Last week, I found myself having the same conversation with three friends in one day about changing the rules of engagement for myself for the new year, learning through recent messages from our spirit guides. In the spirit of my new (or old) way of engaging, these conversations were on the phone and in person.
These important messages were in the context of how to help someone create a new chapter, find a new job or career, or when we’ve had loss and need to find a new path. How to fully open up that new chapter in one’s life.
And the spiritual homework to get there isn’t what you would think. It’s about going back to the analog and old-school, going back to being personal and not robots. Getting away from the digital, our computers, aka “devices.”
One message from the guides to someone who had been online more than usual, was “Live like you’re back in 1976.” Back when you couldn’t have a looking glass into what strangers across the world were doing at that moment.
Another message from a wise spirit guide, was “Delete Robot Land” – to a person who was spending time they couldn’t get back, by looking at what others were doing virtually, people they didn’t even care about in real life. This was a reference to an “anti-social” network that came up that’s based on images, not words. The one where users can see if a person of interest, or a person they’re focused on, is looking at their phones in real time “Liking” an image, or “Following” another person, without ever thinking that someone they might not care for in that moment can see what they’re doing. Unlike a few sentences of text, images show where a person is, and even if a location isn’t given, it’s more personal and less private, because it shows what someone was just looking at and when. And it can attract unwanted energy, or people one does not want to invite, into one’s personal energy and space.
But beyond that specific anti-social network, the digital existence that society around us more and more has been normalizing as “being more connected,” when the opposite is true – when you speak from computer to computer, whether text to text, or images to images and comments to those images of people you may never meet and don’t care about – the wise guide is correct, as they always are, it truly is Robot Land. And the more our heads are buried down in Robot Land, the more we lose our human essence, why we are here.
Friends know I don’t text, and this year, my emails are deliberately more minimal – just informational and for work. I’m opting to call friends who take phone calls to catch up. Like I did many years ago, before Robot Land.
I realize in wanting to go back to connecting the old-fashioned way, on the phone, that it’s more correct for us as humans, not robots, as in one message from my guide, “Even if you’re just friends, that’s still the right thing to do,” to have that voice to voice contact, so that one can feel and hear the other person’s soul.
Our wise guides may be our loved ones on the Other Side, but they know all and see the future, so they know about video conferencing. But they never seem to mention video conferencing. Perhaps it’s because of the digital aspect, the video delays and people being so conscious of being live on camera, but also perhaps because the voice has nuances that just can’t be heard in the very “on” moment when one is on delayed video.
Last year brought new friends on the same page, including someone who I connected through her work with Ian Anderson. It was just after I’d been dealing with regrets about the passing of a friend Fred. But that phone call was a catalyst to reconnect with someone I realized I didn’t want to have regrets with someday like Fred, of not having said or done anything I could have with the time we have left, which isn’t forever.
Last week, I was on the phone again with my catalyst friend in a catch up phone call from last year, to find out that at age 60 she got her first song publishing deal and that her song will be recorded by someone who was in “The Voice South Africa.” It gave me hope that age is just a number and inspired me for the new year. Funny enough, I just noticed, her email signature is “Have an inspiring 2019!”
In our call, I mentioned the spiritual message I relayed recently about “Live like you’re in 1976.” I said, “Forget 1976, even if we go back to 2006, it’s still better than today.”
My mind has it’s own random selective memory, like an idiot savant, especially with dates. I noticed it was Feb. 1 while we were on the phone, albeit at a very late hour, and for more than an hour as catch up calls can take, like in the old days. Since she’ll always be my catalyst that made me reconnect with one person last year after a pivotal loss, I shared about what happened that day in 2006. “The person I attempted to call after we spoke last year – we met on the phone 13 years ago today. Wow.” Time flies. Then again, it feels like another life.
Back in 2006, we just used email to establish introductions and plans on where to meet for dinner, which ended up being Feb. 10. After we met for dinner, the next morning, we called each other. We were eager to connect human being to human being, we often played phone tag, but there was always the wish to try to align schedules to meet again in person soon, with informational emails with clever subject lines like “Paging Sanctuary” to establish our next in person meeting.
During the last time I saw that person from 2006 that I attempted to reconnect with last year, we were supposed to be in a sacred cell phone-free zone (my favorite places that don’t exist anymore), but when the person did turn on their cell phone for a few minutes, it was show me there were nine text messages.
I want to brag that I have no text messages. That’s the goal. To live in 1976, or heck, give me 2006 even. People fear they’re missing out on what every other person is doing now in the world. They didn’t have that fear in 1976 or 2006. My goal is to brag that I am missing out on what the rest of the world is doing and live in 2006 again.
With so much real stress we have in life, this added worry that others might be having a better life because there is virtual photographic proof daily, is unnecessary extra stress on one’s own life and detracts from our raison d’etre.
Back in 1976, and even in 2006, we didn’t have access to what strangers around the world were looking at, through a square on a piece of glass that opens up images and thoughts (or regurgitations) like what kind of coffee someone just had three hours ago and where. And we didn’t care. We didn’t think we were missing out, because we weren’t. And we felt safe, and secure in what we were doing. Our own life paths. And we focused on what we wanted to do while we were here, not thinking others were having more fun out there.
