The Energizer Bunny Learns the Rhythm of Nature (Part 2)

From Part 1:

The Rhythm of Nature
strides as the turtle
who wins a race
he doesn’t know he’s in

Ever evolving,
neither static, nor constant
 yet slowly progressing
beats the rhythm of Nature

Even when we see not
the burbling beneath the volcano
the plates shifting into an earthquake
the atmosphere transforming into a tornado
the waves building to a tsunami

Even then, even when we see not the signs,
the Rhythm of Nature is ever evolving
neither static, nor constant
 yet slowly progressing

            I was trained not to stride to the rhythm of nature, but to the drum of the Energizer Bunny, that mascot toy for the battery that keeps “going and going and going” and, even after everyone else’s batteries are dead, is “still going.”  My mother is wired like the Energizer Bunny, and by some genetic quirk, I am not.  Vacations were full, as Mom booked each hotel with a “guaranteed late arrival” and even planned in which rest stops we’d take for our picnic lunches.  Her errands at home, however, were not planned and seemed to follow a random order, defying geographic logic, zigzagging out of the way, and then returning to previous stores that had deals three dollars better than the later stores.  Like all of the competitor bunnies in the Energizer ads, I, her tag-a-long had batteries that died part-way through, but hers were “still going.”  Thinking I should be wired – or “batteried” -- like her, once I had hit my wall, Mom had one of two replies: “Quit whining” or “The world doesn’t revolve around you.” 

             In time, I gained the endurance to quit whining and eventually grew into an Energizer Bunny myself.  Early in our marriage, my then husband teased me for my to do lists that also kept going and going and going.  I had a love-hate relationship with these lists; part of me longed for days with short lists, but the other part reveled in those days when I crossed out a multitude of items on a long one.

Click here for the body of Part 1

 The conclusion of Part 1: 

. . . It was then that I decided to hire myself for the landscaping project to the side of our house that had been itching at me for four years.  Roughly 40 feet long by 14 feet wide, this plot had previously housed two vegetable gardens and a play sand pit, each bordered with bricks and stones.  But our kids had grown; the gardens had been left to waste; the bricks and patio stones were broken, scattered, and buried; what amounted to seven 20 gallon tubs of stones to be collected that were then also mostly buried; and weeds, many thigh high, had taken over the entire plot.

Since the plot is right outside my bedroom window, every morning when I opened the shades, this disaster welcomed my day, and then it presented itself to me again in the evening at my favorite outdoor spot, also immediately adjacent to it, our hammock.

For the plot’s neglect, I mostly blame the wildfires, of which we had already had three since 2012 even before the 2020 fires.  While one came as close as three miles, most were further away, but we live in a valley, where the smoke from all of the neighboring fires comes to settle itself as an unwelcome guest for weeks of choking, hazardous air.  How does one care for vegetable gardens in the likelihood of such toxic air?  To those who do, bless you.  By 2018, after the third set of fires, I was done.  With some help from my then husband, I began to clear out the plot of weeds, bricks, and stones and hoped to clear enough to hire a professional landscaper to build a stone patio, for which I was also saving money. 

In the summer of 2021, I needed peace at my window and on my hammock.  And between jobs, I needed that savings for the landscaping.  Why not use the stones and bricks I was collecting and hire myself? 

 Now Part 2: 

I spent two years weeding, unearthing stones and bricks, shoveling, weeding and unearthing more stones, raking, weeding and unearthing yet more stones, then finally placing a single strip of landscape fabric over about a third of the length of the 40x14 foot plot.  Then I did more weeding, unearthing stones, raking, and yet more weeding and unearthing stones, then, finally, laid a second strip of fabric on that first third of the plot.  I did the same for the third and final strip for that first third.  A significant accomplishment.  Triumphantly, I returned some of the stones onto the fabric.  Since I had vowed to use whatever stones I’d collect in whatever way I could, my vision for the final product was still vague.

