Part 1 of 4 in the series Spiritual Perspectives on the Covid-19 Pandemic
By Mark Kutolowski
You can listen to the audio version of this blog on our podcast page.
We began posting on our blog in March of 2020, two days after the World Health Organization’s declaration of a global pandemic. Many of us were struggling with fear in the uncertainty, just as we were losing our ability to meet with and serve others in person due to pandemic-related shut downs. All of our retreat leading and guiding was cancelled for 2020. In response, we decided to write. Our first post was written to highlight the potential spiritual opportunities present in the face of the pandemic.
Much has changed since then. A year and a half later, our society is still in a place of massive societal disruption, with no easy end in sight. For at least a year, I have hoped, and at times expected, that we would not need to write directly about the COVID pandemic again. After all, our primary work and mission is to follow the Way of Christ, to seek to live in union with God, with others, and with creation, and to support others in living in this way. It’s a proactive, creative task, and whenever I spend too much energy in reaction to current events, I can quickly dim my awareness of God’s presence, and get caught up in the cycles of fear and animosity that often dominate the news cycle.
Yet, the ongoing drama of COVID and our responses to COVID have had an enormous impact on people’s lives, including our spiritual lives. There is much to mourn, and yet also raw material for spiritual transformation. Times of affluence and tranquility in our culture can often lead us to fall asleep to the spiritual dimensions of life. Suffering and upheaval can help break open our hardened hearts, and provide the opportunity to grow into greater spiritual maturity. In light of this dynamic, I feel called to again explore the spiritual dimensions of the pandemic, and how someone following the Way of Christ might wisely navigate their relationship with the present situation.
I intend this to be the first of three posts exploring the spiritual dimensions of the COVID pandemic. In this current post, I’ll look at the pandemic’s relationship to fear and the life of the spirit. In the second post, we’ll examine how the pandemic has affected the human soul, especially in connection to how we make meaning and to how we live in relationship with one another. In the final post, I’ll explore a holistic vision of health and human flourishing that emerges from Christian anthropology. Through this lens I’ll analyze the dominant cultural understanding of health that has been ubiquitous in the mainstream pandemic narratives. These have been the most difficult pieces I’ve ever written, and I’m acutely aware of the tremendous emotional charge and tension around COVID, public and private responses to the pandemic, and the general fear and disorder in our cultural consciousness. I cannot be certain that what I’m writing is a true understanding of the situation, though I believe my motivation in writing is to seek truth. My hope in writing is not to give any fixed answers, but to encourage each of us to remain connected to Divine Love, and to continue to ‘seek first the Kingdom of God.’ With prayer and conscious action, it is possible not only to remain spiritually awake, but to grow in faith, hope, and love in this time. Without deliberate spiritual discipline, I see many people falling further into fear, isolation, hatred, and dis-ease. So let us follow Jesus’ advice to stay awake, be vigilant, and keep our hearts open to the infinite love and healing power of God. I invite you to pray alongside me, as we seek truth together.
Fear and the Levels of Mind
There has been much physical suffering during the past year and a half due to the pandemic. Yet, I must confess that it has been far less than I anticipated back in March 2020. Each death from COVID is a profound loss and tragedy. There are many who have physically suffered and recovered. There are others who report suffering ongoing consequences from ‘long covid’ that are limiting their physical and emotional flourishing. If we take as a given the US total death count of 750,000, we are dealing with an immense loss of life.[1]According to the CDC, COVID was the third highest cause of death in 2020, following the perineal leaders in the US—heart disease and cancer. This is a real disease, with real human suffering and tragedy.
