The Present and the Future

From a personal point of view, and setting aside its wider implications, I am actually enjoying this lockdown. Where I am in the south of England the weather has been glorious over the last month. Sunny days, not too hot, blue skies and clean air, possibly due to the fact that traffic is back to the level of the 1950s. There are few people when you go out, much less noise and overall a feeling of peace and calm. I hesitate to say this, but the fear people are feeling actually appears to be making them behave a little better.

I have two comments to make on this. First, it is easier to be aware of the spiritual undercurrent to life when the material world has slowed down to a minimum. It's nothing like a monastery, of course, but there is an element of that. When I go out for my daily walk there is a relative silence and stillness that is conducive to directing one's mind towards God. It makes you realise how in the normal world everything conspires against that. Now, when people are not bustling about and car radios are not blasting their infernal racket into the public space, you notice that you are not constantly having to surround yourself with a sort of psychic armour which is quite exhausting, energy-wise. You can engage with your environment without having to fight it off. I find this a blessed relief and it makes me realise how degraded the atmosphere of the world has become, even in my lifetime.

The second thing is this. Are people becoming, ever so slightly, more prepared to open up to spiritual things? Fear of death is a wonderful prompt for doing this and Covid19 obliges in that respect. The opening up is clearly on a rudimentary level but let us suppose for the sake of argument that the virus and the response to it have been steered and directed by the demons with the eventual aim of control then collapse then despair or something along those lines. What if these things lead to a spiritual reaction as the only alternative to suicide? If there is nowhere else left to go then people might go there. That's not as good as them going there of their own accord because they have outgrown the attractions of worldly materialism but if worldly materialism turns very bad then it might cause them to search elsewhere, and that is a start.

The world has changed over the last few weeks and I don't believe it can ever go back to what it was. Where it will go is anyone's guess. Further down into increased spiritual emptiness and the next phase in the tightening of demonic control? Or might it start some kind of turning around? My best guess is that both things may happen. For a majority, the former looks most likely but a substantial minority may start to have the scales drop from their eyes. If you go by the media, this virus is an excuse to effectively deny the reality of God even more. It is quite remarkable how the media is so drugged by its own importance that it actually seems to want the virus to be really bad, seemingly for the sake of a story. The left, too, appears to want the situation to be bad and will attack anyone who says it's not as bad as all that. I would surmise that's partly because they see it as an opportunity to extend state control but also because the left is consumed with a desire for destruction, that's what it's all about after all, so something like a pandemic is grist to its mill. On the other hand, many on the right, particularly in America, go to the other extreme and dismiss it, and that's misguided too. Believing what you want to believe to suit a political agenda is wrong whatever stance you take.

One thing is certain. We have moved on to the next step. This will be a short phase between the past and a new world with different preoccupations. If the economies of the world shrink severely, as seems inevitable, the situation a year or two from now will be very different to that a year or two ago. The virus will be the least of our problems. People will become more dependent on the state which will not be a healthy position. But none of that will ultimately matter for those individuals who place their faith in God and their hope in a spiritual world far removed from the darkness of this world when it is separated from its spiritual source.