Last year, my reconnection with the person from 2006 began a nice electronic communication, and it never materialized beyond our robotic exchanges, never back to the purity of what it had been in 2006 in the very human phone calls with the goal of seeing one another, or of simply wanting to hear the other person’s voice, so we talked about little things like one’s day, the Doppler radar report, the discussion of whether or not we celebrated Valentine’s Day coming up that month, or anti-Valentine’s Day.
It’s sad, how much we’ve all changed. How robotic I allowed myself to become last year. When I started last year by emailing that I was going to not electronically communicate as much, that was my first mistake. I ended up going the opposite way, pouring private thoughts into emails, but it seemed the only way to connect with certain people and I wanted to be more open since my friend’s passing. But I went to that lower vibrational energy of being robotic, rather than the more human, the more elevated, spiritual thing to do when connecting in earnest.
This year I’m trying to organically tell friends I value, and who are on the same page, which seems rare today, but people who do remember talking on the old phone, that I am going back to 2006, where I spoke on the phone more and email was just a side note. But it poses a bit of a dilemma with people I know who don’t answer their phones now, or call back. And it’s not something I want to leave in a voicemail. But if they don’t call back, then the conversation ends doesn’t it?
While it will be sad to let go of those who aren’t on the same page, it also means there will be more space for kindred souls, where there’s no need to want to convince someone to try to be on the same page. They just are. It’s less of an energy drain and supports the higher vibrational, more meaningful life we are meant to live. Humanly.
And if we realize we’ve become robotic in recent years, we might even want to give up those little glass computers that turn us into robots for these cherished people in our lives, and go back to 1976 or even 2006, where we had just a sprinkle of emails, and mostly did phone calls and in person visits.
The addendum from the wise guide’s message to “Delete Robot Land” was “Pretend they don’t exist.” Focus on our own lives. The guide’s complete message was, “You’ll never fully open up your own next chapter,” if you’re looking at someone else’s life.
This message came up in the context of someone looking at an anti-social network. The topic of anti-social networks came up last week – that it can keep someone behind the computer when they could meet friends in real life or talk on the phone. Or more importantly, it can take someone off their own life path, energetically, even if you think it’s only for a few minutes. It’s all about energy and where you want your energy to count. It’s about staying focused on one’s own path. We create our lives from our intentions and energy.
Our own life path is about why we chose to be here. You can’t do that when you’re busy looking at what the rest of the world is doing on your anti-social network that you feel you have to be on because your friends are all there egging you on to stay with their mob mentality. The high school clique mentality many of us were so glad to leave back then, that didn’t value individual thought. Or maybe you don’t feel strong enough to “Delete Robot Land” because life isn’t going your way and your ego gets a jolt by every faux Like you get, or comments replied, even from people you dislike, or wished you didn’t really know in real life.
The spirit guides’ messages were clear – cherish the soulful people we know. Who don’t want to play the world’s lower vibrational robot games. And that good, mindful energy will grow. If enough people “Delete Robot Land,” perhaps it can even feel a bit like 2006 again.
Looking over at what someone else is doing virtually like a robot isn’t just a time suck, because you can’t get the time back in your life that could have been spent in a positive way in this already too short life, but it’s an energy drain. It’s tiring to look at what other people are regurgitating, people that you’re not interested or like (in real life). We can’t really have 500 or 1,000 friends and really like all their photos, can we?
In real life, if we have just a few close friends, we’re lucky. It’s hard to have the bandwidth for many more than that.
When people want to up their numbers of virtual friends, or “followers,” most of whom they don’t know that well or know at all, they often also aren’t careful when sharing something as personal as what they are looking at in real time, or just ate, or their physical home or surroundings, which should be one’s rest and sanctuary. It can invite the energy, and schadenfreude, of the many that they don’t know. And who knows what their intentions or energies towards them are?
I’ll probably lose contact with some people who aren’t mindful of how they communicate now, who don’t care to buck the trend against Robot Land to be more soulful, and value what life was like in 2006 and farther back in 1976. But it’s important to focus on those who want to make a positive change and who want to live more meaningful lives, to be truer to themselves. Not people who mindlessly follow a headless digital leader over an aimless cliff at the end of the day, with nothing to show but lost time.
I prefer to go into the future with the few special people on the same energetic page, than the masses that want to stay behind a computer, always looking down at a piece of glass to communicate robotically like a video game, who never want to speak or hear one’s voice.
In my conversation with the three friends last week on that interesting date that happened in 2006, the topic came up – if we had to be in the relationship space in this era, I said I wouldn’t be able to be with anyone who does that kind of time suck activity for leisure rather than strictly work related posts for necessity. Or, who is on more than one anti-social network, or who is on the network that can be the most creepy, the one that is visual. I can’t be with anyone who isn’t on the same page.
As I said to them, as we get older, time is more precious. There is less and less time for detritus in life. Things that add no value to our soul’s journey here. In this robotic era, I would want someone aligned with my analog values, who strives to be more reflective and mindful in the precious time that remains, and wants to do the spiritual work to live a life that counts.
If I had my druthers now, I would prefer someone who was anti-social networks, anti-Robot Land, and anti-looking and faux Liking what the rest of the world is doing. Someone who would gladly delete Robot Land for a real soulful, analog life. I would want to meet someone from 2006. I would want to page sanctuary.