The Cyber Cult: An Artificial Independence

For many years I belonged to a spiritual cult. At the beginning, I had a euphoric sense of independence. But with time, that was followed by an experience of "group mind" - namely, I was influenced too much by the beliefs of the leader and those around me. The pressures of living in this situation led to a fragmented sense of identity.

After fifteen years in this cult, I began teaching again in 2006. I started to reconnect with the world I had left. I desperately sought agency to function independently once again. It has taken years to recover from this extreme experience, but it has left me with a heightened sensitivity to entering into any collective situation.

While it was a bumpy re-entry I soon noticed familiar symptoms in my students and in many cases, their parents. I was witnessing the cyber cult, up close and personal. Gaming, Facebook, texting and general inter-netting was now a way of being. My students exuded self confidence, fast access to knowledge and endless friends at their finger tips. It was a virtual world that left me, their teacher, an outsider to their lives.

 Over the next seven years of teaching, I was spellbound as I watched my teenage students, as their minds developed, spend countless hours looking at a screen. They were being seduced into a cyber universe. This cyber reality often offers time-saving ways to navigate the complexity of life as well as giving one an entire social life. It leads you to believe that you are in charge of your own life, that a student does not need adult guidance, direction or leadership. This is what I think of as A.I. (artificial independence). It's being offered at a dizzying rate of form and function. Technology has given us: unending virtual entertainment, short-hand language, access to thousands of superficial friends and a place to escape to so we don't have to engage in real-world intimacy. The cyber world blurs the lines between reality and fantasy, allowing us to adopt distorted ideas of ourselves and our abilities, live sedentary unhealthy lifestyles and harbor symptoms of addiction, mental instability and even post-traumatic stress syndrome.[1]

Unfortunately parents and teachers like myself, have also jumped onto the cyber band wagon. It relieves us of our struggle to face each other through conversation and encounter. It is far easier to bury ourselves in our i-Phones while the kids focus on theirs! The cyber world functions as a cheap baby sitter. But at what cost?

What kind of independence are our children gaining from this cyber universe? True human agency is found and cultivated within. Original thought arises from reflection, introspection and often takes place away from outer stimulus[2]. Like cults, the cyber world's influence has to be made conscious. We're all drawn into this virtual world, but at what cost?

 [1] Roberts, Kevin. Cyber Junkie: Escape the Gaming and Internet Trap. Hazelden, Center City, Minnesota. 2010

 [2] Carroll, Lawrence. The Phenomenology of Silence: Educing Learning and Creativity in the Classroom. August, 2013, Oxford Round Table, Merton College https://www.academia.edu/5287098/The_Phenomenology_of_Silence_Educing_Learning_and_Creativity_in_the_Classroom (Accessed December 3, 2013.)
 Click here for more information on life coaching           Click here for products and services

Getting strong is a process not a trick.

In this day and age, old school approaches of discipline and commitment are often shunned by the masses. Instead they have been replaced by the promise you will lose weight and gain ripped muscle though overnight without effort. I am amazed people search so diligently for the mythic magic bullet to change their lives.

Now I have changed my life. I have changed my body. It was not handed out of a weeties box nor, in retrospect would I have wanted it to have been that way. You see the real transformatioin comes from your decision to commit and succeed no matter what it takes.

Once you have embarked on the path you are in process. In process means you are leaving something behind. You are leaving the status quo of poor life habits behind as you start to clean up and get strong.

Please don't look to December 31 as the moment when it will all change. The future is not where you transform. Now is. Decide now you will get strong, eat right and move into aging process dynamically and without regret.

So by now I have probably lost half my readers but that is ok because if you  are still reading I am talking to that part of you that seriously wants to transform.

 I was inspired to write this because, as a coach, many people express doubt or fear that they will never be able to succeed in actual lifelong transformation in regards to their health, finances, relationships or character. Some express great sincerity to do so but often start to focus on the obstacles instead of the goals and so become confused or uncertain.

The body is an amazing instrument. It needs fine and regular care, maintenance and tuning - even if you are an elite athlete.
A rare few maintain their bodies at peak strength and performance. A few more maintain them at "good enough" or healthy status. A majority let them deteriorate with time and fulfill the myth of slow demise. I hate to shock you but bodies DO NOT wear out and become weak with age. You let that happen by the choices you make today.

Don't get me wrong. There are many so called experts who would disagree with me here. But let them. I have proved the opposite is true.

The truth is our bodies are made to last at optimum strength and performance throughout what could be, should be, an 80, 90 year lifespan. 

The fundamental error in perspective that holds this myth in place is that strength maintenance is seen as "this thing we have to fit in on top of everything else in life there is to do".
But the truth is our strength, vitality and innate warrior potential is not separate from our life. It IS our life.

I took stock of my life strength and vibrance two years ago. I was shocked to see that I was letting it drain away into middle age. This dawning catapulted me to take action to reverse the hypnotic spell of the myth of slow demise. I looked deeply at what was out there in the offerings and found living examples of myth busters like Frank Zane, Shawn Phillips and Tony Sawyer Horton. Each one a fierce and autonomous voice of triumph over the myth.

I entered their world and rediscovered the joy of living in a thriving balanced strong body. I took a 90 day retreat, not from life but in the midst of life. I was not fitting my physical practice in I was using it to resurrect from a slow demise. Why 90 days?

The truth is it really takes time to see progress and be confident that this is for a lifetime and not just a brief time out from the demise. 90 days has phases. Each phase brings with it measurable, quantifiable change that you feel and see.

At the end of 90 days your body and being has become strong, vibrant and sees a new potential to thrive - for the rest of your life. At the end of 90 days you have committed and succeeded in dispelling the myth of demise. At the end of 90 days you have taken your strength out of the hands of everyone else and put it into your own - at least for now. 

At the end of 90 days You have a choice. You have a new beginning. To become the strength you were born to be, and stay that way 
Decide. Commit. Succeed.
For more info go to www.core-strength.net.