I believe there has been a second ‘pandemic,’ far more pervasive than the loss of life and health from COVID. This ‘pandemic’ is the rise of fear.[2]The public health response has been a recipe for an enormous surge in fear in the United States.[3]We were told by public health officials that there is a deadly virus, that it is invisible, that it is incredibly contagious, and that asymptomatic people can spread it. This meant that any person you might meet was a potential threat, and you also were to them. Many of us took that in deeply – anyone I meet might kill me. Or I might kill them. We have no way to know.How terrifying! The logic continued—the threat of disease is so serious that we need to stop the functioning of society and limit all social interaction for an unknown period of time to limit its spread. I believe the public health measures of lockdown, and later social distancing and masking, and finally mass vaccination, have all been well intentioned and possibly warranted given the information available to health experts at the time. Yet they have also had the effect of placing many people in a state of heightened vigilance and fear for their own health and the health of their loved ones and community. What began as a two-week lockdown to ‘flatten the curve’ to prevent overwhelming hospitals shifted to, in many communities, months without ‘non-essential’ activity or travel, and a shifting culture with much more limited social interaction. Tens of millions of people began working from home, and tens of millions of others were out of work. Many of us internalized the sense that we were all vulnerable, and that any other person was a potential threat to our health via asymptomatic COVID transmission. There’s a pervasive sense of threat and terror unlike anything felt in our generation.[4]
This played out differently in different regions of the US. Where we live in Vermont, ‘social distancing’ was basically our normal cultural behavior beforethe pandemic(!), and our population took the pandemic restrictions very seriously. In other parts of the country, informal social gatherings continued. Yet as a whole, our country experienced a dramatic decrease of face-to-face social interaction (both one-on-one interactions and public gatherings like church, parties and community events), a dramatic increase in screen time, and an enormous increase in fear. Outside of the Northeast, most notably significant parts of the rural West and South, fear of COVID was overridden by rejection of the official narrative. This rejection was accompanied by a second, equally intense fear – a fear of government overreach and conspiracy by the powers that be (including government, media, and biotech companies) to threaten our way of life.
While I don’t know of any statistics able to directly address the level of fear in the US, the American Psychiatric Association reported in May 2020that ‘We are facing a national mental health crisis that could yield serious health and social consequences for years to come.’Perhaps most troubling is the report that 2 in 5 Americans are now struggling with mental health, compared to a baseline of 1 in 5 from before 2019. That is an increase of 66 million people, or roughly 90 new mental health cases for each reported COVID death. This is an incredibly significant number, and an immense challenge for the spiritual as well as psychological well-being of our nation.
As people following the Way of Christ, how are we to respond? I believe one possible answer lies in understanding the levels of mind. There are three distinct levels of mind out of which we may be living from at any given time.[5]These are the ‘primitive mind/survival mind,’ the ‘rational mind’ and the ‘spiritual mind/Mind of Christ.’ When we understand the operation of these three levels of mind, we can begin to track our own responses to the stress of the pandemic, and begin to make the conscious choice to live from a place of inner freedom and vitality.
The Primitive Mind
The ‘primitive mind’ is the level of thought that essentially emerges from the survival instinct of the body, and is closely associated with the amygdala. The central concern of this level of mind is the survival of the individual organism. It evaluates the world dualistically, scrutinizing everything that comes into its awareness as either ‘good, safe, and pleasurable’ or ‘bad, dangerous, and painful.’ It’s entire agenda is to ensure survival by maximizing engagement with the ‘good, safe, and pleasurable’ and minimizing engagement with the ‘bad, unsafe, and painful.’ This ‘survival instinct’ is of course a natural and necessary aspect of our ability to function and stay alive in this world. It is part of our ancestral heritage, and it unites us with the entire animal kingdom in our common experience of the world.
When we experience the emotion of fear, the primitive mind leaps into action and seeks to inform us of what we need to do to stay safe. The problem is that the primitive mind can only divide the world into the very simple good/bad or safe/unsafe categories. It is entirely incapable of discerning the complex nuances of our contemporary world. In fear, primitive mind runs the show, and then recruits the rational mind into its service. The spiritual mind goes dormant, inaccessible by the primary consciousness of the fearful person. I believe this is one reason that, in the Bible, the most common thing an angel says when greeting a human is ‘do not be afraid.’ When we are afraid, we cannot access spiritual awareness – so we are unable to receive the divine message and/or blessing the angel has come to bring.
