Web of Light

A little sparkly glow appears when you feel as though you're in a dark tunnel.

The human species is one that often feels separate from light, from God and more acutely, from the principles of the Divine such as Light (as a spiritual principle or Enlightenment/Christ Consciousness), Life/Vitality, Love, Peace, Beauty, Truth, Joy, Order, Grace, Ease, Power, Allness, Oneness, and Harmony. At these times of apparent duality and separation, we often, also feel far apart and distinctly individual from one another.

It seems harder sometimes in a world of technology, wherein we are often encouraged to touch less and to avoid looking one another in the eye and in which practicing presence has been replaced with reading people’s public thoughts on a screen while looking at a Pepe the Frog meme established as your “friend’s” profile avatar on social media, it’s hard to feel connected.

I often reflect back on Jesus and how He said, “I Am THAT I Am.” One guy held the entire universe inside himself, the Allness of the Infinite manifested, in, as and through Jesus. What I noticed, too, was He never encouraged people to believe they were not. Even when He said, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me.” He was not speaking of exceptionalism. Jesus spoke of how if His disciples believed in Him they must allow Him to wash their feet. Then He explains that He is a servant and that they were servants and that there is no hierarchy. If his disciples believed in Him, then they too could do as they had seen and believed. It all rolls back to faith and that of all the great things He could do, they could do even greater because of their faith and belief. He paints this magnificent picture in the minds of His disciples of a union between Him and God and Him and the disciples and the disciples and God.

As a parent, I see this example played out every day with my children. Often, a father or mother say, “watch me do this thing.” To us it is simple. We may have tied our shoes a million times. But to a child, the act is magic. They get discouraged because they don’t believe they can do it. They see us as super human. We think to ourselves, this is just part of learning. I was a child once. I grew to an adult, and in that process, I learned these things. We say, “just trust me and follow along. If I can do it, so can you. Do you see me doing it? It’s not magic. It’s just a skill, it’s just experience and wisdom. You’ll get this.” Still, often, our children don’t believe it is possible they could twist two shoe strings together, and it become a pretty bow. They give up, because they don’t see the process, they aren’t paying attention to the example and they assume sometimes that they will know how to tie shoes just by getting older, without effort, without knowledge, without watching and learning how to do it. He says, you won’t find connection looking all around for it to come to you. Watch me do this. Don’t be amazed by it. Learn how to actively practice faith as a verb. Just do what I do. You will heal yourself, do these miracles and you will achieve so much more than this.

Jesus keeps saying, “believe in Me.” But He also reminds everyone that a master is no different than a servant. He shows them He has mastery through His connection to God, but then He behaves like a servant to wash clean all the notions of separation and hierarchy. Just watch Me, trust what I am doing you can do, I am no different than you. Stop placing Me on this separate pedestal. The Father is in me, I am in you. What I do for you, you must do for others. He’s saying we will be teaching our mastery once we find union with one another in Christ, in this enlightened consciousness of faith. We have faith in what He can do and trust that we are connected through His example to these same abilities so therefore we must also be able to do-at the very least: that. I Am THAT I Am.

This web of social media can feel like a tunnel. We talk about tunnel vision. We sometimes are reminded of how isolated we are from one another because of the internet replacing our social interactions. I don’t think any of this is true. In fact, I would say that my life and the lives of anyone I speak to on earth today demonstrate the exact opposite.

How have we met people organically in the past? Family, home, church, school and work are likely the top few social circles. There’s also social clubs, youth sports, and bowling/pool/etc. leagues. Last but not least, we may have met through hobbies and pubs.

However, in the past, if someone lost touch with another of these organically met friends or moved away, aside from them keeping the same phone number or address information forever, and short of hiring a private investigator, you were never going to find lost relations again.

Thinking about this, having moved around and switched numbers a few times myself, there may be only one or two friends I know right now that I know outside of and independent of the internet. Surely, I still have some acquaintances from childhood. However, they are only in my acquaintance due to reconnecting via social media, namely Classmates.com, Facebook, and Instagram.

