At the beginning of the year, I had a clear vision of what 2020 was going to look like. I had worked part time for over a year for a local shamanic teacher named Julie Kramer, who I learned so much from. Shamanism had changed my life and counseling practice, but I knew it was time to go back to my own clients full time so that I could fully live my purpose and spiritual expression.
I geared up to lead Spiritually Human MeetUps every two weeks. I created an arc of content that I was excited to share with attendees and clients. After working hard through July, I would shift gears to focus on getting married to my fiancé on August 29 with 100 of our family and friends.
Enter COVID-19.
My fiancé’s company closed their offices which meant he needed to work from home, and I lost my private home office for seeing clients. Our landlord suddenly panicked (still not sure why!) and told us we needed to find a new place to live as soon as possible. I canceled all future MeetUp gatherings and began seeing clients virtually only.
Whew!!!
I’m sure that many of you reading this can relate. 2020 did not go the way that most of us pictured it would. Many people are out of work or underemployed. Others are sick or caring for those that are sick. A large percentage of people are very afraid of getting the virus or considering the deaths of loved ones. Some are very angry about the way everything has been handled.
None of us know how long this will last or when normalcy will return.
I’ll be honest, when all this started happening, I felt a lot of resistance. I love seeing my clients in person. Leading MeetUps brings me a tremendous sense of joy and fulfillment. I’m still struggling with the decision of whether we should postpone our wedding until 2021.
Yet, through all of it, when I meditated, my Helping Spirits would continually give me the message of surrender. They would say things like…
Stop fighting the current.
Learn the lesson of flexibility and change.
Let go.
Find peace within yourself despite outer circumstances.
Stop thinking that you know the way things should be.
Be still.
Let go even more.
One of the major lessons on my spiritual path has been to trust my body, feelings, and sensations. My mind was really struggling with letting go of my own agenda, but every time I did, my body felt so much better. I needed more rest, more meditation, and more of the unknown. I needed ‘being' rather than ‘doing,’ so that I could learn to flow with the new pacing of the world around me.
From my ongoing work with clients, I know that people are having vastly different experiences and reactions to COVID. My personal art form is not to make anyone right or wrong, but to allow the deeper collective themes to emerge that are a part of everyone’s experience.
I can tell you that the most important theme I see so far is surrender. We must surrender to whatever fear is arising, surrender to change, and surrender to uncertainty. We can choose to surrender to not knowing what we should do or not do in the coming weeks and months. We can surrender to our own reactions, so that we can inquire more deeply within ourselves.
This writing is certainly not meant to give you answers. The point is that no one has them right now. Instead, I hope to point you to a doorway where you can find more peace with not having the answers. Uncertainty does not need to cause endless suffering if we can find a way to dance with it as we gracefully move with all the experiences of human life.
My hope and blessing for all of us is to breathe into the uncertainty without turning to fear, control, or contempt. All people are imperfect and operating from their own value system and life experience. Practice forgiveness that the world is not the way you want it to be, and surrender to the eternal opportunity to discover what part of yourself is always certain and unchangeable— the All That Is.
Blessings,
Kelley