The best way to envision my journey during the last month has been a swinging pendulum that is constantly finding my way back to middle ground. When the pendulum starts to slow in the middle I will read or see something that sends me back on my journey. But what I am realizing is that these swings give me the opportunity to see that my interpretation of what’s going on is my power and during a time when many of us are feeling powerless, where I place my focus is key.

When I find myself focusing on fear, distrust, sadness, and confusion, I find my way out with the help of trust. Trust tells me that I am (and we are) being given an opportunity here. Trust reminds me that crisis is usually accompanied by growth and eventually wisdom. And most importantly, trust tells me that whatever is actually happening is having unintended but beautiful and healing consequences; some of them which we can already see in the clear blue skies, and others that have yet to be revealed to us.

We cannot come out of this unchanged and from that change, new opportunities and trajectories will be birthed. More than a decade ago I tried to read Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth, and the ideas were so foreign to me that I didn’t understand what I was reading. After a couple of years of collecting dust, I revisited the book with Oprah’s book club and it clicked but only lived in my brain. I have recently pulled it back off my shelf because it feels that this whole experience is bringing us closer to a tipping point of awakening, and I am seeing this as a time to bring these understandings from my head to my heart.

My biggest insight is that I have been unconsciously believing that things must happen in a certain way in order to get to where I think we need to be. Under the guise of “I want world peace” (which on the surface seems righteous), my ego has had a narrow definition of how that should and will come about. This experience is helping me loosen my grip on that false idea and opening up my mind to all the possibilities that I can’t see, but can be a part of by following the breadcrumbs of my own life. I would have never guessed that social isolation could bring us closer to those we love because we now have time to connect, or that communities would come together more intensely when we have to physically be apart.

So I am left with the realization that I don’t have any idea how this needs to play out but it will and I can trust the is-ness of life. And if I take things a bit further, we all don’t have to believe X, vote for Y, or act like Z (and it is highly unlikely that will ever happen) for our healing to occur. Healing and beauty is inevitable and there are an infinite number of paths leading us there. My insights may be different than yours because we all have different roles to play, but as they all come together, we will all be a part of the RebEarth.