Australia, August 2020
Like any other dire complications or crises many of us have already faced, Covid-19 holds a mirror to our faces. Like every other taxing moment, the pandemic reflects our family dynamics, our priorities and a culturally adopted superficiality. It has widened pre-existing cracks in ourselves and in the status quo, making them glaring.
Not enough time. Not enough energy. Too much stress.
There used to be a time in the not-so-distant past when we felt there weren’t enough hours in the day to work, to meet certain obligations, to prepare dinner, to take care of the children’s various needs before attempting to squeeze in quality time with our adult loved one.
Time for self-care, anyone? Time to develop a meditation practice or a healthy, relaxing downtime activity?
You had to be kidding! We weren’t getting enough exercise even before the pandemic struck.
So, a question worth asking ourselves is what has gotten in the way of us leading the life we thought we would be leading as healthy, happy and responsible adults with our heart in the right place, as the expression goes.
Another question worth asking is: do we care enough about our selves to envisage, visualise and energise a new narrative about our short and long-term objectives, with holistic wellness at its core?
Together and separately, privately or overtly, unconsciously or consciously, all of humanity has always longed for a profound and wholehearted life lived creatively, a life lived fully, a life truly worth living.
The inception of ancient faiths and noble religious constructs were Man’s early attempts at freedom from the mind.
It was the path the believers hacked through their own culture to reach, while on Earth, an envisioned, energised, glorious state of being.
Ancient wisdom developed the concepts of altruistic caring, hope, compassion, trust, gratitude and detachment in the search for this inner place of contentment.
The proverbial expression Heaven on Earth encapsulates their holistic aspiration for themselves and for mankind.
Serious question: millennia later, when peace simply means the absence of war, are we able to envisage emotional freedom from dogma, free from the past and free from cultural indoctrination?
We are all very familiar with babies, toddlers and teenagers who throw tantrums.
We see young adults and grownups and, maybe, ourselves, too, curled up in the foetal position on the sofa or on a bed.
We see them binge on chocolates, popcorn, porn, alcohol, streaming and video sharing apps – anything that distracts them briefly from uncomfortable emotions before the after-effect ripples throughout their system.
Suffering is a choice. Not choosing, not deciding, not actively surrendering to what is, like not voting, like any inaction is an action all the same.
They all generate ripples.
Walking away, shifting blame, resisting, pretending, breaking ties, shirking responsibilities only setup obstacles of varying height and width.
Our persona wants us to be happy and carefree, but the ways it chooses to do that on our behalf only create unease and disease.
It misinterprets the line of least resistance.
Our persona identifies with the content of our mind.
There is no rainbow to catch because there are no such things as rainbows.
No such things as ‘the future’ either.
So, beyond the, at times, unpredictable series of moments that present themselves underfoot, what comes naturally to us?
Just as what we do defines who we are so, as our energy goes where we place our thoughts … choosing what we do is always paramount.
Seriously, what makes us happiest?
What do we do that we love doing while mindful of our loved ones’ existence?
Beyond succumbing to lethargy, might we one day really love healing ourselves holistically?
A real coming of age means that we have much stronger coping skills than we did when we were children.
Home now is the place where the real coming of age ‘home’ work is intended to happen.
It can be tough today being something more, someone better than we were yesterday, but the good news is: we are, and always will be, the same love-able ‘someone’ we always are deep-down.
The main difference would be that we would be guided by our inner self, not just by our ego-persona, our limited self.
But, as Yudit CS, my Israeli mentor of 10 years used to say, ‘Ze mah yesh.’ That’s the way it is. Like it or lump it!
Ouch! Limited self? OMG! Our ego-persona, by nature of its … nature seriously objects to being called ‘limited’.
None of what we feel, think and do – not even our inaction – is neutral.
Along with lethargy, inertia is a choice, and it comes laden with its invisible but highly energised consequences.
So, when faced with a setback, what healthier option do we have besides daring to the point where we surprise ourselves?
Question: how do we do that?
Answer: by pursuing means that quieten our mind and fortify our heart.
