Coronavirus 2020: Breaking Open Our Collective Heart

Illness is often a symptom of something deeper - something that is out of alignment in our being. This virus didn’t come out of nowhere. Our world has been deeply unhealthy in so many ways for so long. Way beyond our unethical and unconscious treatment of animals, the likes of which is represented by how this virus seems to have crossed the species barrier, there’s our materialism, selfishness, tribalism, separatism, our exploitation of the earth and attempted domination of the environment, our collective denial of soul, our repression of the body, our collective trauma, and the closing of our hearts to each other.

This has been the status quo of human society. And now, with incredible precision, this virus arrives to initiate a crisis we cannot turn away from. And it looks like we may be entering what will be a deeply challenging time for humanity.

My solemn prayer at this time is, may our collective heart be broken open by this. And may we emerge on the other side more united, connected, healed, empowered, and awake.

Many of us will know the transformational power of crisis to bring us to our knees and make us look at things we previously were unwilling to look at.

Many of us will already know how brushing up close with the reality of our mortality will bring what is truly important into focus.

Many of us will know that sometimes it seems we need life to bring some crisis to break our hearts open to the truth that lives underneath the armour.

It’s a reality I refused to acknowledge for a long time, but it seems to almost always be the case that suffering and pain are needed for real change to happen.

Sometimes we need to be brought to our knees. I know I have in my own life. And while the pain in those times felt unbearable, I look back and find myself able to see the fierce grace that was operating then, offering me the opportunity to make choices that would bring me back into alignment with myself and with life. I've learned since then that this fierce grace lives even in the times we feel most afraid and disconnected.

Now I realise that we are actually lucky if those crises come. The alternative is that we just coast through life, unaware and disconnected from what is out of alignment in our lives, recognising this only perhaps when it is too late.

I'm here for more than that. I feel we all are.

Invoking the breaking of our collective hearts doesn’t mean I’m advocating for a callous approach to what is happening in the world right now. Clear, considered, informed action is of course needed.

And, I’m all for this being a rallying cry for the abundant genius, creativity, collaboration, connection and taking care of each other that lives in the human spirit, in such a way that we side step major collective pain from this virus.

May that be so.

And yet, it feels to me like whatever part of humanity we are located in, this virus is here to crack our collective heart open to more soul. I hope so.

That cracking open of the heart comes through heartbreak. It comes when what is most vulnerable for us is exposed. For a collective shift to really happen and be sustained, so we don't just go back to business as usual after this, I hope there is enough heartbreak for us to have to change. I feel tenderness in my heart as I write that.

Many of us, especially owing to things like social media, increasingly live in echo chambers, surrounded by those who inhabit in the same bubbles that we do. And yet out there, feeling, living, fearing, hoping, praying, and caring, is humanity.

I feel the opportunity for us here to have the barriers of our hearts broken down to enter into a deeper sense of interconnection and acknowledged interdependence with the rest of humanity. I pray we come out of this on the other side more aware and connected to the unity that is already the deep truth of who we are in our core.