Sidetracked is in the air when we find ourselves forced into new patterns of any kind. Our inner focus can no longer work in automatic. When we rearrange the house under the influence of spring cleaning, all our patterns are challenged. Crunched paper flying toward the wastebasket may smack into the bookcase because the furniture has been rearranged. The lazy-boy and the TV have changed places, yet the automatic patterns may have us nearly sitting on the TV. Life has changed, but the automatic patterns of the brain and body want to follow their well-known behaviors and constructs of comfortable repetition.
In life around the planet, a significant house cleaning is underway. The old familiar patterns are being challenged. It is more than a simple acclimation of rearranged furniture. Lifestyles are entirely disrupted. Protests, changing belief patterns, personal and collective ideologies may directly conflict with historical governmental, religious, and individual practices.
We are derailed from our automatics. Life on planet earth is demanding a complete makeover. There is no going backward. Our way forward requires an in-depth housecleaning, individually and collectively. The ideas that: garbage will be picked up Saturday, the mail will be delivered every day, the TV will have the 6:00 news, the kids will be safe at school, I’m independent and can do things my way, the government is corrupt, my religion is the only way to live with God, the white society is superior, my candidate is better, your party is nasty, men deserve more freedom and money than women, …are history.
At this moment, often in isolation and too often in despair over a lost child, grandmother, spouse, or friend, we have time to feel deeply and look acutely into our automatics. Do we support old, outdated, often false platforms of truth? How long can we listen to the lies of our governmental leaders? When will we each release the idea we are independent from the mastery of the universe, having every right to “do it my way”?
People upon the planet, in every country, are hurting. No color, no nation, no community is free from COVID-19 threats. This pandemic is holding a massive mirror up to each of us, asking us to look at our automatics. We can no longer be sidetracked by myths of superiority or a desire to go backward to a lifestyle that was harmful to the health of the entire ecosystem.
Chandler © August 13, 2020