Our Moment In History

Throughout recorded history, creatures have struggled in times of war, plague, famine, drought -- natural disasters, and human conflagrations. The time and place of each of our births land us not only in a personal journey but in a moment of world history. It is pointless to think one is in the wrong phase of history or that our situation should revert to another, more glorious or easy time. This is our moment on the stage, and the stage is set.

Transcript

Welcome to In the Deep.

I'm your host,

Katherine Ingram.

The following was excerpted from a Zoom session of Dharma Dialogues,

Broadcast from Australia on June 7th,

2020.

It's called Our Moment in History.

I would like to invite us to just begin with a sit together,

A sit in silence,

But we have a special treat.

Some of you have been on previous Zoom calls,

So you know the special treat.

But our dear,

Dear beloved Noah is here because he's in Turin alumni.

And he's there at the foot of the mountain of Arunachala.

And there he is.

And here are the birds.

We're watching sunrise at Arunachala right now.

Okay,

Well,

There's the mountain.

Some of us will maybe never get to see this mountain in real life,

So called.

But here it is live,

Live images.

And I thought we would begin with a little sitting,

Just looking at the mountain.

Many of you know what this mountain is.

It's made famous really by the place that Ramana Maharshi spent most of his life until he died.

And it's considered a very,

Very sacred place.

Many,

Many,

Many lovers of Dharma,

Lovers of truth,

Lovers of simply being have spent much of their lives there.

And people have come from all over the world to pay their respects to this place.

So it's imbued with,

I would say,

A kind of frequency,

A kind of vibrational field around it.

And here it is at sunrise.

We'll just enjoy this togetherness in this moment,

Sharing our precious historical moment with friends all over the world.

Lucky as we are to be able to do this at this time.

And maybe we haven't felt so peaceful.

Let's remember we can feel peaceful.

And let's just breathe in an easy way.

Breathing in fragrance of the peace of this mountain and of our,

Our own dear hearts.

And releasing the stress of thoughts that have been going by like very loud traffic.

Just releasing all of that for this moment together.

Let your belly become softer.

Enjoy the twittering of the birds.

Sunrise in India.

Thank you,

Noah.

So most of you are in the US,

Not everyone,

But most of you are zooming in from the US.

We're all very aware of what's been happening there.

And how much anxiety you all feel and,

And we all feel if we're not actually on that soil.

So let's just acknowledge that that's rolling about.

It's hard.

I keep thinking and reflecting on basically historical moments.

Even in my lifetime.

There've been a few times when things just felt that they were just going to come apart at the seams like a wheel that's been spun too fast and it's just going to break apart.

I have had a few of those.

This one has its own unique flavor because it's added in with a pandemic.

So it has a whole other component.

In any case,

We have to acknowledge that there is a lot of stress and strain and worry and fear and foreboding running about.

And that makes it incumbent upon us to be islands of calm.

For you to be peaceful in the midst of it as best you can.

You don't have to be pretending anything or think that it's not fair for you to feel moments of craziness and extreme anxiety.

Of course,

One does.

We're sensitive creatures naturally.

But we also have tools and we have a love of Dharma.

You wouldn't be on this call.

If that were not the case.

There's plenty of other more exciting things to do.

You're lovers of Dharma.

And as lovers of Dharma,

You have to keep reminding yourself perhaps in these times,

You'll see all kinds of things,

All kinds of images that are going to trigger you in different ways.

Different types of anger at different factions that are happening.

Whichever one you happen to think is the worst.

You watch what they're doing and it can enrage you perhaps.

But as a long time student of nonviolent strategies,

I'm very committed to those ways of understanding and looking deeper and knowing that nonviolent strategy is great not only because it's a kinder path,

But it's actually almost,

It's also more efficacious.

It works better in the long run.

So it's an elegant strategy in that regard.

And how do you maintain that as an expression in your own life?

So one option to consider is to be a calm voice in conversations.

You know,

To not add to the fire,

To be the one speaking calm to look at the deeper structures,

Or to feel in to your friends or your group of friends fear.

Feel into it.

