More than two hundred years ago, Benjamin Franklin declared, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” With that said, it doesn’t take a genius to recognize that a majority of the world’s governments have failed in their most important duty by putting profits, personal power and the need to save face over the safety of their citizenry. And – as we watch in disbelief – they’re now playing catch-up with a virus that is causing havoc with the health of human beings and the well-being of the societies and the institutions that support them.

To me, this means that – as an individual – you have to do two things; trust your intuition, and take personal responsibility for your safety and the safety of your family. If you still haven’t figured out why – it’s because you can’t rely on the information or the recommendations government and international organizations like the WHO are peddling.

Face masks are one example of their self-serving decisions and incompetence. It’s clear to anyone that the widespread use of face masks, even if they don’t meet the highest medical standards, help to reduce the rate of infections. Yet, even now, both the government and health officials in the U.S.A., as well as the WHO, still provide misleading or down-right false information about their efficacy.

The Czech Republic provides us with a contrasting model. A grass roots movement started – before the government took action. People began making face masks. They gave them to family and friends who wore them in public. This measure as well as the high rate of testing has kept the rate of infections far below those of other European countries.

That is just one example of people relying on their intuition and taking responsibility for their own well-being – and the well-being of their loved ones.

With so many of us are in lock-down or quarantine, it’s not only our physical and economic health that we have to be concerned about. We need to be concerned about our psychic and spiritual well-being – another area where we’ve received virtually no guidance from the authorities. With that in mind, I’ve included an exercise in the following text that thousands of people have used to remain mentally stable and to enhance the flexibility they need to cope during this difficult time. It’s called Chakra Balancing.

The word chakra comes from Sanskrit and means wheel. There are two distinct parts of a chakra – the chakra gate and the chakra field. In the following exercise, you will activate the chakra gate. For people with the ability to see subtle energy fields, a chakra gate will look like a brightly colored disk that spins rapidly at the end of what looks like a long axle or stalk. The wheel portion of the chakra gate is about three inches (eight centimeters) in diameter and perpetually moves or spins around a central axis. Emerging from the center of the disk are what appear to be spokes.

The chakras regulate energetic activities in your subtle field and physical-material body. These activities include many interactions that people mistakenly believe take place exclusively on the physical plane. Empathy, motivation and enthusiasm as well as human love and intimacy are examples of energetic activities regulated by the chakras and chakra fields.

Chakras are able to perform these activities because they not only provide prana – they transmute prana from one pitch (or frequency) to another whenever an organ or system in your subtle field is in an energy-deficient condition. In addition, they balance the forces of polarity and gender by permitting prana to move through your subtle field in four general directions, up the back, down the front, forward from the back to the front, and backward from the front to the back.

Exercise: Chakra Balancing

In the following exercise, you will enhance the functions of your seven traditional chakras, on the level of soul. By practicing the exercise regularly, not only will you increase the amount of prana you have available; you will bring the energy into balance so that it will be distributed evenly throughout your subtle field.

The best time to practice chakra balancing is the morning. I don't recommend practicing it around bedtime since it tends to stimulate the nerves and can keep you awake.

To begin chakra balancing, find a comfortable sitting position with your back straight. Then close your eyes and breathe deeply through your nose for two to three minutes. Count backward from five to one and from ten to one.

When you've reached the number one, repeat this affirmation to yourself in words, not thoughts: “I’m deeply relaxed, feeling better than I did before.” Then assert, “It’s my intent to bring my mental attention to my first chakra at the base of my spine.” Almost immediately the chakra gate will begin to vibrate. The vibration emerges from the front of the chakra gate, making it easy to locate the chakra. Once the chakra has begun to vibrate, breathe into it so that the prana entering your subtle field, on each inhalation, activates the chakra further. Next, place the palm of your positive, right hand if you’re right handed, left hand if you’re left handed, above the front of the chakra gate. For the first chakra, this will be a point between your legs about six inches (fifteen centimeters) below the perineum. For the second through sixth chakra, your hand will be two to three inches (eight centimeters) above the surface of your physical body and for the crown chakra your hand will be two to three inches (five to eight centimeters) above the top of your head, palm down above the chakra gate which faces upward. The location of the chakras is indicated by figure 2.

