Like many parents, I keep learning about my own and my children’s relationship with computers and devices. At times, the learning is tumultuous!
I’d love to tell you a bit about my own relationship with the Internet, and how it interweaves with my life as a mother and facilitator. I’ve written in a bit of detail, which you might not want to read all of – if so, feel free to skip to the second half, where I write about the Internet as a vehicle of consciousness, and how it can be used in service of our evolution. I finish with questions we can ask ourselves when online so that our Internet use can be aligned with our evolutionary journey.
And if you do read about my own journey, I wonder if you’d like to reflect on your own relationship with devices. I found the reflection very useful, and you might too.
My Journey
When my daughter (now 12) was a baby, toddler, and small child, there was one computer in the house. (It was a desktop Mac). There were no mobile phones, iPads were yet to be invented, and there was no FaceBook, Instagram, Twitter, or Snapchat.
However, Google was already around. It was through Google that I learnt about HypnoBirthing, which I trained in before becoming pregnant with my daughter; which started me off on a journey of birthing and parenting; through which I met Peter Jackson, the Australian midwife who later developed Calmbirth, which I also trained in and used during the birth of my son.
I learnt about Aware Parenting via the Internet, when I was pregnant with my daughter. It became my passion, and I became an Aware Parenting Instructor. For the first few years of my daughter’s life, I didn’t use the computer whilst she was awake and whilst I was looking after her. I saved computer time until she was asleep, or when her dad was looking after her.
I learnt about Nonviolent Communication from an online parenting group when my daughter was 9 months old. I did various in-person workshops and trainings, and started teaching my own in-person workshops. It became a cornerstone of my personal and professional lives.
I practised giving empathy; a cornerstone of NVC, through online yahoo forums. I spent many hours doing this. I learnt so much. I also used it as a way to avoid connection with my then-husband. A painful paradox; I learnt about connection by avoiding intimacy!
Wanting to help my dad understand some of his experiences, I looked up ‘deja-vu’ in 2005 and came across The Field Center. I trained extensively in this approach for the next several years, and became certified as a Facilitator and Coach with the Field Center, which became the Field Project.
I had a blog, and then my own d-i-y website, parentingwithpresence.net which I started in about 2005. (It will only be there for a few months, until it too evolves as part of my marionrose.net website).
I started up a Yahoo parenting with presence group. This became a beautiful and flourishing community. I so loved contributing empathy and information to parents about Aware Parenting, as well as Nonviolent Communication and the Field Project. Not only did I get to contribute, but it also gave me a sense of belonging and community. Most of the participants were from Australia, but we also had people from the U.K., from the U.S.A., and from other places around the world. When I went out to a shopping centre, I no longer felt alone when I saw other parents doing different things. I integrated a sense of community and belonging from that group which I took everywhere with me.
However, I also used contributing to others as a protection against my own feelings. I remember trying to help clients when I was England when my dad was dying. And when my marriage was ending, I remember often spending several hours a day replying to posts on my parenting group. And long past were the days of only being online when my children were asleep. I’m sad to say that they also were using devices by then – even though my son was only the tender age of four. We now had an iPhone, an iPad and a MacBook Pro – just enough for one each!! I was restricting what they could do – to watching programmes like Charlie and Lola, and play simple and gentle games.
So, the Internet helped me access information and form community and connection with like-minded people. It also was something I used to which lessened the connection with the people around me. Ouch!
As time went on, other connections developed. Peter Jackson put an article of mine on Aware Parenting in the Calmbirth booklet. Many Australian parents come to Aware Parenting via that article.
Plenty of the parents on my yahoo group began meeting up in their local areas – Sydney was the first place that this started. Many of the members went on and trained to become Parenting by Connection Instructors and Aware Parenting Instructors.
And then, as communities developed in Sydney, Fremantle, Melbourne, Canberra, and other places in Australia, I’ve had the pleasure to go and run workshops around Australia, and to meet parents in person. The community has spread far and wide. Now I know of at least 25 people who are intending to become Aware Parenting Instructors in Australia. The virtual community grew and joined with other virtual communities, and became in-person communities.
In my own family, I still play around with our device use. I have played with unlimited use for my kids, as well as no devices at all, set amounts of time per day, set amounts of time per week, family meetings to find strategies, and many others. I’ve played with having a family table of devices so we can all connect when we are on them; with me not using them at all when I am with my kids so that I can connect with what they are doing on devices, to only doing leisure things and not ‘work’ on devices when I am with them so I can easily stop what I’m doing.
I’ve played with them only watching certain things, or only playing games and not watching programmes, and only using educational apps. I’ve gone through phases of checking FaceBook multiple times a day, to not using FaceBook for several months, to using FaceBook for sharing my memes. And I’m still playing with it all.
The Internet as a Vehicle for Consciousness and Evolution
Last week I read a book called Reality is Broken, by Jane McGonigal. I found most of it interesting, in places challenging, and didn’t agree with it all. However, I felt deeply inspired and excited reading the last chapter, about how we can use what we know about gaming to help people join together to help solve global issues.