And feel the compassion that would naturally arise as you understand that a lot of people whose expression is rage,

What's underneath that is extreme terror.

So in these ways,

You're offering nonviolent communication.

And,

And of course,

Nonviolent communication flows very freely from a peaceful heart.

So I'm going to encourage us all to really turn to that which calms you down,

Gives you joy makes you lights you up in some way.

In this time,

It may be counterintuitive in some ways to do that.

You may feel that it makes you look like you're airy fairy or that you're apathetic.

But that is not the case.

What you're doing is you're standing in your own dignity,

And you're forging in yourself a very strong commitment.

I was walking on the beach yesterday,

As I mentioned,

Some of you were on the call last night,

Or last night in Australia.

And I was walking on the beach with an old friend of mine.

And she was remembering that she and I were in San Francisco during the Rodney King riots.

And I had completely forgotten this piece of information,

Which was that she said that she came over to see me where I was staying in San Francisco.

And that during the Rodney King riots,

I showed her a video I had on the life of Martin Luther King.

And she was only 19 years old at the time.

And she was,

She actually happened to be from Australia,

But had some of you know her Sally.

And but she had come to San Francisco at the age of 19.

And she was in a relationship with my roommate at the time,

And she and I became buddies.

And I showed her apparently a video about the life of Martin Luther King.

On the nights of the Rodney King riots,

Which were erupting very massively in Los Angeles,

Basically burning down the place and had spread to lots of other cities,

We were kind of in lockdown in San Francisco as well.

So it was kind of scary,

And there were sirens and she and I were alone in this big house.

And she reminded me that's what we did with the evening.

So to kind of hold,

Go back to the essentials,

Go back to the places that give you sustenance in the heart,

And remind you,

Right,

Remind you of your,

Your moment in history.

Lots of people in,

In all of history,

Happen to have a slot of history.

That was hard,

Like really hard.

And lots and lots of people,

Billions of people now are in that circumstance.

They already had it hard before all of this before Coronavirus before the collapse of perhaps the economic system and the riots and the social unrest.

They already were struggling.

And yet life goes on as as all of us know,

Who've traveled say in the so called third world,

As Noah can attest being right there now.

Life goes on.

People have hard,

Hard times,

But they have good times.

And they have they have the capacity for beauty and for mercy and for joy.

One of my friends long ago,

And he lives in Ireland,

And he told me that,

I mean,

Probably about 15 years ago,

He told me the story that he had been to Bombay,

Mumbai,

As it's known now.

And he was in some like really dark slum area for some reason or other like driving through or he was trying to get a taxi or something.

But he was he was in this place,

Really polluted,

Really grim,

Grim,

Grim.

And he saw this gang of kids with a,

I think he said it was a stick and a can that they were rolling or a homemade kite.

I forgot what exactly it was,

But it was some incredibly low tech play toy.

And they were all squealing and running down the street and back and forth.

And he just stood there in awe.

Just watching,

You know,

These little sprouts celebrating life,

Having fun.

They weren't moping around saying,

Wow,

We really drew the short end of the stick.

They were having fun.

And it was it lit his own heart.

And even later when he was back in Europe,

And tells me this story later,

It lit my heart.

And I've often thought about that scene.

And I hope you will.

So my point here is that our job,

As lovers of Dharma,

Our job is to remember what we know and to live our principles.

Not just when everything is going swimmingly,

But to live our principles when things are hard.

And to keep returning to peace returning,

Remember,

Just remembering.

And don't don't worry if you have moments of rage and you have moments of extreme fear.

That's all conditioned to be expected.

But just keep returning to what you know,

Just gentle reminders.

And if you have whole phases,

Like several of my friends have recently told me that they're having days of anxiety,

Not just short periods,

But whole days and trouble sleeping and things like that.

Okay,

That to do your best to interrupt it.

Do your best to calm yourself down in all the ways you know,

Be indulgent,

If there's something you can do,

That calms you down,

Know that that that is an offering to everyone else for you to get calm.

So if it means you do some kind of treat for yourself or whatever your thing might be,

Whether it's a walk in nature or a good run or a swim or a bath or a book that's fun for you or some music,

Dance to it,

Or make a fantastic meal.