Once you’ve activated the first chakra using your mental attention, your breath and the palm of your positive hand, you will chant the universal “OHM” from the chakra three times. Raise the “OHM” one note for each chakra, beginning with G for the first chakra, going through the seven notes of the scale (as you go through the seven chakras).

It’s important to note that the tone you chant must cause a sympathetic vibration in the chakra. After chanting from the seventh chakra, close your eyes and breathe normally through the nose for ten more minutes while you enjoy the positive effects the exercise has had on your subtle energy system and physical body.

You may be quarantined, self-isolating or locked down by the government. In any event, your living situation has changed in one of three ways; you’re going to be alone much of the time; you’re going to be sharing your lonely space with your pet Fluffy, or you’re going to be sharing your space with a Fluffy, your partner, one or more kids, maybe even your in-laws.

Given that cabin fever is almost certainly on the menu, I’ve came up with a two-part survival kit. Part 1 includes some practical spiritual hints on how to manage your time and your relationships. Part 2 will arrive as soon as I finish it.

Before we get into the meat of the subject, it may surprise you to learn that Shakespeare wrote three of his most important plays King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra while quarantined during a plague that struck England in 1606, and Miguel de Cervantes conceived of and wrote the prologue for Don Quixote while in prison. So, if you’ve still got a creative bone inside your body, Shakti has just provided you a golden opportunity.

With that in mind let’s get started.

Spiritual Hint # 1. First things first: You have to keep it together! No matter how long you’re stuck at home, you can’t freak out if you want to make it through this crisis. This is especially true if you live with a partner, kids and-or dependents.

To avoid freaking out, I recommend that you perform the Keep it Together Mudra.

I recognize that some of you may believe, before the fact, that indulging yourself in a well-deserved meltdown is a good idea – but there may be unintended consequences after the fact – especially if you have other people including your dog who will have to deal with it.

The Keep it Together Mudra was designed specifically to prevent your energy field from getting overloaded. An overloaded energy field is the principal cause of burn out, chronic fatigue syndrome and the meltdown you want to avoid. Once you’ve learned to perform the mudra, you can combine it with two other activities that will help you avoid a freak-out or mitigate the fallout from a freak-out that has already begun.

Step one – stop what you’re doing and take a cold shower. This will saturate your body with negative ions. Negative ions will increase the level of the mood-enhancing chemical serotonin in your brain. That will help to relieve stress and boost your energy level; both will help you avoid a total freak-out and mitigate its worse effects.

After you’ve showered, sit down in a comfortable place and perform the Keep it Together Mudra. You’ll find it in the following text. Hold the mudra for two to three minutes; then chant ohm while you continue to hold the mudra for at least five minutes more.

Ohm is the cosmic sound. It emerged when the universe was created. Its therapeutic effect is well known – especially when it’s used with the appropriate meditations and mudras.

The Keep it Together Mudra

To perform the Keep it Together Mudra, find a comfortable position with your back straight. Keep the soles of your feet on the floor and your tongue in its normal position. Then bring the tip of your tongue to the top of your mouth. Next slide it back until the palate becomes soft and hold it there. Continue by crossing your right thumb over your left thumb. Then bend your index fingers and press them together from the tip to the first joint. Next, create two triangles by placing the tips of your middle fingers together and by placing the tips of your ring fingers together. Bend your pinkies and bring them together so that they’re touching from the first to the second joint.

Spiritual Hint #2. Cabin fever is primarily about you. So, make sure you have what you need and what you like at home before a total lockdown goes into effect. And remember this; it makes no sense to develop an overbearing social conscience at a time like this. That means it’s OK to feel good and have fun – even when everything around you is falling apart.

