THE INTIMACY OF STRANGERS

Barbara Karlsen

Pushed by the harsh reality of a novel coronavirus, the human species is being forced to realize a new identity. In this new identity everything must be possible—even the intimacy of a “strange visitor” must be possible in it. That is the only courage that is demanded of us, that we trust what is innate within us and love it fearlessly. What is innate within us is a vast organic intelligence that we share with the Earth and other creatures. It is not an intelligence that we imagine from an intellectual point of view, but a far more complex interweaving of different cells, genes, and microbes that shaped the human body. We belong to Nature and we need Nature to actualize the full force of our human becoming. Anything less is to deny the evolutionary forces that shaped us. My point is there is a vast organic intelligence that pervades all of Nature and underlies our development as a species. In thinking we can evolve apart from this intelligence, we have become dangerous to ourselves, and the planet.

When I first met Emilie Conrad in the early ’90s the idea that we were an unfolding aspect of the biosphere was so counterculture. However, almost three decades later her vision was never more relevant. It was Emilie Conrad and the practice of Continuum that concretized my initiation into the body as an unfolding aspect of the biosphere. Through the practice of Continuum I came to know the body as a living, breathing process of planetary unfolding—a planetary unfolding that includes the universal memory of all life interwoven into each cell and gene. It was a true initiation into the universal blueprint, a concept that is now a scientific reality thanks to the Human Genome project. We are an immense outpouring of the cosmos. It is not just an intellectual idea; it is molecular, cellular, and visceral scientific reality. It is what lives inside us and actualizes as the immune system that operates as a web of human and ecological relations. It is demanding that we become stewards of the life within us and outside of us. Yes, we may have a human intellect and technical prowess, but we do not possess the wisdom to use it. We have become a serious threat to the whole of our collective existence. Adaptation, evolution, transformation, rebirth, and metamorphosis will be occurring in short order. We need to heed this warning. The message is clear. She will not tolerate us destroying her.

VIRUSES

Viruses are real and cannot be prayed away. We humans have become a climatological and geological force wreaking havoc with all ecosystems and all other species on the planet. Fires didn’t stop us, increasing fossil fuel emissions didn’t stop us, a pleading Swedish child didn’t stop us, melting ice shelves didn’t stop us, cancer didn’t stop us. It took a virus to stop us. If we don’t heed this warning there will be a more virulent strain. We have forgotten that the Earth is our only planetary home. Forget sheltering at home. The Earth is our only home. Everyone is being asked to stop, to pause, to reflect. Our survivability as a human species must now include the web of life. This means we can no longer conceptualize genes, organisms, viruses, human beings, or environments separately. We are one body of ecology moving forward.

REORIENTATION

We are in the liminal, the end of one world and beginning of another. How do we begin to orient ourselves to a future that is yet unknown? How do we begin the work of inhabiting a new self and a new world while sheltering in place? It seems everything prior to this event has suddenly become irrelevant and fallen away. Everything is being reordered and re-written. As I strive to make sense of this strange and new world, I yearn for relevant models and symbols to re-orient myself. It seems all of the rational theories fall heavy on my heart. Where does one go to embrace the unfolding wisdom of the liminal? How does one fully plunge into the space of “in between”? As I ask these questions, I am beckoned to dive into the living wisdom of my body. This living wisdom unfolds itself in a direct visceral and cellular knowing that is my birthright. Here movement becomes a space to re-embody the truth of who I am and who I am becoming. My flesh is the Earth and the Earth is my flesh.

INITIATION INTO A UNIVERSAL ONTOLOGY

The coronavirus brings a dose of planet medicine, to ease our ailing Earth. Even our beloved parks, beaches, and trails are closed. We are forced into a world of ritual isolation and solitude. In shamanism illness as well as solitude are symbols of a deep initiation. Sicknesses, dreams, and ecstasies are rites of passage that often constitute an initiation for the tribe, not just the individual. These maladies are meant to cleanse and prepare the initiates for new revelations, as well as for a new world. It is part of the cure.

The initiation we are in right now is begging a new story, as well as a new world. A universal ontology already exists. We just need to live it. Emerging now from modern science is an evolutionary story of interconnection and interdependence with all life forms. We are made of the same stuff as stars, galaxies, soil, microbes, rocks, and redwoods. We are one body of Earth participating in an evolutionary universe. If we ignore this call to our collective awakening, we put at risk the future of our human civilization on our precious planet. The choice is ours.

