REFLECTION

Life and death are hot topics in the psyche for the mass of humanity for the first time in a very long time… They have also become hot topics in my household, as my children try to understand the loss of our beloved cat Ninja; the first big death they have ever really experienced. Ninja was with me for fourteen years, three years before I even became a mother. He has been a constant in their life through everything we’ve been through together, and now, he is simply no longer with us. My youngest and my other cat have been suffering this change the most, or have hidden their grief the least. I have been called to take this grand topic of the great fear of humanity, and translate it into the beauty and blessing that it is in the language of a three year old child.

As a species, we are finally being called to stop, to look in the mirror, to see in the darkness where the stars truly fall. We are watching our world buckle under the weight of reality, at long last. We have run from it for so long, pushed it away, tried to ignore it any way we possibly can. At the end of the day though, the sun must set, and the darkness must have its turn. Here we are, in the twilight, and it is beautiful. I want to remind you that night is a splendid thing as well. Death, discomfort, uncertainty: these are wonderful gifts, in a great many ways. We cannot run from it forever, and nature cannot allow us to keep pushing it away to the tune of exponential (population) growth. She cannot endure us ignoring her needs, like babes sucking at her tit with ferocious vigor, eager to grow to monstrous proportion without any thought of consequence. She has effectively put us down and is making us cry it out as, like an exasperated mother; she can simply take no more.

The natural world has forced us to sit down, shut up, and LISTEN for a change. The queen has risen to remind us that our lives are precious, right now! Tomorrow is not guaranteed, and never will be. We have become so comfortable that we have forgotten, regardless of the price paid (as long as we don’t have to see it, we simply put it out of our minds). We have come apart at the seams as a species, and it is these events which shall hopefully mend the bonds. We are entering the dark, the quiet, the yin of ourselves together as one world… that sacred space of stillness wherein we hide all the things we don’t want to own up to within ourselves. This is only the beginning… the longer we must tuck ourselves away from each other, the more we will be forced to see the truths of ourselves we did not want to see. It WILL be uncomfortable, often in unexpected ways. It will challenge us to fully become ourselves again, to accept who we REALLY are rather than what we have been striving to be.

So, how is everybody doing out there? Grateful that you have food in your fridge, Netflix on your screen, four cozy walls to keep you safe and your family close? Maybe you are making the most of a difficult time, trying to spread the love with window paintings, positive social media posts, helping your neighbors and supporting essential workers? Do you feel ‘happy’, or at the very least, ‘satisfied’ like you are supposed to be (by social convention)? Are you ‘being strong for your kids’, driving yourself to drink attempting to keep them busy and entertained, maybe attempting to take homeschooling to the next level? Perhaps you are grasping at joy by expanding on holiday traditions or pulling in holidays which make you happiest from times not traditional at all?

Or, let’s be frank here: Are you ACTUALLY experiencing your humanity right now like any sane, reasonable person would? We are in a global pandemic with a 21% kill rate of its resolved cases (see ‘closed cases’ at https://virusncov.com/), approaching 2 million infected globally. Either your world has been turned upside down completely, or you are trying to hold onto routines from before in a very different world. You are either still working (and handling the additional stressors of the massive adaptations required to navigate work in these abruptly different times), or have come to a sudden stop to face life without that routine distraction. If you have kids, they are growing increasingly restless in a world without school, friends, or adventures; then there’s homeschooling. Maybe you are wondering how long the supply chains for necessities and such are going to hold out under the strain of nothing being open to support our truckers, and global transportation grinding to almost a full stop? To start wearing face masks everywhere or not? Going for a walk is nice… but maybe there’s still too many people out and about, or you feel judged at every turn for not just hiding in your home? Then there are the financial realities of the wide array of situations, either strained by a lack of income or strained by the decimation of the global economy…

