Dark Nights & First Principles

Further COVID meditations...

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Thank you, everyone, for the many kind words you’ve sent me in response to my recent ‘I Got Covid’ letter.

I haven’t had a chance to respond to everyone but I’ve read all of your messages and have deeply appreciated the sincere care I’ve felt in your words.

Your care means a lot to me. Thank you.

It’s now been 12 days since Corona struck. I’m still feeling nauseous and low-energy, but all the other symptoms have basically dissipated. I feel myself re-emerging. Tanja and Lila are similarly almost back to normal, thankfully.

My process during this time has been a very interesting one. There were some serious lows—serious waves of faith-rattling depression and malaise. It’s been grounding and humbling.

Dark Nights & Tests of Faith

One thing that’s been fascinating is that Corona seemed to take me deeper into non-knowing than I’ve been for a while. I guess I’m blessed, in that it had genuinely been quite some time since I had seriously doubted my most fundamental orientation toward life—which is one of deep trust and reverence for what usually seems to me to be a divine, miraculous, loving, infinitely intelligent mystery.

I didn’t feel so sure about the “divine, miraculous, loving, infinitely intelligent” part for a few days there. I still don’t.

Sometimes in the past I’ve posed the question, “What’s the value of faith if your faith is never actually tested?”

Is it even faith, in that case? If it were always easy to trust in Life, would Keeping The Faith be as profound and beautiful as it is?

I suspect not.

Truth be told, it seems like tests of faith and “dark nights of the soul” are a pretty massive and quintessential aspect of the human experience. Seems like this is a huge part of what we learn to navigate in this ‘layer’ of the cosmic game. And it seems like the human experience would not be nearly as stunningly, poetically gorgeous if this were not the case. (Dammit God, you win again, hahah.)

To be honest, I was kinda disappointed in myself at some points during this Corona episode—disappointed that it was so seemingly easy for life to shake my faith to the core.

Here I thought I’d “met God” too many times to be perturbed by anything less than a full-blown apocalyptic tragedy or something. Thought I’d developed this next-level Super Saiyan Faith that would remain Sequoia-rooted even if I were in a death-camp or some other nightmarish place.

Well, as the saying goes: “Pride cometh before a fall.”

Turns out all it took for me to lose my cool and curse the skies was a nasty flu, intense feelings of physical shittiness and depression, and being scared for my daughter’s well-being.

Now I’m having déjà vu flashbacks to years and years ago, circa 2013, when I moved to South Korea. At the time I thought I’d cultivated a pretty damn unflappable Zen flow—an unfuckwitable non-resistant ability to surf the waves of life. Then a few weeks in I started getting super lonely and homesick and my image of myself crumbled like an over-baked sugar cookie. I wrote about it here all those years ago.

Funny, the cycles of life. You think you got the message the first couple (hundred) times, then you learn it all over again.

Back to First Principles

One thing that’s been fruitful about this whole Corona saga is that it’s been an invitation to return to first principles—to freshly examine life without assumptions.

I was really looking at questions like:

“Okay, so I’m now taking nothing for granted. I have no idea what life is—what anything is. From this space, what makes sense to me? What seems true and good and valuable and beautiful?”

And the funny thing is, I found that in the absence of all my models and mythologies and sense of understanding of what the hell is going on in life…

I was basically the same dude!

In essence, I felt like, “Well, yeah, so we’re on Earth for a few cosmic milliseconds, the next moment is never promised, the only thing that makes sense is to love everybody and share good vibes and dance and play and laugh and be what we are and do what makes us come alive and party and cuddle and make animal-friends and build blanket forts and create amazing new actualities and shit. Of course! And yeah it’s obvious that when you hate or resist life it blocks the flow and amplifies suffering, so the only thing that makes sense is to let go and let flow and do your best to love the moment, however it appears. All else would be insanity.”

LOL.

Maybe this isn’t surprising to anyone else, but it was really a kind of epiphany for me that in the absence of all my elaborate “non-dual” and “New Earth” philosophizing—really in the absence of any sense of having any clue what the hell is going on with anything—I found myself to be the same cat. Maybe even more so. This was a lovely reconnection to my own essence.