 I did the same for the second section, and the following year, completed the third.  After two years the seemingly endless task was completed with a creative design I had not conceived.  Thankfully, these years were 2021 and 2022, two gracious years not covered in smoke.  Still, most of my work was done in the heat of the summer, and the Energizer Bunny still in me urged me to head out into the heat to finish more quickly.  But my body rebelled.  If I worked for more than three hours in a day, my body refused to budge the next day.  That judgmental Bunny in me pointed to the professionals who do this work for eight hours a day, five days a week.  Why, he demanded, was I such a wimp?

 Listen to your body.  It speaks for Us.  Though my whispers were soft, they overrode the loud Bunny and reassuringly disputed him and our culture, for whom the Bunny speaks.  Under their guidance, I worked for about an hour in the morning and another in the evening, five or six days a week, and my body, in gratitude, quit rebelling.

 While collecting stones, I was reminded of the story of the tortoise and the hare.  The hare, like the Energizer Bunny, is a rabbit who keeps going and going and going, quickly bouncing in many directions, often off his path, seeking short-cuts, and through most of the race, he’s ahead.  The turtle moves by the rhythm of nature, slowly, step by step, in a race he doesn’t know he’s in.  He walks straight, never veers from his path, and keeps a steady pace.  Many times, my whispers came: Be the turtle.  You will finish. 

 To become the turtle, I needed a new rhythm.  While collecting stones, I reflected on how much I had been living as a Bunny – filling up long To Do lists, feeling that I had to cross all the items off, not answering the phone when a friend showed up on caller ID because I thought I had too much to do, worrying over how untidy my house was when people were coming to visit, feeling guilty when I wasn’t volunteering for the kids’ school or activities, stressed when I did sign up for them, screaming at the repair guy for being late, and so much more.  And that was only at home. 

 At my teaching career, Energizer Bunny was more insistent.  Students had constant needs and administrators asserted never-ending demands, changes, trainings, meetings, and announcements of new problems we the instructors were all expected to seamlessly take on without complaint or mistake.  And that was before the pandemic.

 Then came Covid.  The expectations didn’t change, but the work did, and we had to do it at home, use our own technology, have no on-site support, and face new problems as we stayed at home to save lives.  I had my office and my classroom in my bedroom.  The Energizer Bunny in me was done.

 Energizer says its batteries don’t run out.  Its Bunny “keeps going and going and going,” and even after everyone has stopped dead, “it’s still going.”  I’m no Energizer Bunny.  I might have been trained by my mom to be one, but I had not inherited her Bunny DNA.  My own make-up had never been wired to be the Bunny.  But I had to learn that the hard way.  My batteries stopped dead.  I could not keep going any longer.

 Be the turtle.  You will finish.   While maintaining their compassion, my whispers were nonetheless firm.  But everyone mocks the turtle, I replied.  No one lives like the turtle.  In real life, the turtle is bullied, scoffed at, and the butt of everyone else’s jokes.  Maybe in the end, he wins, but he’s not enjoying himself if people are laughing at him.  I felt my whispers’ compassion and heard their brief reply: He’s counter-cultural.

 Yes.  The turtle’s journey is counter to all that I’d been taught, had lived, and to our culture.  Even if his fable is well known, nothing about his lesson fits into our cultural patterns of life, especially where I was raised in high tech San Jose, nor even where I now live in a small Pacific Northwestern town.  I might have moved away from the Bunny’s territory, but I could never get away from him. To be the turtle, we have to slow ourselves into a counter-cultural rhythm.  It is to this rhythm that Nature strides.

 I chuckled to myself that I had tried for years to teach a turtle-like rhythm to my writing students, even if I hadn’t learned it myself.  Having observed the usual strategy students follow for their persuasive pieces, to decide on a thesis statement and then begin writing, I advised a different strategy.  “If you decide on your thesis before doing your research,” I warned, “you’ll find yourself a stationary bicycle, expending a whole lot of energy, but getting nowhere.”  Instead, “Decide on your research question, research it, and then develop your thesis.  That way, you’ll get on real bicycle that goes places.”  And wins the race.  My whispers spoke up again, interrupting my thoughts I was unburying stones.

