?WILL THE PANDEMIC TRANSFORM OUR LEVEL OF CONSCIOUSNESS?
A team of friends and scholars on "better living" issues in Argentina and Colombia met virtually for a couple of hours on April 2nd and exchanged points of view about why and for what we are living this paradoxical planetary conjuncture produced by the SARS-CoV2. Most important, we talked about key things to capitalize this opportunity.
Here is a summary of what was discussed and some expanded ideas:
The why. The following were mentioned as possible causes: (i) protruding sanitary failures in the Chinese food and supply chain; (ii) a biological “conspiracy” promoted by the US against China and its Eurasian allies (Russia and North Korea) in search of recovering their economic and technological leadership or promoted by the Asian giant to strengthen their advances and power; (iii) the affectation that the electromagnetic fields of 4G and 5G technologies have produced in the energy fields of living beings.
Others attributed it (i) to a mere accident; (ii) to a deliberate and autonomous process of Planet Earth, which as a living being seeks to balance itself with its power of self-regulation, in the face of the damage that human “development” has caused it; (iii) to a “divine” fact coming from a superior Being who intervenes to redirect our actions and make them consistent with the purpose of existence.
The housework. This aspect involves what is being executed, what remains to be done and what should not be done.
In what has been carried out, there is no doubt that (i) sanitary measures, isolation and information have been vital in the administration of the pandemic and must be maintained; (ii) economically, government aid to small entrepreneurs and informal workers is essential and must be intensified and accelerated, if the inevitable increase in unemployment is to be lessened with its dire consequences for the financial health of the country, companies and its citizens.
In what remains to be done, it is recommended (i) to balance bad news with good news. As a deterrent and coercive reinforcement of restrictive measures, it is inevitable to report the negative effects of the pandemic, but also the achievements and advances in its containment, due to the hope it generates, which is a key piece of mental health and peaceful coexistence; (ii) materialize and intensify the commitment of large and medium-sized companies in maintaining the greatest number of jobs. This happens by reducing or postponing the budgeted capital returns, not only for the current year, but also in the medium term, and by the solidarity contribution of employees with medium and high salary ranges, to accept temporary reductions in their remunerations, (as some workers of a well-known Japanese automaker did in the past), which could well be compensated with future bonuses; (iii) promote and formalize the consolidation of citizen support networks for informal workers, as a complement to those already created by government entities. To this end, the creation of committees in neighborhoods, complexes and condominiums in cities is suggested, in order to locate defined groups of the unemployed population to establish channels of in kind aid, during the crisis and for a few more months. It is not a matter of promoting welfare, which is so damaging to the individual growth process, but of supporting those who, due to the pandemic, have been deprived of the income of their work, even if it is informal.
What should not be done. (i) We must not allow ourselves to be infected with pessimism and fatalism, because this undoubtedly enhances the effects of the virus. Although the number of patients already exceeds one million people in the world and the deaths are close to 50,000 (information that in many cases is maximized when presented with yellowish tints by social networks), the news about the decrease in the curve of infections in China, Europe and Colombia itself, and in our case, the country has been ranked as the third in the world in adopting measures to manage the situation, should generate a beneficial and hopeful effect on how the world is capable of overcoming the effects of the pandemic; (ii) we must not cross our arms in the face of the critical situation of our fellow human beings. Those of us who, due to prevention, occupation, state of health and even "luck", have not been infected, we should as a compensatory and solidarity gesture, promote and become an active part of the proposed support measures.
The for what. As citizens of a developing country, it helps us little to look for causes or culprits. It is more useful to take advantage of the limitations that the virus imposes on our freedom to reflect on forgotten aspects of our relationship with the planet and with all its inhabitants, animated and inanimate, which we can do from various perspectives: (i) from the natural resources, where the shortage of basic necessities leads us to understand that they are limited and that it is therefore essential to use them more rationally, (ii) from a physical health view, we must internalize the importance of prevention practices, healthy nutrition, exercise, rest and avoidance of harmful substances; (iii) from family relationships, taking advantage of moments at home to reestablish sincere and affective communication with the couple, children and parents, privileging moments and activities together, such as preparing meals, games, collective readings and other activities such as watching movies, listening to music or webinars; (iv) from the spiritual, understood as the ability to maintain inner peace despite the circumstances, product of the understanding that everything that happens is perfect of a universal plan and has a pedagogical purpose. Depending on the “spiritual posture” of each one, the religions, the techniques of quieting the mind, body relationship, breathing, and others of frequent use, may be used to understand this purpose and incorporate it as a habit of life.
These are times of individual and collective learning, which come precisely at a time of Lent, a preparation for "something great", which sounds scary but paradoxically it comes to deprive us of fear, allowing to reflecting and examining our level of acceptance, understanding and exercise of our free will. It is an opportunity to examine and, if necessary, to fully reassess what we are doing in our lives and to review our priorities, our relationships with others, with the economy and other aspects of daily life.
How valuable it is to capitalize these days of recollection to advance a process of "self-awareness". Let us recall what some thinkers have said about our reactions to circumstances similar to those the world lives today.
Rumi once said: "This too shall pass"; Buddha, speaking of impermanence, taught that "nothing is fixed, everything goes and everything comes"; Jesus Christ said "the leaf of a tree does not move if it is not the will of God" and John Lennon, promoted to great thinker by the wisdom of his songs, sentenced that "everything will be fine in the end, and if not, then it is not the end”.
Everything that happens gives us the possibility of undertaking an unprecedented change, a change of "era", something like "three days of darkness" which, if we know how to interpret and use, we can face without judgment, as a reality, examining the darkness to understand something we do not know and learn from it. We can see it as a tornado that forces us to return to our center, to relearn, transmit and know how to help others from our authenticity. The forced coexistence that we are living is going to expose the best and the worst of us. Those of us who believe in a universal source, which gave rise to the universe and our lives with a purpose, and endowed us with free will as a portal of growth or as a burden that binds us and even sets us back, consider it important to understand that at this point in time, favorable circumstances converge to apply the millennial spiritual teachings the entire humanity has received and which, voluntarily or forcedly, support the evolution of consciousness and a great individual change and therefore, of the planet. We dream that these circumstances, which promote "change of consciousness", promote the revaluation of concepts: competition should be replaced by cooperation; mutual aid should be a life principle; work at home should be a permanent and not a circumstantial reality, so as to promote family ties and decontaminate the environment; sources of work and labor should be reinvented without drastic reductions in jobs as a result of new technologies like robotics and artificial intelligence, including virtual ordering and exchange of goods and services. Our economic and relational model should be rethought or reinvented because we are not achieving a world of harmony, where suffering is eliminated or diminished.
?Will we be able to take advantage of this situation to contribute to the formation of a "critical mass", i.e., a sufficient number of people who align themselves in thought, feeling and action for this great change to take place? ?What if instead of few people focused on this issue of change, there are hundreds of thousands, even millions, who understand and accept the challenge and the opportunity?
If we do not succeed, as is the case of many of the people and corporations that have suffered catastrophic attacks, which changed for a period of time and then resumed to their previous habits and practices, implementing the old saying: “what enters one ear goes out of the other”. This will not be the end of the world, it will only be the loss of a new opportunity to reinvent ourselves, to create or start the process of creating a “New Earth”, from our minds, hearts and actions.
Published by Oscar Ayala Arana and Luis Fernando Caicedo Fernández. Santiago de Cali, Colombia, april 2020