A prayer for the Internet, and the tiny pixel I inhabit within it

Figuring out how to be online

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As I feel into this new chapter of We Heal for All, an edge I actively work with is figuring out how to be online in a way that feels right.

In a way that supports me to be myself, to share what I feel called to share, to be open and honest, forthright and free. In ways that answer questions like: in a vast sea of never-ending digital space, how do I stay grounded in myself while connecting with others? And on a healing-centered front, how do I cultivate things like emotional-psychical-spiritual safety in the digital spaces I move in? How do I do so in order to not unintentionally feed into things that are counter to my call towards collective healing?

The digital world we live in is loud and opinionated and has felt increasingly savage to me over the past 5 years. Between social media algorithms that manipulate and breed hysteria, to in-group/out-group/all-around fighting at an all time high, to the real lived experience of pain and uncertainty in the world. It can feel like a minefield. 

It has made me pull back and pump the breaks. Whoa, has been my response. Let me reassess what is what, and come at this in a new way. 

There is a sense of urgency that the times we live in is bringing out in us. Trauma is kicked up in our collective consciousness related to things like systems of supremacy, the future livability of the planet, people’s ability to take care of themselves and their families in basic, necessary ways. Breakdown, polarization, lack of trust. The list goes on. 

This puts people on edge. There is a collective urgency to respond, change, address all of the things that need to be addressed. Our collective eyes are opening up to the ways our system is not of service, and it creates a hyper vigilance in us. We are standing on the balls of our feet, fists in the air, on the offense and defense, looking for ways this disservice is rearing its ugly head. Ready to pounce in the pursuit of change. 

It is good that our collective consciousness is expanding to hold a greater awareness of injustice and harm. This is necessary for our collective healing and ability to shift and change and evolve. The newness of the Internet is spawning this collective awakening, pouring gasoline on a well-set bed of embers. 

The newness of the Internet, though, is also creating conditions that make it extra, extra hard for me to enact the values I feel called to embody in this world. Such as the value of diversity, like true diversity. Not diversity that flattens and boxes, but diversity that expands and truly includes. That acknowledges and addresses inequality while also moving away from zero sum tactics towards support of divergence and multiplicity. 

The value of complexity, emotional and intellectual. An understanding that the nuance, the subtleties, the contextualization, the multiple sides of it all is where it’s at. That this is a capacity that can be cultivated and that needs to be cultivated these days. 

And the value of emotional safety, as far fetched as it can sometimes sound to achieve. Because that’s when people are actually able to be themselves, are actually able to meet each other is deeper ways, are able to move beyond the manufactured narratives that keep us divided. Are able to breathe. 

It makes sense why all of this is hard. In addition to the real suffering present in the world, the social media platforms we use to connect with each other are manipulating us to do so in ways that are inherently unhealthy, to us and to the collective. The algorithms that underpin these platforms prioritize content that makes us feel. The stronger the emotion the better. Outrage, fear, panic, gushy heart swoons, lust, excitement. These algorithms know that strong emotional reactions increase engagement and keep us on their platforms, which means more money in their pockets. 

We become addicted. The platforms know what we like and know what we respond to, so they feed us the emotionally charged content they know we’ll bite. The kind that reinforces our existing beliefs or triggers a sense of urgency that gets us to stick around. We can become reliant on our social media feed to validate what we think or who we are; or for stimulation that helps us escape from whatever we don’t want to deal with in our three-dimensional world. All of this creates echo chambers and filter bubbles that keep us stuck running around in circles that exacerbate the fracturing and division in our world. 

I find it to be quite an experience to be pushed and pulled and stretched and taken on a ride by all of the different energies of the Internet. It’s new so I give myself a lot of grace for the experiences of confusion and hurt and messiness I have within it. I give myself props for saying yes to trying to figure out how best to position myself within it all; how to orient myself in a way that keeps me rooted while I make my way around the wild, wild west of the unruly digital space. 

There are real practices of psychic hygiene for me within it. The ability to travel across digital lands, and find myself in nooks and crannies completely foreign to me. To find myself knee deep, immersed in another person’s world, way of being, expression of self. Completely submerged in it. I come back to my own home turf still coated in their psychic residue, needing to shake it off, ground down and return to my own stabilized sense of self. Take with me what resonates and leave the rest behind. 

So I hold this question of how to be online with all of this in mind. How to do so as a participant in the system that is the Internet, as well as a conduit and co-creator of the digital field. So I pray for the tiny pixel that is me in this vast sea of digital space. I pray for the space that I take up within our internet, within our shared interconnectivity. I put my feet on the floor, close my eyes, allow my spine to become straight, chin parallel to the earth, crown lovingly positioned upwards to the heavens.

…..

Dear God, 

God bless the space I take up on the internet. God bless the space I inhabit, the space I co-create. As a tiny speck of stardust within this vast ever-growing, ever-changing sea of digital energy. 

God bless my digital home and the pillars that make it up. 

The pillars I use to build it—the concrete content and writing and words and code and website and accounts. As well as my energetic body, my energetic stance. The way I show up in the digital world, within this shared psychic space. The energetic architecture I use to build my digital home, to define my digital foot print. 

God bless all who I come into contact with. All who join me in my digital home, and meet me in the digital space I generate. May our time together, in this way, in this uniquely 21st-century way, be guided, protected, supported, and held. May we have what we need to see each other, hear each other, understand each other, and learn and grow from each other. 

May we be inspired in ways that are of service to our times. May we be inspired in ways that challenge us, that make us lovingly uncomfortable, that help reveal what we need to see at that exact moment we are meant to see it. May we meet each other in ways that helps us shed and let go of that which is not helpful, that which no longer serves. And to grow and cultivate and weave all that we are meant to bring forward, all that we are meant to give birth to within our own lives, within our own digital space, within our own families, communities, organizations, and beyond.

May my role within this digital world be illuminated. May I be clearly guided in terms of how to be in relationship with this vast ever-expanding network of energy. God bless the interconnectedness of the internet and God bless how it affects me and how I affect it. 

God bless everyone's digital home within our internet world. May we all have what we need to keep our homes clean, healthy, and alive in the ways that we are called to. May our digital homes support our truest selves and our deepest callings for being here on planet Earth.

God bless this ever-unfolding, ongoing experimentation that is the Internet. Help us heal and purge the ways our current version is harmful. And God bless all who are involved in crafting and creating a digital world that is safe, that is supportive, that uplifts and excites and empowers and connects and reverberates and reflects the vision within so many of our hearts of what the world can be. May we be equipped with what we need to continue to respond to the emergent nature of all of this. And may We Heal For All be supported to be a practice space for me to do so.

Thank you so much, dear God. Thank you for this weird, wild, wonderful, wacky-ass world that you have gifted us and that you have gifted me. Please help me hold her and be in relationship with her. In your name, in your likeness, in your calling. 

Thank you so much. 

Amen