And there I go tearing up again… yep, still the same ol’ sensitive, emotional fella. Same kid who’d always have to tell his mom whatever was weighing heavy on his heart. :’ )

The Strangeness

Continuing with the theme of returning to first principles…

When I look at life from this space of non-knowing, it definitely looks preposterously strange.

I mean, what in the name of Oklahoma Jones is *actually* going on here?! How… ?! And from where… ?! And why… ?!

Y’know?!

All these creatures and environments and storylines and constantly-morphing what-the-fuck-ness just casually oozing out of nothing and nowhere… ?!

Fuckin’ crazy, man. Who dreamt this up?! Who’s in charge here?! I’d like to speak to someone about this!

Now I’m reminded of good ol’ Kierkegaard:

“How did I get into the world? Why was I not asked about it and why was I not informed of the rules and regulations but just thrust into the ranks as if I had been bought by a peddling shanghaier of human beings? How did I get involved in this big enterprise called actuality? Why should I be involved? Isn't it a matter of choice? And if I am compelled to be involved, where is the manager—I have something to say about this. Is there no manager? To whom shall I make my complaint?”

And now I’m reminded of the inescapable Peter Brown:

"Spirituality is noticing how strange everything is. Entering into a direct relationship with this strangeness is enlightenment. It is a letting go of the death grip of what you think this is."

So, yeah… life seems like same-old-same-old until I actually look at it. Then basically I’m awe-struck. I’m astonished. I’m bowled over. I don’t know where I am. Everything is happening and it’s all just kinda y’know doing itself and even if I try to do nothing the ocean keeps on a’movin’ and “I” seem to be some kind of wave that moves along with it. Plus the whole enchilada is permeated with this subtle sense of sentience and awake-ness, like it knows it’s here and it knows it’s weird and it’s just kinda chuckling along with itself and yeah… I don’t know, man. Where are we?

As I said, it’s been humbling. And also heart-opening. I feel a lot of compassion for everyone else wandering around blindly in this ridiculous labyrinthine hyper-dimensional Pensieve.

Funny now too to consider that probably the most common prayers/intentions I had been speaking into the void prior to this whole Corona episode were to ask God for “humility and heart-opening.”

Careful whatcha wish for. 😅

I can see the perfection of it, though. I’m sitting here in a hotel lobby by the sea, on an island in the middle of the ocean, drinking a draft beer, and I can see the perfection of it.

And some of you are probably annoyed like, “Fuckin’ A, this bloke is already back to yammering on about the perfection of all of it. I like him better when he’s angsty and existential.”

I dunno what to tell ya, hahah. Perhaps change the channel and don’t read/absorb/listen to stuff you don’t actually like. 😅

Anywho…

Be You

So, yeah, that’s me, right now.

How are YOU?

Feel welcome to reply or comment to let me know. I’d genuinely love to hear from you.

As I shared at the top of this post, BE YOU starts in ~42 hours.

Our opening ceremony/activation will be on Sunday at 3pm UTC.

BE YOU is a 5-week celebration to help you feel a new level of self-love.

A 5-week activation of new levels of creativity, soul power, and wildly honest and authentic expression.

The journey is going to be a beautiful blend of heart-full-ness and playfulness.

We’ll be sharing and expressing from the heart the truth of what is going on right now in our lives. We’ll practice listening from the heart and holding one another in a space of unconditional love and acceptance.

And we’ll also get silly and wacky and wavy together. We’ll dance and sing and move and laugh and make animal noises and practice various unorthodox modalities to LOOSEN & LIGHTEN UP and RELAX into being our funny-monkey selves.

We’ll also spend time CREATING together—remembering the immense joy and empowerment of artistically BIRTHING something that never existed before.

We’ll also undertake challenges and mini-initiations along the way to be more ADVENTUROUS in life and EXPRESS ourselves in the world…

And there will of course be many other surprises and non-linear power-ups along the way. : )

So, if you feel the call…

Join us! 🌈

All right, friends, that’s all for now.

Thanks for listening and caring about the babblings of this weather-worn ham-steak.

Keep rockin’ in the free world.

1luv,
jb

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Jordan is being Jordan. Join us for BE YOU, a playful 5-week journey of self-celebration beginning April 10th.

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