Image by Mikk Tõnissoo

Questions in Epi(demi)c Times

Creating space for sovereignty, grace and true leadership in the midst of chaos

Here we are in the middle of what has now been declared a global pandemic ~ the likes of which has not been experienced by any person currently alive, and maybe not in human history. It is surreal to say the least.

I’ve been watching, observing, reading, discussing, standing in long lines in grocery stores where the shelves have been picked clean, and I’ve been feeling … a lot. Feeling the fear, the confusion, the hint of gifts in the challenges, the shock at the rapid escalation of drastic control measures, and so many tears ~ those that well up in my eyes while in conversation and those that flow through in deep, cathartic waves of sobbing alone in my room.

I’ve been trying to make sense of the chaos that is swirling all around, trying to understand what’s “true” in the midst of wildly varying information and messages from “authorities and experts” that are being parroted back loudly and often, and trying to take action from a centered place rather than panic.

I’ve been trying to resolve the increasingly nagging voices that tell me something is way off here, trying to discern the voices that are the product of trauma stored within my cellular memory from those that arise as intuition and wisdom through the space created by the alchemy of all that personal, ancestral and soul-deep trauma.

I’ve been trying to make space for all that I’m feeling, make space for all the many questions, and trying to continually return to that peaceful essence of me that knows all is well. And I’ve been having lots of conversations with myself.

Since writing is one way that I synthesize and process swirls of information and emotions, and since I desire to offer into the co-creative mix my own unique perspective that does not wish to be silent or acquiescent to the prevailing memes that are so loud they are threatening to drown out any other voices, I am sharing here some of the conversations in my head, questions I’ve been asking, and feelings I’ve been navigating.

The inner conversations have gone something like this….

The Initial Tumble

Wait, what?! Within two weeks we’ve gone from news of an epidemic virus in China to laughing at people hoarding toilet paper, to the University of Washington closing its campus and within days it hitting close to home when CU Boulder announced “remote learning,” to frenzied clearing of grocery store shelves, to the voluntary cancellation of large events and travel, to businesses mandating working from home and even closing entirely, to “self-quarantining” and “social distancing”, to closure of all schools and even small public gatherings, to international border closures and state-of-emergency declarations, to the closure of local restaurants and coffee shops, to news of entire countries going on lockdown with curfews and official measures that include putting their citizens under house arrest. And now, with the US following suit in lockstep with so many other countries, with many states issuing “stay-at-home orders,” there is talk of the potential for increased lockdowns, curfews and martial law with police and military enforcement being put into effect here.

In the first few days of watching the dominos falling rapidly, I was overcome with grief and a sense of impending doom as I looked down potentially catastrophic timelines that had nothing to do with actual illness and everything to do with orchestrated oppression of an entire civilization and the stripping away of human rights and sovereignty.

As someone deeply devoted to regenerative leadership and whole-systems design, I felt anxiety rising in me: No, the long-projected cascading systems collapse is beginning and it’s happening too fast! We don’t even have a local food system in place yet!

I also felt the mounting pressure of responsibility to do something, say something that would quell the fear and panic and organize people around a collective, mutually thriving response: Don’t people see what’s happening? If they could only see the bigger picture, they would realize that they are playing right into the playbook that is rapidly being rolled out right here, right now, and they wouldn’t be so quick to give up their sovereignty!

When I was feeling myself being swept under a riptide of overwhelm, I reached out to my two closest friends. Through conversations with them, I could see that another layer of my core program of “Responsibility for Others” was being triggered with an opportunity for me to see it, appreciate it and let go of more of it. Oh right, it’s not my job to “know” what is happening (as if that were even possible), to tell everyone “how it is,” to make anyone wrong, or to “fix” anything. This is an opportunity to trust the perfection of everyone’s individual journey and to release this fear-based need to control people and circumstances.

I could also see how I’d placed my personal sense of safety and security outside of myself ~ on my vision of a world in sovereign unity and mutual thriving that resolves so many of the challenges we’re facing. This allowed me to bring my awareness back into my own center ~ the place where I know myself as a creator being and the only place where I ever find true safety and security.

And yet, I didn’t want to fall into spiritual bypassing ~ a familiar form of self-preservation that says “it’s all perfect, there’s nothing you need to do, just breathe, trust, and silence anything that tells you to do or feel otherwise.”