Self-awareness is a key to gaining interior freedom. How do we know when we are operating from the primitive mind? I believe this state of mind has several common characteristics: In the body, fear manifests as tension, often accompanied by increases in blood pressure, heart rate and respiratory rate, as well as stiffness or ‘jerkiness’ in movement. In the emotions, the primitive mind manifests through a lack of freedom. This can be expressed through the domination of charged emotions, including but not limited to fear, anger, and elation. Paradoxically, there can also be a sense of being cut-off or ‘dissociated’ from emotions, often accompanied with a sort of pseudo-rationality. Someone operating from the primitive mind may sound ‘rational’ and free from emotion, but when they are in this state their body will tend to be stiff and there is an accompanying inability to give space for other perspectives on the mental level. This is not the same as operating from the rational level of consciousness. In thought, fear leads to either/or thinking, and an inability to be present with nuance or uncertainty. The need for absolute certainty and the rejection of simply hearing ideas that might challenge one’s viewpoint are attributes of the primitive mind.
In contrast to the primitive mind, the rational mind (discussed at greather length below) is not threatened and can listen to opposing viewpoints. It can give space in conversation to new information with patience and curiosity. The rational mind is less concerned with being ‘right,’ and more concerned with discovering what is objectively true. The ‘pseudo-rationality’ of the primitive mind demands its own rightness – in fact, it can’t rest until it has convinced itself that it is right, and that other viewpoints are wrong.
Another aspect of the primitive mind is that it can, and frequently does, extend itself onto one’s social group. One’s group could be a family, a town, a political party, a religion, an affinity group, or a country (we are all members of many different social groups). In this fearful state, anything perceived as beneficial for one’s group is considered an ultimate good, and anything perceived as a threat to one’s group is considered an ultimate evil.
Groups adopt a collective ego. The collective ego of the group is then defended by the primitive mind as an extension of the self – an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ mentality. One of the identifying features of this ‘collective primitive mind’ is the inability of members of one group to perceive the humanity and goodness of anyone in another group of people who have become ‘other’ to them. We see the disastrous effects of this ‘us’ versus ‘them’ thinking throughout history – the bitter fruit of this level of consciousness manifests fully in war, ethnic cleansing, genocide, and systematic oppression.
The Rational Mind
The rational mind is the level of reason. It is the level where we are able to critically observe the world around us, taking in facts, data, and observation, and then interpreting this information to come up with the most functional response. It is the realm of logic, and of an interest in discovering objective truth. The scientific method relies upon the use of this level of mind, as do other aspects of academic inquiry. Much of what we know about the material world has been discovered through the diligent activity of people operating from the rational mind, with a genuine interest in exploring objective truth. When a scientist comes up with a theory and then tests it repeatedly, trying to disprove it with objective evidence, and invites colleagues to do the same, it’s clear that the scientist is more interested in what is true than in being right. This is the work, and the power, of the rational mind. Aristotle defined human beings as ‘a rational animal.’ Our primitive mind unites us with the animal self, and in traditional philosophy the rational mind is part of our unique human capacities.[6]
When we’re living from the rational mind, we’re able to ‘hear’ the emotions, attractions and aversions of the primitive mind, but these simply become new data points for us to use in making a rational decision. We might be terrified of snakes, for example, but can use our rational mind to understand that there are no poisonous snakes in our area and then choose to go for a walk in the woods anyway. Or, we might feel a twinge of instinctual fear on seeing someone who looks very different from us, and can use our rational mind to recognize that they’re not a threat, and choose to engage in conversation with them.
One of the fascinating aspects of being human is that our rational mind is almost always active. However, it is not always acting from its own level – it can be ‘hijacked’ by the primitive mind to provide support for its goal of keeping us safe. This is what is known as ‘rationalization’ – the rational mind is used to support an agenda that arises from the emotionally charged attractions or aversions of the primitive mind. Much of what is presented as rational in both mass media and on social media is actually rationalization. When you know what to look for, it’s easy to detect – hardened opinions and charged emotions supposedly ‘backed up’ by statistics and ‘scientific’ proof that the opinion is right (and often, that an opposing group is wrong, bad, and perhaps even subhuman).
