An Unsocial Vacation
Well, my Remarkable pad is frozen so I figure this is a nice time to try out a little journaling here on Evernote. Maybe I finally need to bite it and succumb to the reality that this is my most efficient way of journaling. You embrace and are curious about technologies like VR so why not just drop your morning thoughts on the screen. Man, sometimes your stubbornness to change kills me! We waste so much time in life because of this part of you. I know, it feels good to write, you miss the the feeling of pen to paper.
So, you woke up later then you wanted because you slept late. You are fighting this need to go to sleep and instead get sucked into your phone. You’re undoing your work from last week and know that you are so much happier when you are meditating, eating well and sleeping at a reasonable time. The groove in the mind is still there.
But, there is another pattern I noticed. When your heart is open and you’re feeling all the feels, when you’re vulnerable and feeling sad, you go to your phone to feel connected, which is fine, but you lose the connection with yourself and the divine. Your mind gets sucked up into your brain and it again becomes the primary residence for your mind. So, whats the solution? There is this question as to whether you even need to be on Instagram or if you can be there without getting sucked in, to share, to give and to get out. Easier said then done.
You have so much to do and I know what happens is that you go back to not wanting to do this on your own. I understand that. I understand that it gets exhausting doing life in single mode. What are you doing this for? Why are you waking up every morning, writing, meditating and working? What are you doing? What do you want to be doing when you come out the other side of this moment in time? Who do you want to be?
It’s important to think about a return in June and how you want to show up. It’s June 1, 2020 and when you look back at this moment, all these days you had, what do you wish you had done and what do you wish you hadn’t done and what were you happy about doing?
It’s now September 1, 2020, you’re back to the so called ‘normal’ and busying around the city, the global economic shutdown on route to becoming a mere memory, wishing again that you had time to do all the things you wanted. What are those things for you? What do you wish you had done during all the free time and mind space you had been gifted?
Ok, so you wrote, you meditated for a couple more hours a day, you even prayed and had a couple self led retreats, went for long walks, connected with those you haven’t in a while, had lengthier conversations then usual, but if thats all you did, which is wonderful, it’s not much different from your day to day life.
Remember before this all started, what were you hoping for the most? What did you want to do with the time, but more importantly the free mind space you have now?
I will let these question land deeply in my body and in the mean time I want to reflect. If I was off Instagram for 30 days, what would life be like? Where would I spend my energy? All that time it takes, but more importantly its the distraction for my mind, filling up valuable real estate. It’s just 30 days. A nice experiment to try for yourself. It’s a way to stay connected of course but what if I didn’t have that tugging on my mind? What would I do more of and how would I feel? Would I miss it? I’ve spent so much of my life alone, what would make it any different right now? It’s the hugs and in person connections I’m missing the most and this is no replacement for that.
Starting today, lets exit the world of Instagram and go on a little vacation. It’s a different type of vacation, a vacation from the social. There are so many ways to take vacation when we think about it as a getaway for the mind. How can we redefine what it means to go on vacation, one that doesn’t require planes, suitcases and all the things that go inside it? How can we reimagine a vacation for the mind, where instead of thinking how far away we can go ‘out there’ ask ourselves how far away can we go ‘in here’, without the mind altering substances. Sorry, I know many of you are travelling to far off places with some assistance but here is what I would say having a multitude of experiences with and without assistance.
When we learn to travel through the layers of our being, using our natural gifts that have been given to us, the journey is much much longer and the work very difficult, but when we arrive at our destination, the fruits that accompany the end result is infinite. This mind that you carry with you through this life and the lives after that, will be in the state that you left it here. Whether you think I’m a nut job or not, play with me here, imagine your next life in a new skin suit, but you are back here on earth, what is the state of mind that you want to re-enter with?
So I’m going on a little trip and I will return in 30 days. I am going to spend my time and allocate the real estate in my many minds to build all the things I wish I could have pre Covid-19 and setup a landing strip of my choosing post Covid-19. I am not going to call this a pandemic because we were already here before we even got here. In reality, what was happening before we arrived at this destination was a pandemic. This, in comparison, is a healing, a soothing balm that really fucking stings, but you know that already, deep down every single one of you knows that this moment is a century old wound turning into a scab.
See you May 20, 2020 Instagram!