My Year Unplugged: Internet Vs. Intuition
Initial Thoughts
As someone living in the age of globalized information, economy, and marketing, I often feel a subtle sensation of restlessness flitting to and fro around my thoughts as I live out my daily life. For years I’ve been experiencing this whisper of a feeling, and looking back, I think I’d acknowledge it when it tickled my consciousness and label it as a result of something trivial and distracting and easily dismissed — like one too many cups of coffee — until it popped up again, drawing my thoughts away from whatever I was doing at the time. This restless sensation would stir within me like a leaf leaving a silent ripple on the surface of the pond of my subconscious, again and again, without a concrete identity— until recently I had an entirely new, vivid experience with this very same sensation, catching it in my mind’s grasp and demanding answers.
Some Context
I began 2023 with the mass exodus of my consciousness from all social media platforms. Ah, yes, the well known “social media detox.”
People leave social media for many reasons. Personally, I found it painfully distracting from, well, real life. That, and I began to have a vision of a life more in touch with myself. I wanted a deeper understanding of my purpose in the world. Not to mention being on social media for hours a day would occasionally leave me feeling exhausted. Not the refreshed kind of exhausted after a hard workout, but the kind of exhausted felt after I’ve eaten too much Chinese takeout — not good.
So, I decided to bail. I downloaded the last decade of my uploaded photos to a portable hard drive and deleted Facebook and Twitter, but decided against digging up my ancient Myspace password — neither myself nor anyone else needs to remember my selfies from 8th grade. I kept my Instagram account live so as to communicate with business associates and a few friends on occasion but deleted the app from my phone and do not use it to post or scroll through content, as a rule. I was feeling, how should I put this…drained.
A significant precursor to this desire to unplug myself virtually was my physical detox from alcohol, recreational drugs and nicotine a few months prior. In the last month I’ve been gradually eliminating caffeine and processed sugar from my diet and wow — the struggle is real.
Please do not misunderstand me, it’s not that I demonize any of these things, or consider sober or diet conscious folks better than anyone that loves to drink alcohol, hit a vape, or eat sugar. These things are meant to be enjoyed. We are each the captains of our own beautiful ships. And I believe we are ALL just that: beautiful.
That being said, in the course of steering of my own cosmic vessel, I had a novel notion:
Maybe the reason that people are constantly telling me I should get checked for ADHD (they didn’t need to tell me, I felt a lack of harmony in my daily process on a consistent basis) has less to do with a predetermined genetic disability and more to do with the way I am choosing to give external forces constant dominion over my precious, precious attention. Anything that occupies my attention in such powerful capacities as any of these online platforms or substances logically must be taking my attention away from something else. Right?
But what IS that “something else,” I wondered.
We Seek Attention But Don’t Give It To Ourselves
As I’ve pondered this question in the first month of my year unplugged, I’ve come to some profound realizations. That “something else” is what I would describe as my “higher self,” or my spirit. To me, my spirit (or soul, or life force, or my “connection to source,” as some might call it) is the essence of life that is found in the place where my consciousness meets my body. I feel very strongly that this is the core of my identity and is attached to my sense of purpose in this life. It is the center of who each of us are as individuals, and yet, I believe it connects each of us to eachother as well. It is the most fundamental thing that every human being has in common.
I should clarify that NO, these ideas are not meant to be attached to any particular religious belief system. I believe that terms like “spirit,” “spirituality,” and “soul” have become buzzwords indicative of some sort of religious ideology. For the moment, please leave that way of thinking at the door. No matter what your beliefs and convictions (or lack thereof), I’m confident you’ll find you can jive with what I’m putting down. You don’t have to believe in any god or even a basic meaning to all of this existence to be able to acknowledge that there is an indispensable scientific component to the idea that we are beings of incorporeal consciousness having a physical experience.
Defining key terms in these discussions is so important. Maybe redefining how we talk about what we often describe as “spirituality” is essential to moving forward in open-minded, unbiased discussions about the pivotal, yet often invisible role our human intentions play in determining the nature of the world around us. You may have heard about the study of these invisible forces and how they tie us all together. It’s called Quantum Physics.
Quantum Consequences
Consider for a moment the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics. It was awarded to three scientists for demonstrating that the world around us is not in a state of constant determination, or “real.” In a way, what this means is that the world appears to us as we expect it to appear, and that our intentions and beliefs about reality as an entire worldwide population have a considerable effect on the Universe as we experience it. Put simply, the nature of the particles that make up the world around us is dependent upon the way we observe those particles. The implications of this are limitless, but most importantly for me it is a wake up call. It is a reminder that there are boundless unseen forces attached to our everyday worldviews and thought patterns that affect our evolving human experience on a daily basis. In particular, the phenomenon of Quantum Entanglement more or less establishes the potential for direct relationships between particles of matter regardless of how close together (or far apart) they may be. Seemingly, the Universe, in its classic, comedic fashion, is providing observable evidence that contrary to what you may have thought, that thing that you did when no one was watching probably DOES have lasting consequences that you didn’t expect. Ouch.
