Take a media fast.
As I embarked on my spiritual journey, I spent a couple of years totally ignoring the news and away from YouTube to the extent possible so I could clear my mind of the chatter. What happened and how you might benefit from taking a break.
0:00 Teaser
0:35 Welcome
1:40 What are My Own Organic Thoughts?
3:46 Music Feeds Us Subsconscious Thoughts
6:25 Our Minds Have Been Programmed for ADHD and Mental Illness
7:46 Take a Media Detox
10:04 Stay Tuned for Part 2: Stop Consuming to Stop Creating
Full Video Transcription
Peace family it is Christina, and today I wanted to talk about clearing your mind by getting off social media, stop watching the news, getting off all this stuff that's feeding your mind, getting off all that music, getting off everything so that you can be free and clear, hear your own thoughts, and really find out who you really are outside of all of the chatter.
So before we start as always I love you guys so much. All of these videos are to uplift myself first of all and to uplift at least one person - if it's 10 people, if it's a 100, if it's a thousand, if it's a million, I'm grateful, and as always I want to share with you my prayers and well wishes for life, love, joy, peace, and prosperity. And with that let's go into the video.
So when I was at the beginning of my spiritual journey, I took a break from all media and when I say all media I stopped watching the news completely, I got rid of my television, I got rid of cable, I literally did not really know what was going on on in the world.
Get Out of the Echo Chamber of Politics & Social Media
I think the first thing is when you start to remove all of the media out of your life, you get out of your echo chamber you get out of the hive. If you know about hive mind, you get out of the hive for the first time and you get to really think about what are my own organic thoughts? A lot of times with media, news, even YouTube, social media, we are fed the thoughts that different groups want us to have. On a particular topic, this is literally what they do - the news, the politicians - they will craft a narrative and then they will distribute that narrative, and then people who are news anchors, people who are politicians and things like that will have an established narrative.
"This is what we as a group are going to collectively say about this."
And then the other side will say, "This is what we as a group will collectively say about this."
And then what you're hearing is not these individual people's organic thoughts. What you're often hearing is crafted narratives about certain things that they are told to say or that they've decided,
"This is what we're going to say," and they say it so that everyone will believe it. A lot of times, when we're younger we just kind of take that in and then spit it out
"Oh I heard that this is this is that," and you spit it out, but when you don't hear that at all, you can't even hear it you're not listening for it, you turn that radio off you turn that TV off and then someone were to just bring up an idea of that topic you might organically have a totally different opinion about it if no one had ever given you or fed you anything about it.
Music
The music is a second category of this where the music that we listen to will have a lot of messages in the song and then you get the song stuck in your head. Before you even think about what it's really saying, you get the song stuck in your head. you're boppin to it and then your words that you say in regular conversation might start to mirror the things that you heard in these songs and so fascinatingly a lot of us are not even aware of it. When you're not listening to a lot of music you're not picking up on those vibrations, and the reality is especially in pop music - I'm not talking about classical music, I'm not talking about like most jazz and stuff like that - but I mean especially music with words.
The music itself has messages in an energetic vibration, so if you're listening to a song, even if you can't really make out what they're saying, if they're talking about shooting out people and "F that B," even if you're not consciously thinking about what it says, "F that B" is in your head and it feels more and more okay. That language feels more and more okay and then you start to align yourself with that vibration. So instead of saying like "Women are beautiful, women are amazing, women are gift," if you if the the narrative about women is "F that B," even if you might not organically feel that way it's a phrase that's now lodged into your Consciousness and you may subconsciously either say that or treat treat women in that way because that's just the phrase that's kind of gotten in there. The longer that you go without hearing those things you know it's like you become increasingly empty-minded. You're not feeding that anymore into the brain and so it becomes increasingly clear.
Everything you watch is feeding something into your brain. Everything you listen to is feeding something into your brain so subconsciously for all the years of your life, you're feeding this, feeding that, feeding this right. You're being fed all kinds of things, thoughts, words, phrases, thoughts, words, phrases, opinions.
Taking a Media Fast
When you take a moment to to say, "Hold on wait. Shhh... Everybody shhh. Shhh!" and it's empty and it's clear and your mind is just totally empty, then you can really determine "Which things do I even want in here and which things do I want to take out?" and then you can start to see for the first time.
And it's not our fault. I'm not blaming anybody. I'm not blaming myself. It's just something that's the result of the media, the overwhelming media that we have now. In my mom's generation, they didn't have social media. They didn't have Facebook. They didn't have Instagram. They didn't have Tik Tok. They had television, but they weren't watching television all day about everything in the same way that we are now. They had other things to do, and there weren't as many shows on TV. They didn't have YouTube with every single person talking about their opinion. There was a little bit more clear-headedness, and I think a lot of us, the younger ones of us have gotten so stuck on constantly being bombarded with just advertisement, advertisement, advertisement, song, music, music, music, music, social media, Tik Tok, Tik Tok, Tik Tok.
It's become standard that a lot of people are starting to have increased levels of ADHD mental illness, and it's because their mind has become so packed with just stuff that they don't know what it's like to just sit quietly and have a clear mind and to just sit and not do anything, just sitting peacefully and be quiet because their mind is just filled with junk. It's the same thing if you were to eat a bunch of junk food, your body starts to be filled with junk and what do you do? You have to exercise and get that weight off. You have to exercise to clear your arteries. You have to do things to get it out.
And so all that I'm advocating for is that we just take some time to get off everything. Get off social media for a time. Get off the news for some time. Get off YouTube. Get off of everything so that you can hear clearly what do you really feel about everything? What do you really want? What is your purpose? If you're spiritual, what does God want you to do? If if you believe in God, what are you hearing from God?
When we have so much bombarding into our head all we're hearing is is just music running in our head, and we're thinking about what this news station said, we're angry about this, and angry about that, but once we clear all that out of the way then you can finally start to have peace and start to have clarity about what it is that you really want out of life and it's outside of what people have told you to want or told you to believe. It's that you can really start to listen to your heart space and be in this clear headed place where you can hear for the first time what your heart's really saying to you, and so I just think that's super important, and it was really beneficial for me.
Conclusion
There were a couple of years where I really didn't watch anything and I remember like recently I've been watching a lot of YouTube again. I just started watching YouTube again just a few months ago and have been watching it a lot cuz I'm like what's going on in the world? I want to kind of hop back in and see where everyone's at what y'all doing what y'all been doing for the past few years? I've been out here doing yoga and meditating just kind of minding my little business, and I come back and I'm like oh there's a migrant crisis been having for the past year like I didn't know. But I think sometimes you have to do that so you can just clear that space and now I feel as you see me posting every day active again and ready to kind of come back into the world. You can do that with a fresh clean slate and a fresh clean mind.
Part II: Shift Your Consciousness from Consumer to Creator
I'm going to come back with part two of this which is going to be stop consuming to start creating so once we clear our head of all the Mind shatter and all the things have been bombarded bombarded into your head, it's just dumped in there. Once you can just let that just disappear, let it disappear, then I think it can be a really interesting space to start creating. If you see how creative I've been over the past couple of years, I've made a magazine, if you ever go to my website, Liveology.org, you will see so much content that in the absence of input I had to find something to do and so I also started making products bodycare products and malas and all that kind of stuff. Getting rid of all of that extra stuff can help you to actually be a lot more creative and to create something of your own.
As always I love you guys and we'll see you on the next one.
Peace
Christina V. Mills is the creator of Liveology® Yoga Studios & Magazine and our products. She is a lifelong spiritual seeker, writer, and yoga teacher. Follow her on Instagram @morelifemoreyoga.
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Peace & Pineapples!