I needed to let myself feel all the feelings, to give myself enough space to be with my own fears of loss of health, life and liberty for myself, for my children and loved ones, and for humanity; my fears of somehow failing in my “mission”; my fears of being prevented from doing what I came here to do and realizing my vision for what is possible in the world. I needed to allow space for all the judgments of myself for having those fears when I “know better.” And I needed to remember that this is not a one-and-done experience ~ that these feelings and fears will continue to come in waves and layers.

From that place, I could stop being in so much resistance and let in the current reality: okay, this is happening; it’s time to make some sort of plan with my housemates, stock up on food and medicinal/immune-boosting herbs, make sure my college-age daughter has what she needs for at least a few weeks, begin to plant the vegetable and herb gardens we’ve been talking about, and weave closer connections with our neighbors and community members.

And I’ve gone through multiple rounds of this as virus news updates and the increasing government controls, and my own reactions and feelings, have been on quite a rollercoaster ride.

Allowing in the Questions

Since the beginning of this tsunami known as the pandemic, I’ve been reading lots of articles, searching for answers that would help make sense of the unprecedented and drastic measures that are being implemented worldwide. And I’ve been tuning into social media in an attempt to stay current on what is happening in a rapidly changing landscape.

And I’m finding myself faced with more questions than answers ~ finding very few answers that actually resolve the questions that won’t seem to go away. Questions like:

Does the extent of the actual threat warrant the scale and degree of extreme measures being taken?

Before you comment with a link to “the” article I need to see that will surely convince me….

Yes, I have read the widely circulated article “Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now.” In fact, I’ve read it several times and, unfortunately, for me it raised even more questions and added to my sense that something is off.

The article did not address my core questions {questions it turns out are also being asked by others, including some very intelligent and credible people, found in the links below}, questions like:

• are we sure all these reported illnesses are directly caused by this virus?
• how many people actually have the coronavirus? are the tests reliable? do we have adequate diagnosing capabilities?
• is this coronavirus significantly worse, more lethal, more contagious than the flu or any number of other diseases that the global population experiences on an ongoing basis?
• if we applied the same intensity of focus and those same charts, graphs and statistical analyses to the common cold, would we be able to paint the same picture? does that necessarily mean that this virus is a sufficient threat to our population to warrant these unprecedented measures?
• is the data at the basis of these extremely high-impact decisions reliable?
• why is it that this particular virus must be stopped at all costs?

If enough people read and repeat the same thing often enough, does that make it unquestionably true? Why does this feel like a global propaganda campaign?

In sensing into how I felt when reading the “Why You Must Act Now” article, I could see that my mind (a mind that is intelligent and comfortable with synthesizing large amounts of data courtesy of law school, a 12-year career as the VP & General Counsel of a healthcare corporation, a 12-year career as an entrepreneur and business owner, and a global whole-systems design focus for the past 5 years) was feeling overwhelmed with charts, graphs, data and statistics ~ while the article seemed to gloss over foundational assumptions that were being made. And I felt a mounting pressure from the singular conclusion the article was wanting me to reach.

I have seen so many people pointing to this article as proof of why we “need to take this seriously” and get on board with the “actions we all must be taking now or else.” I noticed that the url link to this article is “corona-virus-act-today-or-people-will-die.”

Lots of social proof has been added, boosting its seeming credibility with a 3/19/2020 update at the top of the article that says it has been translated into 30 languages and has received over 40 million views in the last week {although the 3/13 update also noted the number of views and translations “in the last week” since the article was written}.

I also noticed the bio of the author Tomas Pueyo: “2 MSc in Engineering. Stanford MBA. Ex-Consultant. Creator of viral applications with >20M users. Currently leading a billion-dollar business @ Course Hero.” Seems like someone who understands what it takes to make things go viral and incent large numbers of people to take desired actions….

I have also seen the now ubiquitous Flatten the Curve chart. The first time I saw it I had an instant sense that it would go viral and become a meme.

Within hours, I began to see the “flatten the curve” phrase being used in email notifications of business closures and in many social media posts and comments.

Is Social Distancing really the only way?