Don't worry about counting the calories.

Right?

Have fun.

Calm yourselves down.

That's your offering.

So that the next person you speak to who's in fear and anxiety and fury,

The experience of being in your company will be perhaps a waft of peace.

Just like looking at this mountain.

You can in implant this image in your mind and be like this mountain.

Timeless being.

That's what we're looking at here.

That's what we are not in a personal way.

Right?

Very temporary little mode we have here as I spoke about last night.

But we're part of something that's seemingly timeless.

I never bought into the Big Bang Theory,

Frankly,

One of my friends says it's more like a big bounce.

And that makes more sense to me that it truly is timeless.

And somehow or other,

We came out of all this stardust and gases and extraordinary specificity of evolution,

Just even that we know of on our planet,

On our planet,

Let alone all of the cosmic things that had to come to be in order to produce life.

And then suddenly there's life in simple,

Simple forms that eventually made you amazing,

Made you hearing noises from a faraway place.

And those noises are completely recognized in your heart.

That's pretty amazing.

That's pretty amazing that we have this going on.

So here we are in our moment in our historical moment in our lucky lives.

And I'll just encourage us to sit tall in it.

Sit tall on your mountain seat of freedom.

That's your choice.

And it will probably get harder in terms of the stresses that are going on.

It's not as if we can look to some situation on the horizon and say,

Oh,

That's getting handled really well.

But just like with watching the Martin Luther King show during the riots,

The Rodney King riots,

And all of the other things that just in my one lifetime,

I've experienced the threat of nuclear war,

The anti-war protests during the Vietnam War,

Lots of my friends getting drafted or having to go live in Canada in order to not be sent to war.

You know,

Just the climate crisis,

All of it,

It is bearing down on us in different ways.

And this happens to be our moment in history.

So this is what we've got.

And frankly,

I think the Dharma can shine ever brighter in it.

Like Martin Luther King Jr.

Said,

It is only when it is darkest,

Can you see the stars.

You know,

I'm becoming aware of something that I guess I thought it was only me,

Of course,

A lot of things I think it's only me,

But that the pandemic and the murder last week of the man in Minneapolis,

You know,

It takes its toll.

It may not be,

I may not see it in everyone.

I only know one person that's gotten sick with the virus,

But it seems like we're all kind of walking through this,

It's a woods,

A swamp or a morass,

Or maybe all of them,

Just these feelings of loss and separation and pain.

You know,

And most people I know don't really talk about it.

You know,

It's kind of this vague,

Oh yeah,

I'm not sleeping well,

Or I'm not,

I don't see my friends,

I don't get to hug them.

But it just seems like it's pretty pervasive.

It's more pervasive than I think I was aware of until recently.

A lot of my friends are saying,

Oh,

I'm really sensitive right now.

And I was trying to get my arms around that this morning.

And well,

What are they sensitive about?

You know,

Life goes on,

You know,

I have food on the table,

I can go get a coffee,

I can do most of the things,

Although it still seems kind of this unreal landscape that we're in.

And there's no normal or I don't know that we will ever go back to what it was like before.

I mean,

I'm starting to think that this is going to go on indefinitely,

Or at least for a long time,

Some form,

Even if things open back up.

It sounds like the virus will be with us.

And it's not going to go away.

And there is no immunity and no vaccine.

And I think for the first month or two of the shutdown,

I was just worried about getting sick,

You know,

I need a little cough I had,

It's like,

Oh,

You know,

There's that dry cough I've been hearing about or there's,

You know,

There's,

Am I gonna wake up tomorrow and feel crappy and be gone in the day?

Should I update my will?

And,

You know,

What if someone I'm close to dies?

And those thoughts,

Those immediate thoughts seem to have kind of receded into the background.

But I think what I was starting out saying is that there's a toll,

There's a burden,

A box of rocks that I carry around.

And I think a lot of people do have,

You know,

Geez,

You know,

Things are not great.

And the normal distractions of,

You know,

Having dinner with friends or going to a movie or just,

You know,

Those have dropped away.

