At the very beginning of this pandemic experience, way back in March 2020 someone casually said to me “this lock-down feels like one big “Dyad experience” and I couldn’t stop thinking about it!

Here we all are cooped up in this uncertain and weird social void. A unique and unpredictable space in time, of which we’re all collectively a part (even if it is unwillingly) finding out exactly who we were, like it or not. While in and amongst the forced solitude, with all distractions removed, this self-inquiry is quite literally being shoved in our face with little or no room for escape! What becomes of the caged animal?

No more hiding places existed as we’ve ben pushed and forced into parts of ourselves which previously we never needed to really acknowledge, all thanks to a plethora of life noise, chatter, routines, obligations, commuting, workloads, excuses of plans and appointments and general busyness. We simply did not have to go there, why? Well because ‘we just didn’t have the time’.

But now what else have we been able to do with endless days stretched out before us all begging to be filled up with something? Anything? Suddenly we had all the time in the world and this beautiful and provocative gift of time is lead us into the maze of self to hold us in front of a mirror of our own solitude; and it’s a fucking big mirror – one we all seemed a bit surprised to see! “How could I have missed that?” we’ll coo to ourselves as it begins to throw up parts of ourselves, we’ve kept cleverly hidden for most, or likely all of our current lifetime.

During this pandemic were you brought face to face with yourself? Was this a real inconvenient truth test for some of you? Not able to escape from ourselves as the earth whispered ‘wakey wakey’.  Having everything stripped back no labels to hide behind, no work to consume you.  It can be painful to see yourself for the first time, but if you managed it, if you saw through the chaos of it all…

Well done, keep going…. now… Tell me who you are.

Because this is exactly how the Dyad works, we sit and face another and through mindful and deliberate communication we enter a conscious state of recognition of who we are. Held in a space of non-judgement and safety, allowing the speaker to unravel and explore the authentic threads which ultimately lead them back to themselves. It is a daunting and exposing process seeing and feeling into all these little nooks and crannies. Its deep, quite possibly overwhelming, uncomfortable, and guaranteed unknown territory to many.

Who are you without your job?

Who are you without your social life?

Who are you without your routine/freedom/family/relationship?

Tell me who you are?

This isolation is giving us plenty of time for personal introspection. Stripping us all back to our basic humanness without all the ‘bells ‘n’ whistles’ noise or the external circus to distract us and this will have been tough for many. Sadly, and with great compassion, I acknowledge that it has been too much altogether for some and I hold their brave souls in my heart. There will have been an unbearable toll on mental health during this very hard and difficult time and I am not poking this fallout with stick at all, or dismissing its severity. I am speaking here with conscious recognition, a perspective  which resonates with those who hold their space and travel into the shadow path, the shadow path which only the few can navigate.

I am at my core connected to all things and all things to me; their pain is my pain; my love is their love. Our truth is one truth. We just might see it through different eyes and attach a vastly different narrative to it.  We are all different creatures in our humanness, I am just a curious being and these anomalies of the human experience fascinate me.

This is a time in history of death and rebirth; the unavoidable polarity of the human experience bringing losses and gains, loops and turns, peaks and troughs.

We’ve almost unwittingly been able to use this time, free of external offers of healing, just allowing ourselves to be with ourselves, quietly, uncomfortably at times perhaps yes; but in the safe spaces of our own homes where we can question it all, break down, cry, laugh, be confused, lonely and out of sorts because really it is OK to do all these things but we’ve been programmed to perceive it as wrong, dramatic or too out of the comfort zone!

Well fuck the comfort zone it is time TO FEEL. This is what we’ve been avoiding and how can you know who you truly are if you cannot strip it back at a time when there is absolutely nothing to distract you? Let us take the time to roll around in the inner depths pulling at our own masks so they eventually slip, come loose and drop to wriggle free of the false self and emerge with a new fresh perspective? Showing up fully, in truth and authenticity.

Matt Khan put it beautifully ‘We are a 20’000 year old project of the divine, hand it back to that which created it.‘

Meaning; our perceived identities are tied up in the layers upon layers of social conditioning in the busyness and this gift of quiet reflection stretched out before us forcing us into uncharted corners while the powerful new energies seeped into our cracks and splintered parts like water; filling the spaces with new and fluid lessons. Turning us back into who we are meant to be, not who we ‘think’ we are.

This pandemic has illuminated the way showing us exactly who we really are individually and collectively. Not all of it pleasant but all of it necessary if you champion evolution. Is it returning us to a better place? A reset of the internal and external realities?

One thing I’m sure of is there will be a hell of a lot of us out there who are most definitely not walking out of this experience as the same people who went into it. Maybe slightly battered and a little bruised, but stronger, wiser and eyes wide open to what is really going on. Implicitly trusting in this new-found reconditioned ‘self’ emerging, blinking into the sun slightly dazed and confused from this bizarre yet crucial human process.

To know thyself at profound soul level really is one of the most difficult yet exhilarating (inner) road trips you will ever embark upon – and quite possibly the only road trip any of us were able to take in the last 12 months.

As we begin to assess this post lockdown apocalyptic landscape, changed and different from before, keep asking the question don’t let any of this have been in vain – when you see your face staring back at you each day in societies mirror can you see the reflection now and remember who you are.

Because the answers you seek were already within you, waiting; you just didn’t have the time until now to hear them.

Be brave dear souls.

Its only change.