So, as we are all aware, we are a bit in the midst of a crisis at the moment.
‘COVID has been raging bad for over a year now and it might look like it’s gonna last forever. A lot of people are getting sick of it, and I can’t blame them.
However, all of those walking on the spiritual path, please see this as a great learning point. I’m not saying that you should just take it as it is. But let’s start to bring our attention inwards.
Because there is basically not a lot of other things to do.
Anyway, let’s have a look to what this crisis meant to me.
Learning To Have Compassion
When the crisis first started, I was experiencing everything at once. Anger, sadness, happiness, and much more.
It sounds really bad at the moment, but it really wasn’t. I was lucky that I was still able to work and we were working in a small team. Which made that we were really “tight”.
And then I don’t mean tight in the light sense of the word.
As we were constantly together, it was really hard to cope with each other. Even though there is a lot of spirituality at the place I work, somehow being on top of each other was wiping all the spirituality away.
We had a lot of talks. We never really had any disagreements, it was just that we were talking about all our frustrations, as we didn’t have anyone else to talk to.
This was a bit of a blessing in disguise. Because further on during the lockdown it was clear that people all around were getting frustrated.
They were getting sick of the virus and it was easier to slip back into the mind and make things up.
That’s about the time that I felt it was about time to work on something that I thought I had, but clearly was still able to grow a lot.
I decided that my growth this year would lie in Compassion.
Dealing With other people’s opinion
And wow, I wish I had picked something completely different!
It was like the universe decided to throw everything on me to get me to learn.
It was mind-blowing. I went places within myself that I didn’t know I even had.
Some were good, some were not so nice.
It was great to have a look at them and as everything got magnified, I really saw that I just have to learn to deal with it.
This might sound a bit strange. Dealing with it. It’s more that I had to face the waves that were coming over me. Up until the point that I would be able to ride the wave, rather than just letting it eat me up.
For me, the biggest point was getting to deal with the strong minds of other people.
Over the years I had learned to stand up for myself. Which took me a very long time. And I saw that the pendulum now was tilting the other way. From a point where I had not a strong opinion, to a point where I was willing to rigorously take a stand.
It was good to see that at this moment, I went too far. And it was good for me to find the balance again.
Don’t get me wrong, it was also good for me to have learned to have and stand for my opinion. But it was also alright for me to tone it down a notch.
Which wasn’t that easy. As you might know, everyone at this moment has an opinion. And it looks like there is no balance in these. It’s all a bit black and white at the moment.
Which is why it’s amazing to just observe this and not get into it too much.
Here is where compassion comes in. It’s alright to have an opinion, even within yoga we can have one.
What we do have to look at is how to have this opinion without a lot of emotions attached to it.
This is the part I’d like to zoom in on.
I really have to say that in the last months I’ve really found a deep peace and tranquility inside. However, I had to go through a lot as well. And I’m still in the midst of riding and being swallowed by the waves.
Don’t worry, it’s normal for all of us. We’ll get the hang of it, but it just takes time.
Opinion without emotions
The last couple of months I had to review everything in my life!
Don’t get me wrong, a lot of my opinions didn’t change. But when I listened to other people, I also wanted to know and see where their opinion was coming from.
It did create an opening to have a look at these other opinions and see where it all originated from.
Some things I could really follow, others were too crazy for my mind and my heart.
This also resulted in the loss of a couple of friends. But yeah, also this is life. And I do wish them all well. There was no discussion, nor was there a fight. It just dried out and that was it.
But why was this? Well, because they were basically a mirror. Not because they had a different opinion, but because they were also clamping onto it.
And then I felt, the moment I could let go of these strong opinions, also my own, I could relax more.
Unfortunately, this was also not so understandable by other people. And they felt they had to stay in their truth and clamp on to their opinion.
I’m not saying that I’ve got this wisdom now and that I’m preaching it. It’s an ongoing story and I will have to review it many more times!
But this is basically one of the reasons why I really feel I was blossoming and still blossoming.
Withstanding unstable measures
Now, the next point. Probably the point where we’ve all been struggling with the past year. And some of us might still be experience discomfort. Especially those with a lot to lose. I can only imagine how hard it might be for them.
This is also why I feel a lot of compassion for everyone with a business (including myself), families with children, single moms, etc.
However, from a spiritual point of view, I’ve really taken my time to go into the depths of myself. I’ve given my soul some delicious food to thrive on. Read some books, did quite some yoga, helping out other people with their practice, and so on.
This is what we got taught in a lot of different spiritual teachings. To take the path inside, rather than walking the outside roads. It was not possible, so we didn’t have a lot of choices anyway.
In many different teachings, you’ll find that you have to stay in the here and now. And to be really honest, if you are on a spiritual path, NOW is the time to master this.
I know, this is probably the hardest thing to learn, but we can’t think about the future, nor can we plan anything at the moment. And maybe it’s good to see that it is time to go back to our spontaneous state.
I hear people say: I’d like to have hopes for the future again. To which my response is: What about the hope for now?
Again, this said from someone who didn’t lose his job, who earns the minimum wage so he can’t plan anything anyway.
Fake versus Real
Another discussion I’ve seen a lot: This is fake and that is real.
It’s like everyone is looking for the truth at the moment, and it just becomes a lot easier to point fingers and tell others that they are wrong or fake.
We’ve seen it from both sides. People shouting that the virus isn’t real, people shouting that the numbers are telling the truth.
What is the truth? Well, it’s somewhere in the middle. Where it always is.
But what I’ve realized is that everyone is right and wrong at the same time! Everyone has their own opinion and everybody has their own beliefs.
This means that we’re always watching things from a different perspective.
The sad part at this moment is that we can’t really combine them with each other anymore. It is much more important to point fingers at others, rather than pointing them at yourself.
This brings me to the next revelation I had. Which is that nothing is just black and white. It’s easy to name something good or evil. But what we learn from many spiritual scriptures, is that there is no good or evil. It’s only a metaphor to explain what’s going on inside of yourself.
This on its own gave me a lot of peace of mind. As suddenly I couldn’t see anyone as “the devil” anymore.
And yes, it was easier to call someone a bad person because of his actions, than seeing where this person came from, or what he had in mind for the future.
I even started to feel a lot of compassion for governments (yes even them!). Because I realized that they have to deal with it now. And there is not a single solution that will ease the people.
There is so much division at the moment that not a lot of them won’t make it into their next term.
But that’s it for the politicians, they are just human too. With their own ego and with their own task at hand. Coming from the same source where we all came from! Isn’t that a nicer way to look at it, rather than saying they are the devil?
This still doesn’t mean that I agree with how they look at things, don’t get me wrong.
The Danger of fake and real
This is a bit off-topic, but I wanted to add this is my conclusion. Just to make it a bit more informative of course.
To distinguish fake from real in the media, it would be really good to do your fact-checking.
I’ve received articles from people that state that wearing a mask is deadly. Which isn’t true at all. It was a rumor that got spread in Germany that said that three girls had died on a bus. However, nowhere in the article, it said where this happened, nor in which circumstances. It didn’t have any information at all!
It all happened in the regular news. Someone had sent me a Dutch article about the Portuguese government, which had a lot of wrong information in it. Luckily, it got redacted shortly after, but even there they didn’t do a proper fact-check.
So, for the near future. Please be aware of what you read and what you believe. Look at who’s written the article, if there are multiple sources, and found for other sources too, to verify.
All that rests me to say now is to stay safe and
Nama-stay wonderful!
