COVID-19: A Catalyst For Global Consciousness Revolution?

Global crisis can facilitate an awakening to political gaslighting and greed — leading to the co-creation of a new normal

In 2015, I met a lady called Anna. She initiated a conversation and I engaged, as she seemed sad and strangely intriguing. As we spoke, she rolled up her sleeve and showed me a tattoo. She had been a prisoner in Auschwitz. She described the torture she had endured, her reproductive organs experimented upon. She told me bitterly, “Greed is the worst sin committed by man”. I wanted to sit and talk with her for hours. I wanted to hug her, cry with her. Instead, she suddenly seemed ashamed that she had stopped a stranger in the street and quickly ushered me on my way. I walked home and promptly burst into tears. I felt profoundly honoured and moved. I had just met a true survivor. I never saw Anna again but her words have stayed with me. And they couldn’t be more true than now…

2020COVID-19 has stopped the world. A world driven by greed. I am deriving sadistic pleasure in watching world leaders get knee-capped by this virus, as they systematically experience its deleterious impact upon their precious economies, as the house of cards collapses. Perhaps this indicates that I have become caught up in a postmodern mindset of anger and blame towards corrupt modern systems and governments. A victim of the system, stuck in victim mode… However, I realise that we all play a role in shaping a national psyche, and democratically elected leaders represent a manifestation of the collective consciousness.

If I have indeed fallen victim to this progressive left-wing anger, perhaps it represents part of the purging process that COVID-19 has personally triggered for me. I believe we each play a role in the collective storytelling of historic events such as this. These words represent my own truth, a reflection of my personal journey within the context of my professional work. I am not a spiritual teacher or guru. I am a research psychologist with a lived experience of trauma and crisis. As much as we can strive to achieve objective truth through science and academia, the thing about personal truth is… it’s pretty subjective…

COVID-19 Crisis

According to crisis theory, trauma is a key component of psychological crisis, along with an inability to cope. Most would agree that COVID-19 represents a global trauma, as well as a global inability to cope with its rapidly escalating effects. Thereby, COVID-19 represents a global crisis, within which there is undoubtedly opportunity. The bigger picture of the collapse of corrupt systems, the greater good of reduced greenhouse gas emissions, the silver lining of realising what is truly important once everything that is non-essential is stripped back.

However, we cannot ignore the unquantifiable human suffering that lays ahead for the foreseeable future. To do so would be a disservice to ourselves and to humanity. Ignoring the trauma would allow us to bypass the rawness of this collective crisis. That would be cheating. While too much can be paralysing and debilitating, bypassing trauma creates deeper wounds because it is invalidating. Trauma is a powerful catalyst for existential crisis, representing an opportunity for healing and transformation. To truly benefit from the opportunity COVID-19 represents to humanity, we need to validate the trauma.

Existential crisis – a psychological phenomenon that involves questioning the meaning, purpose, and value of one’s existence – can throw an individual into altered states of consciousness. It can manifest as physical and psychological illness, with extreme cases appearing similar to clinical psychosis. Crisis can facilitate the unearthing of previously unresolved trauma and the individual must make a choice. Face this unresolved trauma and heal it, or allow its effects to become so engulfing that one gets lost in a spiralling loop of disorganised cognitive chaos. This is a process that involves courage and an ability to face one’s own personal darkness. This process can facilitate a transformation — an awakening — that involves the re-evaluation, re-organisation, and rebirth of the individual’s belief system.

Usually when an individual experiences crisis, the world continues to move along at the same pace. This is destabilising, as one wishes the world would stop with them and validate the trauma they are personally experiencing. The individual must then find their way back to normal. This is often traumatic in itself, as for the individual, normal no longer exists. A new normal must be created. This may involve the loss of friends, even family, who still sit comfortably in the old normal. The individual must let go of that which no longer serves them, a painful process of grief and acceptance. This often involves the release of an entire cognitive belief system that now seems utterly redundant. It involves an individual cognitive paradigm shift. An individual consciousness revolution.

When an individual confronts and heals their own personal trauma and darkness, they contribute to global healing. Generally, each step of this awakening process is undertaken individually and gruellingly, often in the face of mental illness diagnoses, medication, even hospitalisation. It is like swimming against the current. For individuals familiar with existential crisis, COVID-19 represents another trauma. But this one feels different. This time, COVID-19 has ensured that we are all swimming together, which somehow feels deeply validating. It creates space to heal.

The Great Reset

I recognise that COVID-19 represents an opportunity to reset all that is wrong in this world. However, as I witness the deaths of countless people, I realise that we are all co-creators and victims of a system that has led to this epic historical event. I realise that part of my own personal reset involves confronting and purging my own personal trauma and the darkness being unearthed. It occurs to me that this event may be releasing me from an angry, victim mentality. But that mindset must be purged before it can be fully released and reset.

The unique opportunity that COVID-19 represents for humanity is that of a collective crisis, for which the whole world has stopped. An opportunity to purge and heal collective trauma and darkness. To experience an event that has stopped the whole world is truly surreal. It is inevitably going to catapult many individuals into altered states of consciousness and existential crisis, forced to face the salience of their own mortality and the very real devastation of losing loved ones. As we are forced to live in the moment, we are waking up from a collective delusion, one that has made us believe that capitalism is good, that the poor will never be rich, that world leaders can never be toppled. An egoic delusion that has us convinced we must possess endless material stuff in order to feel fulfilled, one that has made many of us go mad.

COVID-19 is shattering that delusion, and liberating us from global insanity. It is stripping us back to bare essentials, showing us how little we actually need to obtain fulfilment. As the whole world wakes up, it’s going to be a tumultuous ride… However, individual existential crisis has demonstrated that if one is able to successfully navigate the terrain, one can emerge reborn. Revolusionised. COVID-19 represents an opportunity for a Global Consciousness Revolution because of the opportunity to unearth that which needs healing, on a GLOBAL scale. The potential that COVID-19 offers for collective, global, and planetary healing is truly mind-blowing. But we must face the trauma and darkness, which is the key to the transformation.