The Flatten the Curve meme has even gone high-tech now with a handy article and your own customized coronavirus simulation courtesy of the Washington Post, who has made this article free for everyone to access.

“The four simulations you just watched — a free-for-all, an attempted quarantine, moderate social distancing and extensive social distancing — were random. That means the results of each one were unique to your reading of this article.”

Wait, what? How does that even work? And why does that even matter?

Enter my snarky voice in reply: Oh, because I can then feel more confident in the data ~ because, you know, it’s random and interactive, so it subdues my nagging sense that someone is trying to get me to think a certain way. Plus it’s customized and all about me, so I can share my unique results on social media like the results of my “What Kind of Unicorn are You?” quiz.

Are we jumping to faulty conclusions using backwards thinking?

I’ve observed the ways my mind is wired to be uncomfortable with uncertainty. It wants to know what is happening so I can know how best to respond to keep myself and my loved ones safe.

I watched my mind’s tendency to reason this way: Well, there must be a pandemic, and the coronavirus must be the cause, because that’s what all the medical professionals, scientists, government officials and vast majority of my friends and social media contacts are saying. And it must be very very contagious and lethal, threatening a significant portion of our entire population, given the rapid and drastic lockdown measures being taken by government officials and the huge restrictions being voluntarily and unquestioningly taken by nearly all people and businesses around the world, even in the face of dramatic impact to our financial, social and emotional well-being.

Because if I can let my mind know that this is very serious and that many people’s health is at great risk, that coronavirus is the cause, that our diagnostic and prognostic capabilities are accurate, that the media and government agencies are smart and trustworthy, that social distancing/isolation is the way to stop the spread and save many lives, that mandated severe restrictions on my freedom are not only necessary but desirable and justify the incredible damage to local and global economies as well as individual and collective civil liberties, then I can know the appropriate measures to take to keep myself and many others safe, and even enjoy the ways that we are all coming together to unite against a common enemy, and turn things around as quickly as possible.

That’s a lot of things to “know” to get to where we find ourselves today!

So why can’t I just stop questioning and accept all of these as self-evident truths that will lead to my desired outcome of personal and collective well-being?

Because for better or worse, my mind does not seem to be wired that way. {My first word as an infant may have been “Why?”}

Because for the past 10 years, I have been on a warp-speed journey that has expanded my capacities for a far more flexible mind ~ one that can entertain and even hold many truths as possible, including those that are far outside of “conventional wisdom”, without annihilating a worldview that is attached to my safety and survival.

Because I’ve found a way to witness, without succumbing to, all the ways my conditioned mind wants to filter out open-ended questions and rush down reductionist pathways toward one conclusion that leads to its perceived self-preservation.

And because witnessing my conditioned mind’s tendencies over the years has given me direct experience and amazing insight into how propaganda can be a highly effective form of mind control, especially when it taps into fear for my own survival ~ exponentially more so when the survival of so many is at stake.

I’ve watched my mind want to make a subconscious leap from hearing “many people will die” to “I’m going to die and so will all those I love if I don’t do something to protect us!”

Amplify that by activating the fear for survival in billions of people worldwide, projecting one common enemy and one way to safely come out the other side with consistent and easily shared messaging by people and institutions we are deeply conditioned to trust ~ doctors and other health care professionals, scientists, government officials, peers and mainstream/social media.

Even our well-developed skepticism of many of these “authorities” goes out the window quickly when our safety is threatened, when we feel a desperate desire to trust in people with perceived greater power, when we most need to believe these authority figures have our best interests at heart and will help us survive.

And because the alternative would mean opening a Pandora’s Box filled with far too many questions that lead away from the direction of perceived safety where my mind wants to take me. Questions that are mostly unanswerable and even unfathomable:

Why? Who or what could possibly want to exert this much power and control over me, over an entire population? And again, why?

How could my mind be so easily manipulated? What do I do when I can’t trust what my own mind is telling me?

What if we’re all wrong? What if we don’t come out the other side of this safely? What if these people I’ve seen as authorities don’t have our best interests at heart? What if we wake up one day very soon and find ourselves under martial law with curfews, house arrests, forced medical treatments and vaccinations, hastily issued compliance orders that suspend all constitutional checks and balances, and enforcement of those orders by police and military using drones, other surveillance technology, fines and imprisonment?

