When the lockdown started, the words I often heard people using were “scary” and “frightening”. A few weeks later the word pinging around in my inbox was “bizarre”. Currently it looks like “the new normal” might be the phrase.
I’m having a good lockdown. My current lifestyle isn’t that different from usual, as I already work from home. In some ways I feel more comfortable now – no longer such an outsider, watching the busy world go by. Now everyone has joined me, at home.
And then I got the virus.
It didn’t hit me as hard as other people, and my symptoms stayed within the “mild” range throughout. But it was nonetheless a pretty tough virus to deal with – for several days it felt as though I had something nibbling away at my lungs from the inside, a very strange experience! And yet there was also something very interesting about getting an intimate, first-hand experience of this virus that has stopped the whole world in its tracks.
I’ve heard many people say how good it is that humanity is pausing like this. One of the most interesting comments came from a friend who said that evolution often works this way: a species needs time to pause and “catch up with itself” before taking the next big evolutionary leap.
For myself, I felt a wave of energy sweeping through me as the crisis began. The spiritual group I belong to – the Bright Path Ishayas – started offering three online meetings a day for people to practice and share together, almost like an emergency effort to support people to take the crisis in the best possible way: not as a reason to panic, but as an opportunity to be more present than ever.
In those early weeks, it did indeed seem that humanity was in danger of collectively tipping into fear and panic. The response of spiritual practitioners the world over has been to double down on our practice, and share an alternative response.
It was during that time that I created a story for children. All those kids, suddenly locked up indoors, perhaps with adults who were quietly freaking out at the state of the world: I wanted something for them.
So I asked my inner storyteller for a story about how inner peace can overcome fear, in any circumstances. The story I received is all about a spice merchant who travels as far south as he can, to find a remedy for fear and panic.
You can find the story here: The Merchant and the Spice of Fear
