January 28th
ST GEORGE, UTAH – 2 months ago, while out on a run with my sister, Isabelle, on a county road in the mountainside plains of Montana, I nonchalantly suggested to her that “I wouldn’t be surprised if I were the kinda person to not own a phone one day.”
I still own a phone (I’m not that legit) but I can confirm that I am indeed on my way to becoming that person.
I’ve taken a big break from social media recently. It’s been about a month since I’ve used Instagram and about a week ago I decided to just turn my phone off and leave that way for a while.
There was no intention for me to make a scene of this by writing about it in an extravagant click-bait title like “I QUIT INSTAGRAM FOR A MONTH AND HERE’S WHAT HAPPENED.” That’d be a smart move for the sake of viewership but I typically lack the inherent ability to tone down my wise crazy muses into something viral or sharable.
Check out this related episode on our Defy the Norm podcast!
Back to the point…I initially made this decision because I’ve been straying in and out of a very difficult headspace and I knew I needed to do SOMETHING about it.
I can’t place all the blame on social media exclusively, much of it really has to do with the utterly evident corruption of world events these days.
Social media is a starting point.
I was always aware of the negative affect of social media but breaking away from it myself has turned out to be a far more shocking experience than I thought it would be.
I think we all know that we’re addicted social media.
And it’s not even just the endless abyss of meaningless scrolling, triggering a slow drip of dopamine
It’s the addiction to the validation.
Synthetic Self Worth
Many of us are self-aware of the fact that we use it as a way to receive validation. But the psychological and chemical reaction is stronger than I imagined it would be.
Instagram, you see, works as the exact same house of cards—Jenga tower, if you will—as the stock market. You may find the metaphor to be completely odd and irrelevant but it’s spot on in accuracy.
The market, for the time being, is a synthetically stacked up value that isn’t backed by true value—doesn’t sound too far off from the synthetic self worth that followers, DMs, and likes feed us to replace our lack of true abundant self worth.
The longer we use the app, the higher this Jenga tower gets built. Wobbling. Unsteady.
We become more and more reliant on getting social media validation for doing things in our real life and we come to love the validation after the experience more than we love the actual experience.
It’s goes on to even monopolize our experiences. We’re so busy thinking about what picture we should take and what caption we should write to get the most affirmation that we aren’t present to enjoy life itself.
I can say because I did this. The amount of collective hours I’ve spent worrying about getting the perfect shot is exhausting to just think about.
And just like any addiction, the longer we go on like this, the more we seem to NEED this THING called validation.
Don’t get me wrong. There’s a blessing of Instagram that allows many of us, myself included, to make a living being creative.
But I don’t think it’s particularly healthy to let social media apps keep manipulating our well-being especially when if we don’t have to use it to pay the bills.
Shifting off of Instagram for nearly a month felt like a bucket of water dumped over my head.
Instagram is it’s own little Matrix in which we don’t really know how plugged into it we are until we walk away.
I’m not saying you need to quit Instagram forever, all I’m saying is that maybe you notice these things affecting you too in which case, give it a shot.
If you don’t notice these things I’m talking about, that’s maybe even more of a reason to quit for a while. Your matrix is becoming your reality.
Related: Beginner’s Guide to Meditating
Just like your awakening process, it’s painful and difficult to let the Jenga Tower collapse. To let all that synthetic validation, affirmation, and self worth fall away and face the feeling of “darkness.”
Trust me, I say this from experience. I thought quitting social meida would immediately make me feel better but it didn’t.
It feels pathetic to say, but legitimately, I just started feeing bad because I wasn’t on Instagram anymore.
Invalidating that thought pattern just furthers the issue and moving past it requires blunt honesty and about your menial life problems and confrontation with the negativity.
Come on now, it’s much easier to hop back on social media and keep on building that synthetic Jenga Tower.
But that Jenga was not real and is not real.
In a world of people whose Sacral Chakra is the most commonly blocked energy center, I believe that Jenga Tower needs to be rebuilt.
Rebuilding the Jenga Tower
The Sacral Chakra, the 2nd of the 7 primary chakras, is the ruler of our creativity and self worth. It’s also our chakra of emotional vulnerability hence why it’s the most commonly blocked chakra of Americans *shocker.*
Related: Beginner’s Guide to Chakras
Our chakras have a massive effect on us and it’s more than physical symptoms and emotional blockages. The chakras are our energy field that combine to create consciousness.
The lower our chakra blockages stem from, such as the root, the sacral, and the solar plexus chakras, the lower our conscious vibration becomes.
According to the Map of Consciousness by Dr David Hawkins, the emotions associated with the lower chakras directly cause a lower state of consciousness.
Don’t worry, experiencing these emotions in an occasional moment of fear “oh gosh you scared me haha” are not the cause, rather it’s the long term emotional blockage.
Now stay with me here.
We each have our own chakra system, our own energy field. But surrounding the 8 billion individual energy fields on Earth, there is a collective energy field and it pulsates at the level of consciousness we are existing on.
It’s not a majority rules kinda thing because positive emotion have much greater power than negative ones but it does represent a general average of the consciousness on earth.
Our Earth is collectively stuck on the solar plexus level and because the most lovingly powerful beings on this planet (hey, maybe that’s you!) are bringing us up a level with their expanded consciousness, we can deduce and see the correlation that the majority of those 8 billion individual energy fields or vibrating on sacral chakra level.
Evolution of Consciousness
What does this even have to do with social media in the first place?
I’d think myself a pretty self aware person so it’s probably that I’m not just making up a story about social media. I have this feeling that if I see this icky challenge of social media providing me with synthetic self worth, it’s probably happening for a lot of people.
Is quitting social media the solution to elevating our collective consciousness to the next level? Well probably, yeah.
But I know that’s not realistic.
I’m not all high and mighty here, I still have a business to run.
After experiencing this “withdrawal” from social media, I know many people don’t have the skill set to see that Jenga Tower collapse as a good thing.
But there’s something to be said here.
In your own sovereignty and with your own self reflection abilities, maybe you will decide that social media is not aligned with your higher self. Maybe it’s keeping you trapped in a blocked Sacral and Solar Plexus chakra.
And if you are on Instagram for business, please accept a massive digital high-five from me because I know how hard it is. Especially when you know it’s bad for you and you still have to show up online and do your best anyway.
And maybe it’s not as unrealistic as it sounds.
After all,we’ve received more emails than ever from people on our email newsletter letting us know they too decided to quit social media.
It is time for worldwide collective healing of our root and sacral chakra blockages. We don’t need to put it off any longer. The tools are here and there is guidance all around you if you just look for it.
We need to get back to our truest sense of self. Loving ourselves, feeling worthy, and being souls with bodies, not the other way around.
Is this the start of the age of Aquarius? Is the Air society taking roots with mass transformation in our digital communications?
I hope so and I hope you’re there with me.
Stay stoked, folks
Gabi Robledo
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