In the fast paced world of social media technology, the allowance for synchronicity has increased dramatically. Those empaths attuned to the mirroring effect can relate deeply to this topic. Instant manifestation and it’s virtual delivery is high and mighty as well as the implications of the mirroring effect on our personal development.
Technology has shown us how powerful we are as we connect to each other through social media and contribute to the melding pot of consciousness. It’s also teaching us about our value and influence in the world and the effect we have on each other as we co-create through written or video contributions. To quote a fellow online writer and virtual contributor of the melding pot, Gary Z Magee,“We’re all students, just as we’re all teachers. Life is what we teach and life is what we learn.”
The scale of influence we have on each other through our shares is quite deep and can be a healthy catalyst for change, especially when people are co-creatively using each new innovative way of approaching an issue to continuously build on it towards something more refined, ad infinitum, towards collective wisdom and growth. On a more subjective level being exposed to social media assists us in growing emotionally, intellectually and soulfully through triggering emotions in each other that point us towards unresolved issues. The downfall is that it can keep us in loops of cognitive dissonance when we’ve hit a progressive road block in knowledge vs wisdom, as writer Juan Pablo Hern points out here. When we simply can’t seem to work through a lesson because we either didn’t approached it from a healthy angle to begin with or we weren’t respecting the pace necessary to allow us to digest it fully and turn it into walking-the-talk before moving on to the next lesson.
As we’re navigating through our feeds and interact with different ideas expressed by various people of various levels of understanding, some feel good to naturally take in while others feel annoying, disturbing or anger us into negative patterns. It can be precisely in those moments of unease that we’re given micro opportunities within our virtual surfing to stop and reflect on what exactly has triggered an emotional response in us and whether it’s a valid opportunity for growth or not, given our current state.
At the base, an important question to address that often comes up for people is, “how can I learn to objectively reflect on incoming information from social or news media outlets without falling into reactionary mode and have it ruin my day?” This is an even hotter topic when it comes to face-to-face interactions but increasingly relevant to online application due to the growing use of social media.
It’s so easy to pigeonhole ourselves into ignorance, unwilling to spend the mental time to think through an issue, to ask the right questions and expose the potential blind spots within our limited thinking in order to become a healthy contributor to the whole, efficiently building on the last idea to progressively add to the evolution of the next concept and idea unfolding. If we stay in trigger mode too long simply reacting emotionally from a place of fear we start contributing in an unhealthy way, similar to what happens within our personal daily interactions when we’re clearly in an unhealthy relationship.
Feeling disturbed or angry by spiritual posts on social media may potentially mean we’re more sensitive and empathetically guided and simply disagree with the information being brought forth but in generally if we disagree with a particular view on a topic because we’ve already spent a good amount of time thinking it through for ourselves, we shouldn’t feel triggered when it appears in the same way it did before we nurtured the unresolved emotional issues surrounding it, when we feel solid about what parts being presented we disagree with and have a good understanding of why we don’t are free to disagree without an emotional reaction.
Of course everything in essence is a temporary resolve, so as we grow in consciousness we return back to similar concepts with fresh eyes, to learn from them again at which point a new emotional trigger will be a clear indicator that a new layer of growth is unfolding.
So as much as we’d like to protect ourselves from everyday emotional triggers, in doing so we wouldn’t learn a whole lot or evolve much. Embracing the concept behind the saying, “our greatest teachers are our biggest triggers”, is essential to human evolution, as invaluable as embracing the fact that our biggest mistakes in life, as heart wrenching as they may sometimes be, can provide us with the most growth and spiritual wisdom, when embraced and integrated fully.
Similarly many ancient and modern Gurus are known to break down the ego of their students this way. Grasping from a wise vantage point what might be blocking a student from spiritually evolving and then catering their style, content and reasons of communicating to address the particular mental or emotional blocks the student is carrying within their mind-body-spirit. We’re all made differently and not everyone is going to attract this type of teacher. There is a zen proverb that states, “when the student is ready the teacher will appear”. If a student who is more fragile emotionally and mentally is forced under the care of a guru who’s teaching style is too intense, it could possibly have the opposite effect on the student, pushing them back even further into their unresolved issues.
This is why it is important to position ourselves wisely vis-a-vis the information we are exposing ourselves to on social media. A saying in my family says, “Petit à Petit L’oiseau Fait Son Nid”, which means, “little by little a bird builds its nest”. The nest in this case is our spiritual evolution and just as an athlete training for a marathon needs to slowly build up stamina and endurance to protect the body from injury to arrive at success, so do we need to honour our emotional and mental constitution. Slowly building ourselves up in a healthy way by taking the metaphorical steps large enough to challenge our unresolved issues but in proportion to withstanding the impacts of the cognitive dissonance and emotional unheaveal that go along with them, so we may be able to fully digest and integrate the the lesson. If not what’s the point? We simply get hit with concepts we’re not prepared to work through, then we fall into a cyclical negative pattern with them, don’t chew them well enough, have emotional indigestion over them and are unable to integrate them and embody the knowledge turned wisdom. This also leaves us feeling frustrated when we come across the same emotional trigger the next time, potentially throwing us into a more unhealthy response to it.