And so the essence,

You know,

The essence is sort of the ego.

Yeah,

There it is.

The ego is like going on retreat,

You know,

It's like the first few days,

The ego is saying,

Wait a minute,

You know,

Where's the radio?

Where's the TV?

Where's all this stimulation keeps me distracted.

And then for me,

About the third or fourth day of retreat,

It's like,

You know,

I've got four more days of this,

How am I going to deal with it?

And then I end up settling into some space,

It's become familiar.

And it's why I realized,

So this is why I go on retreat.

And so this is in a way,

It's not at all like a regular retreat,

But it's certainly a denial of the ego's need for stimulation,

At least from what I'm used to.

Yeah,

Yeah.

Anyway,

Yeah,

Things are very stripped down to the essentials,

Aren't they?

But with one to what you're saying with one very critical difference from other types of crises that we have faced as a world community,

And that is,

Usually in times of crisis,

We we huddle together in a sense of belonging,

And we can touch and hug and,

And we can break bread together.

And,

You know,

We can be together cozy.

That is how we have found our our sources of strength.

In times past,

What's different and much more challenging now is that's one of the things we cannot do.

Except those people who are living with their own families,

Which I think is a very lucky thing,

For the most part,

That people get to do,

You know,

I think about,

You know,

People who are basically at home with their families,

Since like you're with your favorite people,

For the most part.

But also,

Though,

Like in retreat,

Where in retreat,

We don't huddle together,

Even though we do eat together in the same room,

And we do sit together in a big room,

But we're not really hugging,

And we're not talking to each other independently of that.

And so there is,

We have sort of exercised a certain type of muscle that can handle aloneness.

You know,

I often think about people who are in solitary confinement,

You know,

Not just for months,

But for years.

And,

You know,

Some of those people go crazy,

And that's understood.

But some people go really sane,

Like,

Some people who've been let out of solitary confinement after years,

They have this inner core of clarity and strength and letting go of like,

Whatever is unnecessary baggage,

Like you said,

The bag of rocks.

They're not even carrying one pebble extra,

You know,

And I've been so inspired by that.

So that is what I am encouraging for us.

I'm encouraging us.

We do acknowledge,

Of course,

That this is hard.

It's hard in different ways.

Some people may have a larger burden to carry than others,

Even on this call,

Because some people perhaps on this call are economically stressed and wondering about how can I keep even getting food?

All of those,

That's all very,

Very stressful.

But I'm just encouraging us to acknowledge that,

Let it come up as it does,

And then do your very best to return to your safe ground.

To return to the safe ground and part of the safe ground is letting go of what cannot be at least at this moment,

Like if it cannot be at this moment,

Something you want something you need you think,

Or that you genuinely need,

If you can't have it,

Then you're just going to intensify your suffering by fixating on the fact that you can't have it right now.

So rather than fixate on what is missing,

It's always better to fixate it on what's here.

To really,

You know,

Go back to,

Okay,

Happens to be no groceries in the house right now.

But maybe I can find some old oatmeal to cook up.

And how delicious,

I've actually done this.

I was listening to someone talking on a podcast.

And he was saying how,

In a kind of happy way,

He was talking about how,

You know,

Day and night are all blended in.

And he gets up in the middle of the night and has breakfast.

And he says,

If I decide to have oatmeal with salad on it,

I'll do it.

So,

You know,

There's this kind of freedom in all of this.

It's sort of like,

You know,

Yes,

Certain things we just can't have,

We can't do,

We can't get.

And so be it.

I feel like we're readying ourselves,

Frankly,

For a different way of life.

And I think you're right,

It's not going to go back to what we call normal.

There's going to be a lot of big changes,

I think,

Coming down the pike in terms of all of our expectations of the grand old party we've been having.

And this is a little interlude of getting used to a different type of party,

A quieter party,

Perhaps.

So yes,

I hear you deeply and feel much the same,

Of course,

About this time that we landed in.

I talked last night about how,

I know you and I love movies,

Gary,

We always share our recommendations.

