ACTIVATE THE COVID-19 CURE!

What would you think if someone told you that right now the cure for COVID-19 is in your hands? Well, I’m telling you just that! And the cure isn’t physical in nature – such as a drug or vaccine. Although social distancing and washing hands are imperative protocols, they are not the answer. The answer is MENTAL.

I was raised Christian but long ago learned to read and interpret the Bible metaphysically. And I learned that Jesus was the great example and master teacher, not “THE CHRIST” himself (or the “great exception” as many were taught). His consciousness informed him that he was one with the Infinite (God), just as he knew that was true of everyone. His message was, “the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these. . . .”(NRSV) The word “Christ” refers to neither Jesus’ last name nor his uniqueness. It refers to the Christ Consciousness – that we are one with our Creator – that is the potential in every one of us. The problem is not only has his message been misunderstood and misinterpreted for over two thousand years, but as a result relatively few of us realize and recognize the Truth of our own being.

This Truth certainly bears on our current situation where our world is fighting the invisible enemy of this deadly virus. But what if we truly understood and expressed our Truth, which is our innate divinity? In that case no pandemic would exist. For those who recognize the Truth of this great spiritual potential within us, we are free to become our unlimited self, doing unlimited things. We are not constrained by our mortal limitations, but draw upon that higher potential that has truly always BEEN us. In the words of Thoreau, we would all “live with the license of a higher order of beings.” That was the life Jesus demonstrated and urged us to realize.

Since God/Creative Life Force/the Infinite has never been separate from or outside of us, all we need to do is claim our own divinity. And we do that by harnessing the power of MIND. That way we know, as did Jesus, that God isn’t an object outside to be worshipped, but rather an indwelling Presence, the infinite energy of creation and Principle by which we live. Anyone who lives in this consciousness – the Christ Consciousness – has a whole new way of experiencing life than is typically the case with most human beings.

It doesn’t matter whether or not you’re Christian, read the Bible, are on another spiritual path, or follow any particular tradition – or none at all. What Jesus was saying is true for everyone, regardless of your orientation. Two primary truths speak directly to our world’s – and our individual – experiences of this novel coronavirus pandemic. First: the ultimate effect of any event in life depends upon the way in which we receive it. The vital question is always, how do I respond to what has happened? And the answer depends on how we view our personal power and the power of our MIND. As I’ve written many times, “mind” is different from “brain.” It encompasses the brain’s physical activity and something much greater, namely consciousness. I talk about that topic at some length in my most recent book, Mind over Matter : An Old Adage Gains New Meaning (Page Publishing, Inc. 2019).

I’ll share some of the highlights here, beginning with this quote by Rabindranath Tagore, a Hindu who won the 1913 Nobel Prize for Literature:

Most people believe the mind to be a mirror,

more or less accurately reflecting the world outside them,

not realizing on the contrary that the mind is itself

the principal element of creation.

“The mind itself is the principal element of creation.” Those are the key words and concept I ask you to try and understand. When Jesus spoke the words in John 14:12, I believe he was talking about mind, and consciousness. I’ve long believed that how I think, react, or respond to whatever crosses my path determines my experience. And that belief applies right now to this highly contagious and virulent virus.

Think of EGO CONSCIOUSNESS as our most basic, and most limited, way of understanding our world. It reflects how we sense and interpret what’s going on around us, to us, for us, and so on. It deals primarily with the material world we experience via our physical senses. This limited aspect of MIND is unable to truly grasp such concepts as God, eternity, enlightenment and other words that point to a greater understanding of universal consciousness.

We know, because science has proven this time and again, that nothing is matter. Rather everything is energy in motion. Our universe is a conscious, living, evolving, and creative being or process. It’s nonrandom, self-organizing, and self-regulating. The essence of all faith traditions embraces invisible things such as the soul, the afterlife, and concepts that influence our thoughts but that are invisible to our senses.

Leading thinkers in this twenty-first century are embracing a new paradigm that invites us all to conceive a fuller picture of “reality” than what we’re accustomed to seeing. I’m inviting you to move beyond humankind’s historical understanding of the world into a more expansive perception of how we’re all connected – to one another, to our environment, to Planet Earth, and to our Creator. That requires a deeper and more fundamental level of awareness.

Dualistic thinking – the way so many of us for so long have believed – promotes our seeing differences. And seeing differences ultimately leads to prejudice, hatred, war and discord of all kinds. If we persist in seeing the world this way, crises such as this pandemic are creating, will undermine our lives and ultimately prove the proverbial and actual end of us, humanity as we know it. We’re being invited to understand ourselves and our world as ONE, leading us to a unified way of comprehending and perceiving life all around us. We MUST shift the direction we’ve been heading for eons. Instead of fragmentation and dissolution, we must move toward what I simply call a more humane way of living.

Right now in 2020 we are experiencing what many consider the most daunting, challenging, and potentially transformative time in the history of civilization. It’s the POTENTIALLY TRANSFORMING aspect of these challenges that is my focus. If we are to survive as a species, we must shift our present direction as far as politics, institutions, values, and individual perceptions are concerned. Instead we must choose to embrace a deeper and truer understanding of consciousness. What it means to be truly conscious and awake has eluded too many for too long. COVID-19 is our wake-up call! Please listen and heed this call so we can heal ourselves and our planet.

The Buddha and other avatars understood that the most important factor in the quality of life for the human race is HOW WE MANAGE OUR MINDS. And when we persist in operating on “auto pilot,” allowing what others think, say, and advise us to do to direct our way, we’re abdicating responsibility to powers outside ourselves. And those powers are many and mighty. They include politicians, governments, the media, and every other individual or body of influence in our lives.