In the past, the overt trolling of government may have been considered unprofessional, leading one down the road of career suicide. However, I believe the current state of global affairs has reached a point that now warrants the calling out of political corruption, dark underbellies, and entities who continually violate basic human rights. In the same way that the 2015 Paris Agreement involves a bottom-up system of naming and shaming those nations who continue to contribute to the climate crisis through business as usual. I would rather speak my truth now and apologise for it later than commit a different kind of intellectual suicide that manifests from not speaking. I now view speaking truth to power, exposing abuse, and unearthing darkness as a social responsibility and civic duty. That said…

Beware

As COVID-19 unfolds, there will be attempts to try and return the world to normal. These attempts will be made by those who have been served by the old normal. The normal that lead humanity into an existence of greed, corruption, excess, and moral bankruptcy. The normal that was so excessive in its desire for endless expansion that it facilitated the spewing of pollution into the atmosphere to the point of becoming a climate emergency. As COVID-19 unfolds, there will be attempts to gaslight us like never before.

Gaslighting is a strategy used by abusers to keep victims in a state of trauma, whereby one is manipulated into questioning one’s own reality. We have been gaslit into believing that we must remain part of an endless cycle, a system that we cannot change, but must endure in order to survive. We are a race living in a hopeless state of survival mode, manipulated into a collective global delusion. The ultimate gaslighting has already begun within right-wing politics, with the urging of citizens to sacrifice their own lives in order to save the economy. It is this kind of abhorrent abuse from which we are all waking up. There is no more business as usual. We must all heal our own darkness, liberate ourselves, so that we are free to co-create a new normal.

Vision

So, what does a Global Consciousness Revolution look like? Initially, it will look like a global psychosis, characterised by collective chaos and disorganisation. The initial psychosis may be followed by a period of global depression, particularly if lockdown conditions persist. This period will be characterised by darkness, despair, and a sense of disconnection from that which gives life meaning. We have already seen the beginnings of these psychological responses during the Trump-era, with many experiencing acute mental health crises (see also Trump Anxiety Disorder and so-called Trump Derangement Syndrome). Unvalidated and unresolved grief can manifest as frustration and anger, like a fire within the collective psyche, perpetuated by unrelenting gaslighting and abuse. Waking up to that abuse releases this fire into the collective consciousness.

There will be clashes between differing belief systems. Religious leaders will claim we have entered an apocalypse. World leaders will continue to ignore science, in the interests of power and greed. Conservative and progressive ideologies will become further divided. COVID-19 is the Great Reset that unearths all of this darkness, bringing it to the forefront for confrontation and healing. As this global crisis unfolds, it will become clearer that this is a paradigm shift of epic proportions.

However, there will be mobilisation, by those who are familiar with the process of crisis and awakening. Creativity will explode, as old systems crumble. We will see the breakdown of all that does not serve humanity — capitalism, dictatorship, organised religion, consumerism, repression, sexism, racism… (British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s recent brush with death may have catalysed an existential crisis that now sees him praising the benefits of a socialised healthcare system)…

Mother Earth has locked the world down so she can heal, and for that to occur, we must all go within. If we truly take this opportunity, as we emerge from the corona cocoon, we will have a new perspective of ourselves, one another, our leaders, our planet… We will emerge from the darkness with a state of consciousness that has altered, evolved, awakened… one which results from the experience of crisis, de-programming, and re-programming. If we allow ourselves to face this current trauma, and all the deep, unresolved darkness it will trigger and resurface, we can undertake a process of integration that facilitates deep healing and transformation. ON A GLOBAL SCALE.

What this looks like is the release of anger and blame, and liberation from the victim mentality. It looks like greater acceptance, compassion, empathy, and forgiveness. It looks like collaboration between industries and fields, between nations, between world leaders, between foreign cultures. It looks like speaking truth to power. It looks like accountability. It looks like self-governance and the appointment of world leaders who are driven by humanity rather than power and greed. It looks like the elimination of billionaires, and the equitable distribution of the world’s wealth. It looks like the deconstruction of environmental-wrecking, fossil-fuel industries and the construction of a global renewable-energy industry. It looks like gratitude. It looks like connection with our children and re-enchantment with our natural world. It looks like Medicare For All. It looks like a Green New Deal. It looks like Universal Income. It looks like a reconceptualised mental health care system. It looks like forgiveness. It looks like world peace. It looks like a global rebirth. It looks like the recognition that we are all ONE.

COVID-19 represents an opportunity for all of us to unearth and purge darkness, to work towards the construction of a new normal that will enable us to achieve equilibrium with our planet, and a future for our children. We should seize this opportunity to heal our own personal trauma, which will contribute to collective healing. We should also take a moment to address the longer term climate crisis, which will contribute to planetary healing. COVID-19 is forcing us to develop the blueprint that is required to reverse the catastrophic effects of climate change, and save the planet.

Anna’s words have never rung more true, the poignantly raw words of a lonely old woman who was once a young woman tortured by a system devoid of humanity. Anna’s trauma enabled her to distil the sins of man to one word. We must now address this global sin — GREED — and our own contribution to it. This journey will not be easy. It involves the healing of the entire planet. It involves the stripping back of everything that is non-essential and no longer serves humanity. COVID-19 represents a pivotal moment in history. This is our ONE opportunity to stop. Break the wheel. Save the planet.

THIS IS REVOLUTION.

The topics discussed in this article are explored in more detail in this podcast with US comedian, Karen Rontowski.