The Internet as a Vehicle for Consciousness and Evolution
Last year 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 center of awareness and will.”
In Richard Moss’ ‘The Mandala of Being’, he also talks 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 awareness.
“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.
With love,
Marion xxx