Getting from there to here But my time is finally near And I will see my dream come alive at last I will touch the sky And they're not going to hold me down no more No they're not going to change my mind
'Cause I've got faith of the heart I'm going where my heart will take me I've got faith to believe I can do anything I've got strength of the soul No one's gonna bend or break me I can reach any star I've got faith, I've got faith Faith of the heart
Imagine you are in a room with a fly. If you are a spiritual person like me, you would probably mediate during some point in a day. Can we agree then that meditation is a process of gaining peace with the mind? The whole idea of meditation is to focus (on objects or things). Let us move forward, this time we are really meditating. Imagine now that now and then a fly comes along and sits on your lap. You are not disturbed; you still meditate. However, this fly is enjoying a room, searching for food; aimlessly moving around, having fun. Will you get irritated with this fly or not?
An ordinary person is most likely to get irritated because the primary function of the person in a room was performing mediation and not thinking about a fly. This is what the Internet is for the present day society. I am not saying that the Internet as a technology is bad.
Like a fly, the Internet is not bad or good. It’s all in our
mind. Some people might
think this is bad for them because they were focusing on something else (e.g. meditation) and not on a fly itself.
The Internet with various web services (e-mail, spam messages, viruses, security vulnerabilities) is like a fly that will constantly interrupt you. For example, if you have your social networking site notification active, imagine receiving notification e-mail of every activity that occurs. Like a fly interrupting a meditating man, we might also constantly get interrupted on the Internet.
Remember clicking on social networking sites ads? Recently, one became public and there is amazing data which showed it earned $9.51 per user in US and Canada alone. From Asia and other parts of the world, it earned around $2 in ad revenue. Multiply this amount with 900 million active users on monthly basis that is the money companies like this social networking site are making out of the tiny sips of online conversation (our virtual friendship). How is that?
This is not a big deal for an ordinary user. We all want to be feel connected. We don’t care much how companies make profit out of our friendship activities online (from the realms of our friend’s activities, our posts, likes, photos, videos, comments and status updates). Furthermore, the world of social media and the Internet generally has become crowded maybe too crowded, and my intention is not to say that this crowded “Internetosphere” is bad or good.
My intention is to remind you in your room with a fly, remind you that now you are again meditating with not just a single fly but tens of them, hundreds of them, and even thousands. I don’t know what you will do, but I am still meditating.
