The first time the covid-19 crisis threw me into a state of face-melting terror was at one of our local Minneapolis co-ops. It was during those very first couple of days, long before grocery stores had started limiting how many people could be inside shopping, long before masks, social distancing, or fucked up words like “aerosolize” had become part of our daily lexicon. My wife had started expressing concerns about this new virus, but I, like a dork, had just been rolling my eyes and mumbling, “whatever.” Then I walked into the co-op.

The place was a mosh pit. Mobs of people ransacked the bulk bins, everyone trying to maintain a thin sheen of “Minnesota-nice” politeness while pushing in front of each other with murderous expressions on their faces. You could feel the panic in the air. Many of the bulk bins were empty, something I’d never seen.

The thing to understand is that I’ve been working through PTSD since 2011. So when I saw this spectacle I freaked the fuck out. One thought gripped me: Must hoard food! Now, in non-armageddon times, my wife and I almost never eat lentils. But in that moment, for some reason, I seized maniacally on the idea of lentils. 

Surviving this apocalypse was all about lentils. 

Wild-eyed, I looked at the few remaining lentils glittering, jewel-like, in their clear plastic dispenser. I looked at the throngs of frantic people between me and the sacred, life-giving legumes. There were an awful lot of skeletal vegans and scrawny, brittle-looking, old hippies with knobby elbows. Surely I could take out a dozen, easy. Give or take a vegan. I’ve trained for decades in demented, jungle-warfare martial arts. It would be like the scene in Enter the Dragon where Bruce Lee lays waste to wave after wave of cannon-fodder prison guards. Except in this case my opponents will have been enfeebled from a diet of estrogen-laden tofu and gluten-free muffins.

I drove home without breathing, my car full of second-tier, loser grains and lame, non-lentil legumes. In the car I listened to the earliest installments of NPR covid-19 fear-porn, which, back then, was just getting revved up. When I got home I ran straight into the bathroom and scrubbed my hands to a scalded, soapy pulp, like I was Lady Macbeth. ‘Popped online to discover that, yes, as a matter of fact, you can get a shotgun, or even a lot of shotguns, many as you want, from Amazon.

My wife, Carolyn was out of town (people were still flying; that would end in a scant few days) so essentially I just curled up on our couch in a fetal position, rocking gently and sucking my thumb, much like Jim Carrey in the truck-stop bathroom stall in Dumb and Dumber. Occasionally I’d glance at my computer – why yes, as a matter of fact I would like to know what people who viewed the Smith & Wesson 12-gauge shotgun also viewed! And if you must know, yes, you can find You Tube DIY videos on how to saw off a shotgun. Just like Mel Gibson’s in Mad Max.

That first week these sorts of fear-seizures took me over a lot, and they were no joke. They were like demonic possessions. Heavy shit. My big problem was that, to get myself out of those fear-spasms, I kept trying to analyze my way out of my terror. Try to figure it all out, hunkered down on our dilapidated couch, scribbling fiercely in my spiral-bound notebook.

I know this is idiotic but fear makes you stupid. It makes you forget what you know, because the part of you that knows what you know is offline. What’s online is your reptile brain, a psychotic Komodo dragon who lives at the base of your skull, smoking rock.

Since “figuring it out” never works (to put it mildly), I’d always end up just doing Muhammad Ali’s famous rope-a-dope, leaning back in the ropes, covering up as best I could, and letting the Komodo dragon wail away on me until he got tired. Komodo dragons have horrendously underrated cardio.

Eventually I started remembering, mid-freak-out, that fear – and getting out of it – is not a head game at all. I used to know this back in 2011, 2012, 2013, when my whole life was a gruesome war with PTSD flashbacks. But somehow I’d forgotten: shifting out of fear is a feeling and a body thing. Sometimes cuddling with my wife worked (while Oblio, our chubby orange and white cat, tried to pry his way between us). More often, though, I began actually trying to follow my own Guru’s instruction. Imagine that. First I’d try to feel the fear as a simple bodily sensation.