How can we recognize the difference between the rational mind and rationalization? Rationalthinking is characterized by a certain degree of freshness, calm, and curiosity. It is genuinely interested in objective truth. It is not emotionally threatened by opposing ideas, but will instead try to explore, and either affirm or refute them against the standard of what is currently known to be true. The best scientists tend to be calm, warm, and friendly, as they are filled with a genuine curiosity, humility, and eagerness to explore. They recognize the limits to what can be known, even as they eagerly strive to know and understand more fully. They often have access to the spiritual mind, and many scientists practice meditation or other interior disciplines because they find that cultivating a conscious relationship with interior silence enables them to do more objective work. In contrast, rationalizationtends to demand that it is right, see opposing ideas as a threat, and be characterized by emotional contraction or compulsion. It is characterized, in short, by the qualities of the primitive mind described above. The rational mind can, and will, critique that which is untrue, but it will do so with a love of truth and a curious, spacious engagement with reality. It will seek to calmly explain if something is false, and counter with facts and models that it believes better align with reality. The primitive mind, utilizing rationalization, will tend to react with outrage, charges of heresy, and a desire to eliminate the threat from public dialogue as quickly as possible.
The rational mind can also be utilized to support or ‘flesh out’ the insights of the spiritual mind. By thinking through and putting into words and concepts realities that are revealed at a level beyond thought and concept, the rational mind helps to communicate aspects of the spiritual mind in the realm of form. As spiritual mind always operates from a state of inner freedom, this does not have the same sense of ‘hijacking’ as the primitive mind’s use of the rational mind.
The sciences are not immune from rationalization, especially in a cultural background of pervasive fear. Even in the sciences, immense energy may be invested in defending beliefs simply because they are ‘ours.’ Scientific rational inquiry holds that all models be held as tentative, being the best explanatory model for the evidence we have at the time. New data may contradict the expectations of old explanatory models. Eventually, a new model may emerge that better fits the data. Yet it’s almost always true that first, people will rigorously try to force new data to fit into the old model, and will defend the old model against new understanding.[7]This conservatism is good, up to a point, yet stifling when it prevents us from seeing reality in a fresh way. The dance between current paradigms and new, emerging data is part of how objective science evolves and grows. In this way, science is not a revelation of ‘absolute truth,’ but rather a process of continual inquiry combined with efforts to develop models that better fit the reality of observable phenomena.[8]
Science faces an intrinsic, ongoing challenge in that true science must be conducted from the rational mind, yet all scientists are human beings who, like all of us, are prone to thinking from the primitive mind. Each field of science is in need of continual self-reflection and self-criticism, lest objective inquiry give way to the rationalization and defensiveness of a group of professionals locked into a set of beliefs that, while they may have been rational in origin, are now being defended by the mechanisms of the collective primitive mind.
Spiritual Mind/Mind of Christ
The highest level of mind in this simple three-part framework is the spiritual mind. This is the level of mind that is united with Divinity. When we enter into this level of mind, we experience peace, stillness, and freedom that are beyond what can be known from the primitive or the rational minds. Access to this level of mind is typically not attainable by effort – we can’t will or think our way into the spiritual mind. Systems of prayer and meditation like Centering Prayer seek to support access to the spiritual mind precisely by inviting us to de-identify with the perspectives that are found at the levels of the primitive mind and the rational mind. By ‘letting go’ of our emotions, thoughts, fears and desires, we leave space for a deeper, more subtle level of perception.
