My Experiment with Being Constantly "Plugged In"

My Experiment with Being Constantly "Plugged In"

Because I don't want the life-sapping temptation of constantly checking Facebook, Instagram and email, I've made a conscious choice - for many years now, as a part of my "Worldly Monk" vocation - of not having a smartphone. I feel this enables me to be more fully present and engaged in the moment - and to the people I'm with - rather than constantly (and passively) checking for messages, "Likes" and comments.

In March, I bought an IPad to use both for Instagram (which can't be accessed from my desktop computer) and to use in my Wilderness Mysticism Powerpoint presentations. Unlike a smartphone, it only has access to the internet when I'm in an area that has Wifi. In general, this means I can use it only when I'm in my office, since I generally don't bring the IPad with me to other places.

However, over the past several weeks, I did an experiment. I began bringing the IPad with me to work at night, to my janitorial accounts. For the past 30 years, I've had a janitorial business - with just a few accounts which I clean by myself - which enables me to think, pray, and do mantric prayer. It's the "manual labor" component of my contemplative lifestyle. But during the past several weeks, I had ready access to the internet all throughout my worknight - via the IPad and the Wifi access provided by my cleaning accounts

Here is what I found. With ready access to the IPad, I discovered that I wanted to keep checking for Instagram and Facebook "Likes" and comments all throughout the night. In fact, I began carrying the IPad with me as I made the rounds - especially while gathering trash and cleaning desks. In fact, checking for "Likes" developed into a full-blown compulsion. I found myself feeling increasingly depressed, undisciplined, passive, dependent on the responses of others, unmotivated in my cleaning, uncreative, and "dead" inside.

Last night, I returned to my usual practice of leaving the IPad at home. I felt light, happy, motivated, creative and ABLE TO THINK MY OWN THOUGHTS. My mantric prayer returned, and I once again felt a sense of self-discipline. It was wonderful!

How strange is this lifestyle that our society's technological innovation has developed! Here I think of what Henry David Thoreau wrote in 1863: "In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post-office. You may depend on it, that the poor fellow who walks away with the greatest number of letters, proud of his extensive correspondence, has not heard from himself this long while."

I wonder what Thoreau would think of our current era, one in which we don't even have to WAIT for the correspondence to arrive?

Photo: Blazing-star able to be its own radiant, solitary self, growing in lava on a cinder cone in Craters of the Moon National Monument, ID, August 2, 2015