Because the Internet
In this year long journey of detachment from externals as an exchange for a deep dive within myself, I expect to be processing many growing and transforming ideas; however, I have already begun to take away from my experience one fundamental concept in particular:
From a very young age, everything that we see, we hear, we eat, we touch, we experience — everything we sense — is a story we are being told about what Life is, and how we fit into the picture. We are told a story about what our deeper identities ought to look like based on the shows and movies we watch, the music we listen to, the food that we eat, the ads that we see, and of course the social media platforms we spend so much of our waking lives on. A huge part of the story we are being told today is that the world is a scary, dangerous place, and life is hard, but fortunately, our entire existence can essentially be conveniently “lived” online.
Whoa. Let that sink in.
But wait. It doesn’t sound that crazy does it? To live an entire life on the internet? That’s because primarily existing on the internet has become the norm for so many people. How often do you see a child in a stroller staring at a phone or a tablet? When pondering the implications of existing in a world that is living on the internet, I often think of one of my favorite quotes from author Kurt Vonnegut as he discussed replacing human contact with electronic contact in his 1996 interview with Inc Magazine:
“…Then I’m going down the steps, and my wife calls up, ‘Where are you going?’ I say, ‘Well, I’m going to go buy an envelope.’ And she says, ‘You’re not a poor man. Why don’t you buy a thousand envelopes? They’ll deliver them, and you can put them in a closet.’ And I say, ‘Hush.’ So I go down the steps here, and I go out to this newsstand across the street where they sell magazines and lottery tickets and stationery. I have to get in line because there are people buying candy and all that sort of thing, and I talk to them. The woman behind the counter has a jewel between her eyes, and when it’s my turn, I ask her if there have been any big winners lately. I get my envelope and seal it up and go to the postal convenience center down the block at the corner of 47th Street and 2nd Avenue, where I’m secretly in love with the woman behind the counter. I keep absolutely poker-faced; I never let her know how I feel about her. One time I had my pocket picked in there and got to meet a cop and tell him about it. Anyway, I address the envelope to Carol in Woodstock. I stamp the envelope and mail it in a mailbox in front of the post office, and I go home. And I’ve had a hell of a good time. And I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you any different.
Electronic communities build nothing. You wind up with nothing. We’re dancing animals. How beautiful it is to get up and go do something.”
I’d like to mention that at the end of this particular segment, Vonnegut actually got up and danced a jig right there in the middle of the interview. I love this!
Now, I think it may be a stretch to say that electronic communities build nothing. The electronic world has helped facilitate countless instances of good; however, it does seem reasonable to posit that the internet has drastically changed the way we function as a global society. While social media has created an opportunity for global interconnectedness and many great discourses, I believe it has reduced much of our interaction with one another to a surface level exchange. I would go so far as to say that it has significantly hindered the average human being’s ability to interact with other human beings in person — but that’s a discussion for some other time.
Being Present Vs. Being Colonized
The issue at hand is this: when I am on the internet, I do not truly feel like I am living presently in my body. I am somewhere else. My mind is captivated in a virtual realm. In recent years especially, I started to notice that even when I wasn’t on the internet and was having a daily experience far away from a computer or phone, I would repeatedly catch my mind still being somewhere else.
What I’m getting at here is that when we give something our attention it naturally occupies our time, and our invaluable time is being treated as a commodity on the internet now more than ever, particularly on social media. In some very powerful statements he made during a 2018 Forum at the Child Mind Institute, YouTube comedian Bo Burnham elaborates on the negative social impact these social media platforms are having on the world. “They are coming for every second that you have…it’s dark, it’s really dark,” and he’s not wrong. When you take a step back and consider the role shareholders play in steering social media moguls like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat it’s pretty easy to see one thing in particular:
They do not care about your well-being — they care about keeping you occupied because that’s what determines the market value of their company. To put it bluntly, the limits of the global frontiers have been reached in the Post-Industrial Revolution, and our minds — our attention — are the new frontier to be colonized.
While I recommend watching Bo’s full segment of the discussion (it may actually be worth your time and attention), the simple reality is that every second of every day we have a choice; a choice to either be fully present with ourselves for any given moment, or alternatively, to interact with a device that possesses limitless information and the nearly unhindered ability to connect us with people anywhere in the world. When you think about it, that’s an extreme set of options. Take it a step further, suddenly attaching a dollar sign to each individual’s active engagement with these online platforms, and we have arrived at the heart of the problem. Here is the essence of that leaf making its ripple on the pond of my consciousness, over and over again. Since their genesis, social media platforms have been developing in ways more and more conducive to attracting and locking down human attention. They’re so well designed that even when we aren’t thinking about using them, we’re thinking about using them. Remember that one time all of the major websites you visited weren’t working together to target ads at you constantly?
