“Reduce your device time & increase time spent enquiring into interdependence to go from feeling ‘over-connected & lonely’ to ‘Inter-connected & supported’”
Dear Integral Meditators,
I’ve recently facilitated some corporate workshops on ‘Digital Detox for Corporate Professionals: Reclaiming Focus and Productivity’. Creating this workshop & seeing people’s response to it has really opened my eye’s to how chronic the problems around overuse of devices are for us these days. In the article below I explore a simple flip to go from ‘over-connected, overwhelmed & lonely’ to ‘inter-connected & supported’. I hope you enjoy it!
I’m almost completed with the new meditation programs starting in August/September, you can see the full line up in the Whats On section beneath the article.
In the spirit of connected,
Toby
Inter-connected or over-connected?
What is my relationship to the world? Is a question is one worth asking yourself and seeing what sort of answers and perceptions come back to you. Your sense of your relationship to the world is fundamental, it forms the basis of most of your other perceptions, choices and experiences in life. For many people, the temptation is to experience ourself as someone coming into life from the outside, an outsider who dies not belong, and has to ‘fight’ to earn their place. Life is a battle to belong, rather than an enjoyment of your sense of already belonging.
A ’flip’ that I continue to enjoy is that of being born from life, rather than into it. To quote from a previous article on the subject:
“Our relationship to it is like that of an apple or a leaf to an apple tree. The apple emerges from the Life of the tree itself, not as something separate from the tree. The life of the tree gives rise to the apple. The apple arises from the tree itself, in the same way that the tree came from the life in the apple that it grew from.
You are like the apple being born from the apple tree. The life in you is a part of Life, you are an expression of Life, and Life is you.”
Being ‘born from life’ gives us a sense of effortless belonging, which is a great and un-lonely place to begin feeling into our connection of self-to-world.
Observing interdependence – Inter-connected & supported
We can strengthen our sense of feeling connected to the world by seeing, through contemplation, the way in which we are all interconnected. There are innumerable ways in which we can do this, to give three short examples:
- I am writing this article on my parents dining table. To be able to use this table I rely on the carpenters that made it, the wood supplier, the trees it came from (and by implication the forest, not to mention my parents’ hospitality!
- I can do the same thing with the computer that I am writing on; so many people involved in the supply chains that put the machine together, created the software and so forth, for me to then buy and use relatively effortlessly
- I’ve just finished a coffee whilst writing. Again, to get the coffee to me relies upon the water from the tap, the coffee supply chain, the supermarket, the coffee plant, the land that the coffee plant grew on…
In any aspect of my life, if I start to look at the interdependence that doing what I am doing relies upon, my wisdom-eyes open, and I start to see how intimately and fully I am connected to everything else in the world. From this comes gratitude of course, but also a fundamental reduction in my loneliness. I am always inter-connected, and in this way never alone in a lonely way!
Over-connected & lonely
The above two states of being and feeling interconnected contrast sharply with the experience of many people who are what you might call ‘over-connected’ through their phones and being online all the time. Our devices enable us to be ‘connected’ and ‘in-touch’ all the time, however this experience paradoxically leads many to feel lonely, left-out (and afraid of being left out), isolated and yet compulsively over-connected.
A few practice points:
- Reduce, and manage wisely the amount of time you stay connected to the world through your devices
- Use the amount of time you save from reduced device time to develop the wisdom of interconnectedness and belonging outlined in sections one and two of this article. This wisdom does not need to be hard work, it’s really just about grounding yourself in the recognition of it. Your inter-connection is fed easily and gently by the recognition!
© Toby Ouvry 2025, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com
All upcoming classes & workshops
Ongoing on Tuesday’s & Wednesday’s (live & online), 7.30-8.30pm – Weekly integral meditation classes
Ongoing Tuesday & Wednesday’s weekly, 7.30-8.30pm – Embodied Transformation – An integrative introduction to Tantric meditation
Ongoing on Saturdays weekly, 5.30-6.15pm – Embodied Transformation – Saturday Tantric deep-dive meditation sessions
Saturday 16th July, 9am-12.30pm – Breathwork Workshop – Improve physical health, wellbeing & inner peace though deep breathing
Saturday 23rd August, 3-4.30pm – One Heart Open Day: Sound of Zen meditation with singing bowls
Tuesday 2nd & 3rd September, 7.30-8.30pm, & then weekly – Integral Meditation from the Perspective of Zen – A 10 week series
Saturday 20th September, 5.30-6.30pm – Autumn equinox balancing & renewing meditation
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