There is a new word in the English language. You won’t find it in the dictionary because it is too new. It was created by Zhenevere Dao, the founder of MogaDao Institute, to explain the growing epidemic of technology-induced neuroses. The word is “info-colonization”, and it has already permeated much of our culture without giving us a moment’s reprieve to negotiate its effects.
Emotions are one way in which a human being makes value of the world. They guides us toward what we want and what we don’t want through chills of affirmation, butterflies in the stomach, or hairs on the back of the neck standing on end. Emotions highlight our relationship to others and to ourselves and offer the most accurate road map to our inner world. Info-colonization is so much stimulation and distraction that we don’t know what we feel. We are told what we want through ads as we research on the computer or watch a tv program. We want to look like the people on tv who are joyful, safe, fulfilled and healthy.
Media is vying for our attention, and it has enlisted a laser-focused advertising paradigm to beat us at our own game. They imitate dangers, stress and fear creating a norm of mild, steady trauma. We have become so accustomed to feeling anxious and traumatized that we would miss it if it were gone. So, we often turn to the very source (computer and tv) that foments fear and deprives us of our emotions and individuality, and we get further and further away from our original essence.
Realizing what is happening is a start in gaining control over distractions. Anxiety is felt when we feel distant from our jing, unique prenatal essence. Practicing MogaDao qigong can help us to become more sensitive to emotions and to invite harmony between our original essence and the manifestation of life experiences. Through repetition of movements designed to harmonize our organs and connect us to an earthly and spiritual practice we can develop protection from info-colonization and targeted consumerism, and make us calmer and less vulnerable to manipulation.
There are other ways to become closer to our jing. Whatever we find, it is important to question how we feel and to reject outside influences that portend to know what we want. It takes practice to be a human being. Stay sensitive and in touch with your emotions. Pay attention to using stock language or feeling that you are truly approved of if many people “like” you. Resist coercion. Turn away from distractions. Search for the spark of your original jing. It is waiting for you to call it into experience.
