A Whole Year of DEEP
By: Teza Lord
Tags: Pandemic Reflections, Year In Review, Reset

In a little while I’m doing the weekly ritual I’ve offered a private Facebook group for the last seven months, to help folks who are anxious, angry, or otherwise experiencing an increased uncomfortability during the pandemic.

The reason I started this group was simple. I was asked to offer my “view on things” to others, because unlike so many, I approach adversity differently. Probably because I’ve experienced a lot of do-or-die challenges many others only read about in books.

I won’t go through what my story is. (I write books about that.) Here, I want to talk about “our story.” The fact that we, as a blended family of humankind, have experienced an entire year of trauma, hardship, loss of freedom, financial upset, and for many of us, too many of us! … having to watch our loved ones suffer with Covid or poverty or racism, or see them suffer the effects of the coronavirus shut-down as we stand by, impotently, ineffectively wishing we could do something, but feeling like we can’t.

So when I started the WeR1LOVE effort, I felt I could offer something besides empathy. Because I’m a survivor of so many other kinds of life crises, that’s why I thought I could help. And then a good friend asked me to publicly share my view that obstacles, even a killer-virus like Covid is, was (among many and egregious negatives, like death!) the most poignant opportunity we’ve faced as a combined society of homo sapiens. The pandemic is/was/shall forever be: “The Family of Humankind’s Day of Reckoning,” one could say, believing as I do, that Big Words with Capital letters drive home more fiercely how important a particular subject is.

The pandemic, now that it’s a year old, has brought all of us, in one shape or another, face to face with what really matters in day-to-day life.

For some of us, and there are many just like me you better believe it, this quiet time, being sequestered, in lock-down, isolated, no-parties, no-concerts, no-nothing has meant being withdrawn. Usually being withdrawn equals being anti-social, but in this case it’s the reverse. Covid-precautions were/still are life-affirming. Helping to stop the spread has given us all an opportunity to dive deeper into our inner selves, and see what’s there because we don’t have the distractions of “outside life” that kept us from exploring our inner selves, pre-Covid.

In our WeR1LOVE private group (there are only two requirements: No assholes, and Have Fun!) I offer a weekly “Mind-Stilling Ritual” in which I help others who need assistance to let go of everyday troubles and worries, to journey deeper within our inner regions of Being (there’s another “BIG” thing).

Our society, pre-pandemic, was spiraling out of control, my friends. Everywhere we looked: Too much of too many choices, in infinite variations! So much so that an ordinary person got dizzy trying to decide which, when, where, with whom … making many of us feel totally ungrounded or — and here’s where my weekly Mind-Stillers come in handy — we could CHOOSE to still our busy, attic-rattling monkey-minds and, by following our breath or ray of Light (among many ways known to meditators and mood-relaxation practitioners) go beyond the outside world’s disturbances to the inner place of peace, joy, bliss … called, and this is true … Self Love.

I’ve had to do this work, learning to love myself from a former state of not-giving-a-shit for the past three-plus decades ,because my own pre-Love-me life crash and burned, and I was either going to die (as “soul-death”) or … embrace WHAT IS.

This is what the Covid-19 pandemic has brought so many: the choice to go within and discover inner peace, or focus on the horrors of the outside world, the stats, the graphs, the lineups of caskets, the jobs lost and wild animals roaming city streets (a good thing!) … or … accept the “Re-Set” that Nature has in such a drastic manner brought us in the form of the pandemic, forcing us to utter the Big word “Yes!” to loving ourselves. And Love, plain and simple, expecially respecting our own Self, lessens the tension of crazy f-ed up modern day life.

How? Here’s a few way so obvious you know already, but it’s good to speak them out loud here: