Each of us is having our own psychological reaction to the threat of contracting the novel coronavirus sweeping the planet. This pandemic event energizes our baseline fears, body chemistry, moods, thoughts, strengths and weaknesses. It challenges us physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.
All of this is a "normal" response to a true risk. We are wise to try to avoid contracting the virus when there is a risk of dying or at least being pretty miserable for some length of time. Some degree of concern and sorrow and depression and cabin fever and anxiety and even paranoia is probably warranted given the suffering wrought by this virus.
But I want to talk about something else that is happening in our environment that is less obvious. It has been my observation that sometimes the emotions of the moment are out of proportion to the specific situation. At times I feel a wave of grief or a deep sadness, an unnamed anxiety or even panic that does not seem connected to my immediate situation. These feelings and thoughts are not a just a healthy empathetic response to tragic news and knowledge of some aspect of the crisis. These are not something to which I can attribute a direct source. What is happening?
One morning in 2004 I found myself in a state of real physical and psychic agitation. I felt like a caged tiger who kept brushing against the too small boundaries of my captivity. I remember describing this to my wife, noting that nothing had changed in my outer life that seemed to account for these sensations. This state lasted throughout the day. The next day we learned of the tsunami which ravaged Indonesia causing over 225,000 deaths. This odd body/emotion/mind sensation immediately dissipated as its root cause became clear. I somehow was reacting to an event which would happen 9,000 miles away.
This illustrates that we are not just bound within our own individual psyche; we also participate in a larger "commons" of human and planetary life. This is important to realize at a time like this. The mechanism of this participation is not really that important although the phenomena says a lot about who and what we are as human beings. It is as though we live in fishbowls, not only filling our own space with the secretions of our consciousness - our thoughts and feelings - but our fishbowl is under a stream teeming with life in other fishbowls. Right now, especially right now, humans are secreting a lot of painful stuff and some of that may flow over from others and into our personal fishbowl. We must try and discern what is our personal stuff and what is coming from the stream.
In some ways this is part of the subtle side of the response to the coronavirus. It seems to me that there are three things we can do to mitigate the buildup of the effluvium in the water.
First and foremost we want to have a practice of creating a healthy ecosystem within our own fishbowl. We need to deal with our own negative stuff and metabolize it in useful ways. Many of the exercises of Incarnational Spirituality are designed to do just that. And of course there are many other spiritual, psychological, physical and energetic approaches that can be helpful.
Second we want to recognize what is our stuff and what is not so we don't unintentionally pollute our personal space and contribute to the toxicity in our shared ecosystem.
Third we can try to be like a "living machine" designed by John Todd. His patented machine is a consciously created wetland ecosystem designed to filter out wastes through organic metabolic processes to produce purified water. (The Findhorn community in Scotland has this waste management system.)
This purified water can overflow from our fishbowl to help cleanse the river and support all of the other life forces trying to keep the water suitable for all life. This is what we Lorians mean by "Subtle Activism" and there are a wealth of exercises from David Spangler that support the individual world-worker and a larger Gaian service.
From my "fishbowl" to yours, blessings. May your bowl overflow with a stream of fresh, life-giving water.