I am sitting with the numbers of deaths in New York over the last several days, and I am aware that our modern Western culture does not have any initiatory rites and symbols of passage to mark the profound “Initiation” our country is going through right now. As Mircea Eliade wrote in Rites and Symbols of Initiation: The Mysteries of Birth and Rebirth, “Initiation is equivalent to a basic change in existential condition; the person emerges from his ordeal endowed with a totally different being from that which he possessed before his initiation; he has become another.”

Nothing better expresses the end of an era or the final completion of something than death, just as nothing better expresses the idea of a new life than rebirth. Therefore, the death/rebirth dichotomy serves as a profound archetype and initiation for what we are going through on the planet right now. Before the pandemic, we were turning a blind eye to death but the dying continues. Every 24 hours, 50–200 species of plants, insects, birds, and mammals are becoming extinct. Some call it the sixth mass extinction. This is greater than anything the world has experienced since the vanishing of the dinosaurs nearly 65m years ago. As we enter into this holy weekend of death and resurrection, may we remember the dead and the fallen as the holy initiates. And on this holy occasion, through their initiation and death may the entire world be regenerated and reborn. (Written during Easter 2020)

HOSTING THE VIRUS

If we were to pause and reflect on this crisis as a crucial evolutionary next step, would we host this virus differently? Would we be so quick to eradicate it? Would our immune systems behave differently if we were invited to welcome it instead of fear it? This virus may have a larger role to play in our evolution than we have yet to conceive. That is one of the reasons why I do not feel it was made in a laboratory. Only evolution could have such a profound hand in the total reorganization of our world. How could we humans think up such a plan? Is this the cosmic hand of evolution made visible? And what makes this so radical is that we have no way of knowing what the future holds. The far-reaching implications of the virus are only beginning to unfold, ranging from cosmic (unintended climate benefits), biological (people taking better care of their health), sociocultural (working at home and spending family time together), and financial (economic collapse). It appears we are experiencing a cosmic-size transformation on all levels. Let us make sure this cosmic transformation is not brushed over too quickly in an attempt to return to a normal that was far from normal.

VIRUS AS A CATALYST

I don’t think the coronavirus is here to “kill us.” I believe the coronavirus is here as a catalyst to awaken positive change on this planet as we move forward. The most urgent crisis facing humanity today is not the coronavirus but the destruction of our only planetary home and its ongoing effect on our human health. Looking at the statistics we see that all kinds of illnesses are increasing, not just epidemics but also cancer, heart disease, and other chronic diseases. Something is really wrong. We live in a momentous time. The significance of changing the way we steward the planet has never been more crucial. Medical systems will not be equipped to handle the surge of diseases that we will see unfold in our lifetime if we do not change our behavior on a global scale. We are being called to a new order and understanding of life. This new life requires that we awaken to a new reality of how everything in the universe is interconnected and interdependent. We can no longer operate from a lesser order. This means recognizing that although we feel special, even unique as human beings, our DNA is only one gene pool among many more in the biosphere.

ECO-PSYCHIC AILMENTS

Individually and collectively we are experiencing feelings of fear, anger, overwhelm, and grief on a scale that we have never seen before. With so many individuals and families experiencing the loss of health and livelihood, our hearts are broken on a daily basis and stretched beyond their capacity to feel. We don’t know where to turn. We feel powerless. Many are calling this the age of ecological collapse, and it will come with a whole new set of psychological problems that we have never seen before. When the place we call home is burned down or flooded, or when we lose our health to an invisible threat, the mix of fear, grief, and increasing uncertainty takes an emotional toll on our body-mind and soul. We need to grieve and confront our painful feelings. This creates the space for something new to emerge. And the new requires a total reorganization of everything that preceded it.

