According to my calculations, we are finishing week 5 of the isolation/lock-down. At some point last week things began to feel different for me. What I had thought of as a temporary deviation was now a lifestyle change or a new normal. It almost feels like my former life has been hijacked by the virus.
One of the things I noticed is that at times it feels like being on a retreat. There are many days when I wake up at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning for no apparent reason. A part of the process of any ‘retreat’ is to examine one’s life for purposes of perspective. I find that the ways in which I viewed the earlier part of my life are changing. In looking at events, now distant in time, I am starting to get a different viewpoint on them. Maybe the mistakes I thought I made were not mistakes in the sense that I don’t need to feel guilty about them. Instead I am viewing them more as learning lessons instead of memories to be avoided. That slight shift is an act of liberation. What?
I thought I was free. As long as one is hanging on to guilt, shame, anger, fear, resentment, depression, one is not free. It is in the letting go that we remove ourselves from that jail. All it takes is the shift in perspective. One of the main take-aways from these early morning sessions is that we are constantly making decisions about issues in our current life based on our perspective which we got mainly from the early part of our life.
Now we are entering tricky territory. How do we keep those formative lessons and the positive aspects without ‘throwing the baby out with the bathwater’? I believe that we each have the intuitive ability to do it. We can liberate ourselves. Each of us knows truth when we hear/see it. We are/I am the only one who can align with it.
So maybe this virus – the hijacker – in an unwitting way, has helped us to become a little more ourselves. It is certainly true for me. I am wondering what it is like for you. Perhaps we can ‘compare notes’ or share stories. I would like to know that I am not the only one.
I wish you good health, safe journeys, quiet liberation, and much connection. Thank you for helping to spread the light.
– Rev. Ed