Welcome to the Special Edition 2020 issue of Parvati Magazine.

On the surface, my daily routine has not dramatically changed this year. Parvati Magazine has been built on remote collaborations, as has the work of the Parvati Foundation, since inception. Though I have adjusted my schedule for my now-postponed performance tours, my work as a singer, songwriter and composer to complete the creative content for GEM (Global Education for MAPS) has always been in the seclusion of my music studio. 

But faced with a pandemic that history will show was pivotal for us all, my life has caught fire from the inside out. I feel as though a star at the core of my being has burst into a billion luminous rays.

As we try to make sense of a lethal virus that has brought our world to its knees, a surging, unstoppable force has summoned all areas of my life to greater directness, grit and depth. Images and insights have been flaring in my mind, making sleep impossible at times amid their fierce light. Perhaps, it is because expansive Jupiter is now significantly aspecting revolutionary Pluto in my astrological chart. Perhaps it is because I know more than ever how short and precious our lives truly are. Or maybe it is that I am acutely aware of how the world desperately needs the protection of MAPS. Whatever the cause, one thing is clear: I am not alone in going through profound change. Burning with compassion for those ravaged by loss in the extraordinary ongoing events, I have felt my very cells shifting in time with an immense global transformation. There will forever be a before and after COVID-19 for each one of us. The question is, what do we want the “after” to look like, and how willing are we to support that change?

This special edition of Parvati Magazine is very close to my heart. It is imbued from start to finish with an honesty, transparency and interconnection that serve to boost our global health and strength. When we come together open, ready, and willing, we can experience a shared inner restructuring. We go from feeling alone, challenged and hurt, to surrounded, charged and nourished. May the articles here support you in doing that.  

Full of valuable information about the situation we face collectively today, this issue is offered in three chapters. “The Opportunity” provides you with context and coping strategies for our new “normal”. “Waking Up to Change” invites you deeper into the potential for inner and outer healing. “Our Healthy World” brings you home to who you most naturally are. Through these pages, you will discover people from all walks of life who, like you, have been experiencing change in the face of the pandemic. Most importantly, this issue offers you the means to ignite your inner light to gift yourself and the world.

INTEGRATING THE OPPORTUNITY

As we adjust to the increased introversion of ongoing social distancing norms, we cannot deny that we are in a critical time for humanity. When we have the courage to open our hearts and minds to what is now gripping us, we face the uncomfortable truth that COVID-19 is here for a reason. Looking at the situation more closely, we see that we each have had a hand in the emergence of the coronavirus through the stress we place on our shared home. While the disease that first broke out in a Chinese market last fall now continues to snatch the breath of life from citizens across the globe, we must ask ourselves: in which ways does this deadly consumer reflect our own taking?

A virus weighing only 0.85 attograms (about one millionth of a trillionth of a gram) has paused the entire world. It highlights an underlying illness that we have been carrying for most of our lives. In so doing, it triggers us to form the antibodies to shake off that deeper disease for good—if we are willing.

COVID-19 is an undeniable killer, claiming thousands of lives every day. Yet this tragedy points to a silent, greater killer driven by our collective sense of disconnect—one which we must urgently address for the sake of our survival. When we place the pandemic in context within our hurting world, we discover that other deaths have long gone unseen because their cause did not come knocking at our front door. We have believed ourselves somehow immune.

Before the coronavirus became top of mind globally, every day 10,000 people were already dying from air pollution, 21,000 were dying from starvation, and hundreds of species were disappearing from the Earth. In a UN Security Council briefing this spring, World Food Programme Executive Director David Beasley stated that even before the coronavirus pandemic struck, 2020 was likely to see “the worst humanitarian crisis since World War II” due to wars, unrest, crop failure, and locust swarms. Now, he warns that we face the threat of “multiple famines of biblical proportions” in which “300,000 people could starve to death every single day over a three-month period. This does not include the increase of starvation due to COVID-19.” 

The devastation is summoning a sober look at our collective values. It is waking us up to the harm we have been doing all along and giving us an opportunity to change our ways. Will we embrace the opportunity? We can only do so if we accept that we got here in the first place. If we remain in a perspective that the pandemic is happening “to” us, we won’t. Like a student who ignores the lesson and must repeat it under stricter circumstances, we risk facing again what we must learn—with even higher stakes.

From whales who have no fear of the darkest ocean depths, to the way the cultural community responds amid shuttered theatres and social distancing; from people acting on courage and kindness through difficult times, to the opportunity we all have to find our inner gems; the following articles touch on the power of compassion, the courage to face our shadows, and the willingness to care for ourselves and those around us.

At our most honest, we can see that the taking energy of the coronavirus disease exists in every one of us, whether or not we have had the physical illness. We can recognize that the antidote to our collective disease of greed, based on perceived separateness, is to awaken to our inherent interconnection. This is the true immunity our world desperately needs.

EMBRACING CHANGE

Wherever we walk on Earth, we cast a shadow. We cannot run from it, no matter where we may isolate. We must learn to manage the darker recesses of our psyches, where our painful tendencies may thrive.

Our collective unbridled shadows create a beast that stalks our world. When we have the humility to recognize that we are part of a whole, our shadows diminish. As we meet them with presence, they undergo an alchemical transformation into light.

Science reveals why protecting the Arctic Ocean is more critically important than ever due to frozen buried pathogens and methane. The land, that we have made feverish and unstable, now struggles to hold them at bay. If we continue to allow disconnect to drive our decisions, the disease of greed will rise, carbon will overheat our collective temperature and the next pandemic will be on the horizon. We can make the necessary internal change. And Nature is telling is in no uncertain terms that we must - now.

MAPS is a 360 degree initiative to reawaken interconnection globally. It acts upon what COVID-19 is teaching us—that what happens in one part of the world affects the whole.

Given the ways our daily lives have been altered, we have an opportunity to open our hearts to ourselves and to those whose life experiences have been very different from our own. Most of us have the privilege to follow social distancing rules. Yet millions, in this very moment, face the stark choice between starving in isolation or risking disease to get enough to eat. Through this lens, we look at what we do have, with greater gratitude, even awe, and choose to act to right the balance.

When we open to the totality of life, we discover how we can avoid tragedy by learning from the masks we wear. We practice filling ourselves with light in a dark time, as we connect with our true potential to make a difference.

In that space, love yourself. 

Love others. 

Love our world. 

We are one Earth family. 

Parvati