Okay, so this one has been … interesting.
The gang here at BlissNinny was talking the other day about COVID-19, masks, social distancing, and all of that, and we started to toss around our feelings about the pandemic. How does one relate to such a dramatic life event from the perspective of one’s spiritual beliefs?
“Surely,” one member protested, “If we’re all a part of the same Creator-Consciousness, we know that life is an illusion – merely a pattern in the zero-point field of all energy – and, by extension, the virus, itself, is merely an illusion as well. Something that’s completely insubstantial. So I would think that we shouldn’t even take the COVID-19 pandemic seriously, much less wear masks or socially distance, or do anything to acknowledge its existence, or partake in any mindset that causes us to feel the least distress about it.”
And being the stickler for precision that makes me a real pain at parties, I answered, “Well, that sounds good on paper, but there’s knowing, and then there’s KNOWING.” I paused then, adding for emphasis, “And don’t call me, ‘Shirley.’”
So which is it? Is it real? Or an illusion?
People keep asking this question, assuming that there’s one, single answer for how to handle one’s awareness of this dynamic. But there isn’t. In a field of infinite creativity, there are as many answers as there are people. Some folks quote their favorite spiritual teacher’s admonition that the only way to create a compelling future is to turn your attention away from the “negative things” entirely, and focus on “happy thoughts.” This is a popular concept, and there’s some wisdom to be found in it. Focusing ALL your creative attention on what you do want is one fine way to avoid what you don’t want.
But anyone who’s ever tried it knows that, at least at first, it can be a hit-and-miss proposition. It’s because of that pesky little modifier, “ALL.”
The short answer? This is a splendid time to be aware of, and managing, the feelings that are arising within you. But it would be prudent to be aware that your body is mortal, and is probably subject to the rules of this “pandemic” game.
The long answer? Well, I can tell you about the answer I gave the client who justified pelting her hubby with what, to me, looked like energy-bombs, by telling me, “We had a fight and I’m sending him my love.” When I looked at the balls of energy with which she was pounding her hapless spouse, there was some genuine love in the mix. A little less than 20%. The other 80+% comprised anger, frustration, punishment, resentment, entitlement, self-absorbed equivocation, and a powerful need to control the outcome of the argument.
John Lennon told us that “All you need is love,” but this lass wasn’t just focusing her “love” on her spouse. In fact, she was primarily focusing a rich melange of intensely painful, negative, and wholly unconscious emotional energy on her partner, lightly laced with real affection. And it looked like her barrage had gone on for the better part of the day. She said she’d been “focusing so much love” on him that she was surprised—and frankly, a little insulted—when he’d come home from work with a headache. My take on it? She’d been beating him for so long that I was surprised the poor guy could still walk.
Here’s my point: she had no idea what she was really doing. Most people don’t. Most people haven’t been trained to be aware of the complexity of their emotional states, much less be disciplined enough to winnow out the wheat from the chaff—and offer only the wheat.
She knew what she wanted to be doing; on the surface, she wanted to be “a kind and loving person.” That was actually how she introduced herself to me, the first time we met. “I’m Jane Doe,” she’d said earnestly, “and I’m a kind and loving person.” I’d been startled into laughter, because in that instant I could see clearly that she wasn’t ready, psychologically, to acknowledge everything else that she also was. To admit just how much anger she had vacuum-packed into her psyche; how much she enjoyed playing ‘victim’ and blaming others for her unhappiness; how much her family upbringing had instilled a love of drama games in her space; or how much investment she had in being “right,” and in “winning” altercations. She was blissfully unaware of how much superiority she ran to compensate for her feelings of inferiority, and genuinely unaware of what a control-freak she could be.
In other words, she was your average person; a nice enough lady, doing her best, but largely unconscious of her deeper motivations.
This is what I mean when I say, ‘There’s knowing, and then there’s KNOWING.’ She knew who she wanted to be. But she was barely acquainted with who she really was. And she had very little neutrality with either role. And while 80% of her energy was actually focused on expressing some very dark, painful energy, she was always surprised when things in her life didn’t turn out light & fluffy—because she didn’t KNOW how caught up she was in negativity and old baggage. And for the most part, she didn’t want to. It was too much effort, and brought up too many feelings of inferiority and shame.
And, please hear this—that’s okay. It’s her life, to live as she wants. This time around, she’ll experience the lessons she signed up for. I only use her complex emotional dynamics as an example to explain why her “positive thinking” usually didn’t get her what she wanted. This is why most folks say, “Positive thinking doesn’t work.” In truth, it does work; it just takes self-awareness and focused discipline that most folks haven’t developed.
So, transferring this same logic—and pretty much the same ratio—onto the dynamic being discussed, I’ll tell you about a client who is taking few or no precautions with the COVID-19 pandemic. He likes to quote current metaphysical gurus with the “focus on good thoughts,” line, using that logic to justify his behavior. He’s gregarious, lives alone, refuses to watch the news, do any research on the virus, follow CDC guidelines, or socially distance himself from buddies, coworkers, or family. Although he’s a pretty smart guy, he’s had house guests and home-brew beer fests all summer long. His biggest concern is that his usual hangouts—sports bars—aren’t open, and that there probably won’t be a football season this year. He continues to greet people with hugs and handshakes, unmasked, waving a hand and saying, “Oh, that’s okay! I trust you!” even if the other person recoils in shock.
