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Armando Vazquez.
By Armando Vazquez / Guest contributor
The murky blinding white lights of eternity:
It was touch and go for a couple weeks with me and my recent bout of Covid. In my worst feverish bouts of acute pain, hallucination and delirium a couple of times I swear I saw those murky blinding white lights of eternity. In the past three years we had been one of the real lucky families in this country. We had been dodging and miraculously avoided get infected with Covid. We had done everything scientifically and deliberately possible to stay away from the deadly disease. I have a chronic, pervasive, and serious auto immune defect in my nervous system that seems to have been passed on to all my children. We are a super high risk family, so we made a very conscience decision to isolate from everyone and everything. Very early on we all got our shots, boosters, used sanitizer religiously throughout the day, we are a mandatory mask family when we go out into the foreboding world. Most importantly I believe, is the fact that we as a family, had the financial, familial and spiritual capacity/support to be able to effectively lock out the world. So we did! We lived in almost complete isolation for the past three years. And then one day, for one moment, we let our collective guard down and Covid struck our family with a vengeance! We all got Covid, all of us at the same time. Debbie and I got super nasty strain of the Covid virus.
Inner Circle:
In my worst Covid moments, and there were many, I thought a lot about death and dying. Sergio, my older brother and my lifelong best friend, had died of Covid complication about two year ago. I was not permitted to visit him in the hospital when he was dying. In my Covid convalescence and solitude I thought about my brother, my children, my family, my friends, and my life. It was always a very heavy meditative reconciliation process that was conducted in the feverish shadows, I feared, of my impending death. This healing meditation brought me fear and joy, anxiety and peace, painful revelations, angst and a clarity of my life’s mission and purpose that I had never experienced. Covid did that for me (to me?). I could not get away from my temporary purgatory. I was captive to both the Covid and my mind. Many times I thought if this horrific disease doesn’t kill me it will render me permanently insane. But no, the fever, the fog, the fear lifted, and I am no crazier today than when I first got sick with Covid. I am, to be sure, a grateful, humbled and transformed man.
Outer Circle:
Who can argue that our current world, is a chaotic, conflicted and complicated place that is being destroyed, at light speed, by a few super evil powerful greedy stupid old men? I am an old man. Am I one of those stupid old men? Am I an active part of the human solution or part of the problem? Should I just rollover and wait for the big sleep in blissful ignorance? In my Covid dreams and nightmare I spoke often to my beloved and long departed jefita and she counseled me with those see everything eyes, soothing words, curandera hands and she would lovingly reminded me.
“Mijo, cuidate y tu familia, y si se esta callendo el cielo, muevete Chato!”
My mother was reminding me as she had all life to focus on the inner circle, the familia. So I am slowly coming back from my Covid nightmare (I am not completely out of the woods) and like you I have no idea what tomorrow will present to me. But I do know today what I will do, I will love unconditionally and without reservation, with as much purpose and clarity that I can muster.
LOVE is the KEY:
In the work that Dr. Deborah DeVries and I do through the KEYS Leadership Academy at the Café on A in Oxnard, for over 3 decades we work with many sisters and brothers who have been abandoned by family, friends, and most if not all, by a cold blooded cruel world. Most of these “lost souls” we work with were, in horrific pain, terrified and looking for their lost childhood — often in the wrong places, always in desperation. I was one of those lost and frightened souls!
For many of us our search leads us to alcohol, drugs, prostitution, gangs or abusive relationships. Others will somehow manage to find a way to live a “normal” life. What we are always looking for is love. It has been our experience that an incredible transformation and empowerment can take place in all who are touched by the sacred power of unconditional love. So, when Debbie and I promoted this idea in the work we do, we were often met with skepticism. Today I tell you, unequivocally, love is KEY!
We press on with our unconditional love and have found that even the most troubled souls respond to this approach.
Here is our seven-step approach to our unconditional love philosophy that I will continue to practice and share with the world:
- Unconditional love is unconditional acceptance of the person asking for a helping hand. Unconditional acceptance does not make demands on the individual. We accept the obvious fact that the individual has perhaps lost the road map to life (or perhaps just taken a wrong turn); either way, unconditional love will eventually redirect the individual.
- Unconditional love will produce loving individuals, and then everything in this person’s life is possible. All the behavior demanded, such as personal accountability, responsibility and resourcefulness that the individual could never master before will eventually be a natural by-product of unconditional love.
- Unconditional love is action-driven. It requires the servant provide individualized services to the client. The servant cannot deliver unconditional love with empty hands; the servant must engage power and institutions so goods and services are unconditionally made available.
- Unconditional love will eventually inoculate even the most troubled client, transforming the client into the servant.
- Unconditional love is fearless. Even when the task seems impossible, it will find a way.
- Unconditional love is forever. There are no time frames, schedules or deadlines. The servant understands a client may backslide a few or a hundred times. It does not matter. Eventually, unconditional love will liberate this client.
- Unconditional love is available to each of us, and we can all practice it, but first we must learn to lead and act with the heart.
We at the KEYS Leadership Academy request that we give the greatest gift we can: the gift of unconditional love to every one of our sisters and brothers that we love, meet, and serve. It will bring love, peace and happiness to all who receive it.
— Armando Vazquez, M.Ed., founding member of CORE and the Acuna Art Gallery and Community Collective.