Going Viral: Respect, Relationship — and a Pandemic

Communicating with other lifeforms as a land and Earth worker is a privilege and a responsibility. I relish this phenomenon and have no need to analyze it — a good thing because I have no idea how I’d go about doing that. If you believe, as I have come to, that everything is alive and we are all connected, what could be more natural?

Interspecies communication is now even the province of scientific study. The focus tends to be on our companion animals or on animals we perceive as closely related to us or, by conventional human standards, as intelligent. But what about communicating with other orders of life — those we consider pests, have biases against, or judge as gross or ugly because their nature is so alien to ours? And what about those that threaten our well-being, not just individually but on a planetary scale? Like a virus? And in the case of a pandemic, what might we learn about, or from, its agent?

Receiving a dream teaching

My introduction to microbes as communicants occurred more than a decade ago.[1] I’d been sick for several weeks with a persistent virus that had drained me of vitality and I was having a hard time recovering. Then, one night, I had a dream in which I saw the virus. Whether this image was scientifically accurate or not (probably not) was beside the point. I knew intuitively this is what the dream image symbolized. I was struck by its white, lacy beauty and its ingenious reproductive strategy: a small piece of “lace” would break off and become the starter for the next gen in a kind of viral “vegetative propagation.” Again, scientific accuracy wasn’t relevant; my admiration for the virus’s attributes was.

The dream’s message was clear: the virus was demanding my respect. I had been so intent on getting rid of it I had failed to honor its power and intelligence. (An unfamiliar standpoint? Stay with me.) So I thanked the virus for the lesson (the dream) and respectfully asked it to leave. It did in short order. Granted, it would have left eventually. But I intuited it did so sooner rather than later and, more importantly, on a different basis once I accorded it its proper due. I felt the difference too: my relationship with the virus had been redefined.

We humans don’t normally think of viruses in a beneficial light, and the notion of expressing appreciation to them is alien, even inscrutable…but only as long as we hold to a narrow understanding. Broadening that understanding requires a deep shift in how we regard “self” and “other” — a shift in which we cease to see “other” as something “less than” or something to assert “power over” and instead come to see “self” and “other” with parity. After all, aren’t we all expressions of the same creative energy? And, in the context of communications, can’t any lifeform, even a virus, serve as a messenger?

Befriending HIV

A friend of mine, a highly regarded Buddhist teacher, was diagnosed with HIV in 1989. He tells a story that speaks not only to communicating with this virus but also befriending it, which helped him live more fully than ever before while facing death from AIDS. His own words 10 years after diagnosis speak eloquently to the respectful relationship of human and virus and what this relationship taught him:[2]

>>> “My dreams, hopes, and aspirations lay in pieces around me [after diagnosis]…In meditation, I endeavored to open to the fear of death, the terrors, the sadness, the grieving, the rage, and the proliferation of thoughts arising out of these emotions…”

“I soon realized I was deeply at odds with the virus. The virus felt threatening, malevolent, and vicious…Several people suggested I begin a visualization that was popular at the time: I would visualize the T-cells,…the good guys in the body, going after the bad guys, the virus. A kind of internal Pacman…I engaged in massive warfare within my bloodstream. Afterward my body felt like a battleground covered with corpses and blood. It was terrible. Instead I sensed a deep need for some sort of peace and balance with what was going on…”

“Over the years I have cultivated a relationship with the virus [emphasis mine]…When in South Africa [my friend’s birthplace], I spend a lot of time in Zululand, which is a place very dear to my heart. There is a Zulu name I love: Sipho…So what I decided to do was call the virus Sipho…”

“In the morning when I wake up, the first thing I do…is check in with Sipho. Our conversation unfolds rather like this:

‘Hi there, how are you doing?’

‘It was a bit of a rough night, wasn’t it?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What are your needs?’

Sipho might say, ‘Gee, I’m really tired today’ or ‘I feel sort of aggravated’ or ‘I feel petulant today’.

And then I say, ‘Well now, look, we’re giving a talk tonight. Don’t act up today! Tomorrow you can act up. That’s fine. Today we have got a lot of things to do, so let’s agree to this’… “

“The virus, however, is not in control of my life anymore; I do not feel victimized by its presence. We respect one another now [emphasis mine]…Sipho and I are doing a dance together for as long as we possibly can.”

“…I am quite sure that if I had lived my years as deeply in conflict with my illness as I was in the beginning, it would have been a much, much more difficult journey…” >>>

And, I would speculate, a much shorter journey. My friend died in late 2018, 29 years after diagnosis. Twenty-nine years fully lived and cherished despite infection by a deadly virus — or because of a consciously fostered relationship with it.

Pandemic: Learning from COVID-19

My dream message and my friend’s experience offer a crucial heads-up in this time of pandemic. For COVID-19 is a worthy opponent if ever there was one — a cunning, opportunistic intelligence that has hobbled human culture planet-wide [see Bio of a Worthy Opponent: Highlights]. Medical science continues to study how the virus functions with the hope of vanquishing it with a vaccine. But there’s no telling if standard protocols for vaccine development will work or how efficacious a vaccine will be for a virus as idiosyncratic and creative as this one.

