A Great Time For Change

Whether forced or self-initiated

With tens upon tens upon tens of thousands of articles published on Medium about the Covid-19 pandemic panic I decided that I would try not to add to it. After all, I didn’t really have anything to contribute. My life hasn’t changed much at all. It is essentially the same during the pandemic as it was before the pandemic.

I have tried not to read too many of these pandemic articles but I have read enough to get the gist, plus I try to read all the articles by my favorite authors that I follow and they have all written pandemic articles. I’ve read so many articles about how the pandemic has drastically changed people’s lives, how they have been forced to learn how to live in isolation with themselves, how they cope being away from social situations, how they deal with the depression that seems to come with being by themselves, how their dating lives are ruined, how they are coping with out-of-control fear, and how their robotic routines have been shattered leaving them clueless as to how to proceed with living life.

Reading these articles I realized that the lives of so many people have been turned upside down. But mine has not! What the hell is wrong with me? So that is one reason I haven’t been writing about the pandemic. Since there was almost no change in my life I didn’t have anything to contribute. So I decided to do something about it.

(Actually, I recently wrote a short fictional story about the pandemic but I never once mentioned the pandemic in any way in the story. It was pure metaphor but no one seemed to notice that the story was about the pandemic. That happens a lot with metaphors.)

So with everyone’s lives drastically changing and mine not changing hardly at all I started feeling a tiny bit left out. With the pandemic not forcing changes upon me I realized that I needed to initiate some change all on my own. After all, change is a good thing, right?

So I made some changes…

The Nap

When I was put out to pasture a year and a half ago (forcibly ‘retired’) I took up a new afternoon ritual. I began taking a daily afternoon nap. Before I could only do that on my days off because I was working in the afternoon five days a week. My now daily afternoon naps are one of the things I like best about ‘retirement.’ A daily afternoon nap can be so invigorating.

Insomnia is something that I simply do not understand because I have never experienced it. I am usually sound asleep within seven to nine seconds after my noggin hits the pillow. Occasionally, I am sound asleep BEFORE my noggin hits the pillow. When I take an afternoon nap I sink into extremely deep levels of sleep. I essentially leave the solar system.

One of the things I feared about afternoon naps is that I would just sleep and sleep and sleep for hours and wake up to find that the afternoon was over. I couldn’t abide by that because that’s a lot of sun hours lost. I happen to be a solar addict.

So in post-’retirement’ I decided my naps would be limited to forty minutes. And I used an alarm clock to make sure that I did not sleep more than forty minutes.

Of course an alarm clock going off is the very unhealthiest way to wake up — at any time of day. It can be ruinous to mind, body, and spirit. It also practically guarantees loss of dream memory.

So one of the big momentous changes I have made in my life during this horrible pandemic is that I decided to no longer use an alarm clock to wake up from my afternoon nap. It has turned out to be one of the most empowering decisions I’ve ever made in my life. I am so glad I did this.

And guess what? Before I lie down on my bed and assume the afternoon nap asana I notice the time. Then, after I naturally awaken without the alarm clock I then notice the time again and see that I slept for exactly forty minutes! (Give or take a minute or two.) Every day! Apparently, I have trained myself to sleep for almost precisely forty minutes. I realized that I simply do not need the alarm clock. I’m thinking of throwing it away.

Meditation

For as long as I can remember I have always meditated twice a day; once in the morning and once in the evening before I go nighty-night. Meditating is one of the most important parts of my spiritual practices.

Well, I decided to make a very serious change to my spiritual practices. I decided to add an afternoon meditation! My thinking in the past has been, Why meditate in the afternooon when you can just take a nap instead?

My routine has been to take a nap then go for a walk around the ‘hood (weather permitting). I try to take at least three walks a day but I only meditate twice? I decided to up my game. After my post-nap walk I usually just proceeded with things that I wanted to get done but now I follow that walk with an intense meditation session and now I’m hooked on it.

My morning meditations usually don’t last more than half an hour and my evening meditation usually lasts fifteen to twenty minutes. Since doing an afternoon meditation I’ve realized that they last between forty minutes and an hour — and they seem to be getting longer. And they are way more intense than either the morning or evening meditation! In the afternoon I’ve been able to do an enormous amount of chakra work and reach much higher vibrational states.

Who would have thunk it? I always meditated only in the morning and evening because those are my power times of day. Thanks to changing my routine during this time of pandemic panic I found out that there is another super-charged time of day.

Dancing

I have already written about this. Thanks to the wisdom of Lindsay Lonai Linegar I began incorporating light dancing into my daily spiritual practices in the evening. In just a few weeks I have realized the beneficial impact this has on my health. It’s significant. Once again, who would have thunk it?

This was another serious change that I adopted during this time of Covid-19 pandemonium. While it has been a most positive change I decided to add some additional change to that change. You see, I almost never listen to music anymore. I can’t stand it when I get a song stuck in my noggin. I try to keep my noggin as empty as I possibly can.

But the night before last as I stared at that glorious April full moon I was inspired to do my new dancing practice to actual music. I had been dancing without music all this time so far. During a full moon is there any song more appropriate to listen to than, Harvest Moon, by Neil Young? It has always been one of my favorite songs on the planet.

So that evening I danced to Harvest Moon while also looking at the full moon out the window. Let me tell you, it was downright euphoric! It was quasi-orgasmic.

So music and dance are changes I’m making while forced into a state of self-isolation — a state I was essentially already in. If that darn virus couldn’t force me to change I had to take it upon myself to force some change. And I am so glad that I did. Meanwhile I am opening up to even more change.

I hope that everyone reading this is safe and healthy. And I hope that you are experiencing some life-empowering change and are staying out of fear. Sometimes it is good to step out of stifling routine and see things a little differently.

Copyright by White Feather. All Rights Reserved. Writings of White Feather

Speaking of full moons and music…