I am plugged in. I have a smartphone and a laptop, a tablet and a wireless connection to the world. I text and Skype, call and confer. I’m not so sure that is smart. I am connected…but to what? A virtual world of virtual friends? An imaginary space on the Internet? Is that connection? If so, what type – the type I want?
I have almost always been connected. Working in the telecommunications industry, my employers always provided me with a free laptop, cell phone, and pager. I was one of the first to have these things, back when they were new and ‘special.’ My life was ruled by beeps and calls, texts and tones. I was so happy when I finally dropped all that. My soul soared, like a bird set free…
For almost four years, I didn’t have a phone or laptop. I was ‘out of touch,’ not connected. It was great. I was connected to something real and actual, not virtual. I was connected to the rhythms of nature and myself, not to an imaginary realm, a virtual world. My heart soared, and I sang hosannas most of the day, despite the ostensible challenges of my physical situation. I was happy…disconnected, but happy.
No RF waves were running through my brain (at least not any I initiated and invited in). No syncing to the beat of an electronic world. My brain was free from images on a screen, from the virtual rape that entails. My mind flowed in its natural channels. My eyes feasted on the beauty of Nature, not on pixelated images on a screen. No one downloaded songs to me – I uploaded them instead, from my heart and lips into the real space of our world.
I like to express, I like the illusion that someone cares, someone actually reads these words and considers them, feels them from their heart. I guess I got addicted to the sense of virtual connection, and lost my sense of actual connection.
While there are many good things about social media and the ability to instantly communicate, I have begun to see this ‘uber-access’ as a sort of cancer, as an affliction I impose on myself. While there are many good documentaries on TV, and much helpful information on the Internet, the time and attention it sucks from me is not helpful.
I am tempted to just dump it all – give the phone and laptop away, the Nook and the Roku, unplug the wireless router and make the TV into an aquarium or something. When my last two girlfriends found me, my TV was unplugged, dusty, with a sign on the screen that said ‘insert imagination here.’ Those were the days.
As a pleaser, I plugged the TV in and got my access going. I mean, Girl wanted to watch some Netflix, so I was down if it made her happy. No matter that we sat side by side, looking at virtual things instead of doing actual things. I cannot even calculate how much precious time I’ve pissed away looking into a screen.
Now those girlfriends are gone, maybe it’s time to unplug the TV again, return to real life…my little, silly life of pedaling and yoga, meditation and (hopefully) increasing service, to Self and society. A real life. Not fancy or even noteworthy, just mine. Just real…nothing virtual about it.
In retrospective, I have paid the price for this pseudo connection. The thoughts and images that were burned into my brain were often not helpful. Trying to communicate about important matters from the head and from texts (or over the phone, just not in person, eye to eye) resulted in so much miscommunication, caused so much harm and pain in my life. The resonance of the information flood of ‘news’ and world events has not helped educate or enlighten me, just the opposite, in fact. It has been an injection of fear and loathing, of disconnection and disgust.
It has lodged in my hips and my heart. It has tightened up my psoas and hip flexors. It has put calluses on my soul, and a film over my eyes. I am more connected than ever, yet feel more disconnected than ever. I do not think I am alone in this. If our lives are so dang great, why aren’t we running through fields of flowers with our lovers, playing catch with our kids, performing our yoga practices? Why are we sitting on line, virtually alone, when we could be experiencing togetherness, reality, life?
Oh yeah, I am well-informed. But about what? Monsanto killing the plant life of the world and endangering the world food supply? The government run amok, abridging and gutting the constitution? Our endless wars, or the sea of plastic bag remnants choking our oceans? The death of our oceans due to poisoning by the ‘clean energy’ of nuclear power? The greedy oil companies wanting to frack our planet, to suck the last drop out of her regardless of the consequences? The vanishing of the species and the disappearance of our protective polar ice caps? That information is not helpful to me. It is in fact harmful – it depresses me and sets a hopeless tone to the world. It rubs my nose in our own demise, and in the sketchy future we leave to our offspring. How does that help? I already know how bad it is, already try to live as a good steward of Earth. How does rubbing my nose in our plight help?
