There is an important question before us. How to save the planet? How to stop a pandemic? Yes. Yes. But the question I’m thinking about is: How do we make it through a few months of self-quarantine…and not go crazy? Bonkers? Insane? Stark raving mad?
How are we to keep sane with our precious sanity being hacked away one frayed nerve at a time by the boredom and forced togetherness of quarantine until we want to irresistibly feast on the beating hearts of our loved ones, laughing maniacally in triumph? I watched this horrible, violent movie called “Pandemic,” which had a scene just like that, so I exaggerated a little for effect. What else can I do? But you know what I mean.
But seriously …
Can you remember how long it’s been since time has been so slow? So painfully, awfully, haltingly slow? What a strange gift. What an uncomfortable one that we might not quite remember or have ever learned how to receive. To know time, instead of time passing by us.
Time … to just be and get acquainted with an awareness of time. My teacher Hedy taught me to distinguish between “Kairos” time and “Kronos” time. We are accustomed to Kronos or chonological time. Kronos is mechanical, clocked-based time, whereas “Kairos” is organic time, natural time … no clock is involved.
We are getting acquainted with the “essence” of time, a quality pouring out from the heart of the universe. We have the opportunity to feel time, instead of letting time get swept up by busy-ness, passing us by because we are so rushed and hurried. When was the last time you felt time?
Think of meditation. Breathe in, breathe out. Time becomes something else. Not a line to nowhere, but a cycle, a pulse, a heartbeat, emanating from the pure heart of being. When was the last time you had that deep, intimate sense of time? The river of time. Painfully slow. Or beautifully deep.
Isn’t that poetic?
The second thing I am noticing is how our relational awareness seems to have acquired a laser sharp focus. And perhaps a depth of emotion, too. I caught myself just looking at my spouse and our two birds in a strange, strange way. It is an unremarkable scene. I just look at them, like I’m looking at a piece of art in a museum. Just smiling. Taking it all in—the depth of all these emotions suddenly seems to shake me to my core.
I felt this fierce, fierce love for these three lives — but also for the relationships that seems to exist between them. In that one moment, I had a kind of profound gratitude for the love that flowed between them. That such love could exist at all. I have gratitude for the richness and grace of it. Such a simple, human, forgettable act: a person sitting on a sofa, playing with two birds.
Maybe these days, you see your husband, wife, son, daughter, mom, dad — just there, just being, doing something totally unremarkable — and something catches in your throat. Your breath is taken away. Your knees feel weak. You feel a sense of gratitude as deep as an ocean. A river of love as mighty as spring. These days, when life feels so tenuous, that depth of emotion is closer to the surface of us, isn’t it?
The third thing I am noticing is that we are being disarmed by this virus Covid-19— not just socially and economically, but psychologically and emotionally. Our defenses are less efficient at protecting us from being vulnerable, weak, fragile. From loving. From feeling what we really feel, deep inside, all the time, but are far too good at hiding from ourselves. The furious depth and might and force of the love that we feel every single moment for those we are close to. That feeling is much, much closer to the surface of our consciousness now. So much so that it can catch us by surprise at any moment, rock us, shake us — and we wonder: Wow! What was that?
What a beautiful thing that is, too. Shouldn’t we feel that way more, rather than less? Shouldn’t we feel that we’re less capable of repressing the intensity of the love we feel and shouldn’t we feel love as if it were as sharp as a blade, more and more, now?
We are learning to be authentic and real in this way. It’s easy to hide those feelings away — and then have them come pouring out. It’s easy to spend a life busy working, working out, going out, planning, competing, acquiring … stuff. That, too, is the way that our capitalist culture has alienated us from each other. It replaces the intensity of our feelings for each other — all too often, I might add, with things. Even if those things are called “accomplishments.”
Living in an individualistic-materialistic way, we are ravenous consumers, competing to evoke envy with the luxury of our lifestyles — or diligent workers, hoping to get the payoff one day to acquire it all. Less often do we really see each other. When was the last time you felt an intensity of love, grace, togetherness? Ever? And yet isn’t that what’s real—isn’t that why we are here?
There is nothing left to think. So we are moving into a strange, strange place. Into—ourselves. Into a place of pure being and endless awareness.
The way to survive self-isolation isn’t to stay sane. It’s to go a little insane. You see, we human beings have failed to really grow up for a very long time now. We have acted like spoiled, irresponsible, self-absorbed children, trashing the planet, ignoring the future, not taking care of our own larger family and bullying all other kinds of life. Does that sound like a mature, responsible form of life to you? Worse, though, we’ve called all that “rational,” “sensible,” “profitable” —sane. That kind of sanity— is the most insane thing of all.
Self-isolation is going to drive you a little insane. Good. Let it! Any real experience of growth pushes us past our boundaries—past our comfort zones. We are being pushed past our old boundaries of awareness right now: becoming more and more aware of time, being, selfhood … love. The bad news is it is going to be uncomfortable. The good news is that our old boundaries of awareness weren’t doing much for us — or anyone else — anyway. They were obsolete, insufficient, limiting, maybe even self-destructive. When we all had those boundaries and walls, we acted in foolish, childish ways as a society as a whole.
Here’s an example:
Sitting and meditating — really meditating, not the sanitized pop-culture commodity — isn’t comfortable. It’s deeply uncomfortable. It’s profoundly disorienting. It shakes you to your core. You sit, and you literally explore the boundaries of the inner self, and then push past them — all of which is baffling and frustrating enough that many don’t even get that far. The reward, though, is a higher level of awareness, and that simply means: more truth, grace, love, beauty, goodness, in every instant of existence. So much so that it begins to cut away everything else like a sword.
Pushing past our comfort zone is going to cut all the illusions away with the sword of awareness.
Self-isolation isn’t going to be comfortable. It’s going to make you cry, sob, laugh, cheer, shake, roar, think, wonder. Embrace it, my friend. It is a gift leading us towards being more mature, responsible, thoughtful, gentle, kind, compassionate people — which is precisely what the world, the planet, the universe needs from us, demands from us, is asking of us.
Right now, in these difficult moments, it is important to know we are growing, growing into who we have always meant to be.
Who is that?
The good news is that we have a few months to think about it. The better news is that we don’t need to answer. We already know the answer. It’s in the way that hands touch these days. With as much gentleness, grief, love, and intimacy as the human soul can bear.
With purely insane love and gratitude,
Paula
