The four gifts of our crises
The chance of our lifetime (2/3)
All crises are an invitation to growth and profound transformation. The crises facing humanity carry four gifts: personal, spiritual, and societal gifts, and one pertaining to our relationship with nature. If we know how to harvest these gifts, we can reach beyond our limitations and regenerate our societies and nature.
All challenges are gateways to transformation and growth. Though we may not realize it, crises come with everything it takes to solve them. This principle applies when you face a personal crisis, if your organization is on the brink, and when we confront the crises humanity faces right now. We must understand this in order to utilize the gifts of each crisis and solve the situation.
Regarding what we have to face as humans, four specific opportunities lie ahead.
Personal
More or less every one of us is, in a way, traumatized or sick, and this blocks our path to fulfilling our potential and gaining agency. We carry the weight of generations before us. We have our own restricting experiences, beliefs, and paradigms, and we are unable to move beyond them and find our true selves. Our crises are the gateway to profound healing at all levels. They point to what we are meant for here on earth. And they show us how to realize this potential. A rich, fulfilling, and vibrant life awaits us.
Natural
In becoming alienated from nature, we carried out enormous ecological destruction to the extent that it threatened our survival. We have the chance to regenerate nature globally by entering into a new relationship with it, one where we realize our interconnectedness with all living beings. Indigenous people not only show how that’s possible; above all, they show that we all carry that wisdom within us. We have to expose it. This will be a journey of healing for both nature and us.
Societal
Our societies are based on control and power. Both are the cause of our own destruction and that of nature. By understanding and utilizing our crises, we can create societies geared toward inner growth and potential. They will foster agency and everyone’s power. We will manifest a nourishing, healthy, supportive social fabric that gives freedom to everyone.
Spiritual
We are caged in our material world, in the realm of neediness, lack, and insignificance, simply because we separated ourselves from the infinite intelligence we are embedded in. This separation is the source of the fragmentation and alienation that underpins our lives, just below the level of our awareness. Our crises invite us to overcome that separation and turn our lives towards abundance, connectedness, and contentedness. We can reconnect to the One and experience being guided and carried. We can discover what it means to be an active creator of that infinite intelligence.
That’s what lies ahead of us. We have the choice: will we carry in crisis and continue experience that aspect of human possibility? Or do we turn around, turn towards ourselves, and realize another aspect of our reality? This cannot be accomplished at the snap of our fingers. The path is rich and rewarding, no matter how far we can go. How to embark on that path is explored in the last part of this series.
Read the whole series “The Chance of Our Lifetime”. The opening two parts described the crises we are navigating and illustrated the change we could create. The third section explain how to achieve that change.