Coronavirus As An Opportunity For Growth | Ashok Gupta | Coronavirus Challenge |

Hello, and a warm welcome back to our series of live events here at the Coronavirus Challenge. And it's wonderful that you're here with me today, where we're going to be talking about looking at this whole situation from a completely different perspective, the whole coronavirus situation, and seeing if there are ways that we can shift our perspective and see it as an opportunity for growth. And I know that many of you have written in and requested that we were going to do something like this because you're finding it challenging to really get your head around this situation and try and understand it. And we all are. It doesn't matter what background you have. We're all affected in some way, mentally, physically, emotionally. And many of you are experiencing anxiety right now. And it's about validating and accepting that there is that anxiety that we're experiencing. Let's notice it in our bodies. We might be experiencing grief as a result. What's going on? You know, what is it that we've lost in life that we're now grieving over our normal way of being? And then finally, there's also what we call anticipatory grief. We may anticipate things that we're going to lose in the future, both individually, collectively, as a society, and grieving over that. So all of these different emotions may be coming up, which may leave us feeling confused and trying to make sense of it all. And in previous sessions here, we've talked about accepting and validating our emotions. And when we move on to this next stage of looking at trying to get meaning from what's going on or what opportunities are there for growth, it's important that we don't engage in what we call a spiritual bypass, which is thinking, oh, everything's going to be fine. You know, the situation is okay. I'm okay with it. A spiritual bypass is when we use a sense of over positivity, or not really seeing what's going on around us as a way of dissociating from our emotions and not really taking it seriously, or we are not acknowledging our emotions, not validating our emotions with a false sense of positivity. But always if those emotions are there, then it becomes challenging for us. So what's important is that we don't engage in a spiritual bypass and instead use the stage of grief that we are at to determine what we do each day. So along the grief cycle, some of us are still in the shock and denial phase, right? Some of us have moved more on towards feeling angry with the situation. Some of us may have moved on to just feeling very sad with what's going on. And some of us may have moved on towards acceptance. And what we're talking about here today is that next stage of looking at meaning. What kind of meaning do we choose to take from the current situation? And that's what we're going to talk about today. And something that I'd like to share with you, something new that you're the first people to know about, is that we will be launching a retreat, a three day virtual retreat where we'll be doing meditations, workshops, etc. And that will be our Give you the dates here. That will be from the 24th to the 26th of April this month. So 24th to the 26th, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and it will be Eastern time from nine in the morning till six in the evening. And there will obviously be regular breaks and things. And we'll be going through some really amazingly deep meditations. And I think that's the need of the moment right now, is for us to really go deeper, calm our minds at a deeper level, detoxify mentally, emotionally, physically from the stresses and strains of the news and everything that we're hearing and an opportunity to go inwards. So you're the first people to hear about it. The Coronavirus Challenge three day retreat. And you can find out more information. We're just putting things together and it will be at the website. We can visit it now. Actually, it's the coronaviruschallenge.com retreat and it's something that's open to everybody. So it's not just people who are doing the Gupta program, but it's open to your friends, your family, anyone who's really finding the current situation a little tricky and wants to go deeper. So that's just what I wanted to announce today. So in terms of looking at the opportunities for growth in the current situation, I'd like to start off with a poem. It's actually not a poem. It's actually some lyrics from a song by Lauryn Hill. The song called Everything is Everything. And in colloquial slang, everything is. Everything is a way of saying what is, is, so be it. Whatever will be will be. So some of the lyrics of this song go like everything is everything. After winter must come spring. Everything is everything. Sometimes it seems we'll touch that dream but things come slow or not at all and the ones on top won't make it stop so convinced that they might fall let's love ourselves and we can't fail to make a better situation Tomorrow our seeds Will grow. All we need is dedication. Let me tell you that everything is everything. What is meant to be, will be. After winter must come, spring, change, it comes eventually. And I just looked at those lyrics today and thought that really sums up what we're talking about today. That as tragic as the current situation feels, when we go deeper and we're prepared to acknowledge and accept our emotions, then move on to the next stage of really understanding what the opportunity is in this current situation, once again, we're not spiritually bypassing. We're still acknowledging what we're experiencing and feeling, but at the same time, using this as an opportunity to grow. And if you're experiencing deep anxiety and if you're