 I realized that I, too, had spent most of my life on that stationary bicycle.  Progress had come.  My To Do lists were shorter, but the long ones I still kept in my head.  Every day, I set myself to accomplish certain goals, leaving little room for spontaneity or leisure with friends and family.  So much energy I had expended on a stationary bicycle, but not getting very far.  Is it necessary to get far?  My whispers had once again shown up.  I let the stones in my hand drop, took a breath, and sat against the fence.  Maybe not.  What had I been striving for and why?  My whispers were gentle.  Be the turtle.  Walk in a race you don’t know you’re in and see where it takes you.

 I felt my inner spirit breathing a new rhythm into me.  My stone garden was the first step: one stone at a time, one step at a time.  Like a turtle, I built my Zen stone garden.  And like the bicycle that goes somewhere, I built it without a “thesis” at the start.  Having vowed to use whatever materials I could unbury in whatever way I could, I didn’t know what the end product would look like. 

 

When I finished, I posted this, with the photos shown here, to my friends on social media:  

One step at a time: weeding, cleaning, shifting, simplifying and zenning to create something new.  Two veggie gardens & a sand pit lived on this 40x14 plot years ago.  Then came the fires and smoke.  One year ago, old, torn tarps, lots of weeds, bricks and stones, many of them buried, lived here instead.  This past year, one weed and one stone at a time, and $300 for some bark and a few more bricks, I've zenned my way into new simplicity and beauty.  I just finished and hope its completion also zens into simplicity and beauty.

            Living according to the rhythm of nature in a world that runs like the Energizer Bunny is challenging.  To trust in the turtle’s pace calls for perseverance, patience, trust in the greater forces beyond ourselves, and a willingness to let go, if that’s the way through.  Success is not necessarily assured. 

But Nature does not give up.  She continues to stride to her own rhythm, and if we learn to step into her beat, slowly progressing, like the turtle in a race he doesn’t know he’s in, we will begin to align with the deeper part of our own nature, connected to Nature herself.  This work is a process, carrying obstacles and losses, yet increasing peace.  But if we, like Nature, do not give up, we can, one by one, like the turtle, return the rhythm of Nature to humanity on Earth.

© 2023 by Karina Jacobson.  All rights reserved.  Please use only with permission from the author.

Return to the Energizer Bunny, Pt 1

Oh, What a Whirlwind we're in!

        Shhh!  Don’t tell.  My very first post.  I find myself spiraling back and upward, like a DNA molecule, to the myriad of themes emerging out of my twilight zone. 

 

(photo by phys.org)

The spirals are so numerous I think I’ll start a “Spiraling Back” series.  (Sorry, Just like Eve readers, this whirlwind is still too big for the creativity of fiction, but I will “spiral back” to it when the winds slow down; if you’d like to hunt down a publisher for me, then perhaps I could return sooner . . . ? 🤔)  I’ll begin with my very first post and all three of its images: the fast-moving “freight train” of information, my “eyes of paradox” (one near-sighted, one far-sighted), and the movement toward whispering, careful speech.  

Image 1: The fast-moving freight train

           Shhh! Don’t tell explained this fast-moving train like a college lecturer speaking so fast you, a student, can’t keep up to take notes.  You had agreed to take notes for some absent classmates, but you gave up, told them the lecture was too fast, and they were on their own. 

I’m now trying to keep up with another freight train speeding along at record speeds.  Nothing adds up, but information – some useful and some really off and very distracting – is blowing in like hurricane.  With all this debris of information flying everywhere, which do we grab hold of, and which do we let go?  Friends, the answers are not at all obvious.

Too many think they know which nuggets of information to trust and which to distrust, but they might be making those decisions based on either a “False Authority” fallacy or an “Ad Hominem” fallacy.  These logical fallacies are opposites, so let me explain them:

A False Authority fallacy is the belief that a statement must be true just because Reliable Person said it.  Perhaps Reliable Person is an authority, but just because Reliable Person said it does not necessarily make it true.  Reliable Person has to provide strong, accurate, reliable evidence for his or her statement in order for it to be trustworthy.  Therefore, a False Authority fallacy does not necessarily mean the speaker is not an authority; instead it means the statement cannot be trusted just because the speaker said it.  Genuine evidence is necessary. 

