Read

May/June 2008 Spirituality
Digital Dharma: Living in Truth on the World Wide Web

by Steven Vedro

Dharma is about our spiritual duty to find teachings in all aspects of daily life. Today, our souls are incarnated in bodies that swim in a sea of information. Our media are not outside our life, but are intimate extensions of our being. As extensions, they mirror and amplify both our soul's hunger for meaning and all of the obstacles we create on our path of conscious evolution.

An electronic web now surrounds our planet. Our ideas travel instantaneously to all points of the globe on electromagnetic waves and pulses of light. In the last decade, communications networks have advanced from wires to fiber optics, from interconnected radio and television grids to a world of billions of wirelessly communicating sensory devices, each with its own address in cyberspace. These collective systems for sharing thought have become the foundation of a new realm-the "infosphere."

Emerging from what French philosopher-priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin called the shared "noosphere" of collective human thought, invention, and spiritual seeking, the infosphere is now a field that engulfs our physical, mental and etheric bodies and affects our dreaming and our cultural life. Each chakra has a corresponding communications theme and technology. Different media stimulate different energy centers, and, at the same time, as creations of human consciousness, they mirror the spiritual-emotional challenges associated with each center.

All of the light and shadow of fifth chakra throat and communications digital dharma is held and then reflected back to us by the net of instantaneous connectivity, overlapping voices, online communities, shining jewels and shifting realities that is the Internet. This is a virtual "place" where such conventional limitations as time and space are gone forever, along with previously assumed distinctions between self and other.

The Internet has allowed formerly marginalized peoples to connect and claim their place in the spectrum of human communications. It has fostered vibrant yet decentralized online communities based on unique interests, no matter how personal or idiosyncratic. This democratization of access has turned the old "passive audience" model of media consumption on its head, especially given the near-instantaneous emergence of more than 55 million (as of October 2006) user-created blogs and more podcasts feeds than the total number of radio stations in the world, with more coming online by the minute. Television viewing and radio listening is rapidly declining as more people, especially in the commercially powerful 18- to 49-year old demographic, discover the power to choose and share media content over channels such as iTunes and YouTube.

The community vision of the World Wide Web offers us a glimpse of what Buddhist scholar Enrique Dussel calls transmodernity: "The emergence of voices from the four quadrants of the Earth calling for mutual interdependence of resources and human rights, ecological justice, and a new collective consciousness." The growth of the environmental movement, our awareness of global warming, the creation of virtual support groups of every kind, and the assimilation of holistic health and Eastern spiritual systems are examples of the new "Internet consciousness."

Fifth Chakra Teleconsciousness

In life as online, what you give and receive ideally reflect conscious choice. This manner of living requires honesty, selflessness and presence. If the Web is a model of the universe's infinite potential, every search, every page you visit, every link you follow becomes your chosen path and the opportunity to manifest your highest state of being.

As the neck is the junction between the brain and body, so is the fifth chakra the "nexus" between the compassion of the heart and the wisdom of the mind. The challenge is honest communications: Can you tell the truth --and confront lies -- compassionately? Old defenses, guilt, self-righteousness and manipulation no longer work in a world where everyone can see your inner light and your darkest shadow. In a world where every email or text message is digitally stored somewhere, I find that I am constantly reminded that every word I speak is indeed given a life, that every one of my thoughts takes on an etheric form and joins all the other thoughts in mass consciousness.

Fifth-level digital dharma calls for communicating with what gestalt therapist Brad Blanton calls "radical honesty," showing your true self to the world, dropping the mask of personality defense so that you can see the light in others. For we can only connect to the essential core of another -- in person or in cyberspace -- by greeting them from this true self within. This level of connection requires that we call forth what author Ambika Wauters calls the communicator archetype and speak our truth to power. A person living from this archetype stands by his or her word and can be trusted with vital information.

Meditation is one way to activate these higher communicator energies. In a hyperstimulated media world, silence clears the mental "memory buffers," and the "roof-brain chatter" that passes for authentic self. Mind clarification must precede mind expansion. These moments of silence are the inner firewalls against the waves of cultural spam that threaten to inundate us. From this place of deep quiet we can perceive the whole network: packets, routers, congestion, viruses and all. Then we can, in yogi Sri Aurobindo's words, "universalize ourselves till we are one with all being."

By opening to "network consciousness" one can hold all of the data available to our physical -- and spiritual -- sense organs. But this new state of energetic interconnectedness requires courage. It means relinquishing one's distorted egocentric view of the universe. Just as computer networks evolved from central mainframes and dumb terminals through client/server models to today's distributed peer-to-peer intelligent networks, embracing fifth-level digital dharma requires that one move from a me-centered universe to a more ecological understanding.

The challenge, of course, is to remain open to our multiple webs of connection while protecting ourselves from predators. Affiliating with trusted friends and supporting each other's work for planetary and personal healing creates the "small network" that can stabilize and hold our center as we move out to explore the light and shadow of our new expanded self.

Excerpted from Steven Vedro's Digital Dharma from Quest Books. Steven Vedro is a nationally known telecommunications consultant advising government agencies, universities and broadcasting stations. Visit www.teleconsciousness.blogspot.com.

Practicing Internet Yoga

• Each time you go online, ask, What is the truth here? Whose truth is it? Ask yourself, How do I decide what and whom to trust?
• When you encounter a questionable site (perhaps dishonest or based in fear or hate), center yourself and send love to its creators. Visualize their true faces behind the aliases and Net names. See the light in their hearts, hold them in love, then release your connection.