Why We Never Forget to Breathe
For a while I thought I might be suffering from symptoms of ADHD, or maybe it was just that extra cup of coffee I’d had — that is, until I started making gradual, consistent changes in my everyday practices. I tried cutting out toxic substances first, and eventually arrived at the idea of unplugging my mind from social media and similar addicting practices on electronic devices. At first the change in myself was barely noticeable. The last couple weeks, however, I have started to feel as if I’ve broken through the surface of the ocean after years spent underwater and can finally breathe for the first time.
Ahhh, that sweet, sweet breath.
How often do you take the time to fully enjoy that beautiful thing we call a breath? That special thing you do all the time without even thinking about it — even in your sleep. It’s an incredible function that many of us almost never think about, yet it is synonymous with that place I mentioned earlier: that sacred place where your consciousness meets your body. Why do you think we never forget to breathe?
We are so distracted at every conscious turn these days that it can seem almost impossible to bring our minds to that place where the breath is and actually stay there for a while.
It’s mindlessly easy to scroll on Instagram, but how easy is it to pay attention to your breath and stay paying attention to your breath?
Why is that? Why are we so easily distracted by everything?
For me it was drugs, alcohol, comfort food, and exploring all the possibilities of life in the social media realm. Comfortable distractions from the reality that life is constant work, no matter who you are. Not to mention, no matter who you are, there’s so much noise that it’s virtually impossible to listen to yourself — and I don’t mean sit in a quiet place and try to hear yourself (that wouldn’t hurt, though). I mean that in the same way the functions of the Quantum realm are mostly imperceptible, so are the workings of our spirits. To fully access our connection to the unseen forces that dictate our experience and our connection to the world around us, we have to eliminate the noise from our lives. It’s as simple as that really, and quite magical, to be honest. Please try it.
Following Your Personal Wisdom
Do you remember the idiom “trust your gut”? I’ve noticed lately that a lot of platitudes like this that we casually throw around are actually powerful, reality-bending pieces of token wisdom that are often taken for granted. For instance, we’ve all heard “it’s the little things that make the biggest difference in life,” right? Well, last year, after 28 years of hearing that said time and time again, I finally figured maybe I should take some of this simple advice (my way of doing things never quite seemed to end up with me being where I wanted anyways).
I started making small changes one day, then the next, and the next. Changes that I could measure and look back on and consistently draw a line from, from each moment to the next, and then finally to me in the present. It started four months ago with a hiatus from drugs and alcohol, but it has turned into something so much more significant than a decision to stop putting something into my body. Without expecting it to, it became my search for Truth, if you will. That is what life really comes down to: a search for our Truth and how to best live it out, I think.
Looking back, it all started with giving the idea that the little things are what really matter a chance, and it evolved into something totally unexpected and beautifully life-changing. There had to be a reason these little pieces of wisdom kept appearing in my life, right? So I finally gave them a real ear. Fast forward, and I am having yet another powerful experience with an idiom: “trust your gut,” or for our purposes, “trust your intuition.”
Internet Vs. Intuition
Finally, my friends, we’ve arrived at the little piece of magic I’ve been dying to share with you:
I’ve mentioned the “higher self” more than once today and that’s because it is the foundation of this entire idea. We live in a world that makes it easy and almost desirable to inhabit so many places besides our actual vessels, our bodies. Even when we are living in the present moment, somewhat in touch with ourselves, we are inundated with noise, both around us and within us. All of this noise disconnects us from our “higher selves,” or more simply put, from our ability to use our intuition, our intrinsic connection to the Universe around us — no, not a connection through HTML, but an unseen connection to the world around us through every one of our cells and strands of DNA, our human code.
It is an amazing thing, intuition. It is nothing short of real life magic. When you can look at any given situation in front of you, and inhabit your body, and feel with your entire physical and spiritual being that you, without question, know what you are meant to do, it is not only more affirming and fulfilling than any experience you will ever have online — it is also humbling. It is a reminder of just how human we are, and it’s bound to crack your heart wide open in a beautiful way.
But, it’s not easy to get to this place of intuitive experience and remain there. It takes a consistent practice, and that practice of getting in touch with yourself will never be perfect, but hey, that’s why it’s called a practice. This is simply a call to return home every once in a while. To return to your home where the heart is, your vessel, your beautiful body, and to meet yourself. Ask yourself how you are doing. Give yourself a hug, listen to yourself breathe, feel yourself be alive. Believe me, it may not seem like it at first, but eventually you start to enjoy that home within yourself more than anywhere else on Earth (or online). You start to love yourself so much that you start loving you back.
Even without social media, I still often find myself distractedly surfing the web ten or fifteen minutes after I was supposed to quickly check my email, suddenly scratching my head in the middle of the internet’s virtual intersection wondering, “how did I get here?”
It’s not a bad thing to venture online, by any means. I’m here right now! I’m just offering an idea: to escape the noise now and then, and come home. Even if you start with one minute a day, or one minute a month, just remember: it’s the little things that make the biggest difference.