The classic False Authority is truly false: "Celebrity says solar flares are harmless." However, a subtle type is a Non-sequitur (it does not necessarily follow) type of False Authority: “NASA says solar flares are harmless.”  NASA, of course, is a genuine authority for such a statement.  Without evidence, however, its logic is incomplete. A good listener should ask why NASA says that and what evidence NASA has for such a statement.  (BTW, NASA hasn’t said this; I made it up for the purpose of the analogy, and I purposely chose a respected national agency who I myself trust.)

An Ad Hominem fallacy is the opposite: it believes a statement must be false because Unreliable Person said it.  Maybe Unreliable Person is reliable, and has genuine evidence for X, but is getting demonized 😅 for something she stated (perhaps in jest) about Y.  Are we not to listen to her evidence on X because something from unrelated Y, taken out of context, condemns her?

Or, perhaps Unreliable Person really is unreliable.  Does that mean that everything that person says is false?  What if Unreliable Person brings forth reliable evidence?  Shouldn’t we take a look at that evidence?

 Think about these two questions also:

1.     Has Person, who is being presented to you (or you think is) either Reliable or Unreliable, provided evidence?  Has Person provided it accurately, based on your own fact-checking through the original data or the original source? 

2.    Are you seeing the full evidence in full context of Person, who is being presented to you (or you think is) either Reliable or Unreliable?  Perhaps Person is Reliable, but is being presented as Unreliable, and Person’s strongest evidence has been eliminated from what you’re seeing.  Have you checked the original source?

Image 2: Eyes of Paradox

           As noted in “Shhh! Don’t tell,” I have anisometropia, or what I call “eyes of paradox,” a slightly near-sighted left eye and a fairly pronounced far-sighted right eye.  In certain ways, like trying to read anything from the Internet on my cell phone, or trying to hit an overhead in tennis, my condition is a nuisance.  No set of eye-glasses can give me perfect vision, so I do the best I can, while taking advantage of its benefits, like being able to see road signs far in advance.  “There it is, coming up, next Exit, you’ll need to stay in the right-most lane of the fork,” I tell my husband when we’re on a busy freeway.  Astonished, he exclaims, “You can read that?!”

           Although they’re usually a nuisance, I’m proud of my eyes of paradox.  My life has been about paradox, starting in childhood.  I often imagine my angels are upstairs laughing, playing a joke on me, as I think they did with my eyes.  She’ll be all about paradox; she’ll see nothing but paradox, so let’s give her eyes of paradox!  That my more pronounced eye is far-sighted is also not lost on me.  As I watch the world, life, everything, I see things much more in far-sighted vision than near-sighted.  Right now, I’m seeing everything in paradox, and I’m seeing more of it with the far-sighted eye.

           Let’s consider Highly Unreliable Person, a person I do not trust at all.  If I had not already been investigating X through credible sources, I might respond to what Highly Unreliable Person is saying like everyone else: Highly Unreliable Person thinks X; therefore, X must be false.  But what if X is true?  It’s a paradox. I want to think Highly Unreliable Person can never be trusted.  In our whirlwind, nothing is that simple.

            Paradox accepts that there is no one size fits all.  Maybe a particular treatment will work well for you; maybe it won’t.  Each treatment comes with effects, some of which are more risky for some than others because our bodies are all different.  This should be a decision between each patient with his or her own doctor.

             Likewise, perhaps a particular preventative measure will help you because you have a weak immune system and could be assisted by it.  Perhaps  that same measure could set back another person who has spent years building up his own natural immunity.  For that person, the same preventative measure that helps you is like the boulder that he, Prometheus, has to roll back up a mountain.

           Here’s another paradox: the stay-at-home order that fits my own zen leanings, but jeopardizes the needs of those on my heart, the youth.  I’ve just posted It Still Takes a Village on the youth, so I won’t repeat that here; I’ll just say that what is trying for the youth -- to slow down and remain in place -- is actually refreshing to me.  These are just a couple of paradoxes, but in our whirlwind, the paradoxes are legion.

