What Self Quarantine is Teaching Us
Retreat is an important aspect of any meditation practitioner. Retreats are meant to create an environment of balance and solitude, where distractions are eliminated to allow the mind to settle and start investigating the state of our inner world.
….sounds a lot like self quarantine.
I am still shocked by how swiftly things changed. Very few people predicted this exact scenario, and although coronavirus will absolutely define 2020, it is this period of self quarantine that will change us individually.
Meditators tend to be suffering junkies. We know every struggle is an opportunity to put the teachings into practice. Insight and wisdom come best from direct experience, instead of intellectually understanding concepts without any real perspective. This is why the sheltered, privileged elite have so little to say (but that's a post for another day). Although self-study is important, it is always meant to supplement direct experience, not to replace it completely. So with this in mind, I keep asking myself in this time of crisis, what is this experience trying to teach me?
What does my perspective of this outbreak say about me?
How can this situation be seen as an opportunity and not as a catastrophe?
How can I use my time wisely during this time?
And although it is important to reflect on how we got in this mess in the first place, the reality is we are here now, so what I am interested in is understanding how we can best move forward now that we're here.
I recognize many of us can't afford to get existential right now. Some are in very real hardships and are focused on their next paycheck, their next meal, and whether or not they'll have a home. I am in no way dismissing the hardships this outbreak is putting on us. This point of view may not be timely for those who are struggling under our crumbling economy right now. But if you are employed, have a safe home, and are young and healthy, then this might be for you.
I am the latter, so decided to use my free time as an opportunity to self-retreat. Unlike a spa or a vacation, instead of focusing on relaxation only, I am purposefully removing myself from my habitual patterns, like scrolling through my phone for hours on end and creating a meditative and contemplative space in my home. This is slowly allowing me to settle my mind and start looking in.
Some of what's been coming up for me is -
My current state of emotional wellbeing
My spectrum of emotions is a combination of anxiety, fear, boredom and future tripping. There is also anger and victimhood. A meditation teacher told me recently, “emotions aren’t meant to be held inside, they’re meant to be released.” But before we can even do that, we have to be aware of those emotions in the first place. During this time, it can become a defense mechanism to ignore our body and instead use our distractions as a quick fix.
I think one of the great challenges we face as adults is not properly discerning when we need comfort and when we need discipline. Bodily awareness to know when we need rest and self-compassion or discipline and honest self-reflection directly affects our ability to heal. So during this time, I am listening to my body's intelligence and allowing it to tell me where I need to investigate.
I know some people who are able to do this intuitively. One of my habitual patterns has been to overanalyze instead of allowing my body to speak to me, so I have a set of tools I use to allow me to be more receptive. My process has always been one in which I start with relaxation. For example, I can't rush in from work and meditate immediately after. I tend to ease into my inner work slowly and without much of an agenda.
I thought it'd be helpful to share a short list of rituals I use to get me grounded: (*Disclaimer: this is my personal toolkit, some of these can fall on either category depending on each person.)
Comforting activities
Face masks
A bad 90’s movie
Cooking
Smudge
Light candles in my apartment
Coloring books
Reading a physical book
Relaxing walk (not with the aim of making it a workout)
Playing with my cats
Calling family and friends
Sending a friend or loved one a nice message for no reason at all
Giving someone a gift
Inner work Activities
Meditation (breath, mantra, or concentration if I am pondering on a specific question)
Journaling
Exercise
Nature hikes
Therapy
Breathwork
Yoga
Crying
Grounding food (mostly plant-based)
Energy cleanse
Virtual meetings with Sangha or supportive group of choice
Lately, I've been really leaning into meditation and yoga, since those two tools allow for greater awareness of my body. I have been releasing emotions through journaling and smudging my home. Depending on our state of being right now, our home may be holding too much energy and may be helpful to clear some of it. I have also brought in more plants in my home, as nature also helps in balancing our energy and clearing rooms.
If I am not sure what I need, I always ask myself, what do I need right now? When I am overwhelmed with emotion or feelings, I find it useful to begin by taking one step towards honoring my emotions.
How fake some of our social constructs are
As I was working with my emotions, I got an email from Credit Karma congratulating me for my credit score increase. That was followed by an email from the New York Times yelling at me the stock market was at it's lowest since 1931. And in this divine sequence of events, it became very clear how imaginary and irrelevant some of our social systems are.