The spiritual mind is essentially trans-personal. We experience the spiritual mind as a presence that is at once within us, and yet simultaneously beyond our individual self. It’s more accurate to say that we experience the spiritual mind and participate in the spiritual mind than to say that we possess the spiritual mind. This fits very well with the Christian understanding of the Holy Spirit and the Divine Indwelling. We ‘live and move and have our being’ in God, and we become ‘partakers of the divine nature’, yet this spirit is not our private possession. We share in the ‘Mind of Christ,’ a mind that is far greater than any individual mind.
The spiritual mind is beyond the limits of both space and time. When we are living in, or from, this level of mind, we experience life in a boundless, eternal present. The fullness of being is revealed in each instant, moment by moment – with a very different perception of time than that of linear time. We also experience a sense of connection with all places and all people – a subtle but very real sense of kinship with all life. Because of this perception, we receive two immeasurable gifts – freedom from fear and the capacity for unconditional love.
Freedom from fear arises because when we participate in a felt sense of eternity, we no longer fear the death of our body, or the end of any particular aspect of life that we may cherish. We intuitively know that all things are passing, and only God remains forever. When we experience ourselves embraced by divine love, we no longer fear being stripped of anything else. This experience relativizes our attachments to all aspects of the finite world. Status, relationships, ideas, emotional states, possessions, health, and life itself become relative goods, which we can enjoy but also let go of as God (or life itself) may ask of us in each circumstance. This is the freedom that allowed the early Christians to walk hand in hand, singing songs of praise to God with genuine joy as they were led to public execution in the Roman Empire.[9]
Unconditional love flows forth from the spiritual mind, as we see and experience the unity of all life in God. We become able to love our neighbor as ourselves, as we on some level experience our neighbor as ourselves. We no longer require people to be like us in external appearances, group membership or beliefs, as we experience our unity with them on the level of the spirit. We all share in the same spirit, so it becomes easy (on this level) to love all, without regard to conditions.
When we tap into the field of universal love, we not only love our neighbor, but also our enemy. The ability to love our enemies goes deeper than loving our neighbors. It’s source is the radical forgiveness that overflows from the heart of Christ.We can, as Jesus said, ‘be like our heavenly Father, who makes his sun shine on good and bad alike’ – and we can do this precisely because the spiritual mind shares in the same unconditional love that God has for all people, and all beings. When we enter into this mind, we literally ‘put on the mind of Christ’ and love as God loves. This is the level of mind from which flows all true compassion, and from which we are able to completely and sincerely forgive all evil done to us. In the mind of Christ, all is forgiven, as we live in the love of God who embraces all.
The knowing that comes from the spiritual mind is often called wisdom or insight. It is a deep knowing that arises not from the external world, but wells up from within a hidden aspect of our being and flow forth into our thinking mind from beyond. It is not acquired from the senses or deduced from analysis. We can’t will it into being. Rather, we open to insight from the spiritual mind by quieting the senses and the thinking mind. When we are still, the spiritual mind can arise into our awareness. The spiritual disciplines of silent prayer, solitary retreats, fasting and meditation all help us to still or ‘empty out’ the more superficial aspects of our being, to allow awareness of the spirit to rise. When we experience spiritual knowledge, we know it to be true not because of external facts, but because of a deep resonance within.[10]
How do we know when we are living from the spiritual mind? St. Paul tells us the outward signs, or ‘fruits’ in his letter to the Galatians: “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.”[11] When we experience these things, we know we’re living from the spirit. It is possible to feel like our ideas are very wise, even spiritual, yet if we do not experience peace, patience, and kindness when we express them, we’re unlikely to be speaking from the level of the spirit.
Upheaval, The Temptation of Idolatry and Watchfulness
How do the levels of mind relate to our current situation in the pandemic? Ours is a time of massive upheaval, where the lives of many have been severely affected by both the COVID disease and by the public response to COVID. We have almost all had our sense of outward security threatened. When this happens, it is a natural impulse to feel fear and contract. If we are able to stay present, and to experience the emotion of fear without identifying with fear, we can choose to operate from the rational mind and remain open to the insights of the spiritual mind. However, if we are overcome with the fear, we are faced with two stark potential outcomes.