Image 3: Shhh! Careful speech

           Through this pandemic, my family has chosen to do “Family Movie Nights,” rotating each of us to choose a film and a couple of nights ago, at my request, we watched Karate Kid 2, my favorite of these because in this part, one of my all-time favorite of film characters is the star: Mr. Miagi.  This little man doesn’t look tough, he doesn’t say much, and he’s quirky – he tries to catch flies with chopsticks!  But no strong man, nor crowd of them, armed or not, can defeat this guy.  And even if his phrasing is as quirky as his habits, when he speaks, you’d be wise to listen.

             After a period of silence, a moment tends to arise when one is released to speak.  Another spiral up into the next rung for me on this theme comes from 2013.  I had been advocating for my students to “rise into voices of power for the sake of good,” and at the start of 2013, I began praying the same for myself. In early April, I faced quite a challenge for an instructor at the start of a new quarter: I lost my voice for two weeks.  The Spirit whispered, I will give you a voice of power, but I first have to take away your voice.  (If you glance at my Blog Archive and the posts per year, you’ll also see when my blog voice dropped off for a few years.)

            A year ago, the Spirit surprised me with another whisper: I’m positioning you to be that voice, so I’ve permitted a distraction to you for a test.  Will you be distracted, or will you be a voice of power?  A year later, I’d say the answer has been both.  Thankfully, not only I, but those relevant, following the divine forces, have shown restraint, opening the door for me to emerge into this voice, beginning with my successful advocacy on behalf of Oregon college students.  For now, the whispers repeat the counsel to emulate Mr. Miagi: be humble, simple, silent, restrained, and be ready when the moment arrives to move or speak.

(8/12 update: I hope to have the chance to be silent for quite some time now. A voice is very difficult.)

(photo by portcitywire.com)

Should we always listen to Reliable Person?  Should we never listen to Unreliable Person?  Oh, what a whirlwind we’re in!  To properly discern, we need to examine the evidence for ourselves through our Inner Authority.  To trust our Inner Authority, we need to free ourselves from fear, anxiety, anger, and lower nature desires. Once we do, our Inner Authority is remarkably reliable.  Here’s a doctor who studies, examines, questions, tests, and listens to her Inner Authority, and suggests we do the same.  As a triple board certified Internal Medicine physician, she fits “Reliable Person.”  But even she encourages us not to take her word for it, nor the word of the many speaking another narrative, but to examine the evidence for ourselves through our Inner Authority.

© 2020 by karina.  All rights reserved.  Please use with permission or a citation that links to this blog.

Cocoons and Koans through the Pandemic

            As noted in TheWay of Zen through the Pandemic, my perspective on our moment is unique.  For one, it fits into the consciousness shift I’ve been mulling over.  Realize we are offered many “shifts” or “cocoons” for metamorphosis, not just one; however, this moment when each of us is in our own cocoon is special.

            Our pandemic did not begin easy for me, but now with my family all safely at home, I’ve been calling my own time in it “Zen-ing,” apt not only for my solitary meditation, but also for what the Zen masters often did: puzzle over a koan.  Our pandemic is a koan within a koan within a koan, and the deeper we enter into each koan, the more koans we discover.

            Meanwhile, our pandemic may be collective, but our experience with it is not.  This morning, I made a momentary hop onto social media to post this:

I introduced it with this: “What’s more is that each hurricane also looks and feels different and is stirred up by a different cause.”

The purpose of this post is not to explore the storms, but before I continue, I wish to affirm that we each have one or more, to varying degrees, and the source of our own storm may come directly from the pandemic or indirectly from the collective response to it.  Among the many koans of our pandemic is this one: the storm many people are facing is creating a different storm for many others.  Consider, for example, those who, even before the pandemic, were already victims of domestic violence.  While we may practice our freedom of speech to our authorities, I hope we can free our fellow citizens to face their own storm in their own way.

            The meme that opens this post is now going viral for two reasons: (1) our planet is in a collective cocoon moment right now and (2) it expresses the emerging value of evolution and transcendence.  The butterfly is encouraging the caterpillar to become like him.

