COVID-19 and inner work

How should I understand the coronavirus in light of my inner work?

Think of the 23rd Psalm and the way it begins.

Despite what it looks like, we're surrounded by a nearly infinite amount of hope and love. Not only that, within each of us we carry a fragment of a highest and most sacred nature. God's love dwells in our hearts in every moment that we live and breathe. Never forget this: know it with the mind, sense it with the body, feel it with the feelings.

Viruses are creatures of the planet. They expose our nationalism and our financial markets for what they are: fantasies of our imagination. They’re powerful fantasies, to be sure: but in the end, we are creatures of this planet and human beings, not creatures of politics and money. Viruses remind us of this, in such a way that they erase our fantasies and illusions.

Because this is terrifying—we love our illusions— we tend to panic.

The first and most important thing for me to do in the face of this onslaught is to ground myself in my sensation—to understand my humanity instead of paying it the usual intellectual lip service.

This can be a real opportunity to experience myself as I am—physical, emotional, vulnerable.

And able to be compassionate.

Here I am, in the middle of life. This is the truth of where I am and what I am. I can use this as a reminder to work in every moment.

Working means to inhabit my life, to be here.

It's my duty to acquit myself in my life with honor, dignity, intelligence, and integrity, in so far as I am able. If I run about like a ninny and act terrified, what am I serving? My mother’s old folk saying goes: when in trouble, fear, or doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.

I last saw my mother on Saturday, at the veterans home where she is now a resident. We looked each other right in the eye as I left, and said I love you to one another. It was a poignant moment; one of those moments when two people acknowledge that we never know if we will in fact see one another again.

On Tuesday, they closed the home down as a precautionary measure and I can no longer visit her. This is a reminder that we always live in the shadow of death, and ought to exercise and appropriate an intelligent sobriety—not to be somber, but to be intelligently joyful in the light of the darkness that surrounds us at all times. Without that darkness, we would not recognize the light; and without the light, we cannot be.

I need to see myself and understand what my action is, not be taken away from life by my reaction. If I get the disease and die of it – well, everyone dies. Gurdjieff said that one of our most important aims should be to not die like a dog: and if I begin by reacting to this situation by acting like an animal, I will die like a dog. No matter when I die. I begin dying like a dog the moment I forget my inner work and my relationship to God and to life and to humanity.

Above all, my work centers around an interest in what it means to be a human being — to think, to sense, and to feel in this moment, in my own Being. Any moment in ordinary life can be extraordinary and offer an opportunity to sense and to participate in the sacred nature of existence. It's always here with me. The question is whether I'm here to be with it.

One ought to be steadfastly grounded in one’s inner work. This needs to be anchored to sensation in such a way that the incoming impressions don't constantly knock me off my feet in one way or another.

Begin there, and little else will fail to point the inner compass back towards God.

May your heart be close to God, 

and God close to your heart.

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.