The Twitter Metaphor

As one of many people who Twitter spiritual reminders, I have been struck by how much this experience reminds me of the practice of meditation.

In meditation, we start out with a focus –our breath, the word love, or I AM, and from there we go into the Place within where we find our True Self. Always, in the midst of this practice, the ego begins to tug at our attention: “nose itching”, “forgot to call dentist”, “boring”, “what time does this end?”, “knee hurts”.

And so on. Our practice, of course, is to brush these thoughts aside and keep returning our attention to the breath, to within, to now.

And so it is in Twitterland. We post a reminder “All is One” or read another’s reminder “Go Within” and in that moment our mind expands into the infinitely wider Self that underpins our local identity, our ego. Then! come the marketing tweets, the “Make $100,000 at home” tweets, the “Here’s what I have for sale” tweets.

There’s nothing wrong with these Tweets – they are the same flow of thoughts that stream endlessly through all of our minds. But if we happen to be thirsty for a drink of Peace, we have to temporarily brush our egotweets away, just as we do in meditation. Return to the breath, to the “I AM”, to the reminders of our True Self.

So at Twitter, just as in real life, we are offered a feast: idle thoughts, distracting thoughts, worry thoughts, exciting thoughts, silly thoughts, doubt thoughts, empowering thoughts, divine thoughts. And, just as in real life, we get to choose where we place our attention.