What if we give up so much of our own personal power, sovereignty and freedom that there is no getting it back? What if so many of us give up our civil liberties that we no longer have a sufficient critical mass to stand up and claim our sovereignty, to resist a force so insidious that it could manipulate and control billions of people into willingly and even enthusiastically relinquishing their own freedom?

I don’t know the answers to these questions. I can’t possibly track all the many threads, layers and dimensions, nor wrap my logical mind, around something of this scale and magnitude.

But I’m willing to sit in the significant discomfort, the uncertainty of not knowing, the sense of desperation and hopelessness {and even at times terror} that arise in me when I let myself ask these questions.

Because for me this is what it means to be fully human, fully alive ~ feeling it all, considering it all, letting it all in, creating space for whatever arises, integrating it all, and continuing to surrender and embody more of the deep, abiding gnosis that brings me peace, stillness and connection to life, compassion and unconditional love in the present moment.

Because to do otherwise ~ to narrow the channel of what I allow in to my awareness ~ just suppresses my feelings and trauma responses into numbness, causes me to think and act from a fear-based mind that will override whatever my intuition and body awareness is trying to tell me, and gives away my own sovereignty and true power to some outside force that I perceive has greater power, intelligence and authority than my own.

Because that scenario ~ where a very small percentage of my being is operating, where I’m easily controlled and manipulated, and where I’m not truly living but merely avoiding dying ~ is far more terrifying than any of the uncertainty and feelings that may arise in the asking of these difficult questions.

Why do I get the sense I am being bullied into submission and silence?

I’ve been watching the same memes and messages being shared widely and repeatedly ~ some gently and some with such oppressive force that it sucks all the oxygen out of the space with no room left for any other thoughts, perspectives or questions.

I sense that the vast majority of this is shared from a sincere desire to be helpful and to keep people safe. And I’ve seen people reacting from fear and attacking anyone who even hints at a different way of thinking or approaching this situation ~ everything from gently trying to steer them toward the prevailing view, to dismissing them with the extremely tired and worn-out “conspiracy theory” label, to adamantly stating that anyone who isn’t being a “good citizen” and toe the partly line is “either an idiot, massively selfish, and/or uncaring about the risk to the health and lives of millions of people.”

Many of these forceful messages have come from people I know to be highly intelligent, caring people who have been working toward a greater good. Much of it is characterized as “sense-making” with vast amounts of data, statistics and “authoritative proof” by scientists, highly intelligent systems thinkers, and government officials.

And all of this seems to stem from a set of data accepted as “unquestionable truths” that have been plugged into epidemiological software models to prognosticate an extremely grim picture that seem to provide validation for the draconian, authoritarian measures that are being taken ~ the likes of which we’ve never seen, much less dreamed were even possible in our home country.

And I’m seeing that anyone who calls into question the veracity and efficacy of this data, these assumptions, or these measures is being shut down immediately through varying degrees of shame, blame and questioning of their love for humanity and country. Not to mention the widespread censoring by Facebook, YouTube and other social media platforms that seems to have escalated recently.

Why is this bringing up in me so much grief, anger, and a sense of foreboding and dread for our civilization?

Because all of this feels eerily familiar in my system ~ a system of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual bodies that hold a vast amount of memory of personal and collective trauma that has been experienced in this life, in the lives of my ancestors, and in the many lives of my soul journey.

Because this cellular memory is also connected to a quantum field beyond the limits of space and time ~ a field that holds the memories and archetypes of monumental turning points in history and even the future.

Because as a woman who is connecting to these cellular memories, it does not feel good in my system to be shushed, to be patted on the head and dismissed, to be told what I must think, feel and do, to be steered away from my own inner sensing and intuition, to be told that I don’t care about the well-being of others, and to be told to just get in line and “be a good citizen.”