experiencing that grief and these really difficult emotions, even that in itself is the opportunity to grow, to be more connected to those emotions and yourself and see how you become more resilient. Yeah. How you can observe those emotions, how you can release those emotions. If that's the opportunity for growth for you, that's perfectly fine. And, you know, in ancient times in the east, let's say in India, China, yogis would look for a place of solace to shut themselves off from the outside world. So they would often go into a cave, historically in the mountains of the Himalayas, and it would give them an opportunity to stop their mind shooting out into the outside world, but actually to go deep within. And this is also how we can see this, that this is an opportunity for us to go inwards. And as they say, if you can't go outside, go inside. Someone just asking, what was that song again? So the song was Everything Is Everything by Lauryn Hill. A beautiful song, Lauren, spelled L A U R Y N. Lauryn Hill, very famous singer from the States. And that song really, as I said, really, really touched my heart today. So I thought I would share that with you. And once again, please do share today's video on your social media. So if you just click the share button, you'll instantly be able to share this live event on your Facebook page, on groups that you're members of. And we can kind of share this knowledge with other people around us. So I was saying that many yogis would go off into the mountains and meditate and go inwards and look for that stillness and space. And here we have an opportunity to use the situation. Now that it's here, it's here, everything is everything. Now that it's here, how can we use it as an opportunity? And sometimes those opportunities seem painful. Take the example of a caterpillar turning into a butterfly. Imagine that caterpillar suddenly, from going from eating leaves and enjoying its existence, goes into this tight little cocoon that it wraps itself around and it goes through that cocoon process where literally wings sprout from its back. And who knows how painful that experience might be for that caterpillar. But it's worth it because then the caterpillar is able to emerge as that strong, beautiful butterfly and have a different level of existence. And if we can just tilt our head slightly, look at the situation slightly differently, we can see where the opportunities for growth are for us as individuals, as a community, as a society and then the entire planet. There's little opportunities for growth at each of those individual stages. And let's look at those stages now. So if we look at the relationships that we have around us, there are three main relationships. There's the relationship with ourselves, there's a relationship with other people around us, and then there's a relationship with community or society or the planet. You know, there's three, I can't remember what they're called. Not adverbs, basically, I, you them, those three kind of layers of our existence or a relational existence. And so in terms of the I, how is this period of time an opportunity for you to go inwards and explore? So let's think of those different layers, the physical layer. Is this an opportunity to work on your physical well being? And if you're taking the coronavirus challenge, we talk about diet. What changes to our diet can we make that we've always wanted to make? What changes can we make to our levels of activity and exercise? Even if you can't go outside, in the country that you're in, there are apps now where you can exercise and better your body inside. So at a physical level, what opportunities are there for our self growth? Then at the emotional level, if we're experiencing some difficult emotions, what have we done with emotions in our past? We tend to do two things. We either numb out from them and dissociate and push them away, or we indulge those emotions and make them worse. In the current situation, observe yourself and think, what am I doing right now? Am I numbing out from these emotions? Am I indulging in them and watching the news every moment and buying into the drama? Or am I having the opportunity right now to just simply observe and be, to be with my emotions? Because yes, this is a challenging time for all of us. It is a new experience for us which is bringing up these emotions that perhaps we haven't connected with in the past. And One of those emotions is our relationship with death. In the west, we are often quite insulated against the idea of death. And it's only when someone close to us or in our family passes away do we then take stock of our lives. Creates a stoical moment, a philosophical reflection period where we think, what is life about? Why did this person die? The kind of temporal nature of our lives and how short they really are and how precious our lives are. So this is bringing up many emotions for us right now. And so reflecting on our relationship with ourselves at an emotional level. And our emotions reflecting on our fears of death, where we often take a step back away from looking at death and we dissociate from it and just carry on in the outside world. And we use busyness, that's why it's called business busyness, as a convenient distraction from dealing with our emotions then at the mental level. So each one of these, by the way, I think it's useful for us to have one reflection individually, one opportunity for growth in each of these areas. So at the physical level, what can we do physically for ourselves? Perhaps just jot down on a piece of paper something that you'd like to have an opportunity for growth for under the error of your physical well being then your emotional well being. Is this