I’m thinking of this now, more fully. My in-person friends, social clubs, churches, homeschool groups, and everyone else I have met in “real” life, has been initiated through the internet. I wouldn’t have any of the in-person relationships, I wouldn’t have challenged a lot of my crappy and weak beliefs had it not been on account of the exposure to new and inspiring voices on the web. If I want to try a new church, first thing I do is to look it up on the internet. I don’t even know where a supermarket is in a new house without looking it up on the internet. I got on FreedomCells.org to find the voluntaryist group close to me that I hang out with each week. Even the couple friendly neighbors I met which I had up to this sentence presumed to be on account of my location, I owe in part to finding the listing of the house through FB marketplace on the internet. The homeschool moms I met in my area, I met through homeschool groups on the internet. Crazy as it sounds, the very few familial relationships I maintain, I also conduct through the internet.

Some of you may be freaking out right now about how much this web is woven inseparably into your life. It’s true that it might *feel* scary for someone who was unobserved of all its utility to break us out of control patterns of the past or future. It allows us to step away from the cult of church, family, politics, school or work. It breaks us from our caste in many ways. That may seem like a dangerous proposition to some. Personally, I think the idea of being able to break from the stranglehold of thoughts and behaviors of our direct ancestors seems to be dangerous to the powers who benefit from us keeping our place, staying ignorant and in many ways, never learning to tie our own shoes if our ancestors refused to learn.

In this case, I think ignorance is working as it always has. People afraid of or chastising of the internet are clearly going out of their way to stay in the dark about how much evolution, I would say positive evolution, it has brought to humanity. Just like people have always feared the new or what they don’t know, the elderly are often the most condemning of the new because it may displace their sometimes undue, lofty position in family or society. They don’t want something new knocking them off their pedestals.

I think in most ways, the internet is helping society due to a collection of individuals sharing wisdom. We further strengthen one another through our shared skills, wisdom, and knowledge pools, teaching one another, caring for one another and helping each other. Because of this, we are using this tool to create better networks and stronger, value-centered societies.

One of the main things I see as a light in this web is connection. We are no different or more disconnected now than the web of mushrooms and fungi saving the forests. We are no more separate than the aspens through their interlaced web of roots. In this same way, we are more closely linked to these wonders we likely never knew of before the advancement of the internet. We are in many ways closer to nature than we have ever felt prior. We are closer to our Allness and Oneness of the Power, Beauty, Peace, Truth, Love, Vitality, Order, Harmony, Grace, Ease, and Light of Life. We experience this the minute we step away from the computer and out the door.

All the sages of recorded history couldn’t have given us this tool for connection, the juxtaposition of our sense of separation and our sense of awe of the sacred part we play in the universe around us as immediately as we can by standing up and walking outside, even in a busy city seeing a dandelion growing up through the space between the sidewalk pavers. Nothing has ever given us the feeling we can just remove the veil of separation by considering all the good around us, as this thing which we have been warned is inherently evil has brought us.

Even if you can see the world as wonderful and intricately connected the second you step away from the internet or TV and out into the world, chances are, you would have a harder time noticing it if you were always in nature, trapped in a kind of state in which it’s hard to see what you have because it’s too close to you. I always tell my friends and clients to put their hands over their eyes, as close as they can, press their hands right up against their eyes, and then to try to visually examine their hands. They can’t do it. I think that’s what happens to us when we live in a condition, even an idealized one. We think we will appreciate it, but in fact, we often take things we are immersed in for granted.

The web not only draws us together, it does so in such a way as to make the times we are physically present with one another more appreciated, more observed and more special and significant.

As you are taking time today to feel this appreciation for life and the verities of the Divine within you and the ability to connect in more powerful ways more quickly than ever before with knowledge, evolution, others and the Life Force that animates your every thought and action, remember the very act of appreciation IS the magic. It’s through appreciation that life appreciates. Similar to the circle Jesus describes: the world in me, I in you and you in the world. It just keeps going around. As our children grow they become the parents and teachers to their own children and communities. As we learn by example to appreciate and be faithful in our appreciation of the wonders around us, more wonders seem to appear for us.

So enjoy the internet today. Appreciate all you have received rather than bemoaning the distraction and the chore of it all. Sit on the internet and appreciate all you get from nature or walk into nature to contemplate all you have received through the internet and if you can, find a space to recognize the interconnectedness of all of it, the web and nature. All the parts, all the signals and transmissions, and how they all came from the same earth and the same wisdom of how to use nature to do these wonderful things.

If you want to be more involved in the magic of appreciation, there are still a few weeks left to participate in Melanie Moore’s FREE Magical May experience. We are exploring the magical powers of gratitude in our lives through EFT tapping and other gratitude practices. The live calls are on Wednesdays at noon MDT. There’s another one tomorrow for this week so be sure to sign up here now!