What the Coronavirus Can Teach Us About Love
What the world needs now more than ever in the midst of the anxiety and fear surrounding the Coronavirus is care and compassion. Compassion is a generous energy. It’s about giving to another from a place of deep care about their suffering.
When we are young, and our behavior is not pleasing or understood by our caretakers, we make ourselves wrong because it feels too scary to make the people who care for us wrong.
We then create a belief that it's safer to make ourselves wrong, and carry it with us throughout our lives. We cease to speak our truth to others. This has two consequences. The first is that we are blocked from receiving the love we need. This can be very depleting. And the second outcome is that we are blocked from loving ourselves. And if we don't develop the self- awareness, that we have a habitual pattern of being self-critical, we then project this judgment and blame onto others, creating distance between us and the rest of the world.
This has been a primary lesson in my life. From a young age I have been exquisitely aware or able to sense others' pain and to see the truth of a situation. This combination of insight and sensitivity was not always welcome or understood by those around me.
What I know to be true is that when we are conditioned to give up parts of ourselves, we end up being anything but compassionate.
Rather than make others wrong, I made myself wrong and learn to shut down this part of myself. In doing so, I shut myself off to giving and receiving compassion. This led to being hard on myself and feeling the need to prove myself for much of my life. (See When Proving Our Worth Undermines Our Value)
I see this same challenge play out in most of my clients’ lives. It is hard for them let go of habitual patterns and behaviors that often lead to self-judgment and an inability to love themselves.
When I see, for example, challenging aspects in a chart between a client’s moon (emotional security) and Saturn (fear and restriction) they usually feel restricted from receiving love. The pattern behind it is that they were conditioned by a caregiver to have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility.
To some this may sound a bit Pollyannaish, but I believe we are being invited to come together, in a new way the world hasn’t yet seen. The first step is learning to heal ourselves and love ourselves. Only then can we truly fulfill the Commandment to “love thy neighbor as thyself.”
We are being asked to break down and let go of all the barriers and divisions that separate us. We are ALL being asked to begin working on the long process of building new and more equitable societal structures that will make it possible for us to love one another as neighbors should. When we do this, it will open the door to the Second Chances the world so desperately needs right now.