Humanity has been force locked inside as if imprisoned by the force of Nature that rules over all things. Many find this disconcerting. It is as if we were suddenly pushed out or rather pushed in away from our comfort zones. To hang out with friends and family, to rush to the malls and pubs, to spend money carelessly, drive recklessly, to be driven by the moment and the hours by lust for power and greed for food and money and sensual pleasure had been increasingly becoming the way of human life, at least in the urban centres. All this has come to a screeching halt. People are feeling distressed as if in a double bind. Outside there is the virus while inside there is the mirror showing us what we are. Restlessness, our dissatisfactions, greed and lust tend to surface in such situations of isolation. However isolation can be a splendid gift if we know how to use it.
First and foremost isolation helps us confront our own nature, that from which we are incessantly running in countless ways. Now, sitting alone in the house we have mainly ourselves as our companion. We can make this companion a friendly guest or an enemy depending upon how we deal with this. All that rises up within us during this period of enforced isolation can be used to study ourselves. This study obviously should not be an indulgent preoccupation with ourselves but a means to confront the different parts of our nature, to reorganise and reorient them to our central purpose and goal. Those that resist strongly can be slowly released as a catharsis by constantly offering it to the Divine Grace. After all for all kinds of addictions the minimum period that a person has to be kept locked up in a treatment or de-addiction facility is three weeks or twenty one days. It is believed and experience bears witness to it that this is the time period required to break the bone of any habit.
Aren’t we living our life rather habitually, mechanically? The wheels of our life have been set into motion from childhood by various forces and influences. We have just continued to move along those paths chalked out for us by convention, tradition and routine. This isolation is a perfect time to reflect upon where we have arrived following this road as also where we are going. Thus reflecting we may discover that thus far we have not really been leading our own life, the true life inspired by the divinity within us. If so then it is perhaps a golden opportunity to reset, rewind and change course.
But for those who are clear about their goal and the path they have chosen, this isolation is an opportunity to intensify their aspiration, to go within in greater depths, to rise further in our quest for God and Freedom and Truth and Light and Immortality.