But I'm wondering if you're having this experience of watching something on Netflix or on a movie and thinking,

Oh my gosh,

All those people are like hanging out at a club and all these people are kissing each other and they're all hugging and they're carrying each other around and sweeping each other off the feet.

And how are they doing all that?

That was not that long ago,

Was it,

That those images wouldn't have triggered some sense in us of like,

What?

And yesterday at the beach,

In a moment of unthinking,

And the only time I've actually done it in this whole,

In many months,

I hugged Sally.

And she kind of laughed and said,

Oh,

We're hugging.

And I said,

Oh my God,

We're not supposed to be hugging.

I felt perfectly safe because she's been locked down as well.

But I didn't think about it.

I just did it.

And yeah,

It's now we're in a point where,

At least for now,

And who knows how long,

Yeah,

That's not normal behavior anymore.

So in history,

People have gotten used to all kinds of different things,

Right?

People have had to,

Refugees have had to leave with virtually nothing on their backs,

Land in a country where they don't speak the language.

They have no rights.

Humans adapt.

They really adapt amazingly,

Sometimes maybe to our disadvantage,

Because we adapt downward in so many ways too.

We allow for things that are not so healthy for us to continue.

But I think our adaptability,

Our sort of dharmic adaptability is very,

Very helpful.

And that's my encouragement for us.

Hello,

This is my first time.

So lovely to be here and to see everyone.

So the thread of this conversation is really wonderful.

I'm relating very much to where you've actually been sewing together these different conversations with people.

And I'm feeling like I'm going on this ride with you.

I'm sort of of the mindset that I was really happy with the lockdown.

I'm an extreme introvert.

And I spent most of my day outdoors kind of farming,

Gardening and big,

Big native plant restoration work that I'm doing myself.

So that is my happy place.

And I'm blessed to have that.

And the story craziness I can get into is the climate crisis is really what I feel behind all of this and one thing after another.

And that's where I fall into anxiety or fall into these places and then the riots and everything happening with our black population is just so horrifying and so right in our face that what you were talking about,

About the being that only safe place I find is right here right now.

And the hope thing is not here,

Not now.

I don't trust it.

It's simply not reliable.

And I have friends who I know I have friends who find me very dark at times and I let the darkness be here because I feel it's real.

And I live in America.

I was born in Canada and I feel this cultural difference here and I still feel a foreigner emotionally because it just simply is not acceptable to sort of not be cheery and bright.

It's like I don't have people I can talk to if I'm not,

You know,

If you can't say something cheerful and hopeful,

Well,

You know,

Just zip it up.

So my plants,

My trees are reliable.

They're my friends.

I'm actually sorry,

I'm very,

Very privileged to be able to enjoy this time of quiet and I already feel the noise coming back and bright.

I'm feeling massive noise.

So it's exactly like you said,

This is the practice space for finding that being in the midst of the chaos because it's not likely getting better ever,

Really.

Now,

I feel the same.

I feel that given what's on the horizon that is locked in,

I think in terms of all the social issues and the pandemic,

Those are things that we could theoretically solve with time and with wisdom and with medical therapeutics.

The climate situation we're in is pretty much I think out of our hands now.

And I know not many people understand that.

But for those of us who do understand that or who do sense it very strongly,

And those of us who are looking at the science data a lot,

That is what we're feeling.

That's what a lot of the scientists that I listened to and have for 10 years are feeling very strongly.

So I think it is,

Again,

Incumbent upon us to sit strongly in the Dharma in this phase,

Which is already hard,

But as a kind of practice.

We have been so very privileged for so long.

All of us on this call,

Most of us are of a certain age or close enough to a range of age.

We hit the golden sweet spot so far that very,

Very abundant wealth in our countries,

What we call middle class,

Is the richest beyond any imaginings for most of history and for most of the world,

Even now.

So we've lived under certain assumptions about a cozy,

Shiny life and a cozy,

Shiny old age and everything kind of continuing on for our children and the grandchildren.

These assumptions now are up for question,

They're in question.

All we can do as elders in it is be steady and know that it will play out however it does.

This is a long evolution,

A long evolution of many quintillions of tiny little motions that got us here.

