It is July of 2020 and as I write this the Coronavirus Pandemic is fully upon us. A pandemic is not selective; it comes for each and every one of us. It presents a unique challenge: how will we work together to fight it?
There are not many things that require the complete cooperation of the public. But a pandemic is one of them. The public’s response to the coronavirus has been fascinating to observe. At this present moment, we are not doing very well. Many people are working together collaboratively and following the guidelines. Others resist any collective effort. Life is a solo journey. Each of us must battle it out alone.
The Coronavirus was insidious at the very beginning because we were totally unaware that it existed. We did not know it was present amongst us and beginning to infect our bodies. In our ignorance we did not do enough until it become too obvious for us to ignore. By the time most states took steps to contain it, it was already well established.
But I write now to tell you about a second pandemic. This pandemic is also insidious. But it is very different in nature than the Coronavirus. The Coronavirus targets the physical body. Its effects are painfully obvious.
This second pandemic targets our consciousness. It is invisible and we do not realize the impact it has on us.
The second pandemic does not leave physical symptoms for us to experience. Instead it constricts our consciousness. And like the Coronavirus we do not yet recognize all the way it limits our experience of life.
This second pandemic constricts our range of human experience. It leaves us with a diminished capability to lead a complete and full life. We do not recognize this diminishment. Instead, we have concluded that our limited life represents the full range of human reality.
We believe that the way we are is the only way that we can be.
The nature of our second pandemic
Human beings are comprised of two very different components. The first component is our body. This gives us the physical dimension to our life. We can see, hear, touch and taste elements of the outer world around us.
Our culture has become highly educated in the various aspects of the physical body.
The second component is consciousness. This gives us the experiential dimension to life. A body without consciousness cannot experience life. Consciousness without a body cannot experience the kind of life that we do on this planet. We cannot have the experience of an outer world all around us.
We need both consciousness and the body to experience the fullness of human life.
So, what is the problem?
We are missing something from our conscious experience of life and we have no awareness that we are lacking it.
It is very difficult to explain what is not there.
We all understand the mind. We all understand how important it is. We know that rational thought and analytical thinking is key for successful interactions in the world. This is indisputable.
But what if I were to tell you about the importance of feeling? Feeing is not a replacement for thinking, it is the counterpart to thinking. Thinking and feeling go together and balance each other out. You probably do not know what I am talking about. That is because most of have not experienced working with thinking and feeling in tandem.
Our natural state is to live in balance with life. Living in balance means balancing thinking and feeling in our interactions with others. This requires a certain state of consciousness. If this sounds strange it is because so few of us have this state of consciousness. We all have the capacity to experience this consciousness but we were never taught how to develop this capacity. And we see the consequences in the world today.
When people catch the Coronavirus they do not realize it at first. Everything stays the same. But then it starts to come upon them and in quick order they feel the impact. For some it is mild; for others it means death.
Our spiritual pandemic is equally sneaky. At first, we do not understand that something is missing. Then we get used to the way things are. The way things are becomes our normal reality. This becomes normal life. We take it for granted. If anyone tells us that our life is out of balance we think they are crazy.
The physical pandemic is often rough on people but at least you know what you have. The worst aspect of the spiritual pandemic is it becomes our way of life and we never realize what has happened to us.
