The idea came to me from within, but then I saw this headline in The New York Times, and that gelled it. “Storm Expected to Bring Snow to the Northeast on Monday” Of course it is. It’s March, ducklings. We who live in the Northeast know that on any given day it can snow, rain, sleet, hail, or beam sunshine with added lilac crocuses for good measure. My hanging Mary Engelbreit calendar for this particular March, that is, March 2020, bears two words: “Brace Yourself!” The lovely Mary has drawn two people flying a kite. We are bracing ourselves for something different from kite-flying these days.
Two U. S. senators, privy to closed-door briefings, profited by selling off stock in industries that would be affected by the virus. One of them invested in a technology that allows people to work from home. As Mr. Leonhardt wrote, “They could have made a difference, but they made a profit.” Okay, that’s enough. That’s enough. We get it. The coronavirus will have an effect on the world economy; we’re already seeing it at home in the U.S. Okay. I am afraid, but I’m not. Every single client I have has either cancelled or postponed their appointment. No one knows what’s going to happen.
So, just when we were pondering the best mechanism to make some of my books available for free during this time of fear, Smashwords came up with Authors Give Back and we jumped on it! Here are the URLs for three of my books absolutely free for the next month!
Two of the three persons in my household got up this morning having had no sleep. I don’t mean sleep lite either, I mean, none. Both of them had to go to work today. One of them was troubled by dreams. It happens. The other’s runaway train brain ruled the roost right before bed and, by following her own train of thought, she concluded her way into the utter collapse of healthcare—where she earns her livelihood. Ouch.
It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. Thank you, Charles Dickens. Could there be a better opening sentence to describe our current situation? Only this one a friend sent me from LitHub.com rewriting first sentences of great literature for social distancing. My favorite was, “FaceTime me, Ishmael.”
The fear that is leading our experience of reality at the moment is, you might be surprised to learn, a form of spiritual bypass. Startling, isn’t that? The Narcissist-in-Chief, the Denier-in-Chief, the Toddler-in-Chief, or whatever other nickname you choose, has taken the practice of rewriting history to its dark underbelly. The thing of it is, as any good metaphysician knows, if we don’t rewrite history, to borrow from philosopher George Santayana, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
The latest buzzword by my lights is social-distancing. Honestly, it makes me laugh. The powers that be are recommending social-distancing as one of three strategies to slow the spread of the coronavirus at the same time as article after article in The New York Times laments that we are culturally in the midst of an epidemic of loneliness. Beloved, we’re already socially-distant. How many real friends do you have? My definition of a real friend is someone who, if I called them using my one phone call from a jail in Peru, would they move heaven and earth to get me out?
There is, in old-time metaphysical circles, an analog technology—if you’ll forgive the oxymoron—known once upon a time as Denial and Affirmation. It’s a simple but slippery concept, especially now that denial has become part of our standard recovery lexicon in the West. Denial, as they say in AA, is not a river in Egypt. Nor is that what the founders of Christian Science, Unity, Religious Science, Science of Mind, or Divine Science meant. They meant to deny the appearance of something in favor of using one’s will to choose something better.
It has been said by many more authoritative persons than I that we live in an Information Age. I cannot dispute the claim. What I can and do dispute is that it’s valuable. Information is information. Facts. Figures. Data. Zeroes and Ones. Ho-hum. There for the taking. So? So the consistent error we make, at least in the West, is to behave as though information is knowledge.
My spiritual teachers are legion, and they often arise in the oddest places. Take this morning, for example: I have been a fan of Mary Engelbreit for decades. It is my custom to have a page-a-day calendar of hers that displays her prodigious illustration artistry. Mary Engelbreit understood sound bytes even before they had a name. She’s used quotes that inspire her for decades. This morning’s read: If you are more fortunate than others, it’s better to build a longer table than a taller fence.
The fear of the coronavirus notwithstanding, there is always a metaphysical—beyond the physical—cause for every illness. I’ve been a Medical Intuitive for decades. At one time, I was the Director of Spiritual & Energy Medicine at a progressive healthcare center in Boston working with the patients of twenty team physicians to help align their bodies, hearts, minds, and spirits. That said, the coronavirus has mystified me for longer than is comfortable. Fortunately, I was inspired with an interpretation that made utter sense to me.
In the space of twenty minutes this morning, I scanned The New York Times, The Huffington Post, and a newsletter from my primary care doctor’s practice. All three made me long for the days when I was certain that The Times really was, by their own report, “All the News that’s Fit to Print.” It might be. Or, it might not.
Lee Siegel’s article on why America is so depressed is chilling. His thesis is that our politics are affecting our mental health. I’d submit that the reverse is also true: our mental health is affecting our politics.
N.B. I address a particular kind of depression in this essay—spiritual angst/ennui, not clinical depression.
Kate Murphy is a listening expert. She’s written a book on it. Here is my take on her take on listening. Listen is an anagram of its own prescriptive: silent. Could that be more perfect? When was the last time you really listened to someone?
A thirty-something friend of mine had to explain the term call-out culture to me when someone we knew mutually called me out, and it totally whiffed me. After way too many words for my comfort as a definition, I finally said, “You mean holier-than-thou?” She nodded vigorously.
Today’s issue of TheOn-The-Other-Hand News comes to you via C. Thi Nguyen and Bekka Williams’ article in The New York Times from Sunday, July 28, 2019. Its title is: “Why We Call Things ‘Porn’.”
I will cop to it upfront. I am not a Facebook person. There are several reasons for it, but the main one is: I don’t get it. It has been TMI from day one as far as I’m concerned.
