 So, our last video discussed this sinister and unfortunate dark side that came with the pandemic we've all endeared. But now, would you be surprised if I told you that, somehow, even after everything that has happened, that yes, there are some actual upsides to the pandemic. And that's what we'll be discussing today. Honestly, if the pandemic has revealed anything, it's that there's a certain line of dialogue that the mainstream often likes to discuss. And it's usually stuff that is far from interesting, or, lest I say, beneficial. I mean, why can't we talk about Atlantis on the mainstream news? Do they even know about Gobekli Tepe? I mean, come on! I mean, I guess in some ways it's understandable. After all, the pandemic hit us hard as a species, and it left us a nasty scar. Nowadays, there's a lot more optimism than there used to be about this starting to be behind us. But the future is still a giant question mark for so many people. Not to mention, there's a lot of upset about the way things are being handled, such as protests around vaccine passports and such. We get it. The past couple of years have been unimaginably difficult for most people. But, with a new year comes new possibilities. Do you have any visions or goals for yourself this time around? Well, to help you start the new year off right, we're offering a membership with Spirit Mysteries that includes the 7-day transformation for no extra cost. To help you make the most of the start of your new year, and ritualize your resolutions and actualize your goals. Use the link in the description and get started today. But as we currently stand, I understand that a lot of people are struggling. There's a lot of financial strife, emotional struggle, discord between families based on different paradigms of belief about the meaning, or reason behind everything that's happening. But as you might be aware, where attention goes, energy flows. If we only take time to focus on everything that's bad, then that's what we're going to see and experience more of. So today, we're going to take some time to look at the good things that came out of this pandemic. We have three of them for you, and we'd like to invite you to list even more benefits in the comments below if you've seen some in your life. Benefit 1. Getting Cleaned Up If there's one thing we can say about humans, it's that we're pretty messy. I know this doesn't apply to everyone, but humans do often have a habit of leaving garbage all over the place in the form of littering, or even just keeping their places relatively messy. I think we're the only species who would deforest an area and use the wood to build a save the trees billboard. While some parts of the world, such as Asia, tend to regularly wear masks when they are feeling under the weather, since it's pretty common in Asian culture to wear face coverings because of the heavy pollution, but until a year ago, Western countries like the US would do no such thing. As a result, we could argue that the common cold and flu that goes around seasonally has become far more widespread and common here than places that are more mindful of how they are spreading their sickness. Now, the pandemic hasn't caused us to stop littering, but the continual effort to inform people to wash their hands and such has created this new wave of awareness through our entire collective field of consciousness to be more mindful of ourselves and how we're showing up in the world. And while the boundaries of mask mandates may sometimes be a little extreme and even strange or downright frustrating, I don't know that we can say that it's entirely bad, as the flu itself has been almost entirely obliterated by the mandates. Seriously, it's seldom discussed in the news, but if you look at the stats from the pre-pandemic world to today, the common flu went down nearly 99% from 130,000 cases down to just 1,300. There's also something to be said here about cleaning up our energy fields, although for non-believers and that kind of stuff, you may consider this philosophically instead. In essence, as we separated from each other during lockdowns and the whole six feet of social distancing in place, many subtle shifts in the human energy field were allowed to happen. Like, maybe finally getting some distance from that guy in your workspace who's always sticking their nose into your work and... Hey, do you mind? People with strong co-dependencies or attachments to others were forced to separate, allowing for opportunities to strengthen their own energetic field, or at least identify one's own energy from another and articulate those healthy boundaries. It's fair to say most people today aren't yet thinking about their body of consciousness in terms of energy, but the value of social distance is kind of like... Well, it's kind of like color theory. Here's what I mean. Imagine if you took all of the colors in MSP and just kind of smooshed them together on a canvas, without any space for each color to be on its own or blend in its own little harmonious ways to make this beautiful, pretty picture. They all just kind of blend and muck together to make a sort of brownie gray darkness. And I mean, that's a fine color, I guess, but it is a limitation of potential expression, too. How this relates is, though social distancing was a difficult thing for a very long time, distancing from people physically allowed our own colors to kind of stand out a little bit more, separating the reds from the blues and the yellows from the greens, and we had the opportunities to find a little bit more self-consciousness based on who we are. In other words, being a part gave us all room to grow. In a sense, this meant learning to hold space for ourselves and discern what it is we needed as well as what made us happy. That said, humanity still has a ways to go to really make all of its colors sparkle, but social distancing and being locked down with ourselves was a step forward on the path, none of the less. Benefit two, slowing down climate change. At least a little bit. As a bit of a preface to this one, in the past we've discussed how the general warming of the planet isn't exclusive to us, and that all of the planets in the solar system are warming up as a part of natural cosmic cycles. So when we say slowing down climate change, we mean specifically the acceleration of climate beyond what's natural due to the pumping tons of toxic pollutants into the air. Okay, back to you, Sheephatch. Thanks for the clarity. Where was I? Right. So, I think we can all agree that the climate was one of the big winners of lockdown. Well, that in Netflix, but I'm more excited about the climate. Remember last year everyone was saying there were dolphins and fish in the Venice canals? Well, whether that was true or not, a few months ago Venice upped its game even more and straight-up banned large cruise ships from docking at its ports because the government was like, one, big ship equals big crowd, which means more COVID, and two, we like the fish and our canals are great. So, shoot. 