Corona Virus Musings
Covid 19, Corona Virus, Social distancing. Lack of toilet paper and cleaning supplies. Empty grocery store shelves. Holidays spent without the comfort of families…
Daunting, haunting headlines of death and the closing down of business, with the corresponding drop in the stock market, then the talk of premature openings, not enough testing and more dis-ease. Bi-partisan politics, world views of Pandemic, the placing of blame…Feelings of insecurity giving way to conspiracy theories, leaving us feel all the more uncertain, out of control, bringing on the paranoia and suspicion...are you seeing it?
Feelings of annoyance, anger, frustration, blame, victimhood surfacing...are you feeling it?
It is the shadow lurking, filled with what ifs and how comes. It is time to deal with it. It is time for some radical healing, starting with what is within!
When I get caught up, spooling in the what ifs and how comes, I find myself spinning stories, telling myself things that may or may not be true, looking for articles on the internet to explain the things that I can’t fathom, trying to justify change that is happening that is out of my control, beyond my sphere of influence. I find that when I take a breath, get a bit of distance, decide to do something different, then things begin to change. My awareness heightens, my consciousness expands, I am able to settle in.
Expressive art helps me with this process. Getting feelings out in color and form, listening to the brush strokes on the canvass all help to clear my residual feelings. So I took to the canvas with my brush, my fingers, some water and paint and here is the result of my intense frustrations, the disconnect from my work and the people whom I love and my fear for the future, and here is the back story, what the painting means to me.
Bats. That is where they said that the virus came from. Bats. Harbingers of change. After reading Ted Andrew’s passage on Bat Medicine, I found that bats are part of an initiatory process for early Meso Americans. They represent the Shaman’s journey, the death of the self through intense tests. They bring up what we fear most and require us to transmute it. They call on us to “rebirth” ourselves.
So, I thought that I needed to paint a bat. I am not fond of these creatures, but I harbor no animosity toward them either. Bats. Rebirth. The death of the Shaman. Spiritual rebirth. As I began to paint, I forgot all of those things and let the paint brush guide me. The painting started with the watery cosmic background that filled me with a sense of internal knowing. I sensed blame, guilt, frustration. So, ok, that is all supposed to come out, to live on the canvass instead of being repressed inside of me. Then the bat appeared. It was, at first, sinister. Then the earth appeared and I started to get chills, because I realized that global pandemic was not just representative of my Shaman’s death, but the Shaman’s death of the Earth plane as we know it. I started routing for mother Earth!
I then saw the waves of consciousness as they appeared, moving us out of our current dimension, into greater understanding of all peoples. I saw the simultaneous presence of dimension with greater clarity than ever. Here we are, flitting back and forth from third to fifth, sometimes beyond…. I saw that the earth is royal, welcoming in waves of the divine feminine and that she is descending in her embryonic stages into the consciousness of those who inhabit her planet. I saw colors that I can’t describe and which are not in my paint box. I saw sacred geometry, writing in a language that I immediately understood, but could not replicate. I saw the roots of mysticism and the promise of new growth.
I saw all matter of sentient beings, all benevolent, all comforting, helpful, even those who were here to help us understand our shadows. I saw that the bats facial structure had changed and at first I was disconcerted, because I feared that it was the blood of all humanity that it was feeding on and then, there was a softening as the earth appeared, embryonic in its mouth and what I saw at first as dripping blood were tears ushering in new life, through a new way of being. I saw the bat, symbolically taking on the old energies while delivering the new. I saw souls rising, into their cosmic birth right and angels calling for blood and creativity. I saw plants to be harvested and stars to be gazed at and the opportunity to look at all of this in a different light. Once again, I saw the earth as royal, the divine mother coming through with each dimensional progression of the planet and I realized that I cannot quell fear by buying into it. I cannot heal the hurt or insecurities by doing anything but loving where we are and believing in the goodness of our nature. I don’t like what is going on. I hate feeling so out of control and I don’t know how the world will be as we come out of this. I do know that I am grateful to live in these interesting times and that part of my calling is to see my own shadow, to understand it, to integrate it and to be easier on myself in my discovery. These are deep changes and to help in the transition requires us to transform ourselves through awareness. I am acutely aware not only of the changes, the emotions behind the changes, but also in the beauty. I see the uplifting spirits and the sacred symbol- as above so below and I know that I still must strive to create heaven on earth each day. I need to find my own bliss and bring that to the earth plane, to lead others by example. As I look at this painting now, I have a deep understanding of what it all means to me. We are not alone, even if in our quarantined state, it sometimes feels like it. This disease, while striking some of us physically, has affected all of us emotionally. It is in our psyches, preparing us for the next “level” of things to come. It has provided opportunities to expand our consciousness, to look at our human nature, to accept ourselves just as we are, to mitigate judgement, to be creative within our communication, to usher in a time that allows us to look within and to transform.