I was eavesdropping on two friends while doing some stretches before Zumba class. “I have gone back to an abnormal life,” she said. “That was a weird sentence” was my first thought. My friend just came back to the workforce after a one-year hiatus from a job of 12 years where she was on the midnight shift. And she was back to it. This phrase got me thinking all the way into this article.
What is normal? To be back in a job that would pave way for you and develop you for a next level career path. Now that’s normal. Except the way jobs go nowadays are 24/7 for multinationals working around the clock due to time zones, unholy hours that would disrupt the body’s natural rhythm, and stress as majority run after the profits. We will need to force the body to get on with it to adapt to the new work time zone.
In another conversation with a friend, we had been discussing the depressing “dark night of the soul” fogginess he was experiencing. And how his doctor friend suggested some pills to sleep. Is that the normal? When many young people nowadays battle depression and seek psychiatric talk, is it the normal procedure for medical doctors to reach to their prescription pads to write out medication orders? What is normal? That we do get depressed once in a while, and experience suffering either because of a loss, a disappointment or even grief. That these are states we all go through in life and could be seen as part of our spiritual journeys to awaken a connection to our souls.
So what is the normal? When women at midlife have affairs because there is restlessness for change despite steady husbands? Or when women stick it out in loveless marriages, or even stay on despite emotional or domestic abuse while philandering husbands rule the relationship due to finances?
What is the normal? When lonely and alone, we seek friends who can reach out to hold our vulnerable spirits in their loving non-judgmental care and nurture us. But no, the normal is to bombard our consciousness with technology, social media to dull the pain of an existential loneliness at the alienation to all the things happening in our world today: the speed, relationships that seem so fleeting, time that is speeding by as we grasp for meaning.
I have the pleasure of being able to talk to small groups of friends who are all walking their conscious paths. All conversations point to the fact that the new normal is terribly abnormal for our spirits to flourish. The world in its 3D doesn’t fit many whose spirits want to expand and rise. So we see a shift happening everywhere. The duality is extreme, the radicalism too intense, the oppositions pulling both sides at breaking points. And we feel trapped. And like a snake shedding its skin, we are trying to find some kind of a “correct” fit.
And yes, systems, institutions, old formats of thinking are all breaking up. Because they must. Because the world consciousness is moving upward and more expansive to allow more of the God Spirit to express itself through humanity. So many times people live unaware, rooted on the phrase we are our bodies and personalities. But awareness would have it said otherwise: we are souls experiencing life (from a very unique and individualistic experience) in this world through a physical body. So unless we clearly “keep awake” and conscious, take clear steps in our daily life to be aware of the wild disruptive energies happening around, we will get lost, confused, depressed. Or burnt out. Just look at the rates of suicide, anxiety attack, psychosis, neurosis; crazy choices made by egos separated from their spiritual roots, it reflects a disruptive energy out to awaken the world through chaos. Well, on the physical body, the stress from the fast-paced life, and city life with EMF (electromagnetic fields) produced by gadgets we interact and use daily creates havoc with our central nervous systems.
It is this chaotic, erratic, low and dense energies we must get out of, step back from, rise above. And look to study and reflect on the newer energy that still seems to be abnormal to us: flow, creative visioning, synchronicities of events, and see the power of aligned collaborative energies that create positive impact. Then define your new normal.
Let’s try to define the new normal and consciously work on this daily. It is balance under a new paradigm. Try a healthy lifestyle. Or soulful friendships that nurture. Giving room in your life for authentic people that help you grow. Moving into work and businesses that create social impact and balancing profits. Living in spaces that reverberate with positive energy. Flowing in the realization that in striving for balance, we become the balance itself.