A short transcript from a YouTube talk by Dave Kashen arguing that one can view people, situations, and even crises as 'allies' for personal learning and waking up. The speaker clarifies that 'ally' does not mean friend or positive circumstance, but an opportunity to learn (e.g., to access anger, regain integrity) and invites participants to list ways COVID‑19 could function as such an ally.
I commit to seeing everything and everyone as an ally in my life, perfectly suited for my learning and growth versus obstacles. These people are in the way. The situation is keeping me from what I really want, believing somehow that this is not what is ideal for my learning and growth at the moment. So one of the things we'd like you to do is when we say allies, we don't mean, oh, you're so. You're so for me. Meaning, like, you have really good intentions. Your ally doesn't mean you're my friend. Ally doesn't mean your this is perfect the way it is. Ally doesn't mean that. Ally means I just get to learn something here. What I might learn is to tell you to hit the road and to find my anger that I haven't been accessing. That might be how this is an ally for me. This scene may be helping me get clear that I'm out of integrity. And this is just an invitation for me to wake back up to my integrity. So it's not always a quote, positive thing. That means I want more of it. So I want to be clear about that distinction around what do we mean by ally? It just means I choose to make this thing a gift so I can learn something. And then the question is, what do I get to learn? And particularly the learning is around waking up. Context. Yeah, there might be other learnings as well, but I choose to see that the world is fundamentally friendly to me. Waking up, that's the key. So doesn't mean that my boss is an ally to me. Getting the promotion that I want doesn't mean that. It means that my boss is an ally to me. Experiencing freedom, real freedom, because my relationship with my boss is bringing up places where I'm still contracted. So that's what we mean, an ally for learning in waking up. So we could think of the coronavirus. How is the coronavirus sheltering in place? And all the other consequences of this virus, how is this an ally for me waking up? How is all of this related? An invitation for me to find an experience of more freedom, more joy, more peace. So I was thinking, actually, Jim, it might be fun to have that, since we all have that as a shared issue, to have that be in the breakout sessions. So let's just have each of you take a minute here or two to write down or come up with all the ways that you can see how coronavirus COVID 19 is an ally. And so, you know, if you've lost your job or your income is being reduced, how is that an ally? How is everything related to this in service of waking up for you?
