
As I write this, our world community faces a major disruption of normal activities due to Covid-19. Fear and concern for safety are on the rise as reported cases of viral infection and death climb in the news all around. In the very town in which I live, there has been at least one confirmed infection, and in my county, a number more. I live with an elder of nearly 90 years, and am fully aware that his well-being is part of my responsibility.
The other day, I was driving through town on an errand, and thought to myself that it would be good to pick up some potatoes as I passed the local store on the way home. I have a consummate desire to walk in obedience to the guiding voice of my heart, which I have grown to listen to and trust over nearly a quarter century of practice. And I am even more vigilant about doing so when anything’s afoot that warrants careful attention. So, as I completed my errand and started back home whereby I would pass the store, I looked into my heart space with my feeling sense and checked how the idea of stopping for potatoes felt. Even though my imagination lit up with both solid logic and delighted anticipation at what I would make if I had those potatoes, in my heart center, the idea of stopping at that store in that moment to pick up those potatoes caused a slightly dimmed, depressed, joyless feeling in my core. Well, that was a straight up No, don’t buy the potatoes. So I drove past the store and went straight on home to make something else for dinner. That was two weeks ago and both myself and my elder housemate are both still perfectly healthy.
Now, do I know for sure that I avoided a brush with Covid-19 or some other harm? Nope. I have no hard evidence of that. I have found it’s not often that I have proof of the reason why my heart or intuition told me to go a certain way at a certain time. The times that I have confirmation of my guidance are the times that I didn’t listen, and then got into trouble and kicked myself for not listening… hindsight proving that the little voice that I ignored, was right.
One such incident of not listening stands out in my mind, even though it happened nearly 20 years ago. Back when I was young and wanting for validation of my self-worth from the romantic attention of an interesting man, I gradually got tangled up in an unhealthy situation with a man recently come to the States from Pakistan. I thought he was mysterious and intriguing, and I failed to recognize the early signs that he had an unhealthy sense of boundaries. And then I failed to do anything really smart about the later signs of his unhealthy boundaries. This is all because, as I mentioned, at the time, I had some very deep emotional needs blinding me and driving me. Live and learn, right?
Anyway, as the story goes, things eventually got to a point where he would insist on my company for an evening of talking over dinner or talking in the car or talking wherever. And if I refused, he would follow me around to try to change my mind. So in other words, he would stalk me. And all this even though we pretty much never even touched physically.
At first, even with the stalking, I viewed the situation as manageable. After a while, however, I felt helpless to demand healthy respect for my space. It got really scary, and I got really skinny from the stress and because my stomach was in such a knot all the time that the only thing I could eat were apples.
In the midst of all this, I was housesitting one night… taking care of someone’s cats and also staying there… and I was ready to go home to my housesitting house for the night. My Pakistani “friend” had caught up with me somehow on the way… exactly how is foggy… my memory of the evening begins from where we were both parked in a spot and he was insisting on my company and I was determined to part ways and go home for the night. I got in my car and pulled out, and saw him in my rear view mirror taking action to follow me.
(This is such an awful and embarrassing story to tell because who I was then was so naïve and foolish in ways that are strikingly obvious to me now. But as I said, this was nearly 20 years ago. Anyway…)
He did indeed follow me; but I had a lead of a decent distance. I knew if he caught up to me, I could not go all the way home because I would not allow him to discover where my housesitting house was and risk getting them involved in my nonsense karma with this guy.
As I neared the village I had to cross to get to my housesitting house, a gentle voice whispered inside my awareness, Turn here… indicating a wooded country road that ran parallel to the main drag of the village. I almost complied, but an angry flash of rebellion came up inside me, daring, “Bring it.” I felt in that instant defiant of behaving meekly, and like I would rather rebuke him with fight energy than spare him accountability by just slipping away into the night; but it was a foolish flash of emotion.
So instead of turning down that discrete side street, I drove down the main drag to get across town. And just before I rounded the turn in the center of town that would’ve rendered me safely and untraceably out of sight, I saw in my rear view his headlights come up to the intersection I had left behind. He spotted my taillights just in time to give me another three or four hours of grief. It was an exhausting evening. I was eventually able to go to my housesitting house alone and unobserved. I don’t even remember how I pulled that off.
The most important and lasting thing about this evening’s experience, is what I found myself reflecting on the day after… the voice inside that told me to turn off on that wooded side street. If I’d have listened, I would’ve been able to go safely and easily straight home that night. And recognizing this in retrospect the following day, brought tears to my eyes, because it was the first time I realized from first-hand experience that there really is a benevolent source of guidance that knows more than I do and that loves me and wants to guide me for my well-being. This was the first time I personally experienced that there was something I could access within my inner awareness to help me make decisions, besides my customary ego structure; and that it was more trustworthy than my ego structure. It was the first real experience of realizing that I am not alone; I have a gentle, helping presence with me all the time. We all do.
So in this time of uncertainty with news of danger all around, I hold the hope for each and all of us that we can have the personal fortitude to stave off fear, quiet our mind, and go within to feel our heart and our intuition, that we may each and all access this same depth of clear guidance that is spot-on relevant to our unique situation in each moment, to help us each get through this situation with wholeness, wellness, and safety.
#SpiritualSensitivityIsPractical
The meek shall inherit the Earth. When we are lost in the wilderness of our own ego structure, we see ourselves in a world in which we wrestle with people and things outside our self, struggling to make a safe space for ourselves wherein we can exist with both physical and emotional wellbeing. We often feel like we have to resist or fight things that oppose our wellbeing in some way. The proposal of meekness seems implausible; it looks from this perspective that to be meek is to be passively acquiescent to forces that seek their own gains possibly at the expense of our health and peace. From this perspective, we resist and fight only out of an effort to take of our needs to have the space to be as feels right to us, and to have what we feel will make us whole and keep... Login as member to read the whole explication