Evicted

 

Consider that domination, greed, cruelty, violence, and all our other ills arise from a sense of insufficient and insecure being......If we could arrange energy from within, if we more often nurtured our companions and promoted their well-being, we would suffer much less. Rearranging energy from within is what mysticism does.

Beatrice Bruteau, Preface to The Mystic Heart by Wayne Teasdale

 

 

The lovely John O’Donohue uses the word “evicted” to describe how the media hijacks our minds from ourselves, pulling us ever outward to more consumption, accolades, and attention.  Scratch the surface of the media onslaught and you what you find is a barren land of lack since what is sold to us can only ever give a brief high that sets us on the desperate search for the next hit. 

 

The overload from the pernicious media/tech machines sullies the senses of perception which become dull, inarticulate, and unable to grasp the subtler aspects of the inner and outer world.  Like the barrenness of junk food, the vacuous promises of an easy life through consumption, money, accolades, and glamour, eventually erode our spirits leaving us deflated, with a void too easily filled by unworthiness, anxiety and stress.  O’Donohue who wrote before the explosive and pervasive infiltration of social media into our lives, foreshadowed the new research about the depressive and addictive effects of cell phones and social media.  Without careful attention and awareness, None of us are immune to this hijacking fueled by the billions and billions of dollars spent to keep us hooked on the swipe.

 

The mental hijacking exhausts us of the vital and nourishing gifts of a calm consciousness and mind.  As Mr Iyengar has written, “We leak energy like a sieve,” referring to the deleterious effects that jealousy, envy, and greed has on our lives, emotions fueled by the media/technology imperative to swipe. These addictive technologies and the desires that take root in our consciousness as a result, move us away from experiencing our natural easy selves, our oneness with life, the fullness of compassion and tenderness.  

 

Contemplative practices that help us to still the mind and turn our attention inward provide the nourishment that the pull of social technology would otherwise destroy.  These practices help us to slow way down so that we might be soothed by a steady flowing river, the sun on bare arms, a playful child, a wrinkled face.

 

John O’Donohue has written “Let the nourishment of the earth be yours”.  I have found the most profound healing to my grief and longing in contemplative practices of solitude by a flowing river, the river with me weeping, unfolding, swirling in everchanging colors.  The green mosses on the rocks, the yellow moths dipping and dancing together in the cool shade, my dog digging for rocks at the water’s edge. My senses full and calmed in the midst of sorrow the sweet fragrance of ferns offering themselves up for my restoration, connection, and homecoming.