erinxsmusings-blog

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My personal response to COVID-19

I was diagnosed with breast cancer in December 2019. Once I got over the initial shock, I knew I had to come to terms with the diagnosis or fear would consume me at a greater speed than the multiplying cancer cells. When the C-word is pinned to you, a massive mindfuck ensues. You cycle through a range of emotions, not dissimilar to the stages of grief. For me personally, it wasn’t long before a fight or flight response kicked in, and I resolved to do everything in my power to combat the disease. I overhauled my diet, increased my exercise regimen, and promptly evicted the fearful and racing thoughts that would creep into my mind from time to time. I saw the appropriate doctors, got second opinions, and followed the advice of medical professionals. But, I simply refused to dwell on the diagnosis I had just been given. It felt empowering and gave me some semblance of control over my life. It is a stance I maintain to this day. 

Throughout most of March 2020 I was making daily trips to the hospital for radiation treatments, right as the COVID-19 pandemic started spreading across the USA. At my first several radiation appointments in early March, I could walk right into the medical facility, the receptionists barely looking up from their computers as they checked me in. By the end of the month, I had to wait in my car for the radiation techs to text me that it was safe to enter the building, and I had to pass through 3 checkpoints along the way where my temperature was taken, and I was asked a series of COVID-19 related questions. 

During the course of my treatment, I had to meet with my radiation oncologist once a week for a routine check-up. Around mid to late March, before homemade masks were commonplace, I asked my doctor if I could possibly get a mask since I still had 2 weeks left of radiation. He responded that a mask wasn’t necessary, as it wouldn’t effectively protect me from COVID-19 pathogens. I recalled seeing a clip of Dr. Fauci on the news making a similar statement a few days prior, so I trusted that I was being given sound medical advice and accepted his answer.

A few days later, as I entered the medical building (through a door that was about 50 feet from the ER entrance), there was a woman in the lobby coughing incessantly. My stomach dropped, and I ran back outside and rifled through my car looking for any piece of cloth that I could use to cover my face. As I did so, I thought maybe I should just cancel my appointment and go home. Was it worth the potential exposure to COVID-19? Finally I found an old winter scarf in my trunk, and I ventured back to the building. As I walked back through the parking lot, I recognized a woman with whom I had chatted briefly in the waiting area the previous week. She  was also a radiation patient. I warned her that there was a woman in the lobby having a coughing fit and advised her that she may want to wait a few minutes before going in. She hesitated and said she didn’t think she had anything to tie around her face. She added that she had also been told that a face covering wouldn’t do much to help anyway. I told her I had been told that as well, but that I wasn’t taking any chances. She agreed and went back to her car to look for some sort of covering. For the remainder of my radiation appointments, I wore a scarf around the lower half of my face and counted down the days to my last treatment. By the end of April, face masks were ubiquitous and more readily available. Also, later that Spring, Dr. Fauci had changed his advice on the issue of masks and was now advocating for their widespread use. In fact, Fauci admitted that he had only advised people against masks to ensure that there would be enough of a supply of PPE for medical personnel. As someone who was undergoing cancer treatments during the time Fauci was advising against masks, I have a real problem with the fact that he intentionally misled people. In fact, never mind the euphemism I just used...Fauci straight up lied. He could have been forthright about the need to preserve PPE. He could have suggested people use any type of face covering, such as a bandana or scarf. But instead, he downplayed masks’ effectiveness. How many people were infected with COVID-19 based on his deliberate deception? And why aren’t more people upset that they were misled? Fauci continues to be propped up by many on the left as some sort of hero. These same folks are the first to castigate non-mask wearers, and they claim this stems from their deep and abiding concern for the collective well-being of humanity. Yet, they fail to hold Fauci accountable for the potential deaths that occurred on his watch, based on his ill advice. 

