Yesterday I had the realization that many aspects of this COVID-19 pandemic experience are similar to what it’s like to go through the process of spiritual awakening.
To be called into a spiritual awakening usually entails finding yourself in some kind of retreat from the world you’ve known. As you go deeper into the process, there are periods where you can feel like you’ve been closed off in a solitary interior room, for a time frame that you have no control over. Some people are actually physically isolated from others during the process, whether by leaving a familiar community, loss of relationships, or by undergoing a drastic change in life direction. Sometimes illness is the cause of this retreat from “normal life.” The temporary isolation is necessary and protective.
In this solitary inner space of the spiritual awakening, we experience an ongoing struggle, a constant tension between wanting to “get back to normal” and what life is requiring of us at the time: to not be productive as usual. To slow down, to take care of self, to listen. To redefine our identity. To reassess how we determine our worth and let go of some of the ways we used to do so. To have our sight fine-tuned so that we can have a life that reflects what really matters most. To change what our “normal” is – for the better. We want the process to end, right now – just as with the pandemic – but it requires us to stay in that place for a time. We don’t have control of the timing and with spiritual awakening, life will not let us out of it until we have been transformed.
The spiritual awakening process is a process of refining. We get refined, by way of our interior worlds, and our lives also get refined. The process reveals. We are revealed to ourselves; it reveals the true faces of the people around us (it shows who is for us and what is simply empty); and it ultimately reveals the divine to us. The process reveals truth. Going through the changes it can bring often entails heartache and loss, as we’re affected by the truths that are revealed. The pandemic is having the same revelatory effect. Because of social isolation, our lives have suddenly become very small, showing us ourselves and revealing who cares for us, who we allow to care for us, what we care about, and who we care for. And again, this is simply what is. This process is simply revealing, and as a result, refining.
Some people don’t make it through the spiritual awakening process, and going through it means facing that possibility, feeling the tenuousness of the situation even as you go through it. There is ample opportunity to get lost in grief, despair, fear, depression, heartache, and disillusionment in the awakening process. For some, the demands can become too great – for example, if someone is called to process ancestral trauma but the way that plays out in their life becomes too overwhelming and they don’t reach out for help. Those who go through illness as part of spiritual awakening can get lost in that too – in not finding help from doctors, or in the demands of trying to cope with illness, especially if it is chronic. Some get lost in a “dark night of the soul.” The awakening process is an initiation that feels quite harsh at times; it can feel like life and even God doesn’t care much about you specifically. The process calls for a strengthening of heart, which we gain by going through exacting tests and trials.
If you survive the demands of the spiritual awakening process, you come out on the other side of it with an empowerment and a strength that comes from having faced things you never imagined you could. It comes from facing darkness, from staring down death (in the awakening process, this is emotional and spiritual “death,” sometimes even the threat of physical death) and from having to figure out how to help yourself and to receive help in the face of great challenge. You gain your real life and your true self, and connection to God. I believe that living through this pandemic can create the same kind of strength and empowerment in us for having made it through.
The key, with both the pandemic and spiritual awakening (and any kind of challenge!) is to use the process. What looks like an ending and feels like an insurmountable challenge has tremendous opportunity for life in it. Some people will totally rearrange their lives as a result of this pandemic experience, as a result of what it shows them. Some will be forced into developing self-care strategies and spiritual connection because they needed those things to make it through this ordeal. Others will decide to dedicate themselves to long-held but previously sidelined dreams. Creatives will pick up their practices again. Some people who lived very unhealthy lives before will take this health threat as a wake-up call and devote themselves to their wellness.
My country (the U.S.) will go through a rebirthing too – hopefully through more investment in public health and pandemic preparedness measures; the adoption of universal healthcare; more widespread options for remote work (which will help the disabled and chronically ill, parents, and others who need more workplace flexibility); and a greater appreciation for workers in roles that were undervalued before but shown to be indispensable now.
The meditation teacher Tara Brach talks about using challenge so that it might not be the darkness of the tomb but the darkness of the womb—a place of rebirth. Many of us won’t be the same after this COVID-19 pandemic experience, just like the spiritual awakening process shakes up a person’s life and creates a new one. Both experiences are crucibles, severe trials. We often fear the burning and the pressure of the crucible—until we look back and hopefully see that the refining it accomplished in us has been good.