Oh, arguments abound why we need to be connected, involved. Some of them are very persuasive, very logical. But my body doesn’t understand logic. My hips and spine tighten up in response to this injection of fear and doom. My heart closes in a protective posture, and I feel the results in my gut, in every cell of my body. I can understand the logic of that.
See, I know this because I have experienced it, lived it and observed it carefully. Most of you reading this cannot possibly comprehend what I am saying (unless you are an avid outdoorsperson or are homeless), since you most likely have never been disconnected, never lived a life free of the chains of virtual reality. (And thus you have no basis for comparison). Of course, your intellects can grasp the concept, your brains can read the research and understand the implications. But true understanding results from living and experiencing. If you could only try disconnecting and giving yourself a break, you could also observe the difference in yourself and your life as you experience the effects of real reality and virtual reality. Few have the luxury to perform this experiment, and thus remain in cages they cannot even perceive. Fewer still have the desire to perform this experiment.
They say this phenomenological world is an illusion, or at least illusory. That may be so, but the wind blowing on my face as I pedal, the sun on my back are much more real than mere images of the virtual world. If the ‘real’ world is an illusion, then the virtual world is an illusion of an illusion, a distortion of a distortion.
I’ll keep my illusions as real as I can, thank you very much.
As a yogi, I strive to balance and integrate the real life and the modern world of communications. That’s what we do – balance and integrate. Yet I’m not sure I want to balance cancer into my life, find an integration of toxic things.
I feel in my heart and head and hips and soul the differences in my life, my outlook, my perceptions when I am not connected. My body feels it in an undeniable way. Maybe it’s just time to take a break, to detox for a bit. Maybe. Then I will encounter the questions faced by all who seek to detoxify, to purify…once you have been detoxed, why re-tox? Once you have been cleaned, why get dirty again? Once you’ve excised a cancer in your life, why re-invite it back in?
My mom always stressed how important it was to be careful of what I put into my mind. It sounded so mommish at the time, so old-fashioned and rigid. Like many important lessons from her that I ignored, the truth of her words became apparent as I lived the unhappy results of ignoring her good advice. I want to honor my mother and her lessons, but I end up disregarding them and letting the whole ugly, greedy, ego-driven world into the temple of my mind and heart and soul.
The sages warn me of attachment to the material world, of the dangers of association with and exposure to the world of the negative, that of the asura (demons) and hungry ghosts, that of the users and rapers and war-pigs. They tell me of the necessity to surround myself with like-minded yogis, to enter into a community of people who will uplift me. They stress the need to fill my mind with the elevating and uplifting wisdom of timeless truth, not mundane matters that drag me down and de-tune my vibration. Yet I persist.
Perhaps it is time. Once an activity begins to limit my freedom, take up my precious time (only 86,400 seconds in each day), then it has become a problem. Once it has an affect on my health and outlook, it has become a cancer. Once it begins to affect my yoga practice, to prevent my deepening of it, it has to go. Once it inhibits my true expression and unfolding, it is an urgent issue.
Like all things, the virtual world and all this modern connection can be a good servant, but a poor master. It can perhaps be helpful in moderation. It needs to be in balance with all other facets of my life. Once again I wonder…do I even want to balance this?
For now, I will keep my laptop. But I’ll use it only to write stories and novels, to make a movie or record a song or two. I will keep the Nook, as a reference source for my practice and a repository of human, yogic, and spiritual knowledge. I guess I’ll keep paying for a phone and for Internet access, but if I see I don’t use them profitably (not in a monetary sense, but profitable to my growth and development), I’ll discontinue them.
But first I need a moratorium, a chance to deepen my practice and clear my mind, that i can consider this issue from a mind untainted by RF waves, electromagnetic radiation, horrible images and news and computer screens. First I need to get back to my space, back to Center and honor the temple that is my body/mind/spirit. I need to clean the temple and take measures to keep future dirt out. I can start there.
My hips will like that. My body will thank me. My brain, remarkably plastic, will return to a more balanced state, and I can re-wire and re-structure my brain based on my own inputs, rather than one those someone else thinks I need.
Of course, I’ll have to miss all the posturing and shameless self-promotion. I’ll have to take my own warped desire onto my mat (my meditation mat and yoga mat, one in the same) and transform it. I can do that.
My hips will thank me.
Tales from the Hips (and Heart) 