The Journey Inward

“Suffering is sometimes the sandpaper that awakens people.” — Ram Dass, Polishing the Mirror

Living in a pandemic, where life, death, and upheaval are front and center, we are challenged to find peace.

Our sense of normalcy and our understanding of life have been shaken. Even if you don’t believe we are living in a pandemic, or if you believe Covid 19 is just a bad flu, there are so many new restrictions on daily living. Many of us are witnessing or experiencing suffering. 

Life has changed. 

This is some people’s first experience of living in uncertainty and unease. Many people are stretching and opening to the challenge, and some are shutting down. 

Upheaval, uncertainty, and unease are nothing new to me. I have spent most of my life straddling life and death and contemplating the meaning of both. As an eleven-year-old, I faced life-threatening cancer. In the past fifteen years, I have lost five family members. As an adult, I worked for many years as a hospice chaplain, companioning people at the end of life.

Here is what I’ve learned. 

First, we can step back from the ups and downs of our thoughts and feelings. Simply, slowing down our fast-chattering mind, which magnifies all the many what-ifs in life, usually brings relief. 

To do so, bring your focus back to your body, which is always in the present moment. Come back to your breath, breathing in and breathing out. Tune in to the cadence, the flow, of your breath and feel some momentary stillness. 

Second, I’ve learned that life is right now. Even though we are reminded daily of the upheaval and impermanence of our life, we can still find grounding by coming back to the present moment.

Third, as a child, seeing and feeling my life on the edge, I learned to touch in to a deep silence and stillness within me. When I did, a peace filled my being, despite the grave conditions that I was going through. 

This quiet, still, peaceful place within could be called our inner nature, our essence, our soul, or pure consciousness. When everything around us is shifting and uncertain, it is unchanging. 

In this place, the chaotic world drops away, and there is a soothing feeling, a sense of calmness. In this place, life is eternal. 

For me, the depth of my soul is where I’m one with what I call God. When I found my way here for the first time as a child, I knew I was not alone. In this felt oneness with God, I discovered love and peace. 

I regularly witnessed hospice patients experience that same thing. Looking into death, they moved into the depth of their being, their soul. There they often found a deeply felt sense of love that is ever present. There many moved from a fear of the unknown to knowing that they would be okay and that life went on beyond death.

Some patients named touching into this inner stillness as God, the Divine, or Source. Others felt it as a universal life energy that carried them. Others said it was essence or soul. Others didn’t give it a name at all, but just described it as a felt sense of great comfort. 

Can you touch in to and live out of your soul--your essence, pure consciousness—and find peace even during a pandemic? I believe all of us can. It takes skill and practice, especially amidst upheaval, but it can be done.

The real question is, will you choose to? 

Whether or not to make this journey inward, is a choice each of us must make every day.