“The mechanism of fear is a contraction, like the reflex that occurs when the hand touches fire. The mechanism of fear is as useful to the body-mind as the reflex that keeps you from getting burned. But it is an arbitrary mechanism, not deep in your consciousness somewhere, but just a superficial little mechanism at the peripheral levels of the nervous system to save you from being attacked by a wild lion…”

 

“Fear is just an ordinary mechanism that you must master, an attitude of the body. It is something that you are doing. It has no ultimate philosophical significance.”

Then, from there, I’d feel “toward” my Guru.  That is, I would try to feel, with my physical body, the Radiant Spirit Power that I sometimes know is always shining everywhere (that devotees of a Guru contact in and through that Guru, but that you can contact through whatever way or ways you like to). 

“You can breathe and feel and relax beyond [fear]. You need take nothing into account philosophically. Just breathe and feel and relax beyond it…”

 “Observe the cat, for instance, who uses fear to control threatening events. The cat is neither addicted to fear nor existing as fear, as you tend to be. In contrast to the cat—and almost all vital creatures, by the way—the human being is addicted to psychological fear. Human beings have transformed the mechanism of fear that is natural to the vital state of any animal into a chronic response of the physical being. The animal’s sudden moment of fearful excitement is stimulated chemically for a specific purpose. Fear is just a recoil, but you tend to prolong its effectiveness, as if waiting indefinitely to withdraw a finger from the flame.”

One interesting side-note is that, as a guy recovering from PTSD, I’ve read a lot of the trauma experts. And one of them, Dr. Stephen Porges (a rock star in that world), also describes trauma – and recovery from it – in almost entirely physiological, biological terms. Trauma, in other words (and hence fear itself), is not particularly amenable to psychological insights, penetrating thoughts, or philosophical tussling. Or feverish scribbling in spiral-bound notebooks. 

However, Adi Da goes beyond Dr. Porges, because He asserts that the reason fear is not our natural state is that our true identity is, “The Very Divine Being, the Eternally Living One,” which (spoiler alert) is not contracted by fear, ever.

“…In your natural state, you are like the cat, which, although it may become afraid and roll into a ball when it is attacked, is not at all chronically afraid. The Very Divine Being, the Eternally Living One, Which exists as the cat and as every conditionally manifested being, is not contracted by fear. And just as the cat has not accomplished any great, profound, philosophical cycle of investigations of the universe to be free of fear, so you need have no great knowledge to be liberated from your fear.”

He goes on to say:

 “You can be free of fear in this very moment, in any moment, even in a moment when some degree of fear seems conventionally appropriate. Fear collapses attention. Therefore, even when fear might seem appropriate, it is still better to be without fear, so that you may have complete attention in the moment to deal with the threat. Fear is plainly and simply inappropriate, except in the flash of comprehending imminent danger. But even then, in the very next moment, you are dealing with the danger rather than with the fear. Fear has only the most minute significance as a practical necessity in your life, and yet you are completely overwhelmed by it! You have made fear so chronic a mood that now you interpret your existence, even all existence, through the medium of that fear.”

I have been given, by Grace – insanely…almost perversely tenacious Grace – many experiences of that instantaneous freedom from fear states. And from many other unpleasant trauma states. It’s astonishing. You’d think I’d turn to that communion a lot more often than I do. On the other hand, Adi Da also points out that the ego is at war with its own help. So there’s that. In any case, for the countless times my Guru has shown me the True Nature of myself and everyone and everything, I bow down at his lotus feet.

Takeaway

Whatever your spiritual practice is, it probably involves putting your attention on something other than the macabre chaos of your own mind.

So, cool. And as you do that, if you don’t already, try to feel whatever you put your attention on, with your body. Like, your literal fleshy person. Here’s another way you can play with this body thing: Notice that your attention – no matter what you do with it – arises within a field of awareness, a vast spaciousness. See if you can sense that field of awareness somatically, with your whole body. If you stay with it, you might also notice, every so often, that that field of awareness has a sweetness to it, a quiet radiance, a fragrant beauty. A wide-openness that feels free and wonderful. Now see if you can feel that with your cellular being and feel scared at the same time. It is almost impossible. Isn’t that the best thing ever? 

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