(cultic groupthink vs collective intelligence)
The reason why ‘learning to navigate reality tunnels’ is becoming popularized partially roots itself in the online world of digital shamanism. A movement that fast took off when shamanic initiates, guides and teachers decided to take their work online to share through blogging, vlogging, daily quotes and the likes. People individuating themselves create virtual reality tunnels through their social media channels using their online personas and teachings. Wanders, seekers, the lost and distraught, including random passerbyers will all stumble across them.
This isn’s a bad thing, a large degree of them showcasing a variety of expression’s reflecting their own personal process of evolution. Sharing their hopes, fears, passions, writings, studies, research, art, insights and ideas with the rest of the world. We want diversity, it opens our minds up and helps us move through our own individuation process more quickly. It’s a free online school for a generation of meaning makers.
The more variety and lenses of perception we have to compare, the more refined our own thinking can evolve, allowing us to become increasingly more selective.
Where digital shamanism takes a turn for the worst and becomes unhealthy is when those people showcasing and sharing their work as ‘healers’ begin to interact directly yet in an indirect fashion with viewers. Developing strong healthy boundaries will help you both identify this behaviour and not fall under the spell of the unhealthy cognitive dissonance it creates.
Have You Unknowingly Been Cast in Someone Else’s Play?
That being said, we’ve coined ourselves to be in the Greatest Meaning Crisis of our Times (John Vervaeke) and because of it, more people than ever before are seeking answers to every last question their minds can ponder, online.
Due to this, many are still externalizing their power. This means many are still handing over their inner authority to people whom seem confident and appear to have a certain amount of credentials in their field of study. The problem is, very few people have the ability to think clearly and make sense of the world themselves. Confidence and salience does not equate to what’s healthy and wise.
“People need privacy. Without it, they stay in performance mode. These performances become increasingly warlike.” An excerpt from Future thinkers.org on the Globalization and Proximity Crisis.
The biggest dangers arise when digital shamans become looped into the feedback from their spectators. Answering questions and engaging in dialogue with specific online audience members without being transparent and direct with who they are engaging with. These types of interactions create rivalrous environments.
It’s a form of online gas lighting. Cognitive dissonance occurs when this type of emotional abuse happens. I’ve witnessed it tear apart quite a few lives while being the fly on the wall in various reality tunnels created by online digital shamans. A similar twist to memetic tribal wars. When the interactions are either direct or non specific to a single viewer there’s a greater chance of people working through their ideas and or coming to their own solutions. This is why mediums of communication such as podcasts, interviews or youtube conversations are the best methods of exchanging and sharing ideas, aside from face to face interactions which of course rein supreme.
Anyone who has the confidence to stand up and say they have special insight or knowledge into life will automatically draw to them a certain type of audience member, those who are inexperienced and un-individuated. I remember the days when I thought everyone knew more than I did, it was a frustrating time when I didn’t realize that we all own a piece of the whole.
What I learned from that short time period was that those preaching the loudest were often just as informed as the neighbour down the road who had a ton of life experience, book knowledge, access to the www and perhaps a basket full of magic mushrooms to tempt their imaginations with. What the others have that my neighbours do not, is the charisma and the courage to take it online and call themselves teachers.
“Healing is an inside job, always. No one else can heal us. I cannot emphasize this enough. It’s one of the biggest lessons I learned in my own healing journey. There’s often a traumatized child inside of us that wants an external authority figure to protect us, guide us, soothe us, and tell us what to do. The work of growing up is becoming our own parent and healing that wounded child ourselves. The only thing another person can do here is to point us back within ourselves and hold space for us while we do our own work. Running to external healers or teachers and giving up our sovereignty to them only perpetuates (and sometimes worsens) our traumas and learned helplessness. At worst, it can land us in some very dysfunctional relationships, or in the hands of sociopathic, narcissistic predators posing as healers and gurus. Finding our own internal compass and clarity is really hard. It can be a messy and confusing process, especially if we’ve gotten used to relying on others to guide us. But this is the necessary work of becoming a whole person, a sovereign adult.” Euvie Ivanova
There are a number of things we can observe happening to the viewers who are experiencing this type of interaction with online gurus and guides. The first thing is that they become dependant on an outside source to provide them with answers to their specific psychological trials and tribulations. Their path, one that is unique to them. You would literally have to walk in their shoes from the day they were born to accurately assist them. This is why it’s realistically impossible to heal another person. The best we can do is hand them tools and point them in the right direction, if and only if they come knocking.
So imagine how confusing it would be for those on the brink of a mental and emotional breakdown to seek answers from a digital shaman who’s attempting to provide individual remedies to an increasingly widening audience through the internet.
When that’s applied to an increasing number of different people at any given time, you have a hodge podgy of contradictory information being broadcasted somewhat directly yet indirectly to a thirsty audience which becomes misconstrued information within their realty bubbles.
Until people gain the right knowledge and experience in life, they’re literally slaves to their basic human biological tendencies. Once they’ve gained experience they can begin to decide beyond it, but until then they’re unaware that they’re controlled chemically and conditioned just as pavlov’s dog was to an outside source of authority. They’re unaware of how easily they’re led to believe almost anything, especially when it’s fed to them during a time of emotional crisis.
Collective intelligence gives voice to what is ontic. To paraphrase Jamie Wheal, “Something that is between us and among us but not specific to any of us, an additional intellect that can emerge that is perhaps what can be identified as what is coherent collective intelligence emerging.”
The above describes a way of interacting with the world which requires people to have healed their own wounds first which allows them to release the need to control the healing process of those they’re interacting with.
The responsible digital shamans are far and few in between but a good example is Russel Brant. They are a dying breed. Speaking from collective intelligence, defined as Jamie Wheal so brilliantly puts it, only opening their mouths to speak when the collective is speaking through them. Not allowing themselves to be controlled by any single individual viewer. They speak to ideas emerging within the collective mind rather than to individual audience members.
This huge difference turns unhealthy online interactions into insightful contributions. This is where those who are labelled as co-dependant digital shamans mislead more than teach. This will require a sovereignty revolution before it can be fully experienced as healthy collective intelligence.
The saddest stories coming from people who have failed to diligently navigate through these reality tunnels are those who have handed over their inner authority completely and end up being cast in a play they themselves did not chose or inadvertently casted the digital shaman on their centre stage. Becoming equally co-dependent to online daily interactions due to their emotional state. Taking each quote and digital bite shared to be necessarily real and relevant to their lives and personal journeys. Often times this keeps people in cognitive dissonance for months and years, unfortunately ending sometimes in even greater tragedy.
These digital shamans are either co-dependant themselves and are addicted to the emotional charge they get from the covert online exchange or are unaware of the harm they’re inflicting due to their psychological trauma and lack of wisdom.
It’s not only time that people started assuming responsibility for themselves through useful sovereignty practices, healthy boundaries and inter-subjective introspection as internet use increases, it’s important we continue sharing the collective wisdom being observed within our online communities to promote healthier choices and interactions for all.
Any online digital shaman that does not teach from a distance and targets specific audience members yet will not respond directly to them and do not promote sovereignty at the core of their teachings are psychologically and emotionally dangerous to the average person looking for health and wellness.
I especially feel inspired to share what I’ve observed for the younger generations entering into the online arenas of reality tunnels. Often people are smart enough to learn from the wisdom passed down to them. We simply need to make the information available.