Because I’m having feelings that go far beyond simply reacting to factual reports of what is currently happening in my community or the geopolitical arena, as my system seems to be tapping into a flood of archetypal memories held in the collective, experiencing on a smaller scale the energy of:

• what it felt like to be burned at the stake or drowned as a witch for healing people with a different sort of nature-based medicine and for accessing information from a place that could not be understood, quantified or verified by those in authority
• what it felt like to be part of an ancient and deeply connected Celtic culture that was being systematically wiped out as the Roman Christians sought to eradicate the Old Ways of a people who were in symbiotic relationship with the many gods of elemental Nature, with the land and with each other
• what it felt like to be deeply devoted to Jesus Christ, Mary Magdalene and their community as these beautiful, heart-centered beings were persecuted for their beliefs that threatened the control held by those in power
• what it felt like to be Hypatia, a 4th century philosopher, astronomer and mathematician in Alexandria, beloved by Christians and pagans alike, as she was stripped naked, brutally stoned to death, her body torn apart and dragged through the streets by a mob of Christians
• what it felt like to be walking into the mass fire, holding hands and singing with fellow Cathars in France as the last stronghold of Montségur finally fell in a massacre during the Christian Crusades, followed by the Inquisition and systematic destruction of their sacred texts
• what it felt like to be part of any number of proud indigenous tribes (Native Americans, First Nations, Australian originals, New Zealand Maoris) who were massively subjugated through colonialist conquests
• what it felt like to be an African woman sold into slavery, watching her children ripped away from her and sold into a future that held so much hate, abuse, suffering and utter disregard for the value of human life
• what it felt like to be a European Jew or sympathizer being imprisoned in concentration camps, tortured and killed in the genocide of the Holocaust
• what it felt like to be watching my children, friends, loved ones and all I’d known perish in earthquakes, tidal waves, fire and floods during the cataclysmic destruction of an entire civilization through acts of betrayal, misplaced trust, and an insidious abuse of power and technology in the Fall of Atlantis….

Throughout these horrific times, we turned on our fellow humans and committed unspeakable acts in the name of a prevailing worldview that needed to be upheld at all cost, that prevented people from gathering to keep them isolated and disconnected from their collective power, that was forced upon us through fear and militant enforcement, and that turned neighbors and family members in to the authorities for fear of retribution for sympathizing with the “outliers.”

How could we do such things? Through the overwhelming power of fear when our survival is threatened, which is dramatically amplified in a collective field.

Fear and conditioned programming that:

• creates hoarding, believing “I need to get mine before someone else does”
• solidifies a herd mentality that says “you’re either with us or you’re against us”
• diminishes our capacities for discernment, feeling, true compassion, and intuitive wisdom
• urges us to silence anyone who thinks, looks or acts differently, shutting down our willingness to allow in a diversity of viewpoints that may conflict with the ones our fear-based minds have decided are the only ones that will keep us safe

Fear that believes separation and isolation are good for us….

I connect in to the energy of these archetypal memories of living, leading and dying during such momentous times. Not only countless memories of being brutally victimized, or of trying to rescue as many people as possible ~ but also the even more challenging memories of being the perpetrator of these heinous acts, abusing power, and (unintentionally or intentionally) leading in a way that did not foster the health or prosperity of the individuals, community or world.

So no, the fact that I am not falling into health-related fears from this virus does not mean I am unwilling to face hard truths, an idiot, a conspiracy theorist, massively selfish, nor uncaring about the risk to the health and lives of millions of people. In fact, my heart has felt close to bursting at times with waves of dismay, anger and grief ~ arising from a deep, ancient love and devotion for humanity and the earth.

My resistance to let go of my questioning and simply fall in line with the prevailing edicts is not from a self-righteous indignation at being “inconvenienced” by a restriction on my personal freedoms, but rather from a very real concern for a potential stripping of the sovereignty and civil liberties of no less than the entire world population. This concern arises from a deep well of intuition and hauntingly familiar experiences that are sounding the alarm, demanding me to question, and refusing to let me be silent about what I’m sensing.

Alchemizing the Challenging Questions and Feelings into Gold

In the depths of my dismay, I feel these questions that want to roar from within me:

• During these unparalleled times when the entire world’s population is now being frantically herded into willingly foregoing more and more of our ways of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” is it really too much to ask the leadership issuing these mandates ~ and perhaps more importantly ourselves ~ to allow space for questions, differing perspectives, respectful dialogue, and true co-creative sense-making?
• Are we really that willing to so easily let go of our own personal and collective sovereignty, bound to repeat the same separation-age patterns of violence and destruction, allowing fear and powerlessness to drive us to accept (and even cry out for) outdated systems of censorship, command-and-control, and authoritarian styles of so-called leadership to tell us how to think, feel and act?
• Does this really feel like a life-nurturing path that is in our personal and collective best interests, leading to a vast improvement in our health, safety and well-being?
• Are we really so obsessively focused on surviving that we’re losing all touch with, giving up all hope for, a notion of life that is defined by thriving?

