The Machines Are Stealing From Us and We Are Complicit

The machines have been stealing jobs from people. Simultaneously, the same governments that sell the ‘technological progress’ while dragging their feet in regulating the whole thing, vilify and badmouth people for ‘not wanting to work’.

But it’s being talked about aplenty, and that’s not what I want to talk about today.

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Today, I want to talk about how the machines are stealing us from ourselves.

From the sun of which we have limited days.

From those around us with whom we have limited days.

From appreciating the fragrance of the lemon tree flower that flowers for limited days.

From experiencing the full flavour palate of the food we eat for which we have limited days.

From our ability to hear the night jar sing for a limited number of days at night and wonder we feel because they sound a little bit like frogs.

The machines are stealing us from experiencing surprise for which we have limited days.

Stealing us from experiencing AWE. Have you ever experienced awe? How was it? Can you remember?

If you can remember, has it ever been through a machine screen?

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Our bodies are the very things that enable us to experience and to express.

We have limited days of it and with it.

On those days when I catch myself allowing the machines steal me from myself and the acute awareness of the extent of it and of the limited days I have hits me, I cry.

Not because I have limited days but because I am complicit in the machines stealing me from me.

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I invite us to take back what is being stolen from us. It won’t be easy; not at first. But we all have something that we can employ to help us: previous experience of what we want to experience of more. For me, those experiences are awe and gratitude.

What are they for you?

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I invite you to join me in a short, simple exercise.

If we close our eyes and call upon that experience – on what it felt like in the body – we can catch it and anchor it.

How to retrieve and anchor it*:

• Think of a time/event when you felt something really beautiful and pleasant in your body; maybe something that pulled you out of your busy mind and landed you in the moment. As an example, my latest such moment was when I was hiking, running my ‘to do’ list through my head, prioritising/strategizing/weighing; not really seeing what was around me. Until I encountered a tree that took my breath away and pulled me right out into the ‘here and now’ and out of my overwhelmed mind. It was, undoubtedly, AWE that I felt.

• Once you thought of the moment/event, close your eyes (the visual cortex is one of the most active parts of our brain; it processes input from our environment without our conscious effort or attention, which, in the context of this exercise, impedes our brain’s access to that stored body memory; so closing our eyes ‘releases’ a degree of resources to access that something that is a little deeper). If you can find a quiet environment, that’s even better; it will further reduce the sensory input that our brain processes without our will.

• The thoughts will continue to show up and interfere with our ability to bring back that body memory; that feeling we felt back then. Best way to counter that is not to try to force the thought out, but to accept their presence. When we stop fighting them, the hold they have on us becomes weaker. The way I usually do it is talk to them in my mind; I say, ‘Hey. I know you are important, I know I need to address you. And I promise I will; I won’t forget you. But I ask you that you give me these five minutes.’ Of course, at first, it feels stupid and awkward, but no one has to see it or hear it when we do it in our privacy. No one’s going to know. So what have we got to lose to try?

• FEEL into that feeling that came back into your body. It’s unlikely to be as strong as the real-time experience, but it will come back, even if less ‘potent’.

• FEEL into is. Explore where in the body it is the strongest, if/where within the body it travels, HOW it feels. Do you feel aliveness in your blood vessels, under the skin? Do you feel lightness? What shape and/or colour would you say that body feeling – sensation – is? Just sit IN it and enjoy it.

• Whilst inside that body feeling, carefully, slowly remind yourself of the process of how you arrived at it. It will serve you in your next journey to that nice place inside; you will have drawn a ‘map’ of some kind. You will have EXPERIENCED that you CAN; you won't have to take my word for it.

• Once you reminded yourself how you arrived at it, before you open your eyes again, take one last dive INTO that feeling in your body: the ‘where’, the ‘movement’, the ‘colour’, the ‘shape’. It will help reinforce that path back to it for when you want to revisit it again.

• Open your eyes and take a moment to feel into what you feel like now, after having ‘travelled’ to that nice place. Maybe the mind slowed down a little, maybe the breaths aren’t so shallow for a little while. Maybe even the returning frenzy of the thoughts is somewhat slower for now affording you a little more clarity and calmness.

*NOTE. It’s not a ‘one off’ and ‘tick off’ to reap the benefits. It’s a practice. And – stating the obvious, of course – practice does make us better at whatever we practice over time.

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Next time we reach for a machine when we don’t absolutely have to, we can bring back that anchor to remind ourselves what the machines steal from us.

And if we pick up the machine only one time less than we otherwise would’ve, we can anchor that feeling - that awesome feeling of having exercised our power over a machine - too, for it to serve in just the same manner.

We can unwire ourselves from the machines.

I know we can. Our physiology is equipped for rewiring ourselves.

And so we absolutely can.

[Written on an ever-heating machine while fully appreciating the irony of the paradox of badmouthing the machines while staring at one and understanding that the only way this can be read by anyone is through a machine screen.]

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