Day 23 The Germ of Truth; or, A Good Example

A headline in The Huffington Post news aggregator this morning called the Narcissist-in-Chief’s son-in-law Jared Kushner the “clown prince.” He has swooped into the federal government’s sullied pseudo-response to the coronavirus.

An article in The Times this morning noted that “New York is running out of body bags,” and that the U.S. Navy ship in the Hudson is “a joke.” They have 20 patients.

Another article says that, despite the “stimulus package which is really disaster relief,” there are no mechanisms set up through which to disseminate the money to where it’s desperately needed. And likely won’t be for three weeks or so.

Just as a medical intuitive learns to look at disease and diagnoses as reflections of what is actually happening for a patient, a metaphysician is trained to look at events and language as a reflection of consciousness, both individual and collective.

The empowerment of incompetency has become a meme during this crisis.

From an upstate New York country doctor whose three-part, impromptu drug cocktail is being hailed by right wing media pundits as a cure for coronavirus to conflicting messages about whether or if it is necessary to wear masks, the Trump Pandemic has been riddled with misinformation. This is not news.

What might be though is how the words and actions of the players can give us a clue as to what’s really required at this critical time. Consider these:

Particle physicist and Cornell University postdoctoral research associate Yangyang Cheng writing in “Of the Virus and God, Orange Peels and the Party” says, “Eleven years ago when I was preparing to leave China, my mother impelled me to do two things: get baptized and join the Chinese Communist Party.

“I fulfilled neither of her wishes. I am not a Communist, and I do not believe in God. I am a scientist and a writer. It is the responsibility of my vocations to ask the questions obscured by simplified answers.”

“Disaster response requires discipline and adherence to a clear chain of command, not the move-fast-and-break-things approach of start-up culture.”

“[I]ntroducing ... competing power centers into a crisis response structure is a guaranteed problem.”

“Despite the views of staff members who see Mr. Kushner as a novice at government, Mr. Kushner still views himself as a person who can fix things. ‘I learned very early on that when you try to work around an existing government structure, it rarely works,’ Mr. Kushner said in the interview. ‘You have to take the machinery that exists and empower it rather than recreate it.’”

As I read the news this morning, I began to think about the usual whimsical wisdom with which Mary Engelbreit’s page-a-day calendar starts my day. One of my favorites of her adages is: You can either be a good example or a terrible warning.

Let’s take some of the phrases used by today’s media, and consider them for personal use rather than pandemic response, and see where they take us. Have a look at these:

ask the questions obscured by simplified answers

discipline and adherence to a clear chain of command

introducing ... competing power centers

take the machinery that exists and empower it rather than recreate it

Each of these has a good example version and a terrible warning version, Beloved. Which are you choosing?

The Good Example (to borrow from the lawyers, hereinafter, G.E.) asks questions all the time, and keeps asking them, till the answers are satisfactory—witness any three year old you know.

The Terrible Warning (hereinafter, T.W.) doesn’t ask questions at all, ever, or if T.W. does, T.W. is satisfied with simplified, meme answers.

The G.E. is disciplined and uses structure as a support system to contribute their gifts to humankind, animalkind, and the world.

The T.W. is chaotic, irrational, reactive, and behaves as though structure, any structure, is against their creative process.

The G. E. is relieved to adhere to a chain of command particularly in the face of their own gaps in expertise.

The T.W. is chaotic, irrational, reactive, and behaves as though structure, any structure, is against their creative process.

The T.W. is outraged by a chain of command and takes rugged self-sufficiency as gospel truth regardless of expertise.

The G.E. is on to how lenses work in perception, and when they know there are competing power centers works to find a win-win for everyone.

The T.W. uses competing power centers to prove the over-riding egotism of the markets, and doesn’t give a damn who loses as long as they themselves win.

The G.E. takes the machinery that exists and makes it right, then looks for ways to empower it rather than recreate it.

The T.W. takes the machinery that exists and makes it wrong, then looks for ways to disempower it so that they can profit by having to recreate it.

Are you seeing a pattern here? I am.

Recently it has been reported to me numerous times that college seniors are angry that they’ve been gypped of their final semester in school. At the same time, they’re helping their professors, who have as a general rule, resisted online education to enable them to finish their coursework online.

The college seniors are disappointed. Of course they are, but ... uh, there’s a pandemic?

The hardest thing to come to terms with about this story is that these students don’t know how to manage their disappointment. Technology? They can manage in a heartbeat, but their own interior atmosphere, they can’t.

Many years ago, I wrote a book called God’s Dictionary about the spiritual power of ordinary words. The word that started my journey toward that book was disappointment. Let’s do a little “folk etymology,” as one reviewer said.

Dis- means not.

When you are appointed to something, say, Ambassador to Luxembourg, you are chosen.

When you feel disappointed, you feel not chosen.

Emotional reactivity to feeling not chosen would tell you that you have no choice. Often feeling not chosen means you’re not choosing.

These students have every right to feel disappointment. Something they expected to happen is not going to happen. On the other hand, something they never expected to happen—online education—is happening all over the world.

Football coach John Wooden famously said, “Don’t let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.”

These students, and each one of us, has a choice to make. We need to take our disappointments, and they aren’t only graduations that aren’t happening. You know what yours are. We need to take our disappointments and make a choice.

Even the Terrible Warning has a germ of truth in its words and actions. If we make the time to look within, find where we are ourselves tending toward Terrible Warning, and look for how to turn that around to become a Good Example, we will not only know truth that sets us free, but we will also be able to help others know their own truth, and that will set them free.

And isn’t that what we all want to choose right now? A world free of coronavirus, and people free to give our gifts to one another and the world.

Dr. Susan Corso is a metaphysician and medical intuitive with a private counseling practice for more than 35 years. She has written too many books to list here. Her website is www.susancorso.com

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