It is Gamma Day today.
Normally this would be a day of celebration for me. In recent years I even made pelgrimages to Delphi and Rome on this day. This year, not surprisingly, I stay at home.
This is not a time for celebrations. We are in the midst of a worldwide health crisis and there is no end in sight. Just like everybody else I worry a lot about the impact this crisis will have on our lives.
On Gamma Day I usually celebrate how the Gamma Tao came into existence. This year the focus is on reflection.
What is the use of the Gamma Tao in times of crisis?
The Gamma Tao originated from a personal crisis, exactly seven years ago. My dear father fell terminally ill and while I was coping with this difficult situation, unexpectedly I found a wave of inspiration. Three months later I had this Gamma symbol, a simple model containing almost everything I wanted to say.
This symbol continues to inspire me to this day. The magic of the Gamma Tao is for me its profound simplicity. It works like a tool to calibrate your mind set. I have used it countless times now. Sometimes even several times during a day. And it helps me. Time and again.
So, how does it work?
Key values and golden treasures
First of all, the Gamma Tao constantly reminds me of the key values gratitude, compassion and just proportion (or balance) and the three “golden treasures” related to these values: the Golden Gift (human creativity), the Golden Rule and the Golden Mean or Golden Ratio.
In its active form the γ itself is a model for resilience, indicating a step-by-step approach to face the challenges of life. Let’s follow these steps in the context of the crisis we are now facing.
Step 1: Acceptance
A crisis usually happens unexpectedly. We do not see it coming and when it finally reveals itself it in its entirety, it may absorb all our attention. We need this kind of focus to survive an acute crisis. In a prolonged crisis situation like this global pandemic, we cannot keep high levels of concentration all the time. There is also no need for this. We have the opportunity to step back and assess the whole situation.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. In a crisis there will be some of all of these.
If you can, start to find the Good in this crisis. Count your blessings. A crisis rarely touches every aspect of our lives in the same destructive way. It can be very difficult to feel any gratitude in the midst of a crisis, but most of the times there still remains a lot to be grateful for.
It is good for your mental health to try to be as grateful as you possibly can. In this way your mind set remains positive. Research has also shown that there is a strong correlation between happiness and gratitude.
You may ask: grateful for what? Grateful to who? Personally I do not always need an object for my gratitude. You can be grateful in many ways. Believers can be grateful to their God(s), some of them even in the most miserable of circumstances. Non-believers can be grateful to other people (or to their pets who do not seem to suffer at all now).
During this particular crisis it is easy and almost mandatory to be grateful to all the working people who keep vital services running and to health care workers in particular.
Unfortunately, there is no crisis without the Bad and the Ugly.
Acceptance is the zero value on the scale from gratitude to misery. Many philosophies of life, both from the East and the West, recommend to accept whatever comes to us with a degree of detachment.
Philosophies like Buddhism and Stoicism can therefore help us to beat feelings of misery and avoid that our state of mind falls below zero for an extended period of time.
And then there is always Hope. Many religions offer us hope for better times. Hope is a powerful idea to fight mental misery. Life is hope. Without hope there is no life.
Spiritual practices like meditation and prayer can help us to set our mind straight. It may be a good idea to try meditation these days, if you do not already have some experience with it.
Daily rituals can also provide a lot of comfort for the mind. These rituals can include physical exercise.
Anyway, we will not be able to solve this crisis all by ourselves, so it is very useful to keep The Serenity Prayer in mind these days:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.
Step 2: Compassion
When we have accepted the crisis as good as we possibly can, we will be less prone to misery and panic. Now we can start to deal with the crisis itself in the best way we can.
Be aware that the Gamma Tao only offers remedies for the human mind. It offers no cure for our physical bodies.
The Romans strived for a mens sana in corpore sano: a healthy mind in a healthy body. The two are intimately connected. A healthy mind will certainly increase your resistance, but if you feel sick or want to keep your body healthy, please, follow your doctor’s advice.
The Gamma Tao reminds us to stay compassionate. The Golden Rule treasure teaches us that we should not treat others in a way that we do not want to be treated ourselves. We must be mindful that in a crisis we suffer in much the same way as others.