First, we can be swept fully into the fear, without a simultaneous awareness of God or a sense of being safe or loved. When this happens, chaos quickly ensues, as the fear is more than our fragile egoic psyche can handle for very long. A descent into psychosis is a real possibility. Again, I am reminded of the sharp rise in mental health issues in our culture, as well as the rise of drug overdoses, and suicidal thoughts (and actions) among the young. Psychologists have reported that it is also literally possible to die of fear, with extreme activation of the sympathetic nervous system leading to heart attacks, aneurisms, or other deadly events.
However, most people won’t choose to stay in chaos and raw fear for very long. Typically, we respond to rising fear through egoic control, where the primitive mind identifies some aspect of the external world as the threat. The primitive mind then develops a system of control to neutralize the threat. It always has a sort of ‘if/then’ proposition. IfI do this, or avoid this, or believe this, then I will be safe and protected from the threat. Once the threat has been identified and (supposedly) neutralized by the protective behavior, the ego can relax and the fear put to rest – but only in so much as we maintain the action, avoidance, or belief that is keeping us safe according to the logic of the primitive mind. As this happens, the rational mind is readily recruited by the primitive mind to provide all sorts of evidence for why we are right, and why any opposing viewpoints are wrong. We can discern when this is happening in ourselves by the way we feel threatened if anyone dares to suggest a differing idea or challenge our behavior.
The terrible tragedy of this contraction into fear is that we inevitably create idols in our minds, to which we bow down and serve rather than serving the God of freedom and love. An idol is any finite thing that we attribute with ultimate good and value. Any time the primitive mind says ‘you must do/act/think’ this way in order to be safe, or happy, or at peace[12]– we have set up an idol. Idols of the mind seek to protect us, but end up enslaving us. Idols of the mind, of course, demand sacrifice – they demand we give up our full human capacities of love and understanding to serve their own dualistic demands. When we are in service to an idol of the mind, we get locked into the primitive mind, and use the immense capabilities of our rational mind to reinforce our prejudice. The spiritual mind then goes dormant, inaccessible to our awareness.
This phenomena extends to the collective, where the primitive mind quickly defends itself with the idea that one’s group is an ultimate good, and an opposing group is an ultimate evil. When one group is in power over another, this can lead to scapegoating the out-group as the source of the in-group’s collective fear and problems, as was the case during the periodic ostracism and expulsions of Jews in medieval Europe. When two groups of roughly equal power take part in mutual projection of this sort, civil war becomes an imminent possibility.
As the stress and fear of this time of unraveling continues, we see this condition playing out in real time in our country. Shortly before the 2020 election, I read with horror that, when surveyed one in five Republicans responded that the world would be better off if all members of the opposing party simply died. My horror only increased when I read that one in four democrats responded the same way! When my side, or my people, or my beliefs, become an ultimate good, the opposing side becomes an ultimate evil. Hatred grows, and violence of the heart has begun. To what degree this will ripen into bodily violence in our country is yet to be seen.
I now see similar dynamics playing out in relationship with COVID, with two polarized camps characterized by mutual hostility. I’m referring to those who are in support of lockdowns, masks, social distancing, and vaccines, versus those who are skeptical of these responses to the pandemic.[13]Of course, there are many people who don’t fit neatly in either category, or who have a more nuanced perspective. But as it relates to our discussion of fear and the levels of mind, I see a tremendous consolidation of fear, rationalization, and the ‘idols’ of the primitive mind at play in the antagonism and controversy around the COVID response. The current environmenthas become so polarized that even to write that this is an area of controversy is seen as offensive to the ‘true believers’ in either camp of extremes.
For the collective, this makes rational inquiry in the facts and statistics around COVID very difficult. Not only are the camps looking with different sets of values and interpretive lenses, there are now copious sets of ‘facts’ that can be cited by each stance to support their view.[14]Constructive public dialogue about the costs and benefits of the various interventions is almost impossible, with so many of the people involved needing to defend their egoic safety at the level of the primitive mind. Emotionally charged proclamations and rationalisms flourish. The conditions necessary for a rational discussion—where all parties come in with open minds, are willing to change their stance based on the facts, and are more interested in objective truth than in ‘winning’—are nowhere to be found.
