, it’s helpful to remember that “this very moment Is the perfect teacher”. Will we live in paralyzing fear or be courageous enough to change the course of history to a vision of planetary health, as that’s truly what our own lives depend on.
Chodron, Pema. When Things Fall Apart. Shambhala publications, 1997.