How much of your life was or is for everyone else? Is the work you do really for you, or just for the sake of the bills our society tells you to pay? Do you truly care about the money? Are the people in your home nourishing you or sucking the life out of you, or have you learned boundaries and balance with them? Is the home you keep really for you, or to please someone else in some way? Are the things you occupy yourself with in your free time things that nourish your soul, nourish others in some way, or are they just what you perceive is expected of you? Are you LIVING, or have you been SURVIVING? Now we are told we must hide away to survive, and many feel this new limitation chafing to their sense of freedom. Do you feel like your life is over by being forced to spend time with yourself? Are you such uncomfortable company? Or perhaps you are bound and determined to be the good samaritan, giving all of yourself to the well being of others… Is this a genuine desire to help, or another attempt to avoid actually facing that quiet space within? Whatever comes up must be honored, because anything else is just a continuation of a game of evasion from the truth.

Others are being forced to carry on, within insanely high expectation levels, pushing through the strain of the increased risk of illness or death. To put on gloves and a mask, or perhaps neither, and to just keep carrying on through the increasing intensity. THAT is really what this is all about: intensity. We have been running from that very thing as a society and as individuals, all along. The positive or “good vibes only” movement is a prime example; heaven forbid we lean into our discomfort and allow ourselves to expand from those points of contraction (like nature intended)! It is the DARK which helps to grow, to become brighter versions of ourselves, and to learn how much we are truly capable of. It is the intensity of DIScomfort which grants us that, and by vehemently pushing away at all that which is anything less than comfortable, we deny ourselves that opportunity.

The saddest part of this movement and societal perspectives around intensity and perceived “negativity” is that it forces most to walk through these waters alone, because no one wants to deal with it. Not only have many taken to pushing away at these experiences within themselves, but also to pushing away the people who cannot or will not deny themselves that. People make excuses to not truly be present for someone who embraces this growth, because we have it so ingrained in us to run from discomfort rather than embrace it with open arms for the opportunity that it truly is (or in the case of people, some of the most genuine and loving individuals are continually pushed away because of this ingrained inclination). Being present for someone in the dark, especially when the dark lingers, is not the most fun social activity; it is where the most beautiful connections live though. Now, one way or the other, we are being called to lean into discomfort and intensity. Perhaps it is the intensity of continuing to go to work every day, attempting to carry on within a suddenly very different world trying to keep it afloat under the mantle of feeling “essential”. The intensity of suddenly having your life dramatically altered with an end to working, trapped with our families or ourselves and given an abundance of time to sort through our own internal processes. Both are equally important and pertinent, and would benefit so greatly from support and kindness for whatever we are experiencing in the waters of our lives.

As a species, we have continually done this psychological evasion with death in particular. It is truly incredible how much people will do to attempt to forget they are mortal. Medical science has come a long way within that cause, however you are about to see it level up substantially as it is now forced to see health in a whole new light. It will be forced to take aspects of WELLNESS more seriously than ever before, and encouraged to see the body in a new way as it comes to understand why certain people are dying of this virus that they do not expect. We are being encouraged to remember that life is not promised to us, that we too have limited time, and that tomorrow truly anything (even the unimaginable) can and does happen. In our lives of excessive comfort, most seem to assume that life is “supposed” to be about 70-100 years, and act as though they have all this time. We forget our most precious commodity of all, throwing it away to live a life which is expected of us rather than the life which screams to be expressed from within our hearts. Death is the gift which grants us a precious quality to the moments and days of our lives. Without an end to our stories, they would dwindle down to the lowest denominator of the repetition of our ego patterns, a boring spiral which becomes predictable and mundane. We would always be searching for something, never to find it, until the madness of that reality wore us down enough to “die” in other ways. Some do this to themselves with our lifespan as it is already… It is the uncertainty itself which makes it all so much more beautiful than anything else ever possibly could, and us ungrateful humans have continually squandered it by pushing it away.

