April 29, 2020
One of the things about this part of Mexico with which a newcomer must come to terms is that it’s full of New Agers. Some are young, some are middle aged, and quite a few are people who cut their philosophical teeth on the impressively dull books of Carlos Castañeda, 40 years ago. And they neither know nor care that he was stripped of the PhD he was initially awarded for his non-existent fieldwork in Mexico with Yaqui Indian shamans. I could never finish a Castañeda book, despite the acclaim he achieved in the 1970s, and when he was exposed as a fraud, I felt relieved that I’d truly missed nothing. He had remarkably little to say, and took several volumes to say it.
But I rarely mention that around here. He is still spoken of with reverence in certain circles.
My real problem, though, comes when there’s a mention of illness. You mustn’t mention that stuff in a local cafe. And right now, disease is at the top of everyone’s mind.
If I comment that my knee is a little inflamed because I’m getting arthritic (as is so this week), or that I don’t always sleep well, I risk inviting a lecture about the virtues of garlic, or turmeric, or oregano oil. If I say I’ve tried these without effect, or that (heresy of heresies) I think homeopathy simply works like any other placebo, I’m subjected to a half-hour lecture on my lack of understanding, or my failure to prepare the medicine properly, or my past programming. In the years I’ve been here, hardly anyone has ever said anything like “Well, acupuncture doesn’t work for everything;” or, “I didn’t find Ayurvedic medicine did a damned thing for me, either.” I can say I did find acupuncture significantly helped a joint injury; but its failure to address a minor but persistent infection will always be due to my lack of appreciation of the method’s gradual effects, not the fact it isn’t a panacea. And this, doubt it not, will be more important than my finding it positively helpful in certain ways.
Sometimes it works. Sometimes … it doesn’t work.
Normally, I keep my grumbles to myself. This is, overall, a laid-back kind of place, and someone else’s obsessions aren’t my problem. But in the current situation, the most aggressively assertive “spiritual” people around me are suffering worse than the cynics and skeptics. They’re agitated, and to mention this to them is to invite probing queries about my own lack of equanimity. Which, admittedly, gets shaky.
But these people know that the virus is really a Chinese weapon, or a product of a CIA black ops program, or something that the Gates Foundation worked on for years. For some (I commend the tortured creativity that went into this one), it’s all three at once.
Alternatively, they know Covid-19 is really irrelevant, and the real problem is some failure of perfection or at least self-attunement in those who become ill from it. I should therefore ditch my face-mask and stop asking my lecturer to step back a few feet, and stop thinking “negatively.”
Such inflexible perspectives offer little in the way of enhanced resilience during a period of deprivation. Pop spirituality’s conceptual conceits don’t deal well with hard suffering. In my experience, only the people who hold to a more solid tradition, with firmer expectation of life’s graver ordeals, have significant inner resources to fall back on.
My case of the grumps over this is intensifying by the day now. I’ve “snoozed” several fervent anti-vaxxers on Facebook for 30 days, since my own agitation is sometimes a bit much for me, and reading theirs on top of it became intolerable. I sneakily try to avoid various true believers and the beliefs they’re true to if I happen to see them while out shopping. I pop my regular, allopathically prescribed pill every morning that treats a geezerish condition quite effectively, and avoid any discussion that includes the words “Big Pharma.”
But how long can I go on like this? If we’re locked down much longer (in the relative way that Mexico is locked down, which doesn’t seem to bother too many people in the village), will I end up lovingly sharpening the larger kitchen knives one morning? Will I start appraising the defensive capabilities of the garden implements? Will I start sticking needles into home-made poppets, and chanting the names of people who can’t hold their peace, or their prescriptions, around me?
Outside right now, there’s a wind blowing, and a spring rainstorm seems in the offing. It’s pleasant, and cooling, and calming, and the two dogs sleeping near my feet are enjoying the breeze after the extreme heat and humidity of the afternoon. Together, we can enjoy the quiet before the storm.
I can, anyway, as long as nobody mentions the curative properties of Chinese mushrooms, or tells me, with that tone that implies “O, thou unawakened one” that they’re a Reiki master who can eliminate my lockdown blues. Otherwise, everything might – might – be just fine. And the knives can stay in their drawer.
Mexed Messages 