Reclaim Your Magic: Stay Human

Refuse the rulership of thumbs, hearts and bells.

We’re midway through a year of profound revelation, reckoning and transformation: Are you spreading magic, Sensitive Soul?

It’s all crazy out there, have you noticed? If you’re feeling, anxious, weary and not very magical, Sensitive Soul, you are not alone. If you’re suffering from physical, mental, emotional or spiritual distress at this time, you may be experiencing a purging process that is preparing you for what’s next.

If you’re engaging with the surreal spectacle on your screen and “flipping out,” it’s a sure sign that you would benefit from exercising the power of a pause. Give yourself permission to take a deep breath and step back from the emotionally-charged stories that are inflaming you. Allow the stress you feel to be the wake up call that delivers you back home to yourself, Sensitive Soul.

Restore your connection with the truest and best version of yourself in your most precious relationship: the one you have with yourself.

Imagine being at a carnival all day long, every day of your life. Can you picture how overwhelming, surreal and disorienting that would be? Well, the phone in your pocket is like a portal to a digital carnival, populated by colorful and compelling distractions that can slowly disconnect your from your soul, click by click and swipe by swipe.

This kaleidoscope of dizzying digital distractions can hijack your nervous system, derail your soul’s goals and steal your personal mojo if you’re not vigilant. Most of what you view online was fabricated for the express purpose of hooking your attention by exploiting your emotions. Why do you think we call them Influencers? It may seem impossible to resist the urgent and competing demands for your attention each day, but it’s essential if you want to maintain what’s most precious about being a human being.

The spiritual remedy for a tsunami of destabilizing input is to come home to your real self.

Frequent scrolling induces low energy states which can make you forgetful of your true self, and therefore vulnerable to manipulative information meticulously engineered to exploit your deepest fears.

Beneath the level of your conscious awareness, your behavior is being influenced in very deliberate ways. Apps, algorithms and notification bells sculpt pathways in your brain, fragment your focus and untether you from yourself and the world around you. You may notice that despite your best intentions, you somehow feel compelled to keep your eyeballs glued to the screen and your fingers scrolling, even as the minutes of your precious life tick away…

All the while, your emotional and psychological wiring is being tinkered with to nudge your opinions, your behavior and your purchasing decisions toward a preordained outcome without your knowledge or consent. Like Mr. Pavlov’s famous dog, we sophisticated, modern adults are being systematically trained out of our glorious humanity by thumbs, hearts and bells. Instead of expanding into our multidimensional grandeur, we are shrinking to behave like the little robots we worship.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

You have the power to resist the robot by staying human.

Your spiritual sovereignty is being stealthily kidnapped by these ubiquitous digital attention-grabbers. The more you scroll, the more likely you are to act in ways that disadvantage you. When you recognize that the dopamine in your brain is being leveraged against you to provoke, influence and control you for profit or power, you can resist by mustering the strength to consciously take back your focus.

Your attention is your life. Your attention is your love and what you care most about. Only you have the power to reclaim it from the robot by carving out time each day to just be still and present with yourself. Listen to your needs and feelings with compassionate ears. Slow down and care for yourself so you can stay strong enough to resist the distractions that can drain you of the energy you need to do what it takes to thrive in your life.

In this overstimulating, demoralizing environment, we’ve become a screen-centered culture, not a people-centered culture. The dehumanizing effects of over-consuming online content can be reversed by:

• Flexing your spiritual muscle to help you resist the robot’s domination in your life.

• Preserving your integrity by declaring and maintaining healthy boundaries

• Practicing compassionate communication to frame discussions in mutually-respectful ways.

If you’re allowing your brain to be conditioned by the robot in your pocket, you may start to merge with it and lose the capacity to make informed and beneficial choices for your life. Instead, come home to yourself. Deprive the robot of your precious attention and stay sovereign, Sensitive Soul.

Guard and protect that which makes you as unique as your fingerprint: Your attention.

Practice Coming Home :

• Place one hand on your belly and one hand on your heart to connect with your heartbeat and the rhythm of your breath.

• Remind yourself that you are safe and you are never alone.

• Imagine descending your mind into your heart and breathing your soul into your heart-mind. Listen, but don’t expect words.

• Let your first reaction to a stressful event be a pause and a deep breath.

• Discern, discern, discern. Be choosy in what you permit past the gate of your attention.

• Choose your focus: Where is there room for an expansion of the consciousness of love and kindness in this situation?