2:12 AM here and I had this dream. I went to an islander retreat site, the captain of the bus was telling me about the pandemic conditions. My son was there, but then the dream was about me. I found myself alone at the site. It was deserted out there and a woman’s face was dissolving into the sand. The sea was rushing in, the captain was saying, “This is all about fear.”

I turned in everything to the all and I said, “I’m not going into fear; I’m not afraid because this is all about what we’ve created together and it’s coming straight from God.” Having accepted responsibility and faced my fears down, I felt empowered and at peace. I knew that I would not dissolve into the sand.

I asked myself, when I woke up, what this was about. The one thought that occurred to me was, there’s something that we say in Yom Kippur and it goes like this, and we touch our chest, we beat our breast with every refrain … Ashamnu, Bagadnu, Gazalnu, Dibarnu Dofi. I remember saying this chant, reciting this with my Zayde when I was a child in the synagogue, the huge cavernous cathedral-like synagogue with the delicate stained glass, infused with angelic light. And I wondered, why were we making these declarations of all of these sins that we made? “Gazalnu.” It’s a way of saying that we’ve stolen and it’s a very literate yet harsh form of the word, like a brazen theft, a theft that is shocking, shocks the consciences, the Supreme Court would say..

Why would we admit to all of these and we use all of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, one letter per crime or person. How could a boy of seven years old have committed all of these crimes against spirit? And how could the community have done it? There’s a way in which we’ve, each of us, run afoul of the laws, the divine laws in one form or another. It’s an A to Z or again, through from the Aleph, from the first Hebrew letter. So, in some measure, we’ve all participated individually and collectively in these aberrations, these sins, the sin.

Sin is – the original meaning of sin is missing the mark. We’ve missed the mark in these ways. It’s our karma. And the next thought that occurred to me is whether this virus was created in China or in America or in Europe, or made in a lab or released by nature. In one sense, it doesn’t matter. It’s all the same. What matters is, I’m alive, this is part of me and I am part of it. There’s so much distancing. You know, the negativity is out there. The toxicity is out there. It’s other people, other people, other people. How can people think this way? How could people believe this? How can people vote for that? How can people support this? How can somebody articulate that?

And it is hard to believe some of the things that are going on out there. Same point. I am part of this world. This world is part of me. I’m standing at the retreat site. It’s desolate in the dream. The ocean is rushing in, people’s faces are disappearing in the sand. I don’t know how I’m going to make it through the night in this place. And so, I look into the cosmos. I look into the all, the infinite, the in self, as we say in Hebrew. And I say, “I’m part of everything and everything’s part of me and I’m not afraid.”

And although in the dream, I did not necessarily feel a tremendous sense of love or bliss or compassion or joy, there was a sense of being connected to the whole, a sense of dissolving my own limited consciousness into the infinite consciousness. So whether you call the infinite consciousness or the great self or spirit or God or goddess, some of my friends would say, there is a sense of connection to all of humanity and to all of life everywhere. Conscious life. As I believe the universe is teeming with conscious life. I’ve written about that before. And I believe that they’re with us, they’re contacting us. You can call it guides, spirit friends, angels, the angelic realms. Even in my son’s school, they talk about the angelic realms and it’s all present.

It’s all present here to support us through this time. And out of it will be a rebirth. There’ll be a new humanity, souls are coming, souls are going just like in the Bhagavad Gita. All the souls are already in Krishna’s flaming mouth. And so, why be afraid? You take action and yet… it’s not that it’s all been determined long ago, it’s that it’s all occurring in some other plane of existence where there’s a great neutrality. And that sounds harsh. That’s maybe not the word. There are other levels to these entrances and exits into this biological, biochemical, physical reality.

And what’s occurring here is part of who we are. So, how do I respond? Now I must respond with empathy. I must respond with dignity. Must respond with truth. Must respond with all of who I am and not be afraid, understand. It’s all a gift from the divine. I was afraid even to say that because some people might judge, how can you call this a gift?

I want to say this video is inspired by a colleague of mine, Debra Scheufler, who’s a healthcare lawyer. And it’s time to put it all of who we are out into the world. Doesn’t matter whether people like it, doesn’t matter whether people approve. Don’t necessarily have to say, I am who I am and I approve this message because I’m not running for president. It’s part of the poetry of our existence, and now’s the time to declare the poetry of our most intimate selves to the world. The dance of the lover and the beloved, Kirtan, sacred chant, call and response.

Put it out there. It’s an act of love echoing out into the universe. Sometimes it feels like putting on a mask. What a metaphor.

Now, we don’t put on our social mask. We actually put on a physical mask. See? That’s the karma. Every day you go out into the world, you put on a mask, guess what? Universe is very literal. It’s like, okay, now you’re going to wake up, when you go outside, you’re gonna put on a mask. Someday you won’t have to put on a mask. Be authentic, be yourself.

I wrote to my friend, continue to put all of who you are out into the world. Bless her heart, she does it. Poetry, dance, some legal advice. It’s all part of who she is. One feeds, supports, and emanates from the other. So, from my heart, with love.