Rise

I had a choice to make; to choose fear or choose love. I believe my fears, masked and disguised in anger, led me to my previous post; of which I won’t delete for I want and need you to see all of me.  But I do know that that place of fear is not my home; My fears exists within me to lead me to my evolution and I needed that Dark Night (TM?) or Dark Nights, because there were quite a few… But I needed them; to show me who I am and who I wish to Be.  I say it again; Living in a world of fear is not our home and if we feel it is; we are yet to access the wisdom that it bestows upon us.

At the beginning of this global situation I devoured the news, the statistic’s, any research or data I could get my hands on became my norm. I could tell you the updates on at least 9 individual countries, not to mention my thoughts on the pro’s and con’s of each countries approach. And this; from a person who doesn’t believe in phone time for the first hour (at least) upon waking.  I place value on my intelligence but I was taking it too far.  I see this led me to a place of anger and pain of how we individually coping and I realised I forgot to allow each person to be where they are at.  People do hurt one another, the world is not built on fairly distributed structures and virus’s can come out of nowhere.

So, I choose; I choose again who I wish to be and and how I wish to show up for myself and for others.  For me, that means directing my attention to the many many beautiful ways that we are showing up for one another. The sheer kindness breaks me open. For those that don’t usually thank cleaners, trash collectors or any of the often invisible service industry workers; I thank you for doing so now.  These people were always there for us and to see how we are now rallying for these people and thanking them for looking after us; My heart grows bigger. Watching video’s of millions across the world cheering and applauding for doctors, nurses and hospital workers coming and going, literally the front line workers in this situation, reminds me that we are being called to offer our best self at this time. My heart grows bigger.

Look around, choose your media sources wisely, consider your words and their impact on the person in front of you; allow the unprecedented amounts of generosity split you open.   It is a phenomenal experience to be a part of this much needed shift and there are many ways that we can be part of this healing journey.   If we can step outside the boundaries of self and show up for something bigger than our individual needs, wants, ego drives and fears; we are being gifted with an incredible opportunity here.  This is a reframe, not a dismiss of what is happening. 

What I am slowly starting to understand, not easily I will add; is that we must release the world as we know it and acknowledge a new world that will dawn on us.  We don’t know much about this new world yet it still will rise.  What is sure is that the world as we once knew it has gone. It is not an option to go back to it. It no longer exists. Here we may touch upon deep grief.   Go gentle my friend.  For we must touch and feel our grief; the heart will grow tender as we tender to our hearts.

However unwelcome and intrusive this grief feels; it is a necessary part of the process in life; to honour what was, to mourn and allow cascades of sadness to wash over us, and then; only then, can we rise.  Somatically, we will grieve collectively.

Only then can we turn a practical measured eye and assess “what would we like to keep and what would we like to let go of?”  Some of the things i’d like to see let go of include:

• The disharmony that exists with ourselves and with each other
• The Social, Class, Gender & Economic Divides that shapes our worlds
• Failing systems and outdated structures
• Our absolute insane dependence on UN-Renewable resources
• Contaminated and manufactured agricultural systems
• Polluted waters across the world
• Shattered political systems and corrupt corporations
• Unrealistic and unhealthy ways of combining work-life
• The notion that Man has it all figured out

Here’s a story for you; When I went through my burn-out and finally left my corporate career, I felt deeply embarrassed and shamed that I was ‘burning out’, people seemed to think it meant I was tired or overthinking and needed to ‘rest and relax’.  Well my dears; it was far bigger than that! Finally, in May 2019 the WHO admitted Burnout as an official medical diagnosis and so the story shall be retold.  Things were broken. We will know another way now as we acknowledge the way we were doing things wasn’t sustainable, it wasn’t for The People and it was definitely not healthy.

There is an aliveness to us all now; a collective story that we are all part of; never before has this happened on earth.  The vibrancy that is deeply enmeshed in this situation is bittersweet.  We are waking up now and all we need to do is listen and feel into ourselves. We don’t know the answers; we don’t know where this is leading us. But it is showing us all how resilient, flexible, powerful, caring, wise, receptive and generous we are.

And aren’t those some of the things that we wish to leave here for our great great great great great grandchildren?