Day 18 Noli Me Tangere; or, We Cannot Be Over the Rainbow

As languages go, I don’t mind the language of numbers. I do, however, think we’ve fetishized numbers as some sort of be-all and end-all that is dangerously illusory. Despite the universal historical practice of myriad forms of numerology, numbers a.k.a. data, aren’t the bottom line.

The numbers for coronavirus have been startlingly bleak, haven’t they? So imagine my delight when a member of my household read that “113,000 people have recovered from COVID-19.”

My reaction was pure numbers. Where? When? How? Who? There were no numeric details.

Regardless, it was a relief to see a number related to life rather than death, or potential death.

Except that numbers only tell part of the story.

It’s Sunday. I wakened thinking of a line from the Gospel of John (20:17, for those who wish to know). It purports to be the words of Jesus of Nazareth. The Septuagint writes it thus: Noli me tangere. Usually, it’s translated ‘touch me not.’

Jesus is speaking to Mary Magdalene, whom I believe is his wife, from an interim energetic state. Years ago an energy wizard I knew, who was also a seminary professor of mine, posited that during the three days Jesus spent in the tomb, he had a tough job to do.

He was dead. His spirit had left his body behind. His body was disintegrating. His job was to pull the cells of his body back together and rejoin his spirit with his body, and it was a doozy.

She further posited that when he said, “Noli me tangere,” most translations of the phrase were off. What he meant was, “Don’t cling to me.” His body wasn’t where the connection to others needed to be centered any more. Where the connection needed to be rewired was from his heart to hers. And ours.

This pre-ascension Jesus, in three words, essentially, rewrote his boundaries.

Boundaries have been a major feature of the Trump Pandemic. Just yesterday, the Narcissist-in-Chief threatened to “quarantine” New York. Governor Cuomo, rightly, blew a gasket and called it a “declaration of war on the states.”

The same pseudo-leader has persisted in calling the coronavirus “the Chinese virus.” His sycophants follow suit.

Shakespeare scholar Emma Smith, writing in this morning’s Times says, “Plague was indifferent to the boundaries erected by society, and its appetite was ravenous.”

Can we not all see, if we’ll look, that it doesn’t matter what bodily boundaries we throw up?
Can we not all see, if we’ll look, that it doesn’t matter what the numbers imply?
Can we not all see, if we’ll look, that it doesn’t matter what governments or states decide?

“Shakespeare is not interested in the statistics — what in his time were called the bills of mortality. His fictions reimagine the macro-narrative of epidemic as the micro-narrative of tragedy, setting humane uniqueness against the disease’s obliterating ravages. His work is a cultural prophylactic against understanding disease solely in quantitative terms, a narrative vaccine.”

I would ask you to consider that Jesus, like Shakespeare, was in the process of transcending boundaries, most especially physical ones. He, though, was turning the micro-narrative of the tragedy of the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth into the macro-narrative of the miracle of the ascension of Jesus the Christed. Furthermore, he was calling his followers to do the same.

I am horrified and disgusted at the partisan vilification that is currently attacking one of the few informed voices of reason during this Trump Pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci. He is, however, not alone. Both the Nazarene Rabbi and the Bard of Avon have suffered similar trolling.

I was impressed with the governor of New Jersey, citing an in-your-face gathering of 47 people in a 550 square foot apartment for a curated disc jockey party. He said that the plan was to arrest people who thwarted the quarantine guidelines, “This is a pass-fail test. It’s life or death.”

At the same time as I am saying the boundaries don’t count, can’t work, are useless, I’m also saying that without them, we are signing our own death certificates. How can both of these things possibly be true at the same time?

Here’s how.

Coronavirus is an equal opportunistic infector.

As a Brooklyn paramedic said, “It does not matter where you are. It doesn’t matter how much money you have. This virus is treating everyone equally.”

Coronavirus recognizes our hosting abilities faster than fast.

Emma Smith cites “René Girard, the French critic, [who] wrote in a famous essay that “the distinctiveness of the plague is that it ultimately destroys all forms of distinctiveness.”

Coronavirus levels the playing field.

With the not-quite-ascended Nazarene Rabbi, it says, “Noli me tangere, touch me not.”

Why?

For the same reason he says it.

Even if we are not touching one another, even if we are in utter compliance with every rule of quarantine there is, even if we are completely isolated and not at risk, we are all connected, Beloved, if not physically, then energetically.

And here, on the level of energy, is where you can make a daily difference.

Those of us who know of the chakra system are aware that there are myriad chakras. There are eight major ones that ascend the spine. The first seven correspond to the colors of the rainbow: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet. The eighth chakra sits over your thymus gland, behind the center of your sternum, and is Dusty Rose Pink.

Go on a scavenger hunt in your own quarantine space. Use things you own, or images from the Internet, or pictures from magazines. Find representations of the eight colors. Array them in front of you.

[Please take pictures and post them! I have some representation of a rainbow in every room in my house for this energetic reason!]

Then, do the work, the real work, of facing your fear. Because I can guarantee you that whatever fear you carry about coronavirus is alive and well some place in your energy system. Find a quiet place, if you can, and get still.

Look at, pick up, saturate in the color Red. Now ask yourself: is this where the fear in me is? If so, hold that fear, hug that fear, love that fear till you feel it ease, even if only for a nano. Move on to Orange all the way through the rainbow to Pink.

It sounds so simple, doesn’t it? But you will be amazed, enthralled, and delighted if you actually do it. We cannot be over the rainbow when our personal energy systems are steeped in it, and because our personal energy systems connect us inexorably to one another. The sooner I handle my fear, the sooner I’ll be able to help you with yours.

Go back to the empty tomb for a brief moment. Do you think that Mary of Magdala, known as the Apostola Apostolorum—the Apostle to the Apostles—wasn’t afraid that she’d never be connected to her Beloved again? She had to have been afraid. Afraid probably understates the case; she was terrified.

For as long as we cling to our need for physical contact, and bemoan its temporary loss, we are focused on the tragedy. Instead, like the frustrated little girl who is trying to fasten her own car seat belt whose dad interferes, completely at her wits’ end, she scolds him, “Worry about your own self!”

Look at the epidemic, instead of the tragedy, and “Maybe, like Shakespeare, we should focus not on statistics but on the wonderfully, weirdly, cussedly, irredeemably individual.”

Start where you are, with what you have, with your wonderful, weird, cussedly, irredeemably individual self.

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