A plant cannot grow forever, just as humanity cannot continue to expand its selfishness into the natural world indefinitely. Our greed has stolen so much, and now it’s time to reap what we’ve sown. WE did this, whether as the conspiracy theorists say by the greed and power of the elite ‘thinning the herd’, or by the power and greed we hold over the animal kingdoms by cramming them into confined spaces in close proximity to other stressed out animals (either stress by confinement or any number of our other crimes to them). WE did this, and there is no one else to blame. Blaming God is irresponsible and immature, blaming the Devil is even more so. Claiming that this is some Divine blessing come to cleanse the world of… literally anything really… and bring back the Plaidians or raise us to the Fifth Dimension or any other hyper-spiritualized consideration is equally as foolish. It WILL change the world in a lot of wonderful ways, but it will also force us to pay a price before we get there. Many already have: 1,837,391 as I write this have suffered for it directly; 113,274 have paid with their lives. https://virusncov.com/

It is my sincere hope that this DOES change the world, because the way things were going were simply impossible to maintain in a great many ways. Economically (since we have destroyed all the fail safe mechanisms of Free Market Capitalism and left it this corrupt, greed-infested mutation), with respect to our use of natural resources, with how we treat each other as a species, but also other species as well; whether we like it or not, we are all in this together. I sincerely hope that our relationship with our natural world becomes one of a great deal more respect and balance. I also pray that our world’s leaders come to appreciate and respect SCIENCE again, as the driving force of policies around these issues. I am hopeful that the world which comes hereafter is considerably more compassionate overall, and encourages a shift in priorities towards living our lives more fully, recognizing that it is therein where our greatest contributions to society lie. There is SO much potential here, as there always is within the creative spirit of yin energies.

We have grasped at yang for so long, chasing the sun until it blinds us, pretending the night can be forgotten if we just keep striving harder and faster under the burning, driving force of day. Like Icarus flying too close to the sun, our wings have been burned and we must crash before we learn. While this is happening in the world around us, that is also a reflection of what is inside as well. We have pushed away at our own mortality, and so it has risen to meet us. We have pushed away at rest and reflection, keeping so busy that we may never truly see what is inside of us, only to be forced into our homes to stillness and quiet so that we must look. We have lived only for ourselves, striving to gain more and more comfort, and now are forced to act for one another. This is in every conceivable way a creation of our own shortcomings as a species, and we MUST recognize that and lean into the discomfort these realities create for us. As individuals, it is our duty to understand our part in its creation and propagation, as we are part of a VERY interconnected whole. While we cannot control humanity, we can and must learn to understand ourselves, our part to play, and how to lean into all the uncomfortable truths which will most certainly arise in this time. The more we drive the truth out and away, the more it will rise to meet us, and hamper the good we might do for ourselves and our world.

Let’s stop lying to each other for a change, and actually, finally be real. How are you REALLY doing? Even as you answer that now, it should not be expected to remain a static thing; it might be a totally different answer in an hour. All of this is perfectly acceptable, and should be expressed openly and honestly! Stop trying to sweep who you are under the rug for comfort’s sake, whether your own or someone else’s. If there is one thing I hope changes in this world after these events, it will be that people finally have the courage to stop trying so outrageously hard to create and maintain these illusions of what they want people to see of them as. That people will be welcomed, accepted, and embraced for ALL that they are, not just what bolsters up the illusions of others or offers entertainment. ACTUALLY look in the mirror and see the truth of yourself, and the world around you; that is what this time is calling all of us to do. I hope that so many more of us learn the courage to express ourselves more fully, embracing both our light and darkness, and creating in the world from that place of authenticity. I hope we all learn that level of honesty so that the lies of our reality stand out so glaringly obvious, that they cannot possibly endure any longer.

This time is a gift, one of our own creation, as much as it is a curse. With awareness comes choice and power, and without awareness we are consumed by fear. It is time for ALL of us to learn how to become more aware, so that we can CHOOSE what part we play and direction we will contribute to. It is only with that awareness that we can take our power back, and step into the world we truly desire for ourselves and our loved ones. It is time to stop grasping at positivity or comfort and learn to lean into intensity; to remember how to really FEEL our way through the world again rather than just doing what we’re told. Whatever you choose, natural selection will tend to the rest…

[/fusion_text][/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]