Eckhart Tolle argues that reaching for your phone during any waiting moment keeps you trapped in a false self and the hive mind of social media. He suggests using those gaps to practice presence and stillness instead, which quiets mental clutter and emotional reactivity.
That can be a great opportunity for disidentifying from mental image of who you are. If you, let's say, you put out the wrong tweet and 200,000 people say you're a terrible human being and then you lose your job, that's a great opportunity for spiritual awakening. But nowadays Almost everybody, the moment they're waiting, they have to reach into their pocket and get out their phones. And so everybody who is waiting these days will be looking at their phones. There wasn't a message coming in at this moment, not even that, no, but just check to see what's going on. I don't know what they do. Facebook, tweets, who knows, Instagram, Snapchat. I'm not familiar with these things, I just pick them up. Instagram, Snapchat, tweets, Facebook, Tinder, and so on. So there's always something to look at, there's always something to take you out of the— completely back into the— you're back in the mind, it's the hive mind, your personal mind, so-called, linked into the hive mind. And this is something that I would suggest as a spiritual practice you You let go of that so that you only look at it when you need to, but not as an automatic thing to fill every moment. That's insane, as an automatic thing to fill every moment, to look at that, and so you're never just comfortable with where you are and completely there. Never, and this— no spaciousness can arise with that. So this is practical advice: you need to just engage with it when there is a real purpose. I can't— everybody these days will be engaging with it, that's fine, But not as an automatic thing, especially when you're waiting for something. Use the precious opportunities of waiting for spaciousness, spacious presence. And you can feel immediately the qualitative difference in this energy field from being engaged looking at the screen and having a— basically what it is, you have a cluttered mind. And it clutters your mind more and more, stuff goes in. And then you have even emotional reactions to the tweets that other people make, and then you put in your own. In the hive mind, people's People's lives can be destroyed by one wrong tweet. Well, yes, not really. That can be a great opportunity for disidentifying from mental image of who you are. If you, let's say, you put out the wrong tweet and 200,000 people say you're a terrible human being, And then you lose your job. That's a great opportunity for spiritual awakening, but there are easier ways. So...
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