A Spiritual Vaccine For The Pandemic

The audio addresses the pandemic we all are coping with through a true story about a woman whose life was completely upended by a crisis that happened back in 1992. The crisis was the Bosnian War and because of it, she and her family lost absolutely everything. Her story witnesses to a kind of healing that restores the one thing we always have, which is our powerful, loving nature that, when embraced, can move mountains.

Transcript

I want to take a moment and address the pandemic that we are all coping with by telling you a true story about a woman named Luby whose life was completely upended by another crisis back in 1992.

That crisis was the Bosnian War and because of it,

Luby and her family lost absolutely everything.

I met Luby because a non-profit agency that I directed back then called the Center for Attitudinal Healing was funded by the US State Department to provide psychosocial support to refugees of that genocidal war.

It was surprising that an agency such as ours would have been selected by the US government to do this kind of work because our approach was basically spiritual in nature.

The approach was called Attitudinal Healing and it was based on spiritual principles from A Course in Miracles.

The approach defined the essence of a human being as love and it asserted that love is the most powerful healing force in the world and that health is inner peace and that healing is letting go of fear and further that a human being is capable of being at peace on the inside regardless of whatever is happening on the outside.

That's because letting go of fear is always a return to love and the moment we let go of fear our loving nature comes alive and we recover the resilience and resourcefulness to respond even to a dire circumstance.

Our loving spiritual nature also means that at every moment we have everything we need to be happy and that the only reason we're ever unhappy is because we are focused on what we don't have rather than on what we do have and the one thing we always have is this powerful loving nature that can move mountains.

Another aspect of this approach is that it was based on peer support.

We train volunteers to provide support to people in crisis primarily by teaching the empathy positive regard and authenticity that facilitate a healing relationship.

Our peer support approach assume first and foremost that ordinary people are capable of making an extraordinary difference in each other's lives when they show up believing that we are all students and teachers to each other and that each of us knows our own best answers and that what helps people find their own best answers is through being listened to with empathy not through being given advice.

Empathy supports a person in understanding themselves and in listening to their own inner wisdom instead of sabotaging it.

So the emphasis in giving support was listening to each other with a whole heart.

Out of that we create an attitudinal climate that leads to healing.

For 30 years the center applied this approach to some of the most stressful and difficult situations in the world including helping people face with life-threatening illnesses,

Responding to the AIDS epidemic when it was at its worst,

Working with parents who had lost children,

Working with men in prison serving life sentences,

And responding to the post-traumatic stress of war refugees.

The center's approach was really put to the test.

So back to my story about this woman named Luby during the war in Bosnia.

One of the first things we had to do to work with refugees was to get permission from the office of the High Commissioner for Refugees at the United Nations and although they gave us permission they didn't think too highly of our spiritual approach,

Not at first.

In fact one of the officials called us trivial.

She said people didn't need our lovey-dovey spirituality.

What they needed was food,

Shelter,

And money and she was sure none of the refugees would have any interest in attending our programs.

The following evening we were scheduled to present our very first weekend workshop in a major hall in Croatia's biggest city and after meeting with the UN I was convinced that the hall would be empty and that we were probably going to fail on our mission.

I was wrong and so was the opinion of that person at the United Nations.

That night the hall was packed.

It was standing room only.

People had come to see if they could actually find the love in their hearts that the war had stamped out.

They came to see if it was possible to mend their broken hearts so they could mend their broken lives.

And Luby was one of the hundreds of people who attended that workshop that weekend.

I can still vividly remember watching her come into the room and take a seat in the third row on the outside aisle.

She was dressed all in black from head to toe as if in mourning,

Which of course she was.

She wore sunglasses to hide her eyes and she had a long shawl Muslim women wear that she pulled tight around her head and she didn't remove her sunglasses when she sat down.

Throughout the morning session she sat there motionless,

Her arms folded across her chest,

Looking at me as I conducted the workshop.

The only clue I had to her emotional state was a downturned mouth that didn't change even when something humorous happened.

When we took a break I didn't really expect her to return but after the break there she was sitting in the same seat.

But this time she wasn't wearing her sunglasses and I could see the deep grief in her eyes.

I was surprised again when she returned the next day to the workshop.

Twice that day in the next we broke into small discussion groups and as it turned out Luby was assigned to the group I was facilitating.

And in the safety of that group she gradually opened up emotionally,

Revealing some of the tragic experiences she had kept locked inside.

She talked about her pain,

She cried over it and as she gradually came to allow it more and more her suffering eased.

And in the last session she was much calmer and she was a support to other people in the group.

