IGI

This is the second part of a three-part series of posts. This post will look at the big picture of this coronavirus pandemic situation and invites you to consider how this event can aid us in discovering what is truly important in our lives as we take the big picture perspective and discover compassion and our greater unity as Human Beings. 

Part One focused on the practical steps we can take in our daily lives and our business and work lives.

Part Three will address the deeper, spiritual significance of this event and how you can view it from an IGI perspective that will help you navigate these chaotic times and evolve to experience more goodness in all aspects of your life. 

Sometimes life gives us our greatest gifts cleverly disguised as our worst nightmares. When adversity happens we are challenged to dig deeper within and discover who we truly are and what is important in our lives.  Sometimes we need these crises to happen in our lives to awaken us from our slumber and catalyze us into a greater experience of life. 

The 4 B’s

This pandemic is an event that shakes us out of the habit of our daily routine and gives us the opportunity to reflect upon our lives and re-evaluate any number of things, such as whether we are living the life we desire and whether we are taking care of our physical, mental, and spiritual health.  We can take responsibility for our bodies and our minds by taking care of our physical health and staying positive without succumbing to fear.  

The time and space that you may have right now as you practice social distancing and are in a state of semi-quarantine is a great opportunity to focus on what I call the 4 B’s – Body, Bonds, Business, and Being.  These four aspects of our life and health that are essential for our well-being and happiness. 

During this time, you can nurture your Body by taking a walk or doing yoga and stretching at home, as well as making sure you eat a healthy diet to bolster your immune system. With the extra time on your hands, you can improve your Bonds by spending time with your immediate family as well as calling friends and relations on the phone.  For Business, you now likely have more time to work on your business or work without distractions and can use this time to catch up on things while connecting with your clients through the Internet.  Finally, your Being can be nurtured through any number of spiritual practices or by taking time for reflection and contemplation. 

What is Truly Important?

In addition to using this opportunity to nurture your total health, this pandemic offers you an opening to discover a deeper sense of vision in your life path.

I think back to years ago when my wife was unexpectedly in the hospital. I was in the middle of selling one of my companies and was very busy with emails, phone calls, text messages, and meetings up until that night when she was unexpectedly taken into the hospital. The next day, she was in the ICU unit and I wasn’t sure if she was going to live. Suddenly, everything had a completely different meaning and every email and phone call seemed so insignificant and unimportant.  

I no longer cared if I responded to them or not and it completely put into perspective what was important. I delegated some of that stuff to others because people still deserve answers, but I knew it wasn’t my purpose at that time because I had a new shift in priority.

When I think about the personal crises in my life in light of the coronavirus, as much as this is life-threatening and has ended some people’s lives and will continue to do so – at the same time it is good to look at the big picture of this. What does this mean for our global planet? What does this mean to us as human beings and what does this mean for our spiritual souls? 

This is something that has happened from the beginning of time. Humanity has experienced famines, floods, and diseases periodically from the very beginning. Usually, when natural disasters do their initial damage, there’s always good that comes from it in the form of innovations and learning from the past. New theorems are created, new advances in healthcare are developed, new laws are passed that benefit the people, new regulations are passed, and people innovate new ways to do business. 

In the same way, this situation can lead to positive growth, changes, and innovations within a business and in our society as a whole. Changes must inevitably occur within organizations as people tighten up their belts and stop spending money on things that aren’t essential. It causes people to reach out to people they would not otherwise come into contact with as they are looking for forgiveness and a sense of unity.

While there have been occurrences of selfishness and greed, such as fighting over toilet paper, there have been far more expressions of compassion. We may see that this event has caused the world to come together in solidarity and recognize our fundamental interconnectedness.

The Big Picture Perspective

I like to visualize this fact of our interconnectedness and gain a sense of perspective with the Google Earth application. If you zoom all the way in and look at your house you can look at the roof of the house and the backyard. You can then zoom out and see the neighborhood, you zoom out again and you can see the town. You can zoom out further to see the city, then the state, then the United States or whatever country you’re in. You can keep zooming out and can see half of the world before zooming out all the way and you’re through the atmosphere and you’re through the clouds in the sky. You look down and you see the earth, this round ball that’s spinning slowly that’s got such beautiful colors with the blue in the ocean and the green and you look at it and it gives you such a different feeling, looking at from that higher level looking down onto the earth. 

Anytime there are daily problems or issues within my life, my business, or my relationships, I like to say, “OK. What level of the Earth do I need to zoom this out on?”  A situation that seems very grave and serious when zoomed in up close becomes much less stressful when viewed from the broader perspective which sees the whole.

We have to deal with the problem at hand and we must have hands-on contact sometimes with these issues that might exist in business or life, or in this case, the coronavirus. But when you look at the very big global perspective and the spiritual perspective from the time humanity began and into our future you can see that we are currently in a very small place in time and space in the grand scheme of things. 

By seeing the big picture perspective with this pandemic, you can see how this situation can be transformed into a benefit for yourself and for humanity as a whole.  You can see how you can use what life has given you and turn it into a benefit for yourself, your loved ones, your business, and the world.  

Whatever will happen with the coronavirus, whether it continues for a month, two months, or six months, whatever it’s going to be, there will be these ripple effects and it will have consequences for our world long after that. 

Compassion & Unity

In these trying times, we must be in solidarity and compassion with those who have lost and will lose loved ones to this illness. Many souls will likely choose this time to leave the Earth and while this may be looked on as neutral from the absolute perspective, from a human perspective there will be much sorrow and experience of loss. This is an opportunity for all of us to further open our hearts and embrace the sorrow of the whole world. I hope that this worldwide experience will assist us all in recognizing our fundamental unity with all life. 

You can look at every situation as to what you are being in service to – your ego or IGI. It is an opportunity to choose between being in your IGI versus acting from your ego. Those who act in ego will find themselves isolated, alone, living in fear, and actually weaken their immune systems causing themselves to become more susceptible to the virus. 

Those who invite goodness in and act in IGI create for themselves a vital state of inner health and find support and solidarity with all of humanity as we collectively meet this challenge and a great opportunity to make positive changes in ourselves and within our co-created world.

Continue to read Part Three.