Another important point – feeling good is more important than you think – especially if you’re a primary care giver. People who are miserable, depressed or who are suffering from chronic anxiety project those fields at other people, which can make it even more difficult for them to cope.

Spiritual Hint # 3. It will be hard to fill each day with interesting activities – so before you flip out, subscribe to Disney+ or do something worse fill the empty space with something intoxicating. I’m not kidding. We’re in a slow-moving crisis, and to survive a crisis like this, you must be able to declare a time-out. So, choose your poison (in moderation of course) and enjoy yourself.

Anthropologists have found that humans, in every culture they’ve studied as well as many species of birds and mammals, need to zone out periodically: Hallucinogens in the Amazon, alcohol in much of the world, marijuana, meditation, chanting, even twirling if you’re a Dervish. So, don’t feel bad about getting wasted – you’re only human.

Spiritual Hint # 4. Don’t dump your personal baggage on the people you live with – especially if your living space is limited. These are words to live by; especially now that you’re no longer in control and you must stay at home with loved ones some of whom, like yourself, can become a bit tiresome, difficult or downright ornery.

In order to safeguard everyone’s mental, emotional and spiritual health – including your pet who can also absorb your projections – practice the Keep it Together Mudra before a meltdown takes place; then perform the Family Circle Meditation once a day with the other inmates.

The Family Circle Meditation

The Family Circle Meditation is based on the principle that family members living in the same household create their own unique family field. The field surrounds each family member in the household and fills them with energy and its essence or manifestation. To use the family field to maintain and enhance family relationships during the crises, have everyone in your household sit together in a circle with their eyes closed.

One family member can lead the meditation by having all family members breathe deeply through their noses for two to three minutes. The meditation leader should continue by having everyone assert, “It’s my intent to experience my personal family field.” After two to three minutes, everyone should continue by asserting, “It’s my intent to center my body, soul and spirit in my personal family field.” Everyone should enjoy the experience for another two to three minutes. Then the meditation leader can continue by having everyone assert, “It’s my intent to fill my family field with life-affirming energy and its essence.” Everyone should continue for five minutes. Then they should assert, “It’s my intent to share the excess energy and its essence, in my personal family field, with the members of my family field.” Everyone should enjoy the experience for ten more minutes. Then the meditation leader should count from one to five. When s-he has reached the number five, everyone can open their eyes and bring themselves out of the meditation.

Spiritual Hint # 5. Remain in balance. The ancient Greeks knew a lot about plagues and pandemics. The Athenians suffered one of their worst plagues during their war with Sparta in 430 BCE. As you might expect, the war didn’t go well for them.

In any case, Greek philosophers, including Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, recommended that you live like a ‘mensch’, which would be difficult without having a sound body and a sound mind. Since we all know that there is a double feedback mechanism at work here, keeping physically fit is essential if you plan to keep yourself mentally fit during your confinement. So, instead of sitting on the couch all day watching grade C movies on Netflix, get off your ‘tuchus’ and get the exercise you need. This will be easy even if you don’t have fitness equipment because there’s a plethora of fitness and hatha yoga videos available on the internet, especially on YouTube. You might also take the Buddha’s advice. He asserted that, “The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate trouble, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.”

The End of Part 1

In the past forty years, the number of diseases and ailments afflicting human beings have been growing at an accelerated pace. What’s more – it’s not only traditional diseases and ailments that have a clear viral or biological foundation, such as AIDS or the Ebola virus. The past few decades have witnessed an explosion of afflictions that have bewildered the orthodox medical community. That’s because, even with their best efforts, medical researchers haven’t been able to find a link between known pathogens and the symptoms of the afflictions. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or CFS is one of them.