The storm we are each in, whatever it may be for each of us, is the Test of the Cocoon.  Cocoons are hardly secure; they’re like crucibles.  For the creature that begins as a caterpillar and finishes as a butterfly, the creature’s greatest moment of suffering and his greatest test is in the cocoon.  His greatest triumph is also when he emerges as a butterfly.

            Tragically, some are likely to get pounded by the cocoon and emerge as very wounded caterpillars, very understandably so.  How might each of us emerge?  Will we come out triumphant as butterflies?

            We can consider our transition from Pisces to Aquarius as a framework for this metamorphosis, and those of you who are drawn to the shift of the Ages are welcome to read it this way.  If you are not, simply take these as metaphors and as a framework to consider our evolving paradigms.  I’m using the Ages not only because many are witnessing this transition, but also because their symbols are so fitting to describe the distinctions of our current, older consciousness with the emerging one, led by the remarkable discoveries of Quantum Physics and Quantum Mechanics.

            Let’s start with Pisces and its symbol:

            Notice we have a perfect duality: two fish swimming against each other in the turbulence of water.  Conflict.  In every spiritual tradition, water represents danger, emotion, and turbulence.  When you add two fish swimming against each other in that turbulence, you have the scariest Age of them all. 

This is why in Pisces, we “focus on the family” and vow to our partners to stay together “till death do us part.”  In Pisces, the only way we humans can survive is to establish ourselves into a stable home.  Pisces is so turbulent that some cannot even do this; however, many can at least survive their incarnation into Pisces if, at least, they can establish stability for themselves in their home.  Most people, therefore, when they are pre-planning their lives in that pre-incarnation time (see Michael Newton), will plan into their lives the chance to meet their “truest love” in their youth, ensuring they marry the “right” “one.”  And in Pisces, a single “right” “one” is possible.  In Aquarius, an Age that values evolution and movement from caterpillars to butterflies, just one “right one” will be unlikely.  There may instead be one “right one” for each phase between cocoons.  But that’s for another post.

For now, we’ll return to the Pandemic and move to our Piscean Posterchild, Dr. Fauci.  Fauci wins this prize not because his face coincidentally looks like a fish, but because of his sober authority look: “I’ve got this.  Listen to me.”  Notice how he cocks his head up, and his eyes, serious and direct; his jaws, firm and set; and his fixed head and face, stoic, rarely moving – an ideal Piscean authority figure.  In Pisces, this is exactly what draws us to an authority; we trust unwavering stoicism because we think that will help us survive our turbulence.

He also holds the skill to both terrify us and comfort us at once.  In Pisces, we are drawn to terror, but we long for comfort.  And he does both: his somber, serious summaries are complemented with his comforting words that if we follow his advice, we’ll make it through.

Finally, notice how he exudes scientific authority with his numbers and his expertise, while presenting an objective middle ground.  “Perhaps if . . .” he’ll begin, giving us a glimmer of hope; “however, . . .” he’ll continue with his cautious warning. 

Fauci’s seeming objectivity gives us a koan within a koan.  Catch what he does not include: (a) critical advice for what we need to do to boost our immune system and (b) a genuine scientific interpretation of the data.  Regarding our immune system, I not only marveled about this omission of health authorities in my first pandemic post, I cited five journal articles pointing to the very well-established science of the most critical factors to boost our immune system: positive mental health, lowstress, exercise, sunshine, and, also from the sun, Vitamin D.  The experts the media is citing, led by our Piscean Posterchild, are not only not telling us the most important things we can do to protect ourselves against a virus, they are encouraging the systematic removal of these very essentials. 

A genuine scientific examination of the data would admit the full picture and any critical context, such as the country with the highest mortality rate from the plain old common flu, at an astonishing 9%: Italy.  We don’t hear that; we just hear “we’d better not go the way of Italy” in this pandemic.  We also don’t hear that the percentage of severe cases among “confirmed cases” is a scientifically invalid number.  Confirmed cases need tests; tests are in short supply; tests are being rationed for sicker people; therefore, the percentage of severe cases among those “confirmed” is bloated.  The experts all know the number is invalid, and they admit it when they’re pressed on it, but they don’t say so in their speeches.