an opportunity for you to read more about your emotional well being, your sense of spirit. Is this an opportunity to observe your emotions more then at the mental level? How many times do we say in life, oh, I don't have time to do that. When I've got some time then I'll learn the piano. But when I've got some time, then I'll read that book that I've always wanted to read. When I've got some time, then I'll do this, that and the other. Now I know many of you actually have a busier life right now than you did before because children are at home or whatever. So I know sometimes there are challenges like that. But still, let's really reflect on what can we use this time for to stimulate our intellect to learn something new. And what's really useful is thinking about creative pursuits that really stimulate the right prefrontal cortex. Because if we don't stimulate this part of the brain, it will naturally default to worry and depression about what is going on right now. So at the mental level, how can we expand ourselves and indulge in something creative? So have a think about that and remember, with all of these different things, if you are just finding this whole situation hard, hard to deal with at an emotional level, that's okay, that's your opportunity for growth right now is simply to be with and observe your emotions without any pressure to self develop in other areas. We're giving ourselves permission and validation to grow at the level that we are experiencing right now. And at the spiritual level. Many of us don't have the time in day to day life to really reflect on those bigger questions. Who am I? What is life about? What is the meaning of life? What is my purpose here? Are we just existing on this rock, floating in space, a needless purposeless existence? Or is there something deeper? And it's times like this when we as an individual and as a society are going through a challenging time, do we then have the opportunity to really reflect on those deeper questions? And as you know, many of you know, we have a app called the Meaning of Life Experiment which is exactly that. A journey starting from the nature of the mind, religion, spirituality, moving through what brings us, what we all share as human beings and what the purpose of life might be. I'd love for you, if you haven't done already, to take, use this opportunity to take the Meaning of life experiment. A 30 day experiment. You know, it looks likely that we will be in some kind of lockdown for at least the next few months or at least the next couple of months. So this is a great time to do those things that you never thought you had time for before. And you can find out more information on the Meaning of Life experiment by searching Meaning of Life Experiment on Google. Or you can go to our website which is themeaningoflife tv and there you'll find where you can download the app. So we've talked about our relationship with ourselves physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. Where are the opportunities for us to uplift ourselves? And then as a society, where are the opportunities? If we just go through this experience and then go back to the way that we were before, exploiting the planet, polluting the planet, that ongoing race, it was called the human race for a reason, because we were racing, racing, pushing, not living a fulfilling life, but constantly overstimulating our nervous systems. That constant need for competition, for more, bigger, better expansion. And all that was doing is polluting the planet, polluting our minds with stress and not really making us any happier. And how can we say that we are an advanced civilization if people are becoming unhappier? There's more stress, more anxiety, more depression. So when we look at the opportunities for society as a whole, we think about what we're already seeing around us. Communities are suddenly realizing that there is such a thing as community. Neighbors are communicating with each other. People are doing things for the person in the streets. They're expanding and uplifting themselves. They're realizing that all of us can make a difference in our own lives and the lives of others. That's incredibly empowering. True happiness lies in not that which we do for ourselves, but that which we do for others. And now we have opportunities like that. Even if it's just making a phone call to someone who's lonely, it still uplifts us. And it uplifts them. And it fulfills the very reason, the very purpose that we're here on this planet, which is to relieve suffering. And that's. I'm just giving that as an example. You decide what the meaning of life is for you. But if that is one meaning of life, this is an opportunity. Right now, can we move as a planet, as a society, from competition, consumerism, individuality, and more, more, more to a place of cooperation, compassion for each other, compassion for the planet. And when we say that phrase, we are all one, it can feel like a throwaway comment, oh, we are all one. And actually, this situation brings it home to us right now. We really are all one. There are no boundaries for this virus. We are in this together. And it's only by countries working together and fulfilling that vision of we are all one, do things actually change and move forward. And it is that vision, that idea that we are all one, we all need to cooperate together that we hope will last. After this situation, we can't go back to the way we were living before. Things have to change. And if we're still stuck in this idea of, oh, but it's so terrible, we shouldn't be looking at the situation from a, you know, any kind of. There's no positives, there's no silver linings in this coronavirus epidemic, pandemic, you know, right now we're being brought down by all of these different things. And yet, let me make a very controversial statement. And this isn't a spiritual bypass. This is just a fact. Did you know that the likelihood is that as a result of the coronavirus, fewer people will die worldwide than would have if the coronavirus hadn't come. And we at the clinic have been doing some of this research here. Did you know that 11,000 people die every day from pollution? 