In The Stillness of Life
Sometimes the strongest connections are made when we are the most still in life. Reach out.
Pandemic. Covid-19. Coronavirus. Lockdown. Quarentine. Infection. Death. These words have been making part of our daily lives relentlessly and almost every human has been thru the 7 stages of grief this year whether they realise it or not:
Denial. “Its just a flu”, “everyone is overreacting"- its a survival coping mechanism when the news and social media loads you with so much of one topic it all seems meaningless and overwhelming, denial lets us control how much we can process at one time.
Anger. “How stupid are they to gather in large groups now?” , “They are just so bad at their job thats why they are so slow to act” or “ I cannot believe this is our nation’s leader”. The process of trying to make sense of it all, finding anchor points to focus on, in attempt to find your feet on the floor again after floating in confusion in denial.
Bargaining. “Ok I don’t mind cooking more at home/working from home/not travel for work/not travel at all/not leave the house at all .. as long as it doesn’t spread, as long as my kids are safe, as long as my parents don’t get it, as long as it ends soon”.
Depression. “People are dying, its not stopping, I don’t know what to do, I’m scared to go out”, “I’m scared of people. I’m really scared that I might get it”, “Nothing is going to be the same again”, “I’ve lost so much I have spent my life creating, my job, my home, my savings, people I know, what kind of world am I living in?”, "I dont want to know what the future holds or how I can go thru this again“.
Acceptance. “It will end eventually, but this is not going to be the last time”, “We will have to learn to adapt to its after effects for a long time to come and be prepared as best we can”.
What have we been grieving? Our daily freedoms, we perhaps took granted for. What we mistakenly thought was our purpose in life taken away by a particle of just 120nm in diameter. A particle that attacks the very action that represents our life …… our breath. Denial was short lived for most in this case, as things got real super fast from China to South Korea to Iran to Italy to Spain and most of Europe and the States in less than a month. And although its called stages of grief, we don’t move on in linear fashion, most of us stay oscillating between anger, bargaining and depression for awhile, even acceptance comes and goes. It is important time to learn that daily freedoms and our true freedom are two separate concepts, one involves liberty of choice and movement and the other a state of mind and being, while simultaneously understand that our life purpose has nothing to do with our daily freedoms, as one can exist without the other. Sometimes we have to lose one to know the difference and in the stillness of life is when we assess and re-establish our relationship with external life and ourselves.
How do we move into and beyond acceptance? Feel everything you need to and let it go. Listen to your needs, go thru your processes and let them develop into a catalyst of movement, change, growth and evolution. There is so much power in introspection, look at what you do have, focus on what is important to you, reach out and connect with the beings you value. Allow life to manifest through all your action no matter how big or small from cooking, eating, reading, writing, smiling, connecting, giving, spiritual practices and looking after your health. In time we begin to feel life again in a new way, allowing what life was, to be, and emerge into what is.
It is vital people move thru their processes. Social media was rife with people posting their home activities and soon after articles telling everyone to ‘just go inside’ and all the online classes, non-stop cooking and other projects was unnecessary. I disagree, it is important to allow people to process and move thru them in order to evolve. Do what you need to do then let it go. Firstly the success of others learning a new skill is not a failure of another. Secondly what may be the process of dealing with grief or trauma does not have to be the same as another’s process. Lastly bear in mind every time there is an emerging trend amongst the people in your circle in social media, soon after articles appear with an opposing view because it is perfect clickbait as it peaks curiosity, don't let this puking of information online confuse you, whenever in doubt seek the middle line, therein usually lies truth.
Life has shown consistently that beings united in struggle will help each other. It is our natural raw state. Elephants gather to help a fallen fellow elephant.
Apes have helped raised abandon big cat species. Humans mobilise to help with finances, food and shelter to those suffering in unpredictable catastrophes. Species and race and other manmade boundaries disappear when in united in suffering and the ability to help.
Elephants are among the most emotional creatures in the world. They have been known to rescue other animals such as trapped dogs and cats.
The will to value life and lifeforms shine when all the layers of us hiding our true selves shed and action is then derived from our inner most core. The layers created by years of false self imposed boundaries in attempt to define whom we are. “I am Yan Ong, from Malaysia, Chinese, a yoga practitioner, I don’t like, I like, I believe, I don’t believe, I want, I think, I am, I can, I cannot …. Blah blah blah” Layer after layer. Layers that only humans have caked on so thick that we forget the shining inner core is even there, the one light that makes us forget all our trivial labels and united us with everyone and everything.
The hero lies not in 1 person but in every breathing life form, in all of us. The hero is this inner most core within us that stretches our hand to help others in need without boundaries.
Global pain has been on the rise for a long time now and has shown little signs of reaching its peak. Suffering and the infliction of suffering is prevalent everywhere. And now there has been grieving on a worldwide scale. It is time to reach that hand out and heal the earth, be back in touch with our inner hero.
Being still does not mean you are alone. Connect.
For thousands of years across all cultures, humans represented life symbolically in circles.
But for now the world has stalled… life is still. We think about our parents and elders. We think about our children and next generations. We think about what we are going to do with our lives. Worry brings us to the past and anxiety to the future. In the state of panic everything we think of is linear, accelerated and exponential even.
However we forget cycles are how everything in life operate. There is a start and an end to everything and that every end is always met with a start. Most use the phrase “Going around in circles” with a negative connotation, but for me its perfect, it leads to going nowhere, stationary, still. Life is meant to be experienced in cycles, in stillness. It is only in this stillness we can observe motions, fluctuations and oscillations as the cycle moves round. In stillness we remember we are in a cycle and that everything does and will pass. When we stop moving our attention is available to experience life as it passes and we will be ready for the next experience we are to go thru no matter what it is, as the new cycle enters.
Sometimes we are sit in stillness watching a cycle of life experience go by and other times in an eye of a tornado as it spins around us wildly, one requires more effort to be still than the other, but either way the stillness of life is the best position to be in no matter its speed.
Before you leave this article, I would like us to take a 1 minute of silence for all those that are grieving a lost of a love one, the heroes we lost saving others during this time and everyone whom lost their lives either as a direct or indirect result of the covid-19 pandemic this year.
~ This article is in dedication to Joyce Chan, whom passed on the 26th March 2020 stuck in quarantine in Malaysia even though tested negative for covid-19. Joyce had been diagnosed with cancer in December and was on the way home to Kuala Lumpur from Shanghai to tell her parents and see her daughter again. She never got to see them. R.I.P. Joyce, wherever you are, may you be soaking in the beauty that is the stillness of the universe. ~