Check out Elephant’s Continually-updating Coronavirus Diary. ~ Waylon
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George Harrison’s lyrics verse through my head again:

“Give me love, give me love, give me peace on earth.”

I replay the song after reading yet another flood of negative and judgmental posts on my social media feed. People are tearing scraps out of each other for doing or saying things that are not in keeping with their perceptions about what is right and correct.

“WTF is wrong with people?” is one comment I seem to see daily, as is “People are dumb, people are stupid, people are selfish…” the list goes on.

Most countries are in lockdown at the moment due to the coronavirus situation. This has led to many of us functioning out of fear. We as humans do not welcome unfamiliar territory and a loss of control. So, we get angry, because anger is the mask that fear wears, and this points to why we are seeing so much confrontation and argument. When we do not have control, many of us go straight into the mindset of survival.

Here, in the United Kingdom, we are permitted to go out for “essential” trips and to take an hour of exercise per day, yet even “essential” trips are coming under fire. There are social media wars because person A decides that person B’s trip is non-essential without having any idea of person B’s story, mental health, or the fact that they may have only been outside once in that entire week.

Many of us are being cruel, not kind, and wrapping it up in a flimsy parcel that we market to others as us being a good person and keeping everyone safe. Be under no illusions: the type of person who engages in this type of judgment and tunnel vision is doing nothing for the greater good.

We fight over whether people should be wearing masks or not wearing them, criticizing those who wear latex gloves and slamming those who don’t. Hell, a person can’t even walk their dog without coming under intense scrutiny, and God forbid someone goes food shopping with their children in tow (what are us single parents supposed to do in this scenario—leave the children unattended?).

We are even being selective of whom to give love and positivity to and whom to withdraw it from. We don’t appear to be practising unconditional love and acceptance for our fellow man; we appear to be saying:

“I will love and accept you if you behave the way I want you to. If you do not, then f*ck you.”

A saddening example of this lack of unconditional love is shown by something that was suggested in the United Kingdom. We are lucky here to have a free national health service, and collectively, people decided to cheer for the NHS from their doorsteps once a week at a certain time.

The positive energy of this was overwhelming and so immense that the overflowing emotion was unavoidable. After this, it was suggested that we do a similar cheer for our prime minister, who is reportedly in intensive care with Covid-19. The uproar of opposition to this idea was quite a disappointing show of humanity. There were even those who said he deserved it, and were pleased to hear of his plight. This shows how, to a large extent, we are functioning from conditional love only:

“You haven’t behaved the way I wanted you too, so you do not deserve my love or acceptance. Here, from my high horse, I send you a resounding f*ck you.”

This judgmental and fear-based nature that many of us embody has been magnified by this pandemic. Some spiritual theories have suggested that this fear is coming to the surface for clearance so that we can continue to evolve and grow—this much I hope is true.

Somehow, we as humans (who apparently want to live in peace and harmony, without wars and cruelty) think that negative patterns of behaviour, thoughts, and beliefs will reap something positive—what?!

It sounds absurd and illogical— because it is.

We expect a peaceful world to happen, like it is something that must gestate outside of ourselves so we can enjoy it once it gets here. Some of us are missing the point that we are all part of a collective consciousness, and as such, if we choose to engage in fear, anger, hatred, jealousy, and so on, we are only serving to poison the collective “pot” that we all share, and that filters right into our experiences.

Is this really still where the majority of us are in terms of realisation that we create what we are—that everything is a reflection of us?

We could change this.

But it seems we prefer to stay with the familiar and comfortable patterns, even if they are destructive. We do not want to move out of the womb, because we feel safe and secure—yet, there is only so much growth that can take place here.

Can humanity really continue this way without something big happening? Oh wait—it did!

Is it possible that we could see past the ends of our noses for just long enough to notice that there is a world outside of ourselves, and that this world and all the people in it are being damaged by our need to be right, our need for validation, and our need to create little wars amongst ourselves?

Is it only coronavirus that may be making us ill, or is the real sickness our attitudes and behaviour?

Somewhat paradoxically, lockdown could crack our mindsets open and allow us to move out of our restricted and outdated patterns, with the aim of healing ourselves so we can actively be contributing to the greater good.

I invite you, with love, to reflect on all these aspects.