CFS is a debilitating disorder characterized by profound fatigue which the medical community estimates afflicts millions of people worldwide. CFS is not improved by bed rest and may become worse with physical or mental activity. The parameters of the disease accepted by the medical authorities have not been well-defined. Although there is agreement that, in order to be diagnosed with CFS, a patient must suffer from the ailment for six months or longer and have four or more of the following symptoms: impairment of short-term memory and-or concentration, sore throat, tender lymph glands, muscle pain, multi-joint pain without swelling and redness, headaches, restless sleep and post-exercise fatigue lasting more than 24 hours. In most cases, the fatigue associated with CFS is severe enough to restrict activity.

Some sufferers of CFS experience additional symptoms, including abdominal pain, bloating, chest pain, panic attacks dry eyes and-or mouth, earache, nausea, night sweats, depression, anxiety, etc.

Some researchers originally tried to link CFS to a virus, but no firm association has been established. Others theorize that stress or environmental toxins trigger the illness. Still others think CFS is caused by some sort of autoimmune response or a general immunologic dysfunction.

CFS is Nothing New

To date, the medical community has found no biological cause for CFS. That hasn’t stopped health professionals from treating the symptoms individually with antiviral drugs and medications designed to reduce pain, discomfort, fever, depression and anxiety. These remedies, though effective to a degree, often cause other symptoms or problems unrelated to CFS, which can be even more debilitating.

A study of historical medical literature turns up conditions similar to CFS, which were treated in a similar way. In 1869, a disease akin to CFS known as ‘Neurasthenia’ was described in a medical text and treated with herbs and pharmaceutical medicine.

Why Failure Makes Sense

Western medicine’s failure to find the cause of the disease makes sense for two reasons which hinge on one another. Medical practitioners, en masse, don’t accept that a cause-and-effect relationship exists between physical and non-physical dimensions like their brethren in physics (think Superstring theory), and they don’t accept that subtle diseases are contagious – and that people who’ve integrated distorted fields of energy and consciousness into their body, soul and spirit can project elements of these fields into other people – infecting them with the same ailments that afflict them. It’s these failings that lie at the root of orthodox medicine’s inability to treat CFS effectively.

It’s interesting to note that Chinese medical texts recognized that the disease had a non-physical connection, centuries ago. They describe a condition much like CFS, known as 'Yin Deficiency.’ Extreme fatigue and sensitivity to cold are symptoms of the disease. So are muscle weakness, fatigue after exercise, cough, decreased appetite and muscle pain. The main cause of Yin Deficiency was thought to be an intrusion of negative Chi (distorted subtle energy) that disrupted the flow of life-affirming energy, including chi and jing (the essence of chi), through the human energy system.

Traditional Chinese practitioners have treated Yin Deficiency with herbal and homeopathic remedies designed to build Yin essence (Jing) and enhance Yang function. Acupuncture and traditional Oriental dietary therapy and Yoga have also been used to treat individual symptoms and restore vitality.

In spite of the fact that orthodox medicine has little to offer patients and Chinese medicine merely provides a method to restore chi, some CFS sufferers experience a reduction of symptoms even without treatment. Others experience cyclic periods of illness and relative well-being. There are sufferers who recover completely with time and some who grow progressively worse.

Let’s Start with the Basics

To understand why the condition of some patients improves while others worsen, let’s begin with some basic facts: Each human being has a subtle field that interpenetrates their physical-material body. The subtle field is composed of a series of interpenetrating fields of consciousness and subtle energy.

These fields along with the subtle organs and systems that support them have functions which most people mistakenly believe are performed exclusively by the physical-material body.

The functions I’m referring to include transmitting consciousness and energy, interacting with other living organisms, participating in intimate relationships and reacting to both positive and negative stimuli on both the physical-material and non-physical dimensions.

In order to carry out these functions, the subtle field must be continuously nourished by natural foods, clean air and from the vast reservoir of subtle consciousness and energy that Perusha (universal consciousness) and Prakriti (energy with universal qualities) supply in abundance to every human being.

