As the world spins and slides from here to there, not knowing where we will land, every day is a dance with the unknown. In this year of the wrathful virus, we are given a hard nudge toward radical change. Everything is different now, in this vigil we keep. Now, after some weeks of social distancing, constant disinfecting, washing hands, and staying alone, in pairs, or within family systems, it has become a time of retreat. It’s a time when I experience in sharp, earthy, deep and poignant ways my common connection with humanity. It’s a time when we all have a great urgency to turn to sources of spiritual inspiration to cultivate faith, courage, and a steady heart.

The beauty of nature is always a place of refuge for me. Each morning I look out across a high desert prairie to distant western mountains. When this COVID-19 retreat began in mid-March, the mountains were patched with snow and often veiled by low-hanging thick clouds in gray and silver, white and brooding pale charcoal. The pinion pines stood solid across the landscape, black-green silhouettes that marked the view with perspective. Now it’s April 2020 and the high desert skies are, once again, a penetrating blue. The weather has changed, but the pines—unchanging sentinels—are still there.

Looking out at the world this morning from my cottage, the silence roars with divine presence. Beauty penetrates my senses. Grace is an open secret in the air. Somehow, all is well. Mornings are a favorite time of prayer, and there is so much to pray about. At times the suffering of the world comes rushing in, a restless mass of sorrows, a heaving ocean of souls. Then all the detail comes into focus, and I think of my family, near and far, my sangha mates, dear friends, loved ones in America and Europe, and even farther away in India. Then there are the impersonal, nameless others, to whom I am connected by virtue of our shared humanity. As the Buddha said, all life is suffering, and the source of that suffering is our attachment and identification—our desire to remain the same in the face of implacable impermanence. All their faces pierce me and come to rest upon my heart. They want to take refuge there, for we have a great need for one another.

Early morning glimmers like a pearl as light arrives on the land to the sounds of early birds that flit and fly from tree to tree. They are ready to be fed. The thought forms: Will I run out of food for them during this madness? That’s really the least of my worries! But it is a metaphor for the radical uncertainty with which we are all faced.

In March it poured like the summer monsoons that visit the desert every year. The recent pounding rains have made deep ruts and runnels in the dirt road that winds through the prairie and steeply uphill to reach the mesa were I live. Before the rains, I had enjoyed driving on the newly repaired and fortified road—now it’s a rocky, bumpy, washed-out road, once again. Even so, rain in the desert is always a blessing.

Everything is subject to change, the one inviolable law in this world. Yes, it all passes, but while it is here, it is real. Change is upon us. Life after COVID-19 will not be the same for many of us. The world is moving through a time of shock and ruin. Many people will not recover entirely from certain financial loss. Many will soon experience greater discomfort as our way of life, daily habits, and quality of life is changed. We may lose homes, jobs, and other forms of security that we have enjoyed. We will be forced toward a much greater simplicity.

What we are going through is not a nightmare; it is open-eyes, wide awake real. And it is always better to accept reality as it is rather than to fight it, pretend it’s not happening, or wish and hope it could be different. Those whose loved ones have or will die will be transformed in some way by the power of grief. The fear of death and loss is in the air. All of this makes it a good time to seek and contemplate the “treasure in heaven that moth and dust cannot corrupt,” as a wise man once said. That is, to contemplate what is Real.

Gratitude flows when we know what is real. Aware of its realness, we are led toward the Sacred. This food I eat is real. This water I drink is real. This ground where I walk is real. These trees, these spring flowers are real. The sky above me and all the vast space of the world is real. And yes, this virus is real. The suffering and deaths of many are real.

“This is real”— a simple statement that asserts the tangible reality of what is here and now—is one of the ways my guru, Lee, taught me to practice inner yoga. It has the potential to center me in the present moment, and it is there, in this moment right now, that I find the secret entrance to a sacred world.

Sometimes I say “just this” to assert the truth of what is, as it is, here and now. It is my guru’s instruction for telling the truth of the moment in which I exist, right now. Lee often said that he did not agree with the non-dualists, who say that this world is nothing but an illusion. Yes, the illusions of the mind are many, and we do want to see them clearly, but this aching beauty and love, horror and joy, freedom and slavery of our living is essentially sacred, and it is real. It’s one of Lee’s greatest and most important teachings, called enlightened duality, which sustains me. When we remember the sacred world, when we pay attention to what is real, the doors of the treasure house open up, life becomes the holy playground of the Divine, and the soul finds sanctuary in the source of it all.

More than ever, it is vital to be connected to what is real, true, sustaining. “This is real” applies to physical or emotional pain. “This is real” can help make some space in the crowded, rowdy shacks of the mind—the busy, distracted, obsessing mind that reels under the onslaught of the raw fear that hides behind many different emotions and thoughts.

Fear is not a failure. Fear is a natural response of the human organism. It is an opportunity to be intimate with reality. To know what’s real. And when it is real, we may still be sad or afraid, but something within us can relax with it.

It helps me to name whatever primal passion is coming up. “This is fear,” or “This is anger.” Or, “This is anxiety.” Avarice, greed (I will get the toilet paper before anyone else does…), anxiety, panic, pride, grief, worry—all these are doorways into what is real. I have to remind myself to get into relationship with the emotion. Give it a name. Embrace it without doing anything about it. Let it be, accept that it is passing through me. It will come and it will go, like the clouds in the sky. It is an experience of my humanity, and I am one small human, a tiny speck of stardust in the grandeur of this Universe.

This realization tells me that I am limited—a natural fact. I am not powerless, I am simply limited, and in relationship with my limitations I discover humility, another doorway. This time it’s a doorway to gratitude. It’s paradoxical and ironic that humility is empowering. What gets empowered by humility? The soul. The soul know that prayer has great power.