The Internet itself is neutral, and can be used both to spread helpful consciousness, or to spread destructive consciousness. Yet I can see that it is, and can be, part of our development as a species.
I believe that our survival and flourishing as humans depends on us evolving from egocentric (me vs. you) to ethnocentric (my culture vs. your culture) to world-centric (earth citizens) development. Technology helped us move towards worldcentric; when we first saw whole photos of the earth from space in 1966, this awoke in many a new sense of being a global human family. We needed to be able to disidentify from earth, to be away from earth, before we could really identify with being a whole human family.
Perhaps you too can trace your own developmental process. I look back and see how I was very identified with being an “Aware Parent”. Over time, as I have experienced more life, I now identify with a much larger group of people – mothers, and women in general. Both the Internet, and meeting people in person, have been part of this development.
I think that the Internet can be a vehicle through which we increasingly see that we are all one. Despite being male or female, English or Arabian, despite our religion or beliefs or nationality or the colour of our skin, our accent, our parenting beliefs, what we do, how much money we have, the clothes we wear, we are all one human family. And when there are enough of us who have this identity – as part of a human family, I believe that we will find that we naturally want to connect, cooperate with, and contribute to, the rest of our family. And that means not fighting them, making sure that they have enough clean water, and food, and opportunities, and care, and helping them know that they matter. And as a human family, we of course will want to take care of our home, the earth, and the other beings that live here.
So, I see our relationship with technology being related to our identity.
Consciousness and Identity and the Internet
I’ve been coming back to an old Psychosynthesis meditation about identity recently. This is a short version of it:
Close your eyes and let yourself connect with your bodily sensations. Let yourself feel the sensations in your body right now. Fully feeling them. Then say to yourself, “I have a body and sensations, but I am not my body.”
Let yourself connect with your feelings. Whatever they are, just feel them. Then say to yourself, “I have feelings, but I am not my feelings.”
Likewise, let awareness come to your thoughts. Notice the thoughts. Then say, “I have thoughts, but I am not my thoughts.”
From here, allow yourself to connect with what is aware of the body, the feelings and the thoughts. That which is not any of these, but which is aware of them. Then say, “I have sensations, feelings and thoughts, but I am not my sensations, feelings and thoughts. I am I, a centre of awareness and will.”
Last night I was reading Richard Moss’ ‘The Mandala of Being‘. He was also talking about disidentifying from our bodies, feelings and minds. I loved his method. He asks us to bring attention to our breathing, for example, right now, as you are reading this newsletter, bring your attention to your breathing. Our breathing is like a kite, and as we bring attention to our breathing, our attention is a string which keeps the kite flying. The string is our awareness. If we let go of the string of our attention, breathing drops out of our awarenesss. “Now turn your attention around, away from your breathing, and point it back down the “string” toward whatever is holding the string. What do you experience? Who or what is holding the string of attention? Who or what is the kite flyer?” (p.24-25)
When I do this, I experience space, emptiness, no-thing-ness….
In essence, we are not our name, our gender, our personality, our beliefs, the car we drive, the work we do. We are consciousness which identifies at one time or another with the contents of our personality. It is really important to me that we value our personality, our feelings, our desires, our needs; whilst at the same time acknowledging that we are always more than this (or less than this, ie. without the identity).
For me, the Internet is a vehicle which we can use as part of our evolution, if we use it as consciously as we can.
We might use the Internet to repress painful feelings such as sadness or overwhelm; let’s bring compassion for ourselves at those times and for those painful parts of ourselves. We might use the Internet to avoid connection in-person, when we are feeling scared or unsure. Let’s bring empathy to these parts of ourselves too.
We can also use it to create connection, community, a sense of belonging and being understood. We can join online communities of ‘like-minded’ people – people who have similar beliefs and ways of thinking as us.
And we can also use it to transcend our smaller identities. There’s a difference between repression and transcending; in the latter, we include all that we are, all the sadness and happiness of our feelings, all the joys and challenges of our bodies, all the fascinations and chatter of our minds, whilst also going beyond those. The Internet allows us to go beyond our bodies, feelings, and thoughts, to identify with a larger, collective sense – a sense of ourselves as part of the human family. And that can be a gateway to experiencing ourselves as part of All that Is.
So, my questions to myself, and to you, each time we are using the Internet, are:
Who am I identifying with when I am doing this?
What needs am I aiming to meet?
Is this helping me?
Is this helping others?
Am I feeling more connected, or more disconnected when I do this?
Am I feeling part of a larger world family when I do this?
Is there something else I could choose to do, right now, that would be more helpful for myself or others?
My sense is, the more I ask these questions, the more awareness I bring to my Internet use, and the more choice I have to use it in alignment with my values and growth. And the clearer I am, the more I will be able to help my children in asking their own versions of those kinds of questions, so that their computer use helps, rather than hinders, their development.
As usual, I’d love to hear if these are things you’ve been playing with too.
