When I got back from Bolivia things were crystal clear. It felt like my life was laid out in front of me. There was direction. Purpose. A profound and intuitive experience as to whatever it is that connects us to life itself. I felt profound Grace. There was no doubt about what I needed to do. Slowly, over the course of a few weeks, and in a very insidious way, all of that just kind of slowly evaporated. What once was a deep pool of understanding was replaced with a thick viscus sludge of uncertainty and inertia. The sludge of life.

I have been sitting in that pool of stinky shit since the end of January. I was determined to meditate and pray every day. In some weird way, I thought if I did that, I would put me further in the front of the line to God. I thought in a weird kind of way God would hear first. I would be put higher on the list of God’s priorities.  God would pay attention to me first. Of giving me what I wanted. I somehow thought in the back of my mind that my practice of meditation and prayer was the cost of admission to receiving GRACE.

This whole corona virus thing just served to exacerbate the way I was feeling. It added a new dimension: fear. All kinds of fear. A primordial fear of dying. The fear of running out money. My business closing. Running out of toilet paper. I have to assume that with exception of a the 1% everyone is experiencing their own version of fear.

There are many reasons for the corona virus. Some founded in science. Some founded in conspiracy theory. Maybe one theory I might connect with is that of this event being the beginning of some shift in human consciousness. For me, when something of this magnitude happens on a global scale, it feels evolutionary. Evolution is a painful, messy, and sometimes long process. Fear and uncertainly on this level can serve as the tinder for a profound change in how we live and relate to one another. It “gets” us in our most vulnerable place. The pace of money and personal financial wellbeing. This subject is grist for another blog post.

As I had mentioned, I was feeling disconnected. To myself. To the divine. To life. Kind of just showing up and going through the motions. I got into the space of questioning what the fuck was I doing with myself and all the decisions I had made in my life to get to where I am in this very moment.

I live in Michigan. There is a 3-week quarantine in place government mandated order. Not many things to do. I have been taking long walks every day, 4 to 8 miles. My good friend Jeff and I often walk together. And yes, we keep the correct distance from each other. Today, we took an 8-mile walk. We are good friends. Our conversations are always insightful. They are usually about what we are processing in our lives. What is important. What is working and what is challenging. They are intimate, deep and profound. We usually walk the Lakeland Trail. The gravel part, north of Pinckney. It was a particularly nice spring day. On the way back to our cars, I had a deep moving experience of GRACE. I felt like my life came back to me. I don’t know why. For no particular reason. Maybe it doesn’t matter. But there it was. I could feel that despite all my fear. All my inertia. All my doubts, all my fucked up thoughts, I was showing up for my life. That ultimately my heart was open and that I was available to receive those things needs to be living a life that would allow for the deepest expression of who I am. Not necessarily the way I wanted, or even imagined. I just needed to be available to what was being offered. I needed to slow down and listen. Everything I was feeling was OK. Part of the human experience. It was a bit clearer to me that my mediation and prayer practice was a means, a tool, a discipline that keeps the din or life to not be so imposing and to allow for the divine to seep in. Sometimes showing up is enough to keep you leaning into your life.

Thanks Jeff.