OCCUPATION OF THE BODY IN THE COVID-19 CRISIS; A WAR ON BODILY AUTHORITY AND AGENCY

In my Continuum class this morning on Zoom, participants courageously expressed a bodily felt sense of the imposed restrictions of a prolonged shelter-in-place. This imposed restriction is not so much about the virus as it is about the control of our bodily nature and agency. Yes, there are dangers involving true threats, I know that. But there are also dangers to the expression of a primordial wisdom and agency that is our birthright. How do we know who we are when our world falls apart? Who are we becoming? These questions are not answered by reason alone. These are answers that reveal themselves in the deepest crevices of our human species wisdom—a human species wisdom that expresses itself in the reorganization of everything that came before. Call it adaptation, evolution, or rebirth. It doesn’t matter. The body will know before the mind what the next species will be.

IMMUNITY

I see the current crisis of COVID-19 as an outdated understanding of the human body, immunity, and its connection to the web of life. And because we can see interdependency in a way that we couldn’t see it before (thanks to shelter-in-place and masks), I believe the capacity for real change now exists. There has been a lack of tending to the body of the Earth and to the wild nature of our human bodies. This has affected our immunity and our soul. Immunity is not something that develops in isolation from the human soul behind a mask, or in a sanitized existence. Immunity arises in a life well lived and emerges in the commitment to live the largest human story we are capable of living. I believe the time has arrived to up-level our human story and destiny. We are living too small.

GERM THEORY VERSUS TERRAIN THEORY

This pandemic is getting more and more disorienting as times goes on. It wasn’t bad enough that we had to shelter in place, isolate from each other, and conduct our lives through technological objects. But now we are being told to wear our masks even when outside. On a gorgeous spring day yesterday, I saw people of all ages biking in masks and walking in Nature with masks. Are we willing to accept this definition of life? Isn’t that why we evolved for hundreds of thousands of years alongside the EARTH? The paradox of the situation is that our bodies are dealing with viruses all the time. That is part of the crucial role they play in the development and evolution of our immune system. Our human genome is outsourcing Nature all the time, including viruses, for important genetic information. One has to wonder if the current pandemic is here to illuminate a much larger pandemic: the lost interdependence between humans and Nature.

SUMMARY OF MAIN POINTS

Our extreme self-centeredness and degradation of the planet have brought untold ecological carnage, the greatest threat of which is to our bodily selves. With the overuse of antibiotics, vaccines, and the mass spraying of synthetic pesticides, we have wreaked havoc not only with the planet but with our own body ecology. Everyone is in a desperate rush to boost their immune system against an invisible invader. This illusion of a separate human from Nature is dangerous and in the end will destroy us if we continue to act Godlike, manipulating DNA, and spraying pesticides so that we can better control ourselves and other living beings.

Far from being superior to microbes on the evolutionary ladder, it now appears that microbes and bacteria are not only the building blocks of life but occupy more space and mass than us humans. And the bottom line is, they mutate and evolve more rapidly . . . hence the novel coronavirus jumping from animal to human. This realization shows that they are ready to mutate and alter themselves and the rest of life should we humans be so foolish as to annihilate the planet and ourselves. Maybe it is time we collaborate with our microbial ancestors instead of killing them, for clues to our own survival.

UNITY WITH THE COSMOS

We may know less about this pandemic than we think we know. And we may be approaching it in entirely the wrong way because we think we know. We are using an old paradigm called germ theory and categorizing COVID into outdated models (reductionist), hence the mortality rates. Maybe it is not just another coronavirus at all. Maybe this novel virus is the “genetic bits” of a cosmos striving to bring forth a supreme birth, one that the human intellect alone could not have given.

Just like the sea creatures found themselves thrust up on the burning shores of a new land, Nature may be attempting to evolve a new species in us and through us. However it occurred, let this be our quantum leap to the beginning of a new planetary era. This is a different path for perfecting the human, and it has nothing to do with intellectual theories, psychology, or imposing a technological existence upon the human body. It is about forging a magical unity with the cosmos.

BARBARA KARLSEN is a Continuum movement teacher, nurse, and somatic psychotherapist trained in birth psychology. She graduated from Naropa University in Boulder with a master’s degree in somatic psychology, and she did her doctorate at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Her areas of special interest and study have been in Earth-based spirituality and ancient Buddhist psychology. She has a private practice in Marin County, California, where she teaches and practices the shamanic art of Continuum and re-birthing. Other supportive services include working with core body issues such as attachment, intimacy, and sexuality through somatic awareness, resourcing, and support. For more information go to barbarakarlsen.com.