As more states report spikes in new Covid-19 cases, they continue to reopen while encouraging masks and social distancing. It is clear that we plan on coping with the Pandemic for quite some time. Depending on your local community, you may have begun your own re-entry process. This is a good time to reaffirm your commitment to a deeper spiritual practice as you re-evaluate how you will be participating as society opens outward. Again, certain parts of the country and the world may have to step back into strict lock-down at times, while certain parts will move forward. We may continue to have to shift.
Even in the best of times, unless we are in a monastic environment, living from a spiritual perspective naturally involves a process of shifting from the interior world of silence and prayer to the outer world of commerce, roles, and social structures on a daily basis. Having a dedicated space for your spiritual practice actually helps you make the shift from one mode of being to another, until you are clearly planted in a spiritual perspective wherever you are, whatever is happening. It seems to me a good time to to assess the physical space where we meditate, pray, perhaps study or write, and open to creative resources within. This is the space that seeds the atmosphere of peace and healing. Ideally, it gives you a sense of the privacy of your interior life and yet holds reminders of the larger spiritual body of which you are a part. It may be a tiny corner for you and your chair or cushion, but over time, entering that space will immediately invoke the peace, spaciousness and freedom of the Transcendent.
I imagine that these months of lock-down have brought you insight and experiences that sooner or later will be reflected in your physical space. Consider the images and objects that will continue to speak to you of peace, of stillness, of silence, throughout the time of Pandemic and whatever events are yet to unfold. (Susan Nettleton)