Perusha enhances awareness and the functions of the inductive and deductive mind. Prakriti energizes the subtle field, its organs and vehicles and the physical-material body so that they can perform their prescribed functions without interruption.

On the level of soul, these functions are performed primarily by subtle organs known as chakras (vortexes), nadis (channels) and auric fields (reservoirs).

On the level of spirit, they are performed by energy gates (vortexes), meridians (channels), dantians and their smaller supporting cavities, and auric fields (reservoirs).

When Things Go South

If the functions of these organs are disrupted long enough by the intrusion of distorted fields and non-physical beings, then a condition marked by the same symptoms as CFS can be observed.

In most cases of CFS, the disruption of the subtle field begins in early childhood with the weakening of subtle boundaries caused by physical trauma, sexual abuse and-or neglect.

Subtle boundaries surround all vortexes, cavities and auric fields. They have two main functions. They separate the subtle field from the external environment, and they defend the subtle field against the intrusion of non-physical beings and distorted fields of energy and consciousness.

Unfortunately, a buildup of distorted fields and the intrusion of non-physical beings will interfere with the ability of subtle boundaries to carry out these functions – and they will create symptoms that are identical to those attributed to CFS by the orthodox medical community.

This explains the confusion experienced by medical authorities who still attribute the symptoms of CFS to physical pathogens and-or some other unidentified physical influence.

Overcoming CFS

By recognizing the cause-and-effect relationship between the symptoms of CFS and the non-physical universe, it’s possible to develop a method that can heal the ailment where it originates on the subtle levels. The method has three essential parts.

Part 1: For many people, the first part of the healing process may require a significant life-style change. That’s because the victim of CFS must stop engaging in activities that are self-destructive and that trap them in negative patterns of behavior. The sufferer must also recognize that freedom is not a license to do whatever they want. Many of the things people want are motivated by the same distorted fields and non-physical beings that create the symptoms of CFS.

What’s Sartre have to Do With It

Sartre famously declared, ‘Hell is other people.’ In one respect, he was right because dependent and controlling relationships also contribute to CFS. For the sufferer of CFS, these types of relationships are clear no-goes; so are relationships that are exhausting, make the sufferer feel weak and incompetent or not worthwhile.

The symptoms these relationships create, which are often the precursor of CFS, have their foundation in distorted fields and non-physical beings projected by people who are trapped in self-limiting patterns and who, at least on the subtle levels, demand that other people participate with them in these destructive relationships. Since the victim of CFS must reduce the amount of distorted energy and consciousness that is projected into their personal space, the space occupied by their physical-material body and their subtle field of energy and consciousness, the sufferer must distance themselves from people who engage in these self-limiting relationships or who are emotionally or physically violent, vindictive or inordinately dependent on them.

Part 2: A regimen of exercises to enhance the flow of life-affirming consciousness and energy through the subtle field is the next part of the healing process. A successful regimen should include exercises that enhance the functions of the chakras, on the level of soul, and the energy gates, on the level of spirit.

Hatha yoga is useful – so is Pranayama (Yogic breathing exercises) and exercises that center the sufferer in their authentic mind. Shiatsu massage, acupuncture and mudras can also be useful. At least at the beginning, rest is essential, particularly periods of mental rest which can be achieved through meditation.

Part 3: In the third part of the healing process, the sufferer will need to strengthen their boundaries. Boundaries can be strengthened in several ways; the sufferer can take responsibility for their decisions and activities by trusting their own intuition and discernment instead of putting their trust in an outside authority such as the Church, government or circle of friends. Commitments to no longer interact with non-physical beings are useful and will have an immediate and permanent effect on the health of their subtle boundaries.

Removing subtle projections and intrusions will accelerate the process even further. Anyone suffering from CFS should meet regularly with a practitioner who has the knowledge and skill to release distorted fields of consciousness, energy and non-physical beings that have intruded into their subtle field.

The End