In my more calm and centered moments, I find myself asking these questions:

• How can I be more of the leader I am expecting from “out there”?
• How can I move through the fears in me that are triggered by the actions of those who do not hold the same worldview that I’m holding, actions that seem to threaten the worldview that keeps me feeling safe?
• Can I be with my own fears of my mortality, and that of my loved ones, which allows me to be with those same fears held by others ~ without needing to make them wrong, fix or change them?
• How can I hold my own perspectives more loosely, allowing for more love, compassion and acceptance of those who are holding tightly to theirs?
• How can I trust in the divine perfection of my own soul’s journey, of the soul’s journey of every other individual and of the entire collective ~ including the many gifts that lie in these experiences of compression?
• How can I surrender to a much more expanded awareness of reality ~ one in which evolution is unfolding so naturally and symbiotically ~ even (and especially) when it doesn’t look like it’s happening in the way I’d prefer?
• How can I embody more trust in the organic field of co-creative, regenerative life force that is truly unconditional, capable of holding all these wildly varying truths, perspectives and potential timelines as not only possible but even essential to the grander unfolding?

When I can give myself plenty of time and space to be with all of these questions, without needing to answer them or direct them toward a particular outcome, I can better sense the opening and invitation for more love, more sovereignty, more connection, and more grace and magic to emerge.

In that spaciousness, I can connect back to a deep sense of trust in much larger forces of nature, seen and unseen support, and a co-creative life-force energy that lies beyond what I could possibly quantify, measure or prove.

And when I allow myself to voice, process, release and transmute all these swirling energies, I can let in the abundance of gifts in this monumentally potent experience:

• a great pause that allows many people to step off the hamster wheel of busy-ness, get out in nature more, and experience a sense of stillness
• the care, compassion and camaraderie that is emerging as people step in to help and support individuals and businesses in their communities who are in need
• the opportunity to let go of things, belief systems and ways of being that were previously thought essential as we reconnect to what is most valuable to us
• the desire to grow more of our own food and support our local organic farmers, healing the soil, the planet and our connection to it
• a growing awareness of the vast array of immune-boosting and medicinal herbs that are offered to us by nature and holistic healers
• a massive reset opportunity where, out of the ashes, entirely new sociocultural systems that are regenerative and rooted in mutual thriving have more space and receptivity to emerge

Throughout this ongoing alchemical process, I am presented with many opportunities to find my sense of safety & security within myself regardless of what is happening around me, to let go of resistance to viewpoints that differ from mine, to trust that everyone is doing the best they can, and to know that all of this is somehow serving a far greater whole that lies beyond this battlefield of fighting a virus and fighting each other ~ a wholeness that exists beyond the ideas of rightdoing and wrongdoing.

True Leadership in this Epic Time

Through the many gifts in this epi(demi)c experience, I am yearning for and being called to more deeply embody true leadership that is rooted in unconditionality, abundance, and mutual thriving:

• leadership that not only accepts but invites, welcomes and celebrates a diverse array of perspectives, feelings, life experiences, questions and unknowns;
• leadership that has no need to manipulate, command, control or silence anyone as it rests in the awareness of the massive creator power that exists in every human being;
• leadership that trusts in the gold of the alchemical wisdom that emerges in a field where sovereignty and unity are not in opposition but inseparable aspects of wholeness.

As I sit with all of this seemingly chaotic and yet perfectly orchestrated experience of challenging questions, feelings and cellular memories, I am greatly appreciating the clarity that is crystallizing in me as a deep knowing:

IT IS TIME….

Time for the (wholly) grail knights, kings, queens and healers of old ~ those who have been navigating and even integrating both their hero’s journey of sovereignty and heroine’s journey of unity ~ to reconnect with each other and anchor in our current reality this anciently new way of living and leading for all who choose it.

Time to co-create the world that our hearts and souls know is not only possible, it is inevitable….