For us as individuals, it can be difficult to avoid getting swept into thinking and acting from the dictates of our primitive mind and joining in the collective thought of our various social groups (whether actual communities, or virtual communities). For me, living in Vermont, the dominant narrative is strongly pro-intervention. Some of my friends and colleagues in the deep South have shared how the anti-intervention narrative is similarly strong there. In either case, it seems that many get swept up in the dominant narrative – or possibly get swept up in the minority counter-narrative (where one’s identity is defined by the act of opposition). Even if one began with a rational inquiry into the most ethical response to the pandemic, it’s easy for one’s conclusion to harden into a rigid, defensive posture that is conspiring with the primitive mind to keep one safe.
For the purposes of this post, I’m not particularly concerned with which side is right or wrong. I personally believe there is a great deal more nuance around these complex issues than can easily fit into any dualistic category. My concern in writing this article is to try and help people to become aware of the tendencies and patterns of the three levels of mind, and in doing so to gain conscious awareness when we are stuck in fear and the thinking of the primitive mind.[15]One can be in favor of vaccines and masks, and do so from the motivations of the primitive mind, or from the motivations of the rational mind, or even from the motivations of the spiritual mind. Likewise, one can be in favor of natural immunity and open faces from the motivations of the primitive mind, or from the motivations of the rational mind, or even from the motivations of the spiritual mind. Spiritually, one’s outward position on this issue is perhaps less important than the motivating energies from which it comes. These motivating energies can shift, even when our ‘position’ remains the same. We all are prone to operating from fear and the primitive mind at times. The point is to stay aware, to remain in humble acceptance of our capacity to operate from the primitive mind, and to pray and continue to seek God and the way of love at all times.
In my own inner journey of the past two years, I’ve actually found myself attracted to, and even arguing for, aspects of both the ‘camps.’ In retrospect, I recognize that I’ve dropped into fear and over-identification on both sides of this dynamic, at different times. Two examples: I dropped into fear and acting from the primitive mind when we refused to allow our daughter to even touch her grandparents when we quickly met mid-way to exchange a car in the fall of 2020. I also dropped into fear and acting from the primitive mind in anger at Easter services being cancelled in the spring of 2020, quickly imagining myself as a virtuous successor to the persecuted Christians of ancient Rome while inwardly raging at government officials, church authorities, and my fellow parishioners who so readily complied. In both cases, my sign that I was in the primitive mind is when I realize how hard it was to relax, to breathe, and to have love and compassion for people who thought differently than myself. It’s humbling to realize how capable I am of collapsing into fear and dualism.
So, my invitation to each of us is to be spiritually vigilant. Whatever our beliefs might be, let us observe carefully the energies at work in our hearts. Do our hearts remain open to love? Do our minds have space for information that might contradict our narratives, or our groups’ narratives? Can we stay connected to God’s infinite, tender love of every human being involved in this pandemic, and pray for their well-being no matter who they are and what they think? These, I propose, are the essential questions for Christ-followers to ask themselves to navigate the ongoing pandemic in a spirit of faith, hope and love.
At our homestead, there are several tools I’ve found helpful to staying open to God and the spiritual and rational minds in this time of cultural contraction. The first is remaining faithful to our daily prayer discipline, which includes two or three longer prayer times (30 to 45 minutes each), and three shorter prayer times (5 to 10 minutes each). Among the five or six sessions, we have about an hour each day of silent prayer, as well as scripture, hymns and spiritual reading. This keeps us open to God’s silent presence, as well as exposed to the writings and teachings of the wider Christian tradition that directs our hearts towards God. Another essential practice has been moderating our engagement with media, giving the space to critically evaluate what information we engage with, rather than being swept up in a particular narrative. When I get too caught up in reading or listening to media, no matter how high its quality, my heart can become clouded and I find it harder to practice unconditional love. Finally, we’ve found it essential to regularly mourn and weep with the suffering of the world, and to seek to forgive all people without exception. It’s so easy for me to slip into trying to fix and offer solutions (even in writing this article!), and when I do, my heart closes. When I weep and mourn with com-passion (‘suffering with’), my heart remains open.
