During this month that ends in Halloween, the more I meditate on ebola, the more I see it as a symbol for “all that can go wrong” in a world where we don’t really understand ourselves, or the human body, or human relationships, or society in general, or, certainly and especially, Nature, from which this “dis-ease” either is or is not descended. (The alternative: ebola is a designer disease, set up to help kill off the “useless eaters” and bring on the police state.)

Ebola works so much better than war. After all, we just have to think about it, about bleeding to death from every orifice, and we’re terrified. Don’t want to go outside, where the winds might carry it. Don’t want to talk to anybody in case they sneeze, or breathe on us. Certainly don’t want to shake hands, or hug anybody.

It really makes no difference whether ebola is “real” (i.e., a single “dis-ease” with a single “cause”) or not. Just the very mention of it brings up Stephen King and other scare authors, all those awful zombie, monster and plague movies, etc.

Of course there are lots of things to do to possibly prevent ebola from ever “getting” us, including building the immune system so that it can ward off pathogens. That’s where eating right, sleeping adequately, managing stress, etc. comes in.

Even more crucial, it seems to me, is how ebola serves as the perfect foil for learning how to control the monkey mind, that part of us that freezes in fear while the nightmarish imagination runs rampant. If, inside ourselves, we instantly and automatically, go out of control, then how can we hope to ever control ebola?

Here’s an interesting and unusually thorough ebola article, via ran prieur.

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