A year ago to the day I wrote a blog entitled, “Love our world… start with your neighbour…” and the final sentence was, “If we change, Mother Earth will have her chance to recover. If not, be sure she will chuck us humans off…”

For many years I’ve felt desperate about mankind’s treatment of our planet, and the resulting devastating changes we’ve seen in climate and pollution of our seas, land and air. I truly believed we had the power, if we all joined forces, to make the differences that would rectify matters. It felt as if change was beginning, there was hope. And then came Covid…

We are now in a terrible mess. Collectively we have removed ourselves so far from being a part of our natural ecosystem, losing any concept of a higher power, consciousness or sense of spirit, that the god we now worship, blindly, is science. Science that has reduced the world to statistics and data, which as we all know can be manipulated to show anything you like! Science that has removed any sense of magic and mystery, by dismissing anything that can’t be demonstrated in a test tube.

I am no conspiracy theorist, but I have definitely viewed the response to the pandemic with eyes other than that of the mainstream. It seemed to me as if the place to which humanity had brought itself last year created a perfect storm for what has since transpired. Let me explain.

Point 1: Timing

Historically mankind faces a pandemic every hundred years or so – the time was ripe. There is much research that suggests viruses are a fundamental part of human development. (eg click here.)

Point 2: “Progress” and Scientific materialism

Ever since the Industrial Revolution, we have placed ourselves in a position of superiority over other species on the planet. Not only that, but we in the Global North have decimated the Global South, mining resources with no regard for the good health and wellbeing of our fellow men, women and children. This is a naïve reconstruction of history, but my point is that not only have we elevated our own human importance above the rest of Nature, sectors of society have also trashed other people in the pursuit of progress and wealth. This is why we have the enormous social divides, the awful racial injustices, and irreversible climate change that we in the Global North are only just beginning to see in all its horror. These in turn feed back into chasms of difference in people’s physical, mental and emotional health. Immediately we have a scenario where some people are vastly more susceptible to ill health than others. The basis of holistic practice is that you cannot separate out physical health from emotional, mental and spiritual health.  In our current science-based paradigm the former is the only measurable one…so the latter three are completely disregarded when evaluating someone’s state of health. Hence the observation of Covid casualties “with no underlying health conditions” ie no physical, scientifically measurable health conditions…but who was looking at their mental, emotional and spiritual state of health? There really is no “one size fits all” – every host is unique, and how we are affected, or not, by a virus is not the random “luck of the draw, you’re all at risk” we have been led to believe…

Point 3: Global “connection” and social media

Never before in time have people been able to hear news of something happening the other side of the world within seconds of it transpiring. Mainstream media story-telling beams across the world in milliseconds. Social media enables instant opinions and sharing. The algorithms ensure what ends up in your Newsfeed is more of what you already tune into, so your beliefs become cemented by the observed consensus of opinion…and the world becomes more polarised. So connected, and yet utterly disconnected from each other and any sense of connected consciousness…

Point 4 – Fear of death

I have now spent many years supporting people who are dying. As a former nurse, I saw the frantic ministrations to those who were clearly near the end of life, as doctors strove to prolong the moment of physical death. To this day death is not a comfortable subject of conversation for most people. The medical paradigm has encouraged people to believe that absolutely anything we present with can be treated successfully – usually by some form of suppression or removal of body part. Whole health is never just about the physical, and holistic therapies work with Nature, rather than against it, to balance the system. Sadly the blind faith in the medical and scientific approach to health – “control and suppress” – has led to a sense that physical life can be saved indefinitely.  Just think of the early slogans our Government deployed: “Control the virus” and “Save Lives.” I never for one moment think any life is expendable, but I know that every life is finite. Modern medicine has some marvellous achievements, but “abnormalizing” death is not one of them. My working life is now devoted to helping people prepare for the inevitability of death, and guiding others in support of their dying loved ones and patients in reassuring and down-to-earth ways.

So, a year on from that blog, I feel that we had our warning from Mother Nature. The world stopped, the skies were clear, fish returned to waters they’d abandoned, families started to engage more with their natural surroundings, neighbours looked out for each other – but the planet’s message failed to be heard. There has been a relentless push to “get back to normal” when “normal” was the trajectory pushing us to extinction. I still have no answers, but I think we ignored that warning at our peril. I can only ask, “What’s coming next?”