The focus of this post has been how to understand the effects of the pandemic on our spirits. We’ve developed a framework that hopefully supports our ability to remain open to the spirit and free from the constricting influences of fear that take root in the primitive mind in a time of uncertainty like our own. In the next post, I’ll explore the effects of the pandemic on our souls – both on how we make meaning and how we love and are in relationship with one another.
“Looking at mosses close up is, Robin Wall Kimmerer insists, a comforting, mindful thing: ‘They are the most overlooked plants on the planet. But they are gifts, too. They provide us with another model of how we might live.’ Beneath your feet, barely visible to the eye, is another world: a rainforest in miniature, though you’ll need to fall to your knees to see it properly.” (From The Guardian Interview)
[1]Death statistics in general are more subjective that most people assume. With COVID, the issue is the complexity and difficulty of knowing if someone died fromCOVID or if they died withCOVID. This need not be an indication of dishonesty or systematic efforts to skew results. It’s just a reminder that even such ‘hard’ statistics as death counts can be subject to subjective interpretation.
[2]Interestingly, the root meaning of the word pandemic is ‘all the people’ (pan/all+ demos/people). While not all people have had COVID, I wager that all the people connected to the modern world have felt some fear stemming from COVID and/or the public responses to COVID. Literally speaking, fear rather than COVID is the true pan-demos.
[3]Much of what I write here surely applies to other countries, but I’m going to try to largely limit my observations to the USA, where I have experienced the pandemic firsthand.
[4]The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks did somewhat puncture the American sense of invincibility, yet the accompanying fear of terrorist violence was nowhere near the intensity of fear of COVID.
[5]I’m presenting a simplified model here – of course there are more than three levels. I believe this distinction is accurate, though not covering the full complexity of the human person.
[6]I say in ‘traditional philosophy’ because there are many fascinating studies of animal cognition that now call into question the uniqueness of most human cognitive abilities.
[7]For example, when rigorous observation of the movement of planets challenged a geocentric view of the universe, astronomers first responded by adding new ellipses to the planets’ movement, which temporarily allowed the data to fit into the old model of the earth at the center of the solar system. It took generations for the eventual shift of scientific consensus to a new, heliocentric model of the solar system. (16th-17th centuries AD)
[8]The classic book on this topic is The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn (1957)
[9]The ancient Romans placed a strong value on dying with courage, possibly as a result of the influence of Stoic philosophy. Perhaps because of this, the public executions had the opposite effect of what the Roman authorities sought. They often enkindled an interest in Christianity in the pagan audience viewing the execution, and led to a growth of the religion they sought to destroy.
[10]This is distinct from rational knowledge, which can be deduced from observation of external phenomena and mental analysis. Spiritual knowledge is not in opposition to rational knowledge, but it does arise from a different source. Rational knowledge and spiritual knowledge are highly complementary – one reflects a true understanding of the external world, the other a true understanding emerging from the inner world.
[11]Galatians 5:22-23
[12]We might ask, ‘whose safety, peace, or happiness is at risk?’ Neither the rational or the spiritual mind are prone to this type of fear. It’s the primitive mind that feels threatened.
[13]To be more abstract, we could describe this as the philosophical tension between central mandates in service of public health/the common good vs. the rights of individuals and bodily autonomy
[14]And yes, one side thinks you’re an idiot for trusting the government and biotech data, and the other side thinks you’re an idiot for believing any data that departs from the official reports.
[15]A second gift of the perspective outlined here is that it can help us to see others with love. We can begin to recognize what level of mind others are coming from, and have compassion on them when they are caught up in fear and identifying with the demands of the primitive mind.