I find myself asking the following questions:

What can we learn about this formidable adversary beyond its characteristics as a highly functional physical organism? That is, what can we learn about it as an intelligence? About the acuity of its awareness?

What can we learn about the larger-level situation that gave rise to COVID in the first place? That is, what can we learn about the underlying energies of which this virus and resulting pandemic are just one expression — about our fraught relationship with an Earth out of alignment largely because of us?

And as I wrote this text, another question arose, one natural to a land and Earth worker:

What can we learn from this virus? That is, what can we learn by communicating with it directly?

As this is familiar territory for me (though it may sound fantastical to you), I followed my usual protocol and connected energetically with COVID to see what the virus might be willing to reveal about itself and what messages it offers us. Following is what I learned so far. (The door remains open to additional communications.)

>>>   >>>   >>>

The virus and I linked up quickly. It was as if COVID had been eagerly awaiting a human to inquire and a platform from which to speak! I didn’t say much at the outset because I didn’t want to set an agenda or limits — it’s best to keep things open — and I had the sense the virus, as the information source, would prefer to take the lead.

It did.

It began with transmission mechanisms. I saw an image of energy “radiating” from the “points” in the corona (crown) in streams resembling tentacles. Sometimes the tentacles moved in snake-like fashion and other times spun like a pinwheel, in each case casting off energy “droplets” (the pinwheel cast them farther through centrifugal force). Physical droplets of contagion are carried by the air, energy droplets by the air and energy currents. Although the distance either droplet type can be carried wasn’t specified, my sense is that energy droplets can travel much farther than physical droplets and remain viable.

As we already know, the physical droplets are inhaled or transmitted by touch. But energy droplets function in a different way: they move into a human energy field wherever there’s a weakness and/or breach, something the person may be unaware of; the virus can kill quickly if the weakness is serious enough and/or the breach not well defended. Once COVID is in a human field, its energetic signature can trigger other (non-COVID) vulnerabilities, further stressing and compromising the system.

Social distancing of 6 feet, the accepted convention, may protect against infection via physical droplets. But it is inadequate to protect against infection from energy droplets because the energy fields of individual humans are likely to overlap within that distance, facilitating energy-droplet transfer. Social distancing of 15-20 feet would be far more protective (though, in today’s world, impractical or downright impossible).

The virus is mutating so rapidly that, to be effective, the vaccine would have to be able to lock onto the energetic signature of the virus as it mutates and self-modify accordingly, otherwise the “key” (vaccine) won’t fit the “lock” (virus). Can current vaccine technology do this? Not that I know of. Can it be re-engineered to do this? And quickly enough? No idea. A vaccine targeting an older version of the virus (that is, older energetic signature) might be 20% effective — inadequate to vanquish a pandemic.

The virus sourced from animal husbandry in China in which animals raised for food and the land growing their feed were disrespected through worst practices of large-scale agriculture. But whereas factory farming, excessive use of pesticides, other forms of pollution, and chemically tainted food are by no means unique to China (no finger-pointing here), it is the most populous nation on Earth and feeding its 1.4 billion people poses major long-term challenges an intelligence as savvy as COVID might quickly capitalize on. Evolving to jump from animals raised for food (and maybe not only those) to humans is just one potential viral strategy.

There are numerous manifestations on Earth now of the dark, distorted energies born of the planetary gate opening on 9/11,[3] including but not limited to extreme weather and threats to food supplied (locust swarms, “murder hornets”) arising from climate change; the fear-based, hateful mindsets that eventually brought Trump to power and reinforce the distortions that could keep him in office for a second term (these mindsets aren’t limited to the US); systemic violence at the intersection of racism and privilege (also not limited to the US) — and now a pandemic. Don’t try to analyze this or look for causal or linear linkages. Instead, feel into the deep, collective phenomenon and sense the connections.

In the case of COVID, shifting the energies would be far more effective over the long term than a vaccine, though each has its place and both are needed [see Energetics 101]. Creating a vaccine to vanquish a virus is old thinking, the equivalent of going to war (recall “Befriending HIV” earlier in this post). Shifting energies to vanquish a virus is new thinking and begins to reset the balance. That COVID itself pointed me toward the key to resolving the pandemic surprised me at first. Why promote its own demise? Then I realized the virus had the awareness to “understand” that the paradigm shift required was unlikely to happen quickly.

It appears that humans have to be at an inflection point to change their fundamental thinking and behavior. And we’re at one now. The pandemic is the inflection point. This is the challenge, and the opportunity, that COVID presents.

>>>   >>>   >>>

The sooner we get all the messages COVID-19 bears, the sooner we can make our way through and out the other side. Albert Einstein famously said: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” To resolve the pandemic, we need to think differently. And thinking differently means not only pushing the edge of the envelope but breaking through to what’s beyond. It means taking an evolutionary step. Evolutionary for humans and the planet.

The ultimate point here is about balance. When a lifeform becomes too populous, Nature invokes a correction to restore balance. Likewise, when a lifeform falls out of alignment whether it’s too populous or not, Nature invokes a restorative correction. Balance doesn’t just hinge on carrying capacity. It’s not fixed and mechanical. It’s dynamic and relational. Balance is possible only when relationships among lifeforms, including the Earth herself, are healthy, and relationships are healthy only when nourished by parity and respect.