I’ve worked with this guy for a long time. At this point, I probably know more about his core programming than he does, and my concern with the way he’s decided to just ignore the mundane world is that I can see the disparity in his energy investment ratio. Last time I looked at him, it was running at about 12% Confidence and 88% pure Fear.
While he’s slowly making headway on bringing his unconscious programming to consciousness, he’s still got a long way to go. As the eldest of two boys, when both of his parents contracted their terminal illnesses, he was the primary caregiver. It was an act he performed from duty, not love; as his folks had always been distant with him—his father sporadically abusive. The only time he could recall ever feeling his mother’s concern was when he was seriously ill or injured, and on one level, he almost craved illness in his younger days, because it was the only time he felt that she loved him.
His dutiful care of his parents in the last years of their lives reminded him of their care of his grandparents, who also died lingering, painful deaths. Deep down, he’s absolutely certain that he has no choice but to follow in their footsteps. He and his brother were never close, and he’s terrified of dying alone; terrified that when he becomes ill in his final days (not “if,” mind you; but “when”) he’ll be ignored by his estranged ex-wife and perhaps only reluctantly cared for by the two adult kids he barely knows.
And yet he gets up in the morning and tries to be positive. He considers himself quite conscious and enlightened. If challenged, he says, “It’s all an illusion. I’m part of God, the world is love, and I have nothing to fear. And to prove this to myself I will never look at anything that might frighten me or upset me.”
I call this the “Head in the Sand,” response. Because the truth is, if you’re afraid of becoming upset by what you see in the world, ignoring it isn’t “proving” to yourself that the world is safe. If you can’t even bring yourself to look at something without eliciting gut-level terror, that’s actually proving that you do NOT believe that the world is love. You do NOT believe that the world is safe. And you’re certainly not fearless.
He knows that he has a truckload of unconscious, unresolved programming telling him, “That’s how you’re going to die: long, drawn-out, and suffering.” He’s heard that many folks recovering from COVID have had life-altering damage to their organs; that some have even required lung transplants. This scares the hell out of him, because he finds himself thinking, “This is it, then. This is what will kill me.”
To quote Abraham-Hicks. “When you’re vibrating purely, you get only what’s a match to that. It’s your ambivalence: ‘I like that but I don’t like that… I like that but I don’t like that…’ that keeps what you like and what you don’t like coming at you all the time. You don’t have to ‘turn the other cheek’ when you are in vibrational harmony only with what you want. Then, only what you want comes.” (Excerpted from Chicago, IL on 11/1/98)
Are you getting the picture here? In spite of what this client wants to think about himself, he’s not in a place where he is sincerely “focusing on the good.” On a good day, maybe 10 or 12% of his consciousness is focused on that. The rest is torqued up in fear, absolutely certain that he IS going to catch the disease, and (eventually) die from it, in agony, probably alone, abandoned, and unloved. If he were truly neutral to this dynamic the way he claims to be, he could walk into a hospital, look around at the people on ventilators with deep compassion, and still have absolute certainty that he would never contract the virus. (And even that might not “protect” him from getting it, since the larger part of him that’s Spirit might decide to participate in manifesting the illness, just for the novelty of the experience. There are no hard and fast rules.)
But definitely, if one feels anxiety, dismay, distress, or aversion, it’s because that dynamic of fear is active in one’s space. That is resistance, and that dynamic of fear and judgment can draw the unwanted energy to you as certainly as iron filings are drawn to a magnet.
The universe doesn’t hear “No.” It just responds to what you focus on most forcefully. In saying, “I don’t want that! I don’t want that! I don’t want that!” You’re actually sending out an energy pulse that says, “That! That! That!” And the Universe cheerfully says, “That? Wow! You must really want that—you’re putting your heart into it. Okay. I’ll give you that.”
Do you see what I mean? I truly believe, in the depth of my being, that we are all aspects of the same Divine force. That there is no “Other;” that there is only God in expression. This is Oneness. In the people around me, I see aspects of Godself expressing personas and characteristics like characters in a play. And I see those characters, in this dimensional reality, focusing their will in order to create a play of infinite variety and variation, just for the joy of the experience.
But most people perceive of themselves, at least in part, as their mortal bodies, and until an individual ego/persona is able to step outside of itself and consciously perceive itself as God embodied, it will continue to identify as a human being bound by the rules established within this physical reality. That tiny aspect of Godself-embodied that we think of as our personality/ego/persona will primarily see itself as a character in a play—and part of the rules in this game of life is that the characters die. All of them. In this plane, in this dimensional reality, you’re born, and then you die. Depending on the script, sometimes you have a long life; sometimes a short one. And sometimes, those characters die in pandemics.
So, regardless of how much I agree with the concept of Oneness, or how many times I’ve felt flutterings of awakening that felt so vast that I almost felt that I should capitalize even just referencing that peak moment (like “Awakening!”), I’m not going to tell this man to “think good thoughts and he’ll be fine.” Not because he isn’t the creator of his own reality—but BECAUSE HE IS!