By not taking everything as ‘persona -lly’ as we do – as we’ve been trained to do in childhood, and beyond.
It might seem like a bit of a brain twister to think that we need to lose ourselves to find who we really are.
Be that as it may, the alternative, no matter how much in denial we might be, is to live in fear of our own responses, in fear of that others will think of us and in fear of the ‘next’ plot beat or sinkhole to crack open in the next moment underfoot.
It means that most of us, most of the time, live in survival mode by way of a sympathetic nervous system as easily triggered as an over-sensitive alarm system shrieking throughout the house and neighbourhood, even in the dead of night.
So, up to us, together and separately, to deactivate our glitchy alarm systems and, in relative calm, look for the crux of our issues.
Up to us to find the most direct, simple and robust solution out of left-field but within the realm of coherent karmic possibilities.
That could be the solution that pulls the rug out from under our old self and leaves it no room to return.
When, for one reason or another, we can’t ‘go outside’, we can’t leave the house, it’s our karmically-induced opportunity to ‘go inside’, to dive in, stay there for a while and explore.
It’s never a cue to escape physical reality.
It’s our cue to connect to Soul, our inner self, the seat of our personal empowerment.
It’s our cue to plan, imagine, visualise and activate a plan to feel exhilarating energy and feel meaningfully creative in how we problem-solve states of loneliness, disconnection and apprehension.
Synchronicity at play always gives us the option to tune in to Soul, which some prefer to call our inner self, our intuitive self, our essential self or our higher self.
Regardless of how we refer to this energy, we are all referring to the source of our evolutionary potential – our dedicated unerring GPS set on the surest route to sustained contentment.
Though quasi dormant from lack of stimulation, Soul does her best to whisper to us the best short-term trajectory via self-inquiry on the long road to fulfilment, our optimal destination.
Her compass is set on a destination we are unable to envisage on our own because of the early childhood programming that has become our persona-lity.
So, as we do with our phone GPS when we believe it hasn’t triangulated correctly and has not identified where on Earth we actually are in regards to our intended destination, we override Soul’s whispered instructions.
We are convinced that the most expedient path to follow is the one we can ad-lib on the spot.
We think we know how to proceed without Soul’s guidance, so we deviate from her whispered trajectory.
We don’t pause. We don’t reflect. We plough on.
We don’t hear the ‘ta-dum’ sound indicating she’s aware of our mistake; that she is recalibrating our trajectory; that unforeseen complications might now pop up to meet us.
Meanwhile, we find ourselves taking a few wrong exits off the highway.
We get embroiled in unnecessary streets thought to be short cuts.
We lumber slowly between trucks and buses.
The voice of the GPS resumes its function. By now, irritated as we are, we find it too loud. It’s annoying.
We tap the screen to mute it and we find ourselves slipping in and out of dense traffic areas, narrow lanes and cul-de-sacs.
We circle roundabouts.
Eventually, we accept that we’ve lost our way and stop at a petrol station for directions.
In real life, we might – or might not – find our way, days, months or years later, back to that first major wrong turn with the option to start again differently.
Coherently. From the inside-out.
If only we knew how to tap into the many dimensions of consciousness and reality that would allow our selves to go beyond the known, the perceived reality that has seldom served us to the maximum!
It would allow us to regain our sovereignty as the observer of our mind.
What if we knew we could go far beyond what we can ordinarily do, by trusting that there are several coherent possibilities and alternatives ready for heart-based sampling?
What if we knew how to unzip the possibilities of amazing shifts in our level of contentment that we had thought were only accessible in a parallel universe?
Perhaps stating the obvious that is so often bypassed, the 11th President of India known as People’s President A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, stated, “You have to dream before your dreams can come true.”
Thing is, if not now, at the time so much of what we have taken for granted is changing then, when would be a better time to rethink many of the persona-lity traits we have respected and disrespected, embraced and rejected? Those that, as individuals and as participants in the greater collective, we activated according to the impulses of our ego-persona?
So, what now, dear Reader, Warrior for the greater good?