Witnessing this kind of healing and the resilience it fosters is always astonishing to me.

The irony is that once you are able to define what is subjugating you,

You actually get freedom from it.

Eckhart Tolle says something similar.

He says that the moment you completely accept your non-peace,

Your non-peace is transmuted into peace.

Although it was the dead of winter,

On the last day of the workshop Luby appeared in a colorful silk outfit that brought a touch of spring into the room.

On this day she stood up in front of all these hundreds of people and stated that prior to coming to the workshop she thought she had lost the love in her heart.

She thought the war had taken it from her and had left her to live the rest of her days in an empty loveless shell that reverberated with pain.

Those were her words.

She stated that over the course of that three-day workshop everything had changed.

In the workshop she found the courage to feel what she had to feel,

To see what she needed to see,

And eventually to challenge the dark voices of the mind that had drained the joy and peace from her.

She then began to cry,

But she described her tears as tears of joy,

Over her finding that the love in her heart was still alive and well,

Making her life worth living again.

It was a profound moment of healing for everyone at the workshop.

A year later I had coffee with Luby and Zagreb and she had not relapsed into the empty persona the war had made of her for a time.

Often the term fact of life is used to refer to a condition imposed by the world over which we have no control.

In Luby,

Love transcended the facts.

Love and the dynamically peaceful and vibrant way of being it engenders is the inner strength that makes us larger than circumstances,

Even larger than war or pandemics.

Here is a way we lose that strength and power.

The pandemic is likely to wear on for some time to come and sometimes what happens is our empathy and concern for other people wears thin.

We're already hearing some politicians in my country,

America,

Talk about how we should all get back to work,

Get back to society,

And that older people who will probably die from it should be willing to sacrifice themselves for the future of our economy.

I saw this kind of disregard for other people happen during the war in Bosnia.

There was an old woman down the street from where I was living near the old gate in Zagreb who I saw this happen to and I wrote a short poem about it.

I'd like to read it to you.

It's called No Wonder We Are Afraid.

Every day there is this woman sitting on the cold stones of the street just outside my door.

She is old and of another era,

With her woolen clothes,

Her thick black boots,

And a dirty scarf that covers dirty hair.

She's Bosnian,

A peasant far from home,

Surely someone's mother,

A grandmother.

I think she might be lost to family.

Perhaps they think she's dead.

Perhaps they're all dead.

One thing is for sure.

She's been abandoned by the world.

Since the war every day has been a total disregard for what she is and what she was.

Her presence on the street is an annoyance to the neighbors.

The compassion they once felt is wearing thin as war wears on.

Here's what I think.

Beneath that agitation lurks the ancient fear that every man is stranded,

That every one of us has been abandoned by the father.

We're afraid we'll end up just like her,

With no place where we come from and no place where we go.

If this fear could find its voice it might say,

Don't underestimate that day when the world will do to you what it's done to her.

Most of us will pass this peasant by without much notice,

And even those that give it's rare these days that love decides how much,

Or grows into a thought for her that reaches out to touch her.

After all,

She's not our mother,

Not our sister.

She's cut from another cloth.

She's on the other side of the distance in between.

So here's my point.

Even though we must keep social distance from each other during the epidemic,

Let's not let that distance be in our hearts.

Reviews

Very interesting. The story touched my heart. Thank you 🤍

Wow! What a beautiful story, thank you for sharing and for seeing the love in everyone.

Precious words! Thank you!
🙏👼💕🌹⭐✨✨✨✨

The poem at the end brought tears to my eyes . Namaste 🙏 💕

Wonderful message, thank you! Peace, 🙏

Fabulous! Thank You.

Excellent meditation. Thank you so much for your perspective. If I may suggest something.? A soft background music would enhance the experience. 🙏🙏🙏

Thank you for sharing this needed story. I will be sure to share it round . Many blessings.

Thank you for sharing❤️

I won’t !! Thank you for sharing this meaningful message 🙏sending love and healing light ❤️✨🙏

Wow. Beautifully said. Thank you 🌷🙏

I really liked hearing about the background that led up to the story as well! What a wonderful organization you were in.

Great story! I am nourished by the message of keeping connected with others while we maintain social distancing.
Thanks!

I loved this piece of sanity Thankyou so much

Very very heartfelt meditation. Thank-you.

Uplifting in these times. I agree, love can lift us up in all situations. We shouldn’t lose our compassion for each other even while physically distancing ourselves.

Namaste 🙏🏼 This has actually tied several things in my life together to see a path.
Thank you so much 💕