The fact is, we are creating the more uncomfortable aspects of our reality with our unconscious, habitual, negative mindsets just as surely as we are moving onto higher ground, from time to time, with our more elevated moments of focus.
So why in God’s name would a being incarnate at a time like this? What possible reason could there be, if one can be trapped, by unconscious motivations, into creating the exact thing you don’t want?
That’s easy! To learn from it! To bring that which is unconsciousness to consciousness. To find the courage to face the unknown. To develop a clearer and more supportive relationship with one’s physical body. To do something new, feel something new, and have fun.
Fun? Well, yeah. You have to switch focus and keep in mind that, as spirit, none of this is distressing. In fact, as spirit, there ARE no such things as “distress,” or “pain,” or “loss.” Those states just don’t exist. You’re talking about a state of being where you are immortal. You’ve incarnated a million times, and you know that you can’t be hurt. Imagine taking part in a demolition derby where you know that whatever you do to your car, you are guaranteed to walk away unscathed. You could roll your GTO, blow it up and be inside of it when it bursts into flame, and still walk away without a scratch. We are all a part of the same Creator-Consciousness, and we do know that life is an illusion. And so is death.
But, that’s the part of you that’s spirit. The challenging part is that in order to experience this reality, you have created a life-long relationship with a physical vehicle through which you can experience time, the dynamics of dichotomy, and physical limitation. This vehicle is called “your body,” and it’s a conscious miracle of regenerative design. So when you look at that demo-derby picture, the part of you that’s a mortal, physical body is going, “Hey, hey, buddy—I’m the mortal half of this partnership! Let’s be careful out there!”
To your body, this play you find yourself in is real. To your body, anything that threatens your physical safety; anything that might impair that delicate balance between this reality and the next, that state you think of as “life,” needs to be taken under immediate advisement. As the senior partner in the relationship, the part of you that’s spirit needs to be alerted to whatever the part of you that’s body is experiencing.
And when your body feels endangered, that’s what you feel as fear.
Just for the record, there are wonderful emotions your body shares with you as well, like joy, laughter, and passion—but for the most part, those emotions won’t get in the way of you continuing to live. They aren’t indicating danger. Fear is an indicator of danger. Fear is your body asking for help.
When you’re feeling strong emotions, like fear or terror, or even deep, unrelenting anxiety, you’re being given a tremendous opportunity for awareness. You’re being given an unparallelled opportunity to develop a deeper, more conscious relationship with your physical companion in this life. (You think your dog is awesome? Think of all of the things that your body has done for you!)
Your emotions are what you incarnated in a body to feel. You created a body in order to experience the rich, bittersweet intensity of human life. The immortal part of you; the part that’s spirit; doesn’t feel emotion the way one does when they’re incarnate. In part, this is because a mortal body lives in time. In this dimensional reality, every experience is transient, agonizingly ephemeral, and happens only once. This may sound obvious, but it’s not; not really. Most people never take the time to stop and really consider what their bodies are feeling. Other than surface stuff, like “I’m mad at so-and-so,” or “I’m hungry,” most people don’t pay attention to what their bodies are telling them at all. When they get overwhelmed with emotion, most people tend to medicate—not meditate. Caffeine, alcohol, and cannabis are readily available. Social media is another soporific that numbs the mind from the distress felt by the body. Scrips for prescription anxiolytics and antidepressants are at an all-time high. And medication is a perfectly valid way to handle the experience of life embodied. Just one experience that can be selected from many choices.
The other way is to stop, breathe, let your body communicate to you exactly what emotions are being stimulated by the events of your life, and take the time to reclaim your energy from those programmed emotional states, and/or take steps to reduce the feeling of danger. It sounds simple, and it is! But it’s not easy. Why? Because it takes time. And time is something our society parses out in miserly milliseconds.
Some folks aren’t given to introspection. It’s not their thing. And that’s fine. I’m not here to claim that there’s one “right” way to live. In fact, in a universe of Infinite creativity, people are supposed to be doing their own thing. Or to (again) paraphrase Abraham-Hicks, ‘It’s a big kitchen, and you can make whatever kind of pie you want.’
But if you are introspective, and you do want to understand your relationship to your physical body more fully; if you do meditate and take time to check in with the miraculous vehicle through which you experience physical life, then you can use these stimulating times to become aware of your unconscious, negative programs, teasing them to the surface on a wave of anxiety or unease. Your emotions are the key to what you are creating on this planet. And you can simply pull back your energy from any program with which you are not in agreement, feeling yourself expanding as you reclaim your power from those old, stuck patterns of being. This will lead you forward on the road to consciousness awareness. And getting in the habit of using this tool of energetic reclamation can change your perspective of reality.
As Abraham-Hicks says, “When you are in sync with who-you-really-are, your emotions range from satisfaction to passion and enthusiasm for life. You feel clarity and certainty and interest in life. You feel fun. Your timing is good. You feel vitality. And then, what comes to you feels good to you-because Law of Attraction will not give to you something that you have not practiced.” (Excerpted from San Diego, CA on 2/8/14)