By practicing awareness and non-judgment, you create space. You provide some breathing room between an action and a reaction and in this space, in this pause, something new can emerge—an insight, or a bit of compassion. This is the beginning of transformation.

Are you as tired of hearing and reading about this horrid virus as I am? It’s like hearing about the hurricane that’s brewing off-shore: we hear report after report, we prepare, we hoard, we hunker down and we wait and worry and watch the news and wonder if it will really hit, and when, and whether it will hit us, or just those other unfortunate people.

Chinese medicine calls viruses “Pernicious Evil Influences,” which sums it up pretty perfectly. They are all three of those things. But while viruses are nasty, the anxiety they generate is worse … much worse.

I’ve been dealing with some big issues lately, things that hurt my brain and stir my emotional pot; things that if not kept on a tight rein release a toxic tsunami of anxiety. So I picked up Eckhardt Tolle’s A New Earth to try to get some perspective.

On May the second, I drove through our little town early in the morning taking my son to school, and was greeted by a display of American flags along California Street. I wondered what holiday it was, but quickly realized it wasn’t a holiday; it was a celebration of Osama bin Laden’s death–or killing to be precise. And since that time I have been consumed by a deep and abiding consternation and a heavy heart.