Far too many of us have lost control over our own lives. We must remember our divine potential and power and start expressing our essence as spiritual beings living this human existence. OUR self-awareness, OUR relationships, and how we understand reality determine our life’s experiences. We are being challenged right now, like never before, to BRING UNCONSCIOUSNESS INTO CONSCIOUSNESS in order to heal, to grow, and to master our life’s lessons.

And that will demand much of us. We’re attached to old thoughts, beliefs, and ways of living that often cause us to deny new information as it’s being presented. But if our views don’t change to accommodate new learning, we will stay asleep at the wheel, while someone else or some outside force controls our life.

I recently realized how allowing Donald Trump to trigger all sorts of negative energy within me was doing the very last thing I really want to do: handing control of Susan over to DJT! Why I hadn’t realized that before, I’ll never know. But that doesn’t matter. What DOES matter is that now I’ve taken back control over Susan, the only control I ever really have. But the realization that thinking negatively about Trump actually fuels his own negativity stopped me in my tracks. I’ll do my best to never energize him that way again! This realization is nothing more than regaining control of a certain aspect of my mind: by becoming conscious of what I was doing, I then was able to make a necessary and desirable change. And such is the case with any aspect of our lives. So let’s apply this Truth to our experience of COVID-19.

I certainly don’t want this deadly virus to impact any aspect of my life, health, or finances. Nor do I want it to harm any other human being. Since first becoming aware of its presence, especially in the USA, I have focused less on the potential harm it could bring and more on the lessons its global presence can teach us. And those lessons are many and powerful. Can we wake up enough to recognize them, and then stay conscious enough to make the changes being demanded of humankind?

Consider the environment. The skies are bluer, the waters clearer, and the air cleaner than we’ve known in decades! It’s amazing to realize how quickly nature restored itself since humans around the world have largely ceased to drive vehicles, fly planes, cruise in ocean liners, or – as is the case in Venice – pollute the canals that attract thousands to those waterways.

First and most obvious is that this pandemic is reminding us all that WE ARE ONE. We are connected. We are different expressions of our common nature, which is divine. Again, remember that we’re spiritual beings experiencing humanity. We are all created and sustained by a Life Force that is pure energy as well as pure potential. The “pure” aspect of God’s nature is love, and all the many ways in which love expresses. God, this Life Force Energy, is active and expressing in our individual lives TO THE DEGREE we are aware of its presence. As I remember - am awake and aware of the Truth - that God expresses in, as, and through Susan to the degree I am conscious of my essence, then my thoughts, words, actions and resulting experiences are all expressions of love. My essential nature is love, and I express and experience love in unlimited reciprocal ways.

Next, COVID-19 is inviting humanity to remember that because we are all connected, we need to work together, in harmony, to restore balance wherever inequities exist. Today we’re reminded that that means sharing our resources, such as PPE, and our medical and scientific know-how and discoveries with the world, as we collectively strive to find a vaccine and treatments for this disease. It’s not about US and THEM; we’re all dealing with the same enemy. And the most effective way to combat it is to share our discoveries and resources as opposed to competing with each other (and sometimes ourselves!), or turning a health challenge into a political one.

Third, the virus is asking us to honor our humanity above our material and financial interests. That’s tough because our economies are taking huge hits even as people are sick and dying. The question asked so often these days seems to boil down to this: what’s more important – human life or the economic life of our nation and world? Really? These two central aspects of life are intimately intertwined. Without healthy people there is no healthy economy. And if our economy collapses to the point it becomes irreparable, then say good-bye to life (at least human life as we’ve known it).

The real question has to do with what we value most. It’s almost like the age-old riddle: what comes first, the chicken or the egg? No people, no economy. No economy, no life. This is an interesting challenge and one that demands the highest possible guidance to restore health to both concerns.

Ultimately every person must take responsibility for himself or herself. But because we don’t live in a vacuum but are dependent on one another in so many ways, part of our individual responsibility is doing all we can to protect and help others – again, as our lives invite us to do. Right now as states are beginning to re-open their economies – hopefully not too soon – individual business owners are considering the risks and rewards of the big “to open” or “to remain closed” experiment this moment poses.

A basic consideration involves this very tricky question: what is a life worth? I recently listened to a PBS program that explained STATISTICALLY how the government values life. The $10,000,000 current established value of a single life is based on how risky a job is. That dollar amount has nothing to do with the moral or ethical value of a person. When economists considered a person’s age as a factor in determining one’s value, there was tremendous outcry when the question was asked, “How much is my granny worth?” So we’ve truly got a moral dilemma on our hands. That said, today’s economists agree the country should stay SHUT DOWN until loss of life caused by this virus is clearly and steadily on the decline. And we must realize there’s no magic bullet that will save us. As is the case with HIV-Aids, it’s been forty years and still no vaccine exists.

If there were no political or competitive advantages at stake as we deal with this pandemic, I except the inconsistent messages from “on high” would be uniform. No one would gain an advantage by choosing life over the economy, or vice versa. Unfortunately such is not the case, at least not in America in this election year, 2020.

These times demand a consistent and uniform response to this deadly virus. Unfortunately we are seeing neither consistency nor uniformity from our current leadership. So until that leadership changes and one emerges with a dependable and well informed approach to our existing challenges, it’s up to us, individually, to lean into that higher power within that divinely guides and inspires us to take whatever our highest road may be. In that way, starting right now, we can each have a direct and positive impact on containing the damage COVID-19 is perpetrating on our planet.

So many of us are literally sitting around right now, wondering WHAT CAN I DO TO HELP? Now you know. The answers all lie within, as does the power to take control over your life’s circumstances. Take advantage of this “down time” to listen as you’ve never done before. And in so doing you will find the guidance you seek and the power to impact not only your own life, but the life of this planet.