the medicine of corona virus
Originally written on March 8, 2020
As I was sitting with my friend Emily enjoying a delicious breakfast at a cafe in Holbox, a small Island off the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, a 24-year old Mayan man approached us selling bee products.
As he opened his backpack to pull out his collection, he shared with Emily and me that the bees they work with to make their products are very special. They come from his 115-year-old grandfather who cares for them in the town of Chichen Itza.
I was totally caught off guard when he asked us if coronavirus is affecting the people and place where we come from. He shared that these products, this medicine from the bees, keeps your immune system so strong that something like the coronavirus would never affect you.
He then showed us the palms of his hands. They were rough. “I never wear gloves when I work with the bees because when a bee stings you, it passes all of it’s life experience and wisdom to you.”
Wow. What a different perspective from the one I grew up with of fearing bees.
He got me thinking…
Right now, the coronavirus is “stinging” the planet. The world is infected by fear. Events canceled or postponed. Flights canceled. Global panic. Everything is shutting down.
Instead of going into fear, I am seeing coronavirus as one of the many powerful messages we are receiving from the Earth that things are out of balance. Since the start of 2020, the world has experienced extreme weather, disease, violence, uprisings, and changing political systems at increasingly rapid rates.
It’s just like when we ignore symptoms, we get sick. Our body has a way of communicating to us when something is not working and we need to make a change.
WHAT IS CORONAVIRUS HERE TO TEACH US?
WHAT MEDICINE IS IT GIVING US?
In the Western world, we hear the word medicine and usually think of a pill or syrup that helps alleviate or take away a symptom. From an Indigenous perspective, medicine has a very different meaning. We receive medicine from an energy, plant or substance to heal an aspect of our body/mind. It supports us to look inward and shift our perspective. It allows us to see why the symptoms arose and what we needed to learn.
WHAT IS CORONAVIRUS REVEALING?
It’s helping us look at our relationship to fear and choice.
Do I choose to go into the energy of fear or do I choose to keep living my life? If I am feeling fear, what is the fear? Really look at it. Is it fear of getting sick and missing work days? Is it fear of not being able to afford the proper care? Is it fear of being quarantined? Is it fear of something foreign? Is it fear of dying? Or is it a healthy fear that is keeping you safe because you are an immunocompromised individual and really need to care for yourself at this time?
In the United States, it is helping us look at our systems in a new way.
A very large percentage of American citizens do not have health care and can’t afford the tests needed to confirm coronavirus or the medicines needed to get better. Many of these people do not get paid sick days so missing work for one or two weeks has major consequences if you’re living paycheck to paycheck.
It’s helping us look at the global climate crisis with new eyes.
Even though globally we know that we must take drastic actions now if we want to reverse climate change and continue living on this Earth, change has been incredibly slow and most of us are not feeling the urgency. However, the fear incited from coronavirus has inspired major actions worldwide and the results for the environment have been incredible. Closing factories, cancelling flights, events, and even car travel have massively dropped emissions. And that is needed right now.
If we begin treating the climate crisis as a crisis and implement new actions immediately, just as we have with coronavirus, change can happen so quickly. We will begin to bring the Earth back in to balance faster than we can imagine.
OUR INDIVIDUAL ACTIONS MAKE AN IMPACT WHEN WE ALL COMMIT.
So I ask you, what medicine is coronavirus giving you?