by Alejandro Villegas

Our human nervous system is always craving a reference point. In a universe too complex for our brains to fully understand, the seemingly chaotic soup of energy ping-pong we live in can be a bit too scary for our comfort. So, like the protective hero of a movie, our frontal cortex steps in to "make sense" of things. "I've got this! I know what's going on!", it says. And so begin the schematics, the drafts, the measurements, the categorizations, and the stories. 

Since humans first started walking upon the earth, we have constantly scanned our environment for the reference points that make our existence seem a bit less wobbly. We pay close attention to the sun, the moon, the seasons, and the dance of the firmament. And those who hold the most information about these patterns have historically been the people who make us feel safe. They know more than us, therefore, they must know what is going on. 

Like the insistent "are we there yet?" questioning of a child during a long road trip, we like to turn to the keepers of this wisdom as a way to feel more guided and comforted. Calculations, stories, and predictions make us forget that our survival is as uncertain as the path of an Earth-destroying asteroid in the shooting gallery of space. 

And every single day, as we transition from our delta dream state, through our theta slumber, and into our beta wakefulness, we go through the same process all over again. "Where am I? What day is it? What's the weather like? What do I have to do today?" In some distant past, these questions were answered as we got out of whatever primitive dwelling structure we lived in, and scanned the natural environment. Our scale of focus went from etheric (dreaming), to interoceptive (body), to exteroceptive (immediate surroundings), to cosmic (extended surroundings). So, essentially, we gradually widened our field of vision and perception to find our place within our environment. But in our contemporary world, there has been a disruptor to this natural process: the screen. 

As modern life has increasingly driven us to be disconnected from our environment, the organic topographies of our planet have been replaced by the straight line and, before we even stick our heads out of our prison-like dwelling boxes, we turn to our digital screens to figure out what is going on. We find a sense of comfort in checking our weather app, reading the news, or scrolling our social media feeds. Every morning, as we stumble around to find our footing in a new day, most of us reach for our phones, turn on the TV, or flip open our laptops. The bright, rectangular windows of glittery information beckon us to find out what is real, what is not, and what we can expect. Without knowing it, we have enslaved our magnificent consciousness into the confines of a two-dimensional prison ... and the people on the other side of that information hold the keys. 

As a religious ritual, we have trained our brains to receive their morning dopamine fix from our digital devices. We have lost control of this important neurochemical firestarter and we've given our power away to the content creators who are very well aware of this mechanism and love to capitalize on it. Those who hold the keys to the stories confidently displayed on our favorite media channels hold the power of knowing what is. And we all so willingly and obediently listen and follow along. We believe these sources so much that, in fact, we have allowed them to define our own reality. What we consider real or not depends on what our media masters are telling us. Oh, and we believe them! So much, in fact, that we make life-or-death decisions based on these news channels all the time. 

The spiritual mandalas of the East are comprised of three primary symbolic elements: a circle, a dot, and a square. The circle represents the completion of the Self, spiritual ascension, or universal consciousness. The dot (represented in the very center of the mandala) represents the energetic heart, which is the hub of the interdimensional vehicle. The square represents three-dimensional reality and matter. So, in essence, the square takes a "snapshot" in space-time of the etheric geometries of the spirit and the heart and frames them in a way that our brain can comprehend. From this perspective, one could say that the square is the perfect symbol to represent the materialistic, control and greed-driven capitalist consciousness of the West. In our modern altars, where the Holy Dollar is the eucharist, and our quadrilateral screens give the sermon, we have sacrificed our freedom and our divinity in exchange for a little bit of comfort and a false sense of security.

Enslavement does not only happen at the physical level. The most insidious of enslavement tactics happen in the mind and the current psychological war is proving that they are very real—and they are working. The good news, however, is that we have the capacity to wake up and exit the game altogether. How? By remembering where we come from and what we are. By disconnecting from our screens (especially in the early morning hours) and retraining our nervous systems to trust themselves, their intuition, and the wisdom that comes from the earth and the cosmos when we sit still enough to listen. Developing a strong daily practice will help us bring our power back to our own minds and to ourselves. By remembering that the vehicle that connects our interior realities with the rest of the cosmos is the dot at the center of the mandala—for it is only through our hearts that we can find true peace of mind and a sense of knowing and security. This has always been the only Truth ... even if Facebook and CNN want us to believe otherwise.