2020 was one of the best years for climate change. According to the World Meteorological Organization, Southeast Asia alone saw a 40% reduction in the level of harmful airborne particles caused by traffic and energy production during the pandemic. As countries all over the world got together to impose a lockdown, we gave the planet a much needed breath of fresh air, which caused a reduction in global greenhouse gases and local air pollution, and allowing ourselves to also take a collective deep breath too. I mean, seriously, did you see those pictures from China? Here's what it looked like pre-lockdown. And here's post-lockdown. Wow. Putting the world economy in a mini-coma has cut fossil fuels used like crazy, which reduced the accumulation of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases and slowed the rate of global warming. The problem is, as we've started opening up again, the amount of pollution globally is starting to creep back up to those pre-pandemic levels. Well, because we haven't really learned our lesson yet. Like, it's been made so clear. Get it? Because there's no smog? Anyway. But now we have to do something about it. And it may just be that if we are coming face to face with the climate disaster, we may collectively all go inside again. And this time for longer. Until we can find ways of solving this pollution issue for good. But all that being said, I think there's still something worth exploring here that has been beneficial. Our awareness of just how much we affect nature, and vice versa, has been pushed to the front of our lives. But you know, the good thing here is that the lockdowns were eye-opening for enough of us that we are still seeing changes take place. Many tourist attractions, especially ones that involve nature, are now starting to put limits on the number of people that are allowed in spaces at any one time. There's even certain national parks out there that now have time tickets and people caps, which is great for the Redwoods and is going miles for slowing down human damage. And on the subject of tourism, people are now even growing more conscious about where their money goes. This has led to the new term, regenerative tourism, which is kind of like traveling where the main goal is to leave an environment better than how you found it. The point here is that there seems to be a very definitive shift of consciousness brought about by the pandemic, one in which we have become more aware of our planet and our relationship with her. Lockdown hasn't solved the climate crisis, not by a long shot, but it has brought us a little more time to deal with it. We just have to use it wisely. Benefit three, inner work and connection. I think if we could sum up the general vibe of spirituality during lockdown, it would be, when you can't go outside, go inside. And it really seems like a lot of people took their time to heart. COVID shook up our day-to-day lives so much that it provided an opportunity to reflect on things and reconsider what we do, how we do it, and why we do it at all. Things we took for granted, like going to the gym, going to eat with friends, or even grocery shopping, were suddenly not possible anymore, or at least, limited. Even more drastically, a lot of us had to change the way we worked, moving more into our homes instead of the office. This meant that a lot of our routines were interrupted, and while some people definitely struggled, it also gave us an opportunity to rethink our habits to make some great changes. And let's be honest, it's every introvert's wet dream. Think about it. When you can't go to a restaurant twice a week, commute two hours a day, hang out with your friends, or go to a party every weekend, that's a lot of time you just gained back every day. Now, that's not to say that becoming a hermit and shutting down from everyone was wise, but just that this whole lockdown thing really allowed us the space to see what was serving us and what wasn't. I think that's part of why so many couples broke up in lockdown. There were many circumstances where one person started to really grow and the other didn't, or they just gained a new awareness of how their relationships were no longer what they wanted. In other situations, the pandemic actually brought new relationships together. And I mean, there's definitely something to be said for trauma bonding, whether it's healthy or not as something else, but hard times tend to offer a great opportunity for bonding, and other ways of connecting and helping others. Of course, not being able to visit friends or family has increased isolation and feelings of loneliness in some cases, which has kind of triggered its own mental health crisis, but it does feel like there's a very definitive sense of, in this together, which has triggered many changes in the global perception of we the people. It's actually a beautiful thing, because many people started connecting on a community-wide scale, and some of those moments have even gone viral, such as Italians singing together from their windows and balconies, or neighbors passing food to each other over the fences. Generally in society, we're taught that we are separate from each other. It's the general consensus, right? My thoughts are mine, your thoughts are yours, and there's no overlap, and that religions, borders, or nationalities define us from others, quote-unquote. But in a scenario like COVID, where almost everyone around the world is experiencing the same thing, it provided opportunities to reconnect and create more social coherence with the greater whole, not only during the crisis, but also afterwards. Notions of us, and them, are dissolving because we're all experiencing the same stresses and traumas and helping each other through them together, and the world is becoming all the more interconnected for it. I think it's kind of humbled us as a species too, you know? For years, the collective human ego has placed us on top of the food chain and got us thinking we're almost invincible. But when something like this actually comes along, it provides us all that opportunity to be more humble and see the relationship between each other and the planet. In almost every aspect of life, we want to be in control, whether it's our health, airline safety, or our calendars. We live in the illusion that full control is possible and realistic, but the pandemic has helped us create an awareness of the wisdom of the ancient one. We don't really have that much control in the grand scheme of things, and sometimes we just have to surrender our attachment to that in order to gain it. Sometimes we just have to flow and be like water and understand change as the only constant. So if we keep on looking at the brighter sides of life, the longer the crisis lasts, the larger the opportunities become for great change. And I know it's hard, but sometimes a great forward leap requires two steps back in order to get that run going. And, you know, I have a feeling that we're collectively gearing up for a great shift, and we're all going through the growing pains together, right? So we just need to stay balanced and move into it gracefully. Alright guys, I'll catch you all next time. See ya!