Our blindness for the destroying of our sensitivity

This week some personal wanderings around our fading away sensitivity in relation to life after reading a book I borrowed from my neighbors.

When you deal with blind people you can discover that they are accustomed to realities we cannot even imagine. Their sensitivity to the world of touch, smell, taste and sound is such, as to make the rest of us seem like boring chunks. We pity persons who have lost their sight but rarely take into account the enrichment that their other senses offer them. It is a misfortune that those riches are ‘bought’ at the heavy price of blindness and it is quite conceivable that we could be as alive and finely attuned to the world as blind people are without the loss of our eyes.

We connect with the outside world with our senses. Watching takes about 70% of our so called ‘sense energy’ so when you close your eyes automatically there is more energy available to raise the sensitivity of the other senses. And with them the awareness and connection with the world around us raises. Tasting, touching, smelling and listening – and even being aware of the energy around you - become more and more a journey of discovering and real connection.

Once we got mobile devices to support us and make things easier for us. Nowadays they seems to be the meaning of life. We cannot live without them anymore. They are not only attachments but became to be the new addiction, a drug.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not against use of ‘social’ media. I use them myself. I feel sad about the addiction, the drug that people need to feel connected but actually to show they are not connected at all anymore.

I know, everything you give attention grows. Walking around in shopping malls, in the city, in restaurants, during the service in our church and, sad to say, also more and more at the health location I live and work, everybody only the greater part of the day seems to be connected with his or her mobile ‘lifeline to the world’.

Lusting eyes, being afraid to miss any experiences of what’s going on, the feeling of being connected, the idea the device gives meaning to our existence.

Thich Nhat Hanh, a famous Vietnamese monk, calls them devises to help us to flee home. To help us to not connect with ourselves. We are afraid of going home. Because we are anxious, feel lonely, we are afraid, in doubt, uncertain, feel lost, jealous, possessive and carry our sorrows and pain. So this is a means we think it is the passport to lasting joy, peace and freedom. Actually destroying the sensitivity of the senses that really connect with people, our environment, with life.

They help us to come into a cycle starting with attraction. From attraction to pleasure, then to attachment, to satisfaction, which finally leads to boredom and frustration. Mixed with the anxieties, the jealousies, the loneliness, the sorrow, the pain, that makes the cycle a roller coaster. And we are not even aware anymore of this.  Our attachment to our digital devises more and more nowadays is a need, a clinging that blunts your sensitivity, a drug that clouds your perception. A sensitivity destroyer.

Awareness caries the key. To strike the destroyer of sensitivity and real connection with life.

See the suffering that this drug is causing you. The ups and downs, the thrills, the anxieties and disappointments, the boredom to which it must inevitably lead. Where is your time to do nothing?

Realize what this drug is cheating you out of, namely the freedom to really connect and enjoy every minute in life.

Understand how, because of your addiction and your programming, you have invested the devise with the beauty and value it simply does not have. What you are so charmed of is in your head, not in your device.

Awareness breaks the spell. So, not even in a playful way, the device is no longer ruler of your life or the meaning of living. Switch it of more often to help, like a blind person does, and keep all your senses sensitive. To connect (and when this is nothing for you then to show respect at least for the cook who prepared your diner).

Maybe strange to say. Let’s say, to make it easy, it’s an addiction. So you will have to deal with withdrawal symptoms for sure. But there is a wonderful gift waiting for you.

You will learn you start to enjoy more and more and finally everything (instead of nothing). You make the great discovery that what you are enjoying on the occasion of each thing and person is something within yourself. The orchestra is within you and you carry it, like the devise, wherever you go. The stories on your device about things and people outside you merely determined what particular melody the orchestra would play. And when there is the awareness that your device – so no one or nothing - has your attention the orchestra will play a music of its own; it needs no outside stimulation.  You now carry in your heart a happiness that nothing outside of you can put there, and nothing can take away.

You suddenly become sensitive to realities whose existence you have never suspected and respect them. Real sympathy and concern for others. Real connection. Not respond from need but from sensitivity.

Be aware of the use of (and start switching off more) your digital supporting equipment. When you call yourself a manager and think about the idea this is not possible ask yourself what manager you are of your life....
Be as alive and finely attuned to the world as blind people are without the loss of your eyes.


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