I started contemplating a lot on our credit score construct. What is a credit score, really?
Well to start off, our credit is a scoring system that determines our risk in the eyes of companies and government institutions. It essentially dictates where we are in the totem pole of our society, and depending on where we land on that pole, it grants us certain privileges and access that others don't. If we do what they say and follow the rules, we get goodies, like houses and credit cards with fake limits on them, and If we don’t, we are forced to live in the fringes of society.
So really, it’s a categorization of human beings. It is a method capitalism uses to cluster and grade humans based on how well we can follow rules and comply with market order, all set by a select few who don't necessarily need to follow them.
And you can take this world order and apply it to most of our capitalist structures. Harari has an entire book on imaginary orders and I recommend during this time when all we have is time, you check it out.
And this is my problem with capitalism. It is the system that could. Just like that relationship we keep going back to because we see potential but bad execution, we keep betting on the potential of capitalism.
What if we had a scoring system based on how much we contributed to the wellbeing of the planet? What if we had a scoring system on how well we treated each other?
And before anyone yells at me, yes, we need our capitalist society. First off, we don't have much choice. We have created this tightly wound concept for ourselves and now have to play in it. But, I also believe the system, free from toxic interest groups can work for its people.
It is also true this construct is imaginary. It is a man-made concept not required for the biological survival of humankind. If we operate from this place, then our economy becomes a game. We can play Monopoly without becoming the players ourselves. The problem is we can't see the difference right now. We put more effort into our workplace than in maintaining the quality of our friendships. We spend more time shopping for things we don't need than gifting to others. Capitalism as s system is not the problem itself, but it's the consequence of the erosion of our values that is the issue. Don't let capitalism run your life. Play the game and have a life.
When I think of it in this way, it gives me room to breathe. I can be both my true self and my capitalist self. I also don’t believe in the concept that we have to choose either one. Our ego wants our personality to be fixed. If we embrace nonduality, then we are all things in one, as well as opposites. The Ying Yang symbol perfectly illustrates this.
embrace non duality during self quarantine
A tree was at one point a seed, and part of the ground it was buried in, as well as the rain used to nourish it. Similarly, humans are their environment. We are biological matter that will eventually decompose and allow other life forms to continue to exist. We are also ever changing - I am aging as I write these words.
Similarly, when we investigate, our consciousness does not have a fixed point of reference. So there is no need to cling to any identity and solely operate with the goal of keeping it alive. In fact, I invite you to let some of your identities die. I experienced ego death a couple of months ago, and it gave me the possibility to be so much more than the mask I had been wearing up until that point.
Psychedelics aren't the only way to work with our fixed identities. Meditation is a method to do this as well. If you're familiar with the Eightfold path, then the concept of Right View allows us to see the world how it really is, not based on our preconceived notions and social conditioning.
We need to stop destroying our only home
The conservationist and activist Dr. Jane Goddall says humans are the most intelligent species on this planet and also the ones responsible for the destruction of our only home. We are doing that in three major ways - through extreme poverty, increases in human population, and our ever-increasing waste.
In a sort of poetic justice, this time of slowing down is showing us where we are putting our resources, time, and value. Currently, we have more weapons of mass destruction than we have surgical masks. “Low skilled workers” - immigrants, and those with low credit scores, are as crucial as doctors and nurses. In 14 days of self quarantine, we have seen more progress in climate change than the last 5 years of incessant fighting between political parties - all selfish egos focused on short term gain instead of long term sustainability. Covid-19 is a virus but, also, aren’t we? This outbreak is putting a mirror in front of our society and reflecting back on our lack of humanity. So now, Earth is taking time to heal. We should respect it and allow her to do her work.
This is a pivotal moment in our history of human civilization. I don’t believe we will come out of this unchanged. I don’t believe 2021 will be like 2019. We are already seeing the beginning stages of the lesson:
We are all interconnected and desperately need one another. We have one home and we have neglected it for far too long. Our priorities and values need serious reevaluation, and we need to find ways to detoxify our capitalistic system.
And there’s no better time to think about how each one of us can contribute to this like today. So take your self quarantine time seriously and use it wisely. Mother Nature may not give us another chance.