Collectively we are all being forced to reassess what's important and what matters. Shelter-in-place is forcing many of us to look within, to find out what we're made of, what's driving us. This virus is forcing us to remember, to remember our dreams. In a way, we are being dismembered in order to re-member. We are being disintegrated in order to reintegrate.
Are we going to try to go back to the way things were? We so easily forget what it was actually like only a few months ago: the striving, the pressure, the speed and intensity, the addiction to being busy. Most importantly, we overlook the twin misconceptions afflicting our collective consciousness: the fallacy that we are never enough as we are and that something outside of ourselves will pacify this emptiness we feel inside.
We aren't skinny enough, aren't young enough, aren't smart enough. Our rampant materialism has been an unconscious attempt to cover up this subtle feeling of inadequacy and dissatisfaction. Material things can never fill this void. What we desire exists only in relationship to ourselves, to another, to others and to spirit.
As we consume more than we need, we lose touch with our interdependence with one another and to this earth. Our disconnection upsets what truly matters. We upend the balance of nature, which we are utterly dependent on for our survival. Our waters become poisoned, and our earth is scorched to feed our insatiable greed. We can see its effect in our own homes as we watch our children growing addicted to video games and drugs.
Nature has been poking us to remember for some time, but we have been ignoring her calls in the form of natural disasters, mass killings and lying politicians. The more we ignore her, the more we can see how it affects not just ourselves but everyone around us. It's hard not to see today that this fundamental choice to come back home to the heart and to remember what matters effects everyone.
We don't like to feel confined in our homes, but sheltering in place is the perfect excuse to drop in and confront our ego's delusion of not enough-ness. We will never find what we are looking for through our consumption. Until we figure this out, nature will continue to humble us, to remind us that we are of the earth. We are related to all life and to The One Life. This moment is dismembering us so that hopefully we can re-member.