Fast forward to late July 2020. Dr. Stella Imnanuel, a doctor being promoted by Trump, makes headlines for suggesting that hydroxychloroquine is an effective treatment for COVID-19. Dr. Immanuel is immediately written off as a quack by mainstream media mostly due to comments she has made in the past, showing her unconventional African-based religious views. The Fauci sycophants flock to social media, poking fun at Dr. Immanuel’s religious beliefs through memes and other pejorative statements. Around the same time, a video called “America’s Frontline Doctors” (that I haven’t seen) is scrubbed from major social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. Many on the left, who have even less medical training than the doctors featured on the video, cheer its removal. They know best, after all. They are, for some reason, absolutely certain that corporate media reporting about COVID-19 would never lead them astray. The ways in which Big Pharma might be shaping the narrative are not considered. Their short-term memories fail to recall that Fauci irresponsibly lied to them a few short months ago. Who is the quack doctor again?

It seems that the modern-day American liberal has no problem with xenophobia as long as it’s been pushed in a manner that “resists” Trump. Also, they are completely ok with and even champions of censorship, while simultaneously screeching about fascism being on the rise because “Trump is literally Hitler.” Well, actually, I agree with them there...fascism is on the rise, and they are the embodiment of it. 

So, back to my battle with breast cancer. Here is the deal: I had to muster up a lot of strength to overcome the distress I faced when learning of my diagnosis. You don’t get to demand that I submit to living in fear just because you are allowing state-sponsored media to scare you shitless about COVID-19. Of course, I believe coronavirus is real. I believe that masks do reduce transmission, and that large clusters of people are not a good idea right now. I also happen to think Trump is a buffoon. But I also don’t judge anyone who questions that sentiment and believes that the lockdown measures are draconian. They have a right to that line of thinking, and you are not entitled to their opinion. The exchange of ideas and free thought is the cornerstone of democracy. You also do not get to decide what I or others watch or read on the internet. And by the way, I’m not taking news media advice from people who spent 4 years pushing Russiagate, and who continue to deny that it was a giant FLOP. Talk about false conspiracy theories, sheesh! 

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Lessons from the Total Solar Eclipses

It’s eerily interesting that there are 2 total solar eclipses that will cross over the US both in 2017 and 2024.  The paths of these 2 eclipses mark an X right on Carbondale, Illinois which is right between the New Madrid faultline in southeastern Missouri and the Wabash Valley faultline in southeastern Illinois. I’m not necessarily suggesting that these eclipses are harbingers of doom and destruction per se, but I do believe they involve significant and symbolic messages that we should be gleaning from the timing and placement of them.

There are 7 years between both eclipses, and in numerology, the number 7 represents the seeking of truth, critical thinking, and hidden truths coming out and being exposed. What I find fascinating about this is that is also the symbolism of an eclipse….the idea that truth and light are being obfuscated by darkness, falsehoods, and deception….that nothing is actually as it seems. Given the tense and divisive political arena of the past many months, where accusations of lies, fraud, and other forms of disinformation have been argued about and debated ad nauseum (myself included), it’s possible that these eclipses will uncover some hard truths, and the placement of an X right on the center of the continental USA is symbolic of that.  Or maybe there’s even deeper symbolism in the actual location of the X. I, personally, believe that we (humans) are very connected to Mother Earth and that our emotions, thoughts, fears, and feelings can actually manifest natural occurrences. We are more psychically powerful that we all realize, and if there is enough collective anger, hostility, and friction, this negative energy can seep down into the earth and trigger a reaction. So, maybe it is possible that the X is a warning of a major earthquake...caused by none other than yours (you plural or all y’all) truly. However, because the number 7 calls for the seeking of truth and higher order thinking, I would argue that the X is symbolic of something far more figurative... the idea that we are so divided right now, that if an earthquake would happen, it would literally split the country in 2 right there in Carbondale, Illinois.  It’s a suggestion from God or the Source or the universe that we need to do a better job of trying to heal the divide….that we are letting disinformation take over our emotions and prevent us from seeing the common humanity in each other.  People on both sides of the political spectrum have been lashing out at each other taking cues from their shadow sides….the X over Carbondale is the bulls eye center of the moon’s shadow both in 2017 and 2024. Therefore, I believe that this intersection or X is a call for us to alleviate our bitter feelings and resentments toward each other, to minimize the friction, to stop letting our shadow sides take over, to smooth over emotional fissures.