11,000 people, I think several million people every year die of pollution. 3,700 people a day die from car accidents, road accidents, just in those two areas of pollution and road Accidents, we know that statistically there will be. The deaths from coronavirus will be partially if not fully offset by reduction in those deaths from pollution, from car accidents. So it's just when we tilt our head and we look at the situation in a slightly different way, if we're feeling depressed and anxious by the fear of death or the mortality rate that we're seeing, when we actually look at the facts, there are fewer people potentially that will die overall as a result of this. And they're estimated that even In China alone 50 to 100,000 people, the fewer deaths there will be as a result of the fact that. That there is cleaner air all around us. Now, that isn't a justification for this, but I'm just saying it's useful for us to be aware. And then when we become aware of that, it relieves our mind from the pressure and the depression, the negativity of it all, because we see it from a whole new perspective. And this is something which, when we look deeper into, we can see that it helps us have a new perspective, relieve our anxiety and grief, and we can start using it as an opportunity for growth individually and as a planet. Okay, good. So I once again just want to emphasize that we are doing a retreat from the 24th to the 26th of April. It'll be from 9 till 6 Eastern Time. And hopefully that's time that everyone in America, Canada and even Europe can attend. It might be slightly late for people in Europe, but hopefully some people would still like to join us. And we'll be doing lots of meditations. We'll be having expert interviews. I'll be conducting workshops. There'll be opportunity to connect with others around you in our campfire sessions, just like we do here, kind of campfire here. So we're having campfire sessions as part of the groups as well. And it's just an opportunity to let go of the outside world and all this bad news. Go inwards and use this as a working example of going inwards, meditating together and finding peace and solace within so that you come out stronger, more resilient, happier and better able to handle this transition that we are going through right now. And you can find out more information@the coronaviruschallenge.com retreat. And we've tried to keep the price of the retreat as low as possible because we know many of you are experiencing financial challenges. But I hope it's something that you will attend yourself. You'll bring your friends and family. It's something that you can do together within a Family as well. It's a great shared experience. So what I'd like to do is once again invite you all to attend that particular retreat. Tell everyone around it, and please do share it on your social media. We'll also have a video that we're coming out soon as well that will give you more information about that. So all it's left for me to say is it's been wonderful to be doing these live sessions with you over this last week. And as you may know, some of these meditations are in fact on our website. So if you go to the coronaviruschallenge.com click on Meditations, you'll see that some of these exercises are there, some of the meditations that we recorded over this last week. And we will keep you informed of some new live events that we will be engaging in over the coming weeks. We don't want you to feel like you're alone. You're going through this without any support. We want to be there for you in any way that we can. And that's why we're rushing to produce these videos and these opportunities. And I hope that you will join us for those. And please remember that our planet is going through a transition. And every transition is painful. Change is painful. Think about changes that you've had to go through in your life. It can feel painful. It can feel like it's the end of the world. But truly, when we shift our thinking, when we just tilt our head, we see it from a new perspective and realize that the world will come out of this a better place. It will be an opportunity for all those changes that needed to be made, to be made. Look at the Second World War. It was an awful experience for the planet. And yet after the Third World War. Sorry, after the Second World War. My apologies. After the Second World War, it was the formation of the United Nations. It was an opportunity for countries to come together and cooperate together. There was an opportunity for health services to be developed. There were so many things that came out of the Second World War that wouldn't have come had it been a result, had it not happened. So although the situation is awful, let's look at the transition phase that we are going through. And I have hope for us as individuals and the human race. We will come out of this. There will be more harmony and more expansion on the human planet, and we will move towards a more conscious, enlightened society that is the aim of all of this. So it's been wonderful to be with you today. Thank you for watching and I will look forward to seeing you, hopefully, on our retreat from the 24th to the 26th of April. Thank you for watching and we'll see you next time. Thank you and goodbye.