The Corona Virus and BARDO

In this very tumult lies opportunity to bring awareness into this uncomfortable place and locate mammoth energies from our unconscious.  Such power, not accessible in ordinary consciousness, can now be harnessed to remake ourselves and reconfigure our whole lives...

Stephen Ruppenthal

Bardo:  

Using Pain
for Spiritual Gain

Because of the Corona virus many of us have already found ourselves beginning to access the unconscious energies described by Ruppenthal that source our behavior.  Bardo is the next step in our evolution.  The lives we have been living have been catapulted almost overnight into 

“a new normal” we could have never imagined.  Separated from friends and family and from our occupations, we are left to deal with this new landscape...our only choice of action.  And, additionally, we must face ourselves for we have lost the opportunity to be distracted from this quest.  We are essentially alone, left to make sense out of what appears to be a senseless interlude in our lives.

It is so interesting to contemplate that history books will surely tell the story of this formidable experience the earth is undergoing.  But WE are living it.

And there is something here for us in these moments of darkness.  Something very profound is interwoven into this strange, cataclysmic episode:  the opportunity to discern the tumultuous energies which lie deep inside us.  The Leviathan most of us are never able to “see”

In ordinary times.

The Bardo Ruppenthal describes is authentic and somatic driven.  It is irrefutable testimony from the soul accessed through the body. If we are open to its gift, we are able to sense and feel what has been stirring, spiraling, and fomenting our behavior throughout our lives.  And it comes in a lightning flash.  In an illumination so intense it cannot be ignored.  And it connects with stunning clarity the many threads of our behavior which suddenly reveal themselves to be instances of the same unrealized longing.  A longing expressing itself over and over wherever it senses a fighting chance for us to be heard.

The stark realization of how these moments of our life are so connected is shocking.  But it is enlightening, too.  We see how intensely we have been pursuing the healing of our issues and how coherent our efforts have actually been.

The clarity of what we need and what has propelled us to seek it is astonishing.  With that clarity,

it seems important and urgent to acknowledge and address our pain and to find positive ways to heal it.

Now we can clearly see how we have attempted to compensate for our unmet need in our unsettling behavior AND we feel inspired to take responsibility for its healing.

The presence of Bardo, though immensely challenging, is a profound gift in our lives.

                                                                     Marie Helena

Image from pinterest.com

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