Two years ago, which must be about the time when COVID first entered my radar screen, I remember thinking, "I hope we don't fight this virus tooth and nail." By the end of January 2020, it was clear that indeed the virus was being fought, and that major changes were coming. By late February, stress and panic were settling in. I wasn't afraid of the disease, per se, but of the wave of fear I could already see circling the globe. By mid-March, the library, the bus system, and other networks had closed or all but closed, and I was housebound with some friends. I didn't have a computer, and, as you know, didn't write this blog at all for about fifteen months. It was one of those deals where you watch and sense the energy of events rather helplessly; in any case, I couldn't envision a scenario where anyone would listen to me. I was, like most people, in shock, and had no easy outlet for speaking out. And even if I had had such an outlet, I convinced myself that I would be ignored. My advanced degrees are in music and art (illustration), not science, medicine, theology, sociology, political science, or any other relevant discipline.
However, this year, ignored or not, I'm speaking.
One of the main law of attraction/metaphysical teachings is to focus only on the things you want in life, not the things you don't want. The idea is that what you focus on, grows. Money, cars, and fancy houses seemed to be the preoccupation of many of the field's modern teachers and students, so I wasn't always completely on board. However, I still think the precept is true if you broaden it out beyond physical possessions. In this case, what do all of us want? Health. What do we not want? Illness or death. In early 2020, as most of our institutions started down the road of fighting this disease (with all the passionate attention and focus that this requires), I cringed. Other people began fighting the people who were fighting the disease. Then, as the language increasingly reflected that of the military (front lines, defense, offense, victory, etc.), it became almost impossible for me to even watch a short nightly news report. The "fight" mentality appeared to me to almost guarantee a bad outcome.
However, this past summer, there was a hiatus when we all thought possibly the vaccines and the weather had improved things. It was liberating to do errands without a mask, and to see friends more easily. I truly hoped that my early gut reaction was wrong, and that the human effort to fight the disease had "won".
But there has been no victory. The case numbers, hospitalization numbers, numbers of protective equipment, masks, tests, studies, medical personnel, emergency personnel, upheaval in business and education, airline travel cancellations, tons of trash, the cost in dollars and mental and physical health...the situation is off the scale huge, and the numbers in every category are growing by the second. Me being me, I would never have "fought" this illness from day one, but of course there is no proof of what would have happened if humanity had not reacted as it did. Our culture is doing its best, and doing the only thing it could have done, based on its underlying duality vision of the world.
One of the only things I can do is focus on my underlying vision, on the number one, a world of love, unity, community, oneness with each other and nature, a world without fear (of disease or anything else) or violence. How long it will take to get to that point, I don't know, maybe centuries. But the prospect of a more unified longterm future keeps me going right now, as does trying to do a better and more frequent job of expressing the path forward in that direction.
