MAYBE COVID-19 IS THE SPARK THAT IGNITES OUR INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE MINDS, BODIES AND SOULS TO NEW WAYS OF BEING AND DOING IN OUR WORLD

The Covid-19 pandemic has given the global community extreme moments of pause.

Soon after its notoriety hit the airwaves, human beings everywhere were caught up in disease, dread and even despair. The fear of dying and death was among the strongest emotions being expressed by millions.

Saving human lives became the watchword and overwhelming call – the virus and death were the enemies and needed to be defeated at all costs. The avoidance of death at all cost! And now, for many, the vaccines offer that elixir! That promise of life – at least a longer life – free of infection and dying.

Perhaps you shared many of these emotions and sentiments over the long months of this pandemic.

And perhaps you still do.

But what if dying and death are invitations to a fuller life and living? What if a little coronavirus rampaging the globe is the spark that ignites our individual and collective minds, bodies and souls to new ways of being and doing in our world?

What if this is the elixir, the emergence of a new consciousness, and a new way of being more truly human in harmony with all that is? What if death is the gift for new life?

What if the practice of dying is the gift for the practice of living?

What if this virus is the harbinger of a vital truth – that our individual and collective egos, grandeur and recklessness need to die and we need to embrace the urgent call to essence in our love for all created being?

“Listen carefully: unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you’ll have it forever, real and eternal” (John 12: 24 - 25, The Message).

As James Flaherty observes in Coaching: Evoking Excellence in Others: “The point in honestly confronting death is not that we become depressed or resigned, rather it’s only in such an authentic encounter that we have a chance to really prioritize life. It’s only in looking at our lives from the end that we can begin to determine what’s really important for us and what is only distraction or waste. The sooner we begin to see life in this light, the better, because at the end of your life it will be too late.”

Death can be a metaphor for growth rather than for stagnation and human mortality, as is illustrated and documented in Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’s Death: The Final Stage of Growth. And so one quote from the book is an incentive for wise rather than foolish living, especially when things are going well in life: “Do not frivolously use the time that is yours to spend. Cherish it, that each day may bring new growth, insight and awareness. Use this growth not selfishly, but rather in service of what may be, in the future tide of time.”

This is not the time to live and tarry in complacency,

The hour-glass is running down, and it beckons for our death;

For too long, we’ve been shielded and sheltered in our invincibility, Puffed-out, we’ve felt controllers

Of all the vastness we surveyed;

Then, unexpectedly, imperceptibly we find ourselves floored, and grovelling in the darkness of this long and eerie night;

In a trice, the life we thought we own, Is plunged into an anxious uncertainty, even our breath is taken away, in a collective gasp for salvation’s air; Even now, the conundrums are stacking up, the stable ground totters and twists, and life we know evaporates in mists, our drowning frailties shout out and never stop;

And so now, my hope is that you die,

Die to all the falsehood of your pride,

Die to the avarice of your grandiosity,

Die to the ego on the pedestal of your soul;

Like a seed falling into welcoming soil, Die to the make-belief of your wanton living,

Die to the old and worn out lies a nd unseeing

Dare to live into the essence of your one true being.

What if this is the elixir, the emergence of a new consciousness, and a new way of being more truly human in harmony with all that is? What if death is the gift for new life?