Archives for December 2009

It’s meditation.  Stay with me and I’ll show you how.

Yesterday, I made a post on how to improve and extend  your vision to accomplish more in 2010.  Near the end of that post I made a recommendation that you should consider learning meditation.  Today I will explain why.  And if you are a social media practitioner, you may be surprised at how meditation is functionally very much like it, if not identical to it.

Meditation is not just this woo woo thing that belongs to the yoga crowd.  It is a tool that can help you to better connect with the people that can help you do what you want to do better – in your business, or anywhere else.

When you practice most forms of meditation, you use a mantra.  Mantra literally translates to “instrument of the mind.”  A mantra is a sound that connects you with a field of consciousness that is shared by other people.  In that sense, consciousness is a network – just as social media connects you with other people through channels you know as networks.  It both circumstances, it all happens electronically.

Try This

Imagine you are having a dream and in that dream you are dying of thirst.  And right on your nightstand is a glass of water, which of course is exactly what need to quench that thirst and solve your immediate problem.  Unfortunately, while you are in the dream, you are in one state of consciousness, and the glass of water is in another.  Both are states of reality.  One is virtual and one is real.  Which is which depends upon your perspective.  If only there was a way to connect them.  You guessed right; there is!

Social media works in exactly the same way as meditation.  You are communicating with people virtually through an electronic network, just as you would if you were having a face-to-face conversation.  And what is connecting the virtual with the real is your mind. Your mind transcends both states of consciousness.  If something is real in the mind, it is real.  A dream is real if you are dreaming. And social media is real if you are immersed in it.  And both are just as real as a physical experience – at least in your mind.

The Future of Social Media

The day will come when the virtual reality of social media begins to seamlessly merge with what we have come to understand as reality. The truth is, it’s already happening with social media applications that augment reality.  However, it only works if you are willing to suspend your belief about what is real.

Does this seem unconventional?  Well, what are you doing when you go to the movies.  You are buying into the dream, the augmented reality, the story of the film – it’s a meditation!  It’s all the same.

So if you are overwhelmed with the fact that you are too connected in this world of advancing technology, why not take it to another level and learn to meditate so that you can transcend all of it?  Being too connected really means you are disconnected – from yourself. When you get connected with that, you have magically expanded your bandwidth for any and all forms of communication.  Pretty cool, huh?

The Truth

There is no computer more powerful than the one sitting right on your shoulders.  And the software that runs it is your mind.  That software needs to be refreshed or updated just like any other.   One way of doing that is through meditation.

Consider this. Your iPhone communicates with your Macbook electronically – through ‘the cloud.’  Your mind connects with other minds, call that other computers, through another, and arguably identical, electronic cloud.

The last time I checked we all have just one shot at this.  You have to make that original issue hardware function by doing the work to improve your ability to connect through that universal network that we are all using, all of the time.  Meditation is a simple practice that enhances your ability to connect by gradually removing the clutter, and in the process, expanding the bandwidth.

Think about it – when you Tweet, you are sending out micro-messages through a network with the hope that they will reach an appropriate destination.  You are using the cloud in the same way that meditation uses the field of consciousness cloud.

It boils down to the fact that people are people and we connect through our minds.  Whether that connection is visual, or tactile, or electronic – it is all the same. It’s electric.

Maybe it helps to consider the order of these communications.  First you have a thought, then you send a Tweet that reflects that thought, and after you make the right connection, you get together to have a conversation and potentially discuss business.  In short, your thoughts manifest into reality.

Given that, doesn’t it make sense to start at the beginning and do the work to ensure your mind is operating just as well as your Macbook?

It’s not woo woo at all.  In social media circles we hear about eco-systems, augmented reality, the cloud, and more.  These are all metaphors for what is really happening:  many minds connecting through an electronic network we know as consciousness.

You just have to suspend your conditioned disbelief and give it a try.

Whatever you want to call it, and however you choose to do it, I look forward to connecting with you.

As far as I’m concerned, it’s all social media.

Photo Credit: Adhiwus.com