What I learned from COVID-19

[Historical note: When I mention this past month in this post, I am referring to September of 2021, when I did have COVID-19, but within a couple of weeks, after feeling better without a fever, I was cleared by the state health department to be out and about in the world once again and to be able to help others once more in September.]

Before old habits and thoughts potentially take their accustomed place again, I want to share what seems relevant and meaningful from having had COVID-19 over this past month.  I also could never express enough my thoughts and feelings regarding COVID-19, particularly for those who have been touched by it in any way.

I have mostly found in my life, perhaps more so when I was younger and certainly over this past month, when I am sick I am able to reach a level of peacefulness at some point, where I am almost completely removed from the everyday world.  I have described myself in other posts as being a mystic, and I think a door for me at these times opens: I am able to just be with my understanding of what the universe is at a larger level.

When I have just only been able to rest, or sit peacefully, or stare even, with hardly a thought to be had, and if this is experienced without the feeling of bodily symptoms or concerns hardly at all, this approximates or is the experience of being a mystic, a similar experience to be found in meditation as well.

One step at a time becomes the approach when coming out of this experience.  The energy expended is just towards each next step.  The energy level is low, but it does not have room for more egoistic concerns, other than just for survival and for being well.  We want to be in this state almost exclusively, it would seem, for our health and for continuing to live.  When other concerns of an everyday nature come up, which we have to expend more energy to meet, we do not want to expend the energy to address them, but we know we must in order to survive.

These all describe my general sense of living: I do not want to do much else other than be at one with, feel that oneness with, the universe or God, if you will.  Worldly or other concerns at times weigh me down and take me away from that state and that feeling, that knowledge of being at one like that.  The trick or the ideal is to feel that oneness, that quality of just being, without the extraneous thoughts, in all circumstances and at all times.

Having had COVID-19 basically enforced this perspective of reality, and I enjoyed it in that sense, that I was hovering as a person in existence at that threshold of just being with the universe, while retaining some sense of myself, and almost dissolving completely in that experience of oneness.  Again, and very accurate: this is how coming closer to and merging with an understanding of the universe is, how a mystical experience comes to be experienced and felt.

Coming back now into everyday life, I see now how my energy becomes expended or is easily tempted to be expended.  I am still somewhat fighting these old habits and tendencies.

What I hope to retain from my time having COVID-19 is the meaningful application and expenditure of my time, which means my energy, and the furthest from my ideal would be to expend my time and energy on worries and concerns that I expend just for the habit of worries and concerns.

This I do not find to be helpful at all, and as I trusted in my body and the universe during my time with COVID-19, I also want to continue to trust in my own inclinations towards healthy ways of living, which include happy ways of living, and in the universe for guiding me and just being with me, maybe even to the point of the universe handling what seem like major concerns or what to worry about but actually are not.

Time needs to be honored each step of the way, for what feels right to you, never pressing the panic button to change reality into something it is not.

When time and self become thinner and seem to vanish, this again would be a mystical experience, and it actually describes living in a fulfilling way, if one is enjoyably being or doing whatever it is one is doing.

With COVID-19 I was surviving, hoping each moment and step to come out the other side, feeling that oneness at times with the universe or God, certainly some real presence Who I hoped had my back.  I certainly enjoyed feeling the closeness then.

Now I can say I can see where our energy may travel, where we may expend it in thoughts that may fritter it away.

It is my hope that we know a real connection to ourselves and to the universe, for our own guidance within and for what the universe can provide.

Perhaps it is a narrower door to travel through, or to keep finding ourselves needing to walk through, than the regular thoroughfares and passageways we walk in life.

The time and energy spent to go there, I think, are completely worth it.  If you are not shown this doorway through your own life circumstances, then I hope you can find it through beginning to trust in yourself and your own ideas and notions of what may be the right path to travel.

The universe has your back, I feel this, and this takes trust and surrender.

Being a mystic, I think this is the only way to live.

Much peace and comfort to you, with a deep connection to yourself and the universe.