<
An important concept proposed in spiritual practices is to honour where we find ourselves on our evolutionary paths, to simply respect and love ourselves wherever we might be. This brings us to the concept of learning to emit vs absorb certain information for our own protection. To have the clarity to know when we’re using this protective tool as a spiritual bypassing maneuver or when we’re using it as a healthy and vital psychic tool of protection against incoming information that we’re not otherwise emotionally prepared to process.
If we’re emitting our own frequency at the cost of preserving our egos for example, we’ve struck a spiritual bypassing cord but if we can switch to emitting our own frequency when the value of preserving our wellbeing is the most crucial at that moment to maintain health, then it’s absolutely necessary to honour this. Opportunities to grow spiritually and emotionally are weaved into life’s everyday moments but we also all have the power and should develop the wisdom to chose wisely what we’re prepared to deal with and what will assist us the most, ESPECIALLY when it comes to social media.
As I sweep through my social media feeds and observe what sort of triggers come up for me and what topics they relate to, I can determine where I should be investing my “personal growth time” and what will most benefit my immediate spiritual health based on my current works in progress. My personal preferences to spiritual growth have always been intense, having so much Fire energy and Aries energy pushing me forward and with so many key planets in the 12th house, it feels natural for me to manage heavy emotional loads associated with spiritual growth but even at that it needs to feel playful and when it gets too serious I know that I need to avoid certain triggers for a while.
It’s always a nice feeling to work through a trigger and then overcome it but sometimes the amount of emotional strain needed to endure and work through the lesson is not worth the set-backs imposed on other aspects of life, we all have our limits and knowing them is paramount. Everything has an impact on every other aspect of living, including our families, careers and all other relationships. It’s a balance because life is both practical and spiritual, being too immersed in one aspect can stifle growth in other aspects of life. A fine balance indeed and one which each of us can only determine for ourselves and to what degree.
As a conclusion, the internet is an amazing tool for spiritual development and I believe social media is causing us to evolve at a faster and faster pace, to quote Alan Kirby (great article), “postmodernism is dead and buried. In its place comes a new paradigm of authority and knowledge formed under the pressure of new technologies and contemporary social forces.”, but within this new paradigm come different challenges and one of them is becoming passively apathetic or aggressively overly stimulated, due to everything being so impermanent and fleeting, less and less people are willing to take the time to think through the ideas being presented to discover what’s actually fact, or what’s the most pertinent information to become absorbed in on their spiritual path. This has many negative impacts on society both politically and culturally which is a whole other topic on it’s own, one that is currently being addressed in social media as the ‘post-truth’ movement.
The implications on spiritual information being shared can be viewed with a slightly different lens because there are very few hard facts when it comes to personal spiritual development. It’s such a personal journey for us all, so many unknowns and it can’t be narrowed down to one practice or way of seeing the world other than healthy or unhealthy. What pseudo-post modernism implies when it comes to sharing spiritual messages online is that because information can be dropped so easily and quickly into the collective mind, the consumption of it often overshadows our state of wellbeing. In order to continuously absorb what’s coming down the pipeline from social media outlets we have to digest more and more very intimate and challenging concepts at an increasingly faster rate of delivery. This can leave us incapacitated emotionally and unable to digest the spiritual lesson(s) that’s most appropriate to where we’re at in the moment. Leaving us unable to honour what’s most essential to our wellbeing or simply unable to fully digest the currently lesson we’re working on to properly integrate and embody it. Instead we look to keep up with the spiritual trends, just like the issue of keeping up with the latest fashion in yoga, forgetting the bigger picture and concept behind it, such as learning posture alignment first or practicing the 7 other limbs that make it what it is.
To determine if you need to slow down to fully digest a lesson in order to move onto the next soul-initiation, you can ask yourself these three questions:
1. What triggers me the most from the spiritual material I’m viewing on-line and why? (List your answers out to determine what’s valuable and worthy of your time and energy)
2. What spiritual teachings or approaches to spiritual teachings am I exposing myself to regularly that are leaving me feeling completely drained?
(In this case it could be posts about certain topics, such a topics on government oppression, the unethical treatment of animals in our food industry, or any other highly triggering news about the poor state of worldly affairs. It could be a particular person or spiritual teacher’s approach to teaching spirituality or broaching specific subjects that leave you feeling drained. Yes growth and becoming aware are not painless but respecting our emotional limits is a mastery in itself and absolutely just as valuable. Smaller doses may be necessary and more beneficial for you or putting that whole concept aside for an undetermined period of time. Use your social media preferences to minimize exposure to pages, sites and teachers who are draining your life juices and may possibly not be best aligned to where you need to focus your energy in order to maximize your growth in the here and now.)
3. Prioritize. What is the most essential teaching that I need to practice, right now, in order to fully embody it before moving on to the next?
Good luck learning how to navigate your increasing exposure to social media. We’re pushing not only each other but the world into a heightened state of awareness at an increasing speed towards important issues that have been previously hidden from mainstream consciousness but let’s not forget to be soft on ourselves, to respect and honour ourselves and fully embrace where we’re at, instead of trying to enthusiastically catch up with the next and next spark of insight to the detriment of our emotional health and well-being. Being a modern day social media warrior requires a new level of self awareness when it comes to quantum boundaries.