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O SON OF SPIRIT!
The best beloved of all things in My sight is Justice; turn not away therefrom if thou desirest Me, and neglect it not that I may confide in thee. By its aid thou shalt see with thine own eyes and not through the eyes of others, and shalt know of thine own knowledge and not through the knowledge of thy neighbor. Ponder this in thy heart; how it behooveth thee to be. Verily justice is My gift to thee and the sign of My loving-kindness. Set it then before thine eyes.
I was walking down the street in Victoria British Columbia a while back and saw this sign in the window of a Chinese medicine shop. Just in case you can't see it, it says, 'Neti Pot: Ancient Yoga Tool for Cleansing the Sinuses….as seen on Oprah.'
For those of you that don't know what a neti pot is and it's association to the ancient practice of yoga, here is a brief history.
The practice became popular with practitioners of yoga in India and was later adopted by those practicing Ayurveda. Yoga practitioners were trying to develop clear and expanded consciousness on the basis of a strong, healthy and energetic body, and found that a key was the taking in of “prana” the "life energy" which comes in with the breath. That led them to develop techniques to ensure that their breathing apparatus was functioning at optimum efficiency and power, and eventually, to the use of nasal cleansing techniques.
What struck me at the time that I saw the poster in the window was the tagline. Yoga is said to have it's origins rooted in the Indus Valley civilization (ca. 3300–1700 BC)…quite ancient beginnings. I found it interesting that the shop would see the need to have such an ancient and proven practice be validated by Oprah who is neither ancient nor a yogi as far as I know.
That seems to be the way of our world now. Every interaction with the present and with ancient times seems to have to be mediated through our media or technology to be deemed as 'true' or worthy of consideration. Our religion is filtered through our clergy, our 'friend'ships through social networking on the internet, our music through ipods and videos. We prefer the virtual over the real in more cases than not.I recently started reading a book called The Authenticity Hoax: How We Get Lost Finding Ourselves by Andrew Potter. In his introduction, he recounts a story he read about a small group sitting on top of a hill waiting for a solar eclipse. He writes:
'The sheep lay down, the street lights in the nearest village in the distance across the moor came on automatically. It was a moment of almost spiritual doubt.' Doubt, perhaps. But all in all a very real experience, the realness of it spoiled only by a man watching the BBC coverage of the eclipse on a portable television, afraid of what it wold be like to experience life unmediated by technology."
He goes on to write,
"It is almost like we'd rather be any place other than where we actually, really are. And if we have to be there, we'd prefer to see it mediated through technology."
We swim in a sea of delusion and estrangement where our values have become so mixed up and disjointed from our reality. Neil Postman alludes to this in Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology when he states an eerie fact: we live in a world of humans that need to be 'deprogrammed' and computers get 'viruses.'
This thin veil or virtual 'interface' that separates us from our true selves and others prevents us from experiencing the joys and pains so integral and necessary for human development,community growth, and social progress. This 'filtering' out of the real and preference for the virtual leaves us numb, distraught, and longing for connection…wandering in paths of delusion. Now I am not saying that technology is a bad thing. I personally believe that it's development falls squarely in the context of our Divine Inheritance as children of Spirit. However, anything in excess can be harmful.
There is a fairly simple way out…
Find a living, tangible friend in your area and spend some time with them…actually share some space…some oxygen. Turn off the t.v. or computer and instead of watching nature shows, go touch, even hug, a tree or stick your feet in the ocean. Study, sit, and meditate with your sacred text without the aid of a mediator. I would be willing to guess that they possess their own power to speak across time. I would think that God would welcome talking to you directly and not to your pastor, imam, or guru all the time on your behalf. Hug your kids. Kiss your grandmother. Bounce a ball…you get the point. And as you are doing this, do it! Stay there, be in that moment and do just that with the awareness that YOU ARE ALIVE…what a miracle.
Free yo' self…Ascend!