Quite a few objective physicians are speaking of the full picture, but the media is not quoting them; in fact some physicians with strong credentials with evident objectivity get censored (when so much blatant, unsubstantiated reported remains available).  [Update on 5/22: 600 doctors have sent a letter to Pres. Trump to report the lockdown is causing a more severe health crisis than the virus itself.]  Still, part of the cocoon’s purpose is to give us a koan to shake us up, to think fresh and outside the box, and prepare us for metamorphosis.  Therefore, a few oddities to the official story are necessary, including – how dare I?! – an analysis of Fauci.  Friends, Fauci is just a koan within a koan within a koan.  That’s all.  And if we’re going to emerge as butterflies, we need to contemplate some koans.

            Now let’s say we collectively do this and enter into Aquarius about a century early.  How might we, in our new consciousness, respond to our next pandemic?  Good news, friends: in Aquarius, we will not be freaking out. 

Let’s now examine the symbol for Aquarius.

            Aquarius is the “Water-bearer” and it is an Age of Air.  In light of Pisces, two fish swimming in the turbulence of water against each other, consider the power of the Water-bearer Air sign.  The Water-bearer is not driven by fear within the turbulence of water.  Instead, he wields power over water.  The story of Jesus walking on water is a perfect image of Aquarius.  He represents Christ consciousness of Aquarius serving Pisces at the start of the Age of Pisces – and, therefore, amusingly, he often asks aloud, “How long must I put up with this generation?"

            For the past year, I’ve been mulling over a great many distinctions between the current consciousness and the coming one, and everything is implicated.  Once we shift, so our will our educational systems, our political systems, our religious systems, our families and relationships, and, most certainly, our sciences.  For the health sciences, consider this distinction:

            Pisces: Everything is matter.  Matter is fixed.  Our health is determined by our genes, and these are fixed.  Sickness is determined by bacteria and viruses, and these are also fixed.  Therefore, even the well-established science of our immune system is left unspoken during a health crisis in a Piscean paradigm.

            Aquarius: Everything is energy.  Energy moves, evolves, and transforms.  Our health is determined by a combination of energetic forces in and around our bodies. Everything that enters into or touches our body, and even our very genes themselves, are malleable. Therefore, the already well-established science of our immune system is embraced and, during a health crisis, at the forefront of every dialogue.  (Of course, discussion of what to do on behalf of those without strong immune systems will also be discussed, but, importantly, methods to boost our immune systems will be key in a more holistic, complete set of discussions and decision-making policies.)

            This “Aquarian” way of scientific thinking is led by the twin yet competing disciplines of Quantum Physics and Quantum Mechanics, sciences a century old, but too weird, too un-Piscean, for our textbooks.  However, some sciences are building upon these, such as the newest science of health, Epigenetics. (If you’re ambitious and would like to better understand it, review the explanation by the British Society for Cell Biology).

            So what might a more Aquarian doctor say about this virus and pandemic?  My own go-to is one of the leading forerunners of Epigentics, Dr. Bruce Lipton (CurriculumVitae).  While at Stanford University in the 1980s and ‘90s, Dr. Lipton fell upon an astounding discovery: our genes can be flipped on or off by our cell membrane.  For a brief explanation, review paragraphs 9-12 of this Independent article.  Or, in a video from years ago, watch Dr. Lipton explain how viruses work and how to keep yourself healthy.

            Just like the quantum sciences that led to its development, Epigenetics will likely will not take off until Aquarius, since it challenges the material paradigm of Pisces.  However, in the emerging consciousness, any science that acknowledges that everything is energy will be embraced. 

As we close, we’ll reaffirm that we are in the crucible of the cocoon right now, and for many, a hurricane rages all around with no clear path for how to make it out safely.  Once emergence does happen, much time will be necessary for many to discover a new life.  May we each persevere through our individual cocoons in strength, health, and hope. May our time at home, away from the World’s Materialism, be like the cocoon we need to give us the chance to reflect, learn, self-empower, contemplate some koans, think for ourselves, and emerge out of our cocoons into flight as butterflies.

Other pandemic posts:

Whispers of Mystery through the Pandmic
The Way of Zen through the Pandemic

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