This piece is a guest post by visionary coach Amber Chand, including a reflection by Penny Gill. Amber Chand originally shared both readings as part of a community gathering in response to COVID-19 in early April 2020.
What does Coronavirus have to teach us?
This is the great initiation. You have had others in your human cycle. Initiations are your fire path. You have to walk through them, even as your feet smolder and burn. Even then. There is no respite. For this initiation requires you to Wake Up, to step across the burning threshold into a new awakening. A new time.
Some see it as a time of apocalypse. It is. If you understand that the true meaning of the word is "the dropping of the veils," the great revelation. A time when the shadows rise up from the dark depths, ready to be witnessed.
I, Corona, arrive as the great Unifier. I pay no heed to your borders and boundaries; to your walls and fences. I sweep across rich and poor, black and white, north and south—transcending all dualities and polarities. I care not for your institutional order and political hierarchies, your financial markets, your social media.
I have come to destroy your illusions around these structures, built on foundations of sand and seeming stability. Institutions that seek only to devour, ravage, consume and destroy the essence of your humanity. Your natural order.
For that, you must seek out Nature, her networks of mycelium that hold your planet together. For that, you must go and sit under the shade of the ancient oak and listen to what she has to tell you. Gaia, the great restorer, nurturer, and sacred womb of life has much to reveal to you.
I understand all this.
Hidden behind my cloak of invisible microbes I have come to remind all of you how fragile your life is, how sacred. For life is restorative and requires intricate balance. And the life force that courses through the veins of this planet has been deeply poisoned.
I am the great Disruptor—cutting through your frenetic obsession with economic growth, one that enslaves all of humankind; your insane worship of money and profit at all cost; your narcissistic greed and parasitic desires—all of which diminish the human imagination. I have come to disrupt all of it. Your schedules and events, your constant activity and busyness, your social calendars.
You now face quarantines and social distance, need to wash your hands, pray, despair, weep. You are lost and helpless in the face of Corona's wrath. This is part of my medicine. My Kali face—one that destroys in order to create; disrupts in order to restore; unleashes fury in order to free you into fierce compassion.
You are now asked to open your eyes to the deeper message of this time. To look at the horizons of your becoming. To take note. To understand that your systems have already been imploding, their foundations rotting at the core. To know that they do not—cannot—sustain or nourish the divine spark that you are.
Your systems were never designed for that in the first place—this patriarchal system with its matrix of control, domination, hierarchy, serfdom. You have been witnessing its collapse for years, decades. I, Corona, now have made sure of that.
Remember, in the breaking down of your entire system, breakthrough is heralded. The golden light of a new story is possible. You have to believe in this—and get to work.
A Reflection From Penny Gill’s Manjushri
There are ferocious winds of energy roaring into earth, unchanneled and unrecognized. This is no Shower of Spirit. This is a cataclysm of new energy, high frequency energy, demanding awakeness, demanding responsiveness, and demanding non-ego responses. It is vast and potent, and it will separate those able to stand in its midst and those who flee or blame or deny. You are witness to this. You show us, it is terrible to watch.
It is as if this energy causes a fever everywhere. That is a metaphor, but there is also bodily truth in it. And earth is sinking into a great healing crisis, a long-overdue or long prepared purge of much that is wasteful, inadequate, too partial, too ignorant, too self-absorbed.
The remedies are simple and well within reach of virtually everyone. Back down. Settle down. Tend to those closest to you. Care for the sick and the elderly. Move with generosity and tenderness. Watch out for your community, for fellow workers and children. Inhabit the truth of connection and interdependence and kindness. Calm your fears first and then the fears of those near you. And then further out into wider circles. When the fears are calmed, it becomes clear, there is enough for everyone.
Then the long, steady work begins, of recreating institutions which are no longer founded on fear.
As you see, it is very simple.
Every aspect of human life is threatened now: health of mind and body, family and society, economic activity, political activity, and spiritual practices. Food, water, science, housing, trade, art, and so much more can be invested with this profound, new purpose. Every single person alive can contribute to this re-imagining and re-making of human life.
You must build a world in which every person can flourish, and in which every sentient being finds her place.
How to proceed? There is no need for bosses or directors. Simply invite people to explore their own fears, now, and begin that gentle, clear-sighted fear work. Ask people how they might imagine lessening their fears and the fears of those close to them. And then, for those beyond that small circle. Fear arises from delusions of scarcity. Once those are penetrated, strong creative energies can emerge. The rest will then move of its own accord.
Another way to say all this: Healing the human heart is the beginning. The rest follows naturally, as in, the nature of life itself, which is to ground itself and provide for its continuation. A market can be a tool, for limited purposes. But markets cannot be allowed to be the only tool. That was the turning point centuries ago that gave rise to this explosive catastrophe of greed and selfishness. This is not an ethical judgment. Greed and selfishness are not in accord with reality! They are foolish and ignorant. That is the point. Not that they are unethical. That is a useless argument to make.
And your task, which you share with countless companions on the way, at this great and auspicious moment? To speak the questions, point to the fears, offer skillful ways of healing the deep sicknesses of human life now, and encourage the creation of new forms of human connection and earthly balance. Wonderful, wonderful work. Don’t you agree? And of course, you are supported by all the beings in the other realms, those not in body as you all are
We heard one of you say once: Never waste a good crisis! Indeed. The breakdown of the old patterns is a beautiful opportunity, rich with possibility. Don’t turn away. Don’t turn away.
Last note: much is already underway. Much. Everywhere in the world. Look for it, please, and make note. This is our view. We gladly share it with you. And bless you all.