Dear Facebook

Four years, six months, five days and sixteen hours have elapsed since we were last together. Please forgive me but I feel better for it. You see I need maturity and holistic growth, being with you is like dating an emotionally challenged three-year-old drunk. I’ve grown tired of your mundane gossip. Who cares how arbitrary people feel at random moments, what they’ve just eaten and what they will do later or have done the night before. I’ve realized I’ve been guilty of such frivolity in the past but I’d rather call four hundred and twenty-two people personally and tell them how many kilometers I ran today as opposed to a Facebook post.

In my short lifetime, I have come to witness the devolution/degradation of reading, I’ve observed book worms mutate to book face, I mean Facebook.  Alas, not only have the mechanisms of reading transmuted but the contents too. Its kinda similar to the way chipboard sort of looks like oak, but is not. My observation, however, is that social media is not the problem, rather our misfortunes are sowed from the seeds of an exploitative greed-driven economy. The manner in which we abuse and are abused by media is the cause of our woes. Humanity is robbed of independence and intelligence due to the addictive nature of television, Instagram, Youtube, and tabloid magazines. These weapons of mass distractions are soul-sapping, they hijack our creativity and the need for meaningful human interaction. On a cognitive level using these stimuli create the same chemical response within the cytoplasm of the brain as hard narcotics.

If you ever had a thorn under your skin you will know that you can use another to extricate it, the danger is that one could end up with two thorns. So use your kindles, tablets, smartphones, and laptops to infuse spiritual knowledge into your daily activities, in so doing freedom awaits. Thou please be mindful of the snares of the illusionary trappings which can ever so subtly lure you into a meditation on gossip and unsavory engagements. Did you know the pornographic industry makes 4 billion more dollars than Hollywood every year. Their tentacles permeate cyberspace resulting in toxic audio/visual material being a push of a button away. According to Juniper Research, by 2017, a quarter of a billion people are expected to be accessing mobile adult content from their phones or tablets, an increase of more than 30% from 2013. Mobile adult video chat alone will have a compound annual growth rate of 25% .

We are afforded the rare opportunity to see through the eyes of ancient wisdom. So instead of reading the TV guide or another Watsapp message grab hold of one of Prabhupada’s books which are infused with dynamic spiritual energy. They consist of over seventy volumes of authentic Vedic scriptures totaling more than nine million words of praise of the all-attractive absolute truth. On this planet, Vedic literature consists of approximately ten billion verses. Prabhupada has expertly condensed and distilled the essence of the Vedas into the Bhagavad-Gita, Srimad Bhagavatam, and Caitanya Caritamrta. Arguably his magnum opus is the translation of Srimad Bhagavatam ( the literary incarnation of God). Prabhupada’s purports afford one the key to open the door to esoteric truths, for this philosophy while sublime is tantalizingly subtle. Its knowledge is perfect and complete as such one who engages with such purity themselves becomes perfectly complete.

A swan can separate milk from a mixture of milk and water. Similarly, intellectuals should have the ability to discriminate between truth and the muck of falsity. This ability is awaken when one's mind and senses have been purified through the revealed words of God. One then gains insight to interpret the world via the medium of knowledge generated from saints of the past. In this way we hear and feel the presence of God in everything around us, which lends itself to seeing the naked form of material nature for the illusion that it is.

In closing I lay down a friendly challenge, a social experiment if you will. Dethrone television from the citadel of your daily regiment for seven days, replace it with Bhagavad-Gita as it is. Thereupon take a personal inventory as to how this change has affect your mood, energy and relationships. I think you will find that the plasma screen which is so close to our eyes is some distance away from your heart. “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit ” (Aristotle).