It's not one generation or two generations or one particular country.

It's a long,

Long time coming.

And as I say in this essay that I wrote,

We're exactly where we were headed.

This is exactly,

We're exactly in the spot we were headed.

And when you get to that understanding,

There's something that releases and stops blaming and stops trying to find the boogeyman and the bad guys and the place we went wrong in history and the evolutionary misstep and all of that.

You don't bother with any of that.

And you fall into gratitude,

Right?

You fall into gratitude.

This is what we've got.

This is our moment in history.

Longevity was never actually guaranteed for anyone,

No matter what time you were born,

What era you were born in.

Some had higher chances than others,

But it was never a guarantee.

So you fall back into this is our moment and using this phase,

This paused phase as like you were saying and I've been saying too,

This is a practice run.

This is a dress rehearsal of learning how to make do,

How to fix things,

How to go with less.

If you can't get something then you don't get it and you figure out something else.

And there's a lot of creativity that has erupted and a lot of returning to simpler ways of doing things,

Right?

We've built a very complicated system that is quite unsustainable.

So there's a lot of sharing,

Sharing economy.

Ms.

Shire,

This area that I live in,

I'm part of something called Resilient Byron.

We're addressing both long-term and short-term needs in case the system,

The bigger,

Larger federal system becomes spotty.

But I'm encouraging people wherever you are,

Whatever your neighborhood or your friends in your region,

Your town,

Start making those kinds of connections and conversations.

And it doesn't have to be extremely well,

Perfectly organized.

It doesn't have to be anything that hard.

It can just be that a whole bunch of you know that if somebody needs something,

You have your own little collective together.

And the way people used to live,

The way tribal people have had to live all along and many,

Many smaller places live that way.

But we can live that way within even cities.

You can have your own tribe in your city.

So these are some of the reflections and some of the ways that you find the silver linings.

You incline your awareness to whenever you're in adversity,

You find some way that you make this,

You find the wise harmonious thread,

The wise harmonious thread through it.

I write this column for an Australian journal here.

It's based on my,

Well,

It's called In the Deep with Katherine Ingram,

The same as my podcast title.

But what I do is I curate some Dharmic piece of writing,

And I then write a preamble to the thing that we then present.

So the next one that I'm going to do is a poem that one of my friends gave me in the 1990s in Ireland.

And it's called This Error is the Sign of Love.

And the whole poem is about how,

You know,

It's like the crack in the ice where the otters breathe or each line is on one level,

It could look like a mistake or an error.

There's some lines transposed in the will for the widow.

The lines are transposed in the will and coins are scattered instead of ashes.

So in other words,

The will got written wrongly,

But it says,

But she marries again for love.

Like that,

You know,

It's just line after line after line.

And we all know this experience where something that looks like just a nightmare,

A dumpster fire turned out to be that thing which forced an opening or set us on a different course or allowed us to let go of something that actually did not work anymore,

And that it needed to almost be ripped from our hand before we could really let go.

All those things that it's your attention,

It's your own awareness that finds those signs of love,

Right?

That's what finds them in the morass.

I'm in Dublin in Ireland.

I suppose,

Just listening in on what other people have shared,

I can find myself resonating with it.

I suppose,

I work in the health service and I'm very busy.

I'm a psychologist.

So I'm not on the front line,

But I am considered an essential worker.

So I get to park in places and not have to pay and get passed along by the police without any hesitation.

So it's kind of an odd experience.

And in my lifetime,

This is a very odd experience.

Especially when things kicked off,

A lot of you will know how important St.

Patrick's Day is in Ireland and what a major event it is,

And it was cancelled.

And that marked in a way the beginning of the lockdown in Ireland.

And the lockdown was announced actually from the USA when our Taoiseach,

Our Prime Minister,

Was in Washington.

So it's been for me quite a shocking experience,

I think.

And I've really been so grateful that I've had so many experiences of retreat,

Lots of them in Italy with Catherine.

And I found myself,

When I would begin to feel overwhelmed,

I suppose,

By what's going on around us,

Overwhelmed,

I suppose,

Just by how shocking it is that not just Ireland,

Not just Dublin,

But every country around the world has been impacted at the same time by the same virus.

