Loss of Discernment After COVID-19 Infection

Early in the coronavirus pandemic, an unfortunate symptom of COVID-19 infection was the loss of the human host’s sense of smell and taste.  While viruses mutate and symptoms change subsequently, the initial loss of these senses continues for many people, such as myself, even years after infection.  Although improved, it seems my sense of smell will never be the same, and its diminishment has been disorienting.  As I try to reorient myself in this world with my broken sense of smell, my musings are on the deeper implications of this handicap.

On a mundane level, losing my sense of smell has been accompanied by a loss of interest in food and, at times, a loss of appetite altogether.  How hard this must be for chefs, or food critics, or “foodies” in the same boat.  I’m grateful that I know enough about nutrition to “force feed” myself in order to keep my body fueled even when my appetite has checked out.  Although I can again taste food somewhat, eating has become an almost exclusively intellectual enterprise.  Given that eating is a famously visceral human experience, I’m not used to that yet. 

And even my intellect around food is reorienting itself, because the associations I have with food don’t pan out in reality anymore.  For example, I like ice cream, especially in the summer months.  But several outings in recent years with my ice cream-loving friend left me unsatisfied, with unfamiliar sensations in my mouth.  Because I couldn’t taste an ice cream sundae like I used to, I was suddenly keenly aware of its mouthfeel, often wondering what exactly I was eating.  It’s like having a reverse amnesia, if you will, where the memories you have of food don’t apply to your lived reality.  Instead of rediscovering life without memories, I’m revisiting memories without life in them.  Sometimes I can taste ice cream and enjoy it, but I never know when that’ll be.

What’s much more alarming to me are the instances in which I’m startled by my surroundings once my sense of smell suddenly and often momentarily reappears. This happened several times this summer as I worked temporarily in other’s homes, cooking and cleaning for immobile, elderly individuals, some with pets.  In these cases my eyes suspected there were noxious odors in the untidy environs, but I couldn’t smell them – until I could – and then I would often retch involuntarily.  Prior to my contracting COVID, it’s likely I’d have been able to smell the inside of such homes from outside their doors, and at least have had the sensory warning.  I suppose neglect of our elderly is an outcome of behavior held over from the pandemic, and that those elders I visited may also have a degraded sense of smell. 

We use our sense of smell for detection and discernment.  Is this food or drink spoiled?  Does the baby need a diaper change?  Do I have body odor?  Is there enough herb or spice in this dish I’m preparing?  Is what’s in the oven almost done?  Does this apartment I might rent smell mildew, or stale with cigarette smoke?  Is something burning?  Is there a gas leak?  Is that fresh paint?  Did my pet pee in the house?  Should I open a window while I clean with this product?  All gone for me now.  I used to be able to predict snowy weather because I could smell snow on its way!  Now I can rarely smell fresh-cut grass or the earth after a rain.

But these mundane losses, while disorienting and disheartening, are not my main concern.  Instead, what I recognize is a loss of deeper discernment, stemming from a deficiency in my sixth or brow chakra, where my coronavirus infection most severely manifested and did the most damage.  My frontal sinuses have never been the same, and are now my canary in the coal mine in the same way my tonsils used to be, alerting me to an inhaled or ingested pathogen early on.  I had the nonstop coughing also symptomatic of early iterations of COVID, but it was the pain in my third eye area that most debilitated me.

The chakras are energy centers in the human body as recognized by ancient India.  Even long before I became a bodyworker, the chakra system made sense to me, and inspired me to become a Reiki channel.  Many healing arts practitioners incorporate the energy body into their healing work, including medical intuitive and best-selling author Caroline Myss.  There are any number of authorities on this subject, but for my purposes here I’m sourcing Myss’ 2001 Sacred Contracts.  

Using Myss’ language, each chakra has its own power, strengths, lesson, and shadow side, as expressed through us, ideally in a balanced manner.  The sixth chakra is associated with wisdom and truth, with discerning through intellect and intuition our vision for our life, and with sagely guiding that vision into manifestation.  The sixth chakra helps us to see beyond our limited eyesight, beyond ordinary vision, to what is possible when we apply our creative imagination to physical form.  Successfully bringing your vision into reality requires discernment, and the ability to recognize what is true for you, while avoiding defining truth in self-serving ways.

In addition to losing my sense of smell, I’ve lost my vision for my life, I can’t see where I’m going, and I struggle to discern what is true simply for me.  Is it just me, or does it seem that we have an epidemic of deficient and shadowy expressions of the sixth chakra on our hands?  In an age of fake news, artificial intelligence, competing versions of “truth,” and controlling global agendas, when it’s ever more challenging to discern what is true and what is real, it seems I’m not the only one living with a dis-eased third eye. 

All of this equates to a truly bizarre experience for me, all the more disorienting because historically, my sixth chakra had been one of my healthiest, clearest, most vibrant chakras, according to those who can perceive such energies.  And that made sense to me, because I’d almost never felt lost or aimless, or as though I didn’t know what I was doing with my life.  But now, questioning my own life path is my norm.  Without my normal third eye vision, I feel vulnerable and wary unlike never before.

In this, I know I’m not alone.  In the span of one week, three separate men I admire, two a part of my life, announced that they are “followers of Jesus.”  Well, so am I, yet what that means differs slightly for each of us.  We may be in quite a pickle when we can’t even agree on “the way, the truth, and the life.”  I am struck by how many Americans have recently turned to Scripture, and are congregating in newly formed churches, in search of something relatively unchanging, reliable, and true.

Notably, the sixth chakra is associated with the pineal gland, located behind and between your eyes, within the epithalamus.  The epithalamus is a connector for the limbic system, which supports our sense of smell.  The pineal gland is responsible for melatonin secretion, which helps regulate our wake-sleep schedule and other circadian rhythms.  Associated with conscientious and moral behavior, a healthy pineal gland facilitates resistance to mind control and programming.  The pineal gland is perceived to be calcified and stagnant in the current human population as a result of substances toxic to us in high doses such as alcohol, tobacco, prescription medications, fluoride, and heavy metals.  I find it sad, to say the least, that COVID-19 further compromised this important and already beleaguered gland in our human bodies.  Many remedies and practices exist which are said to heal and activate the pineal gland, but I’ll let you research those yourself, should you discern the need.