All that being said, I don’t always think that “darkness” is meant to represent deceit or negativity, and given that the moon symbolizes the divine feminine, I am not trying to give her a bad rap. In fact, I wonder if there aren’t also Christian-related spiritual messages being delivered by this eclipse. Many scholars of ancient mystic Christian Gnosticism believe that Mary Magdalene was not only NOT a prostitute, but rather the 13th apostle and Jesus’ female counterpart. Gnostic Christians believe that she also carried within her a light similar to Jesus’ and was instrumental in helping spread the word of God. However, unlike dogmatic organized religions would have you believe, Gnostics believe that Jesus and Mary’s message was much more “Buddhist” in nature. In a nutshell, they believed that God’s light lies within each of us, and that through prayer and meditation, we can hear God speaking to us. Gnosticism also asserts that God has been anthropomorphized as a fearsome, omnipotent, omniscient authority, when in actuality our souls each contain a piece of God, and that our human souls are the collective composition of God, including the good, the bad, and the ugly. One can certainly see how this translates into Jesus’ compassion for all, however, Gnostics believe that Jesus’ messages were much more mystical in nature. Much of this was considered heretical by leaders of organized religion, and thus began the spreading of “fake news.” In fact, many of the Gnostic gospels were buried by monks to avoid their being destroyed in the name of blasphemy. There even exists a Gospel of Mary (Magdalene), which was discovered in Egypt in the late 1800s but it wasn’t given much legitimacy (shocking!) until more Gnostic gospels were found by some farmers in Egypt in 1945. With the discovery of these other gospels, more credence was given to the Gospel of Mary, and since that time, Gnostic scholars have been hoping to increase awareness of their existence. Additionally, I don’t believe that it was a coincidence that these texts were discovered in 1945, the year in which World War 2 ended, and the US military industrial complex was developed in response to the Cold War. This leads me to my next conjecture, and that is the symbolism of Mary Magdalene as a moon goddess. Some alternative theological scholars believe that Mary Magdalene is/was the ancient Egyptian goddess, Isis, reincarnated or embodied, and that Jesus was the embodiment of Isis’ husband, Osiris, the god of the sun. There are certainly many parallels between Jesus/Mary and Osiris/Isis. In fact, many say that this is how we derived the word “sun” in English because Jesus was the “son” of God. So, if we take the metaphor of Jesus as the sun and Mary Magdalene as the moon and apply it to the 2017 and 2024 total eclipses, we again have the suggestion that we all need to start putting the truth at the forefront of both our political and personal issues.  Like Tanya Donelly suggests in her song tribute, “Mary Magdalene in the Great Sky,” humans are like moths who irresponsibly flock to porchlights, thereby ignoring the bright and mighty moon (Mary M.) shining above “Moths burn on the porch light tonight and every night. We hear them fall like cottonballs. Meanwhile there’s a bright, berry moon above. But they go for the nearer, easier glow.” Later in the song, Donelly asserts that the best way to connect to Mary’s divine energy is through meditation, but that it might require commitment and faith “If you can make it past your own guards tonight. Close your eyes, be still fall in, just trust me on this.” Regular prayer and meditation give us the keys we need to seek our own truths, which will in turn help us see greater truths including those on a global scale. By going for the moon instead of the porchlight, we can more easily see through the skewed stories and false narratives being delivered to us by people in positions of power….the same folks who enjoy keeping us divided so that they can more effectively fund their candidacies through donations from major weapons’ contractors. Now consider that Carbondale lies in an area of Illinois called Little Egypt. And that Carbondale, Illinois is near St. Louis, Missouri. And that the symbol of both St. Louis and Mary Magdalene is the fleur de lis. Of course, all of this could be unrelated, and I could be connecting dots that aren’t even meant to be connected. But even the most skeptical among us would have to agree that all of this divisiveness and hostility isn’t good for our collective culture, and we all need some way to overcome the divide and lies that are being propagated by those who lead us. So, would it really hurt any of us to start going for the moon instead of the porchlight? Can we afford not to?

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