The historic covid-19 pandemic and lockdown is the most wonderful opportunity of our entire lives potentially. It is the time in which we can face our greatest fear, and in this atmosphere we can access our greatest power, strength or opportunity. We have been pushed into something that is, for many, the most frightening time in their lives. But it is under this imposed fear, that we can remember, realize and call upon our true courage.
Every spiritual warrior has their steed. This is Antares.
The current pandemic is perhaps the greatest challenge we have faced. Certainly as a human race collectively, and perhaps as an individual at home in our private world. Whether real or contrived, this pandemic is here and our leaders have chased us into hiding from the “invisible enemy” as President Trump called it. This imagined or real enemy has forced us to face our greatest fear, namely death. We have been told that this pandemic can kill, so we are chased indoors into lockdown to avoid potential death.
Add to that the fact that you and I have also been labelled a potential killer, since you may be asymptomatic and be a carrier of the killer virus, and you could be the one to infect and kill others. Thus we retreat under lockdown lest we become the messenger of bringer of death to our nearest and dearest. We are now even in fear of ourselves. We have been told that we could be the very enemy that we fear, in one sense.
We have willingly given up our greatest qualities, our most valued treasures, simply in order to avoid the greater fear, that of our own or our loved one’s death. Fear of death is the greatest fear of all living entities. It is hard-wired into us, exactly like the drive to mate and reproduce the species. Lust for life is balanced by fear of death. Eros is in cahoots with Thanatos. And we stand in the center, with the two opposing forces holding us enthralled in their grip.
As the Tao says, the greatest disaster is also the time of greatest opportunity. The glyph for disaster is made up of two parts – danger, and opportunity. And this covid-19 pandemic, whether real or fake, has presented as the greatest danger in our modern lives, but it also presents us with the greatest opportunity, perhaps in our entire lives. And in this environment of death or glory, we have today, in 2020, our greatest time to shine, to find our potential, to realize our courage and to go boldly where no other human has gone before. To the next level. The new frontier, to paraphrase Captain Kirk and the space ship Enterprise on its Star Trek. Within ourselves, we have, perhaps still in unconscious or seed form, valuable potentials that may only arise under such pressures.
For example, in my region of the world, on the south Cape coast of Africa, we have a unique species of plant kingdom called Fynbos. And much of the plants within this floral kingdom are specifically sprouted by fire. They don’t germinate or manifest unless there is a bush fire. Almost every year there is a fire season and sometimes entire hillsides are burned to ashes. But it is that very fire of destruction that acts as the catalyst for creation in some specific species of the Fynbos floral genotype. Similarly, it is now during this unique and specific type of pressure upon us, that we can reach within and find our greatest potential. We are being pressured like never before in our lives.
We have our backs against the wall as a society and as individuals. Either we could die of a vicious virus that knows no bounds and can spread like a wildfire, or we could face total and complete bankruptcy and economic collapse as our old source of income evaporates while we are forced into lockdown. And yet this unprecedented pressure may be the very thing that forces us to look within, to reach deeper and pull out our greatest strength, our Holy Grail, our sword from the stone. One way or another, this pandemic and lockdown has provided us with the most powerful opportunity, as a human race and an individuals. It is under this kind of pressure, with all this time on our hands while under lockdown, to introspect, to go within and to think as well as to dream about exactly who we are, what we are doing with our lives and what parts of ourselves we have left unlived up until now.
We may have forgotten our “bliss” as Joseph Campbell called it. Out of fear again, we may have molded ourselves to fit into society, whether out of fear of appearing foolish or out of fear of poverty, and we have perhaps covered over and forgotten to “follow our bliss”. Campbell actually originally borrowed the concept from the ancient Veda, the Sanskrit philosophy texts of India’s prehistory. There we read of the Sanskrit term “sat chit ananda” eternal being, full consciousness, and bliss. That ananda is the bliss he referred to. These three qualities are attributes of the self. And of them all, it is the bliss which is most animating. Eternal existence, even with full consciousness, is not complete until enriched by unending bliss.
And that bliss is what Campbell is calling us to follow. For it is our very self, it is an attribute of who we really are. We are being asked to “be yourself”. The true self is inherently blissful. Anything less is due to illusion and forgetfulness. How many of us have given up our true natures, our real self, in order to follow the dictates of our society? And having done that, how many of us have settled for a life half lived, an incomplete shadow of our real potential? We may have failed to follow our dharma, our true nature.
The dharma of sugar is to be sweet, the dharma of fire is to burn. What is your dharma? Find that out and you will also find out what it takes to follow your bliss, to live a live of bliss. On one hand our dharma is to survive and thrive and reproduce, on the mundane level. But on a transcendent level, when we remember that we are eternal spiritual beings in full consciousness, we may realize that our inherent nature is more than that, it is to attain the goal of yoga, the Sanskrit word for union with divinity. And that is where we find our eternal bliss.
....to be continued in part 2