That for me is shocking.

And I know,

And I agree with the previous person who spoke about climate change being the real major concern for us.

And I think,

So I've been going in and out of overwhelm at times.

Part of that's just due to tiredness from working a lot,

But part of it also from the awareness,

I suppose,

Of the vulnerability.

And I was thinking today,

Because I was fortunate enough to be on the earlier Zoom session,

Which in our time was 10 o'clock this morning.

So that really set a lovely tone for me today.

It's Saturday,

It's a day off.

And I was able to,

I live alone,

And so I was able to have a really nice quiet day.

But I suppose the strong theme that came through for me today was about vulnerability.

And I'm very careful when I go out,

Because I need to be very careful.

And so when I go shopping or pick up the shopping for my mother or for myself,

I only go out when I need to.

And so there's the vulnerability around the physical risk.

But I think,

In a way more significantly,

Is the vulnerability I feel just around my place in this time and in this world.

So I suppose the question,

Catherine,

I have is just really about that.

It's about just staying sane in a way,

You know,

Staying sane with the vulnerability and in vulnerability.

Without hiding away,

Because hiding away,

I mean,

It's not an option I would choose anyway.

Like many others on this Zoom call,

I'm an introvert.

So I love the quiet and I like the,

You know,

The good excuse not to have to meet up with people too much.

That actually is almost like a gift.

But yes,

The vulnerability in that too.

And the responsibility not to disconnect just because actually I can.

What's coming to say is,

I talked about it last night,

Or maybe it was today on this call,

I think it was last night.

Part of what torments us is the disparity between what we think should be happening as our life,

You know,

Or our place in it,

Or our meaning of our life,

And the reality which isn't matching that picture.

Right?

So that's where the stress is.

And,

You know,

Fair enough,

We were galloping along with life looking a certain way,

Where you could watch a movie and see people milling about and not think,

Oh,

That's weird.

Right?

Or you could go to a store and,

You know,

If somebody happens to step within six feet of you,

You don't,

You know,

You don't sort of leap back in the old days.

But now we do.

The disparity,

As I say,

It's really pictures of this doesn't quite make sense that torment us.

What if we said,

Yes,

This is what it is now.

Right?

Not torment ourselves with saying it shouldn't have happened and look at all the mistakes that happened along the way and how dumb all that was,

Blah,

Blah,

Blah,

All true,

But still,

Not the first dumb mistakes we made as humans.

And also,

Are they even mistakes?

That's the other part of it,

You know,

It's just the evolution,

This is where we are,

Period.

And so to really say yes to your life,

Dignify this very,

Very moment you're experiencing,

This is your day,

Without a guarantee of tomorrow.

Right?

This is your living,

This is the beautiful moment.

And if you can even just say that to yourself now and again,

This is the beautiful moment.

Right?

I often do this little experiment,

And I use it in my toolbox of saying to myself,

Any of these moments will look pretty good from my deathbed.

Like any old stressful moment,

Any crazy moment,

Any moment when something didn't come through,

Any annoying thing,

All of it,

You look back,

If you can,

Imagining yourself looking at it as a sweep of life that happened.

And you realize this is your precious moment in time.

This is actually your life.

It's not a misstep.

This is your actual life.

And to your point about the fact that the whole world is sharing an experience.

Actually,

This has never happened before.

Even when we call things like world wars,

The whole world wasn't involved in those wars,

Because some countries were,

Not the whole entire world.

But now,

Even the people in the deepest parts of the Amazon are being affected by the coronavirus,

Tribes that are not even connected to the rest of the industrialized world.

Everyone is sharing a moment in history.

And that's very,

Very unique and probably is having some massive psychological effect on humanity.

We'll see how it plays out,

But it might underpin to some great degree,

The social movements that are coming up,

The combination of the stress and seeing the disparity,

But also a one world,

One being experience.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Reviews

Magnificent! Uplifting and positive in a time of uncertainty, fear and anger.
Thank you! Blessings 🙏👼💕🌹🙌