Written By Shaz

Suddenly, I’m startled!  There is a big, noisy racket outside my sanctuary window.  I can hear helicopters whirring and hissing, sirens bleating and car horns moaning.

Then, a couple of heart-pounding thumps at my front door.

“Who’s there?”, I question fretfully, yet courteously.

Through the entryway I hear, “Hellooooo, it’s your old friends, Change and Impermanence!  Remember us?  We are stopping in for tea, dressed in our Corona finest!”

“WTF?!  Wait!  I’m not ready”, I cry, pushing my back up against the locked door as the knob is jiggling frantically.

“Oh, and our cousins want a visit too”, they politely sing in harmony. “You know Fear and Anxiety, don’t you?  They are right behind us skipping up your driveway!”

“NO WAY! I’m certainly not letting THEM in”, I bellow.  "After all, I am not an Airbnb, you know!”

 I do not have the time nor energy to deal with these sneaky, snarky surprise visitors. What a disruption to the serenity that I have worked so long and hard to carve out and achieve! Can I really trust in the uncertainty of these uninvited callers? Or will they pull the rug out from under me when I’m once again not prepared to deal with such groundlessness? 

Upon reflection during these last few months, I inherently know we are all being tested!  Mother Nature has made sure to hone in on our harm and carelessness, despite providing us with countless caveats.  It’s apparent that the Divine has been shining a spinning, pulsating, glaring, disco ball light fixture on the many ways we have ignored and flaunted our basic humanity. Some of us are being stopped short at the velvet ropes.

This pandemic is being touted as The Great Equalizer. This modern plague forces us to ask ourselves the big, essential and existential questions of our lives.

Yet we agonize, complain and even protest about the loss of our creature comforts.

Allen Ginsburg famously said, “The suffering itself is not so bad; it’s the resentment against suffering that is the real pain.”

According to the wisdom of Nelson Mandela, “When we can sit in the face of insanity or dislike and be free from the need to make it different, then we are free.”

As a Seeker, I just love drinking in inspiring quotes and spiritual parables with my green tea…BUT AT MY LEISURE!  NOT when my world is disordered!  Yet any kind of psychic awakening does not happen when we are in our meditative, incense burning, chakra balanced, Zen-den, stocked with plenty of toilet paper!

Clearly, we cannot travel, skip town or flee at this time. There are too many confusing guidelines and limitations.  However, I can go on an inward journey and just be still.

There is always the optimistic possibility of resetting and realigning ourselves during a lock-down.  Will we really learn from this universal collapse and transition to a new “normal” since not changing is not natural, nor is it normal?

I can feel the earth shifting.

Barbara Kingsolver once said, “The changes we dread most may contain our salvation.”

Do we have a choice to not open our front door to greet the chaos?  I believe it’s best to let those old helpers in and, yes, even embrace them. 

…before they tear my door off the hinges.