During a crisis compassion and kindness are very important. We all need each other more than ever. We must not try to pass our burden on to others, let alone try to make an excessive profit out of this crisis.
Many wisdom traditions teach us how we can cultivate compassion. This is probably a good occasion to listen to these teachings again and again.
The current crisis offers many opportunities for us all to practice compassion.
Compassion has great benefits to our mental health. Just like gratitude, helping others gives us a good feeling about ourselves and generates happiness and joy.
Step 3: Balance
Feelings and emotions are at the heart of the Gamma Tao, because ultimately they give value and meaning to our lives. In some wisdom traditions you may have to separate yourself from your emotions as much as possible. This may be true for these higher wisdom paths. The Gamma Tao is only a beginners path.
There is a place for feelings of grief, anger and despair. These feelings can also offer some relief. It is unnatural not to feel pain in the face of real suffering.
Feelings and emotions however have no limits. Their intensity varies constantly and they cannot always be trusted. Especially in times of crisis emotions can become so intense that they become dysfunctional and block our capacity to take the right actions.
We cannot be led by the chaos of our emotions. We need our rational faculties to find balance. The Golden Ratio or Golden Mean is the treasure that stands for balance or just proportion.
In order to find the just proportion we need to put things into perspective. Our own personal perspective is limited. We need to keep our hearts and minds open for the different points of view that others can provide.
We also need scientific and logical methodology to assess the situation in a systematic way.
Comment sections on websites often show strong opinions. In the current health crisis many seem to have become epidemiologists overnight. They jump to conclusions and even condemn others who do not share their recently acquired insights.
We always tend to overestimate our knowledge. This is called the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Good scientists are much more careful. They keep in mind how little they actually know, even when they are making a lot of progress or when their advice is needed.
Socrates was once considered the wisest man of the world by the Oracle of Delphi, because he knew his own ignorance. This helped him to keep an open, always examining mind.
In a crisis like this there are no simple solutions. We have to proceed with the limited knowledge we have and try to make wise decisions.
In a health crisis it is good to be extra careful. Beter safe than sorry.
Step 4: Creativity
Finally, we have to find our way out of a crisis and make a turnaround. The Gamma Tao always tries to lead us to a wise and positive mind set. The final leg of the γ clearly goes in an upward direction.
We need our Golden Gift treasure, human creativity, to make this shift.
We can already see an explosion of creativity in the way people respond to the corona crisis. There is a lot of creativity in the way people work from home and try to help and entertain themselves and others.
The creativity in the Gamma Tao is not limited to so-called creative people. We all possess the Golden Gift of creativity.
Creativity is probably the most distinctive trait of our species. We use to call ourselves “sapiens”, but that claim may very well turn out to be a tragic exaggeration. We are certainly a “homo creans”, a creating human being.
We respond to situations not only by our instincts. We appear to have a degree of creative freedom to respond to a given situation. In this way we create culture. And the enormous diversity of our cultures is a clear indication of our creative freedom.
We are not talking here about Creativity with a capital C. We do not need to be artists to be creative in real life situations.
There is also no need for big gestures (all though they may be welcome in a crisis like this).
We can all be creative in countless small ways. Giving up a craving is a creative response. These days you can help the community already by simply staying at home.
A crisis forces us to change our habits. A crisis is also an opportunity for change.
We should try to make these creative responses transformative. Transformation means that we overcome our habitual self, our ego, and become a better version of ourselves.
All religions and philosophies of life share this and aim for positive personal transformation. If you just perform your daily or weekly rituals as a cultural habit, you are most certainly missing the essence of your own wisdom tradition.
In the Gamma Tao this transformation is represented by the seed and the sunflower.
The black and white peel of the sunflower seed symbolise the good and bad circumstances we are experiencing in the present moment. Our creative potential is the actual seed within the peel.
We should strive to transform every situation into a sunflower.
These are my reflections on this weird Gamma Day. I hope it is useful. Everybody is free to try to use it or just leave it.
Whatever you do, stay safe!