The mass of humans lead lives of quiet desperation.

—Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Why do we feel so alone today, why are so many people so utterly lonely and depressed in this lone and dreary world?

I suggest it is because we are becoming more disconnected from the Whole, from the One, from the Singularity, from each other, utterly separated into our isolated, independent, alienated, disparate, siloed, egocentric, individualistic, selfish, greedy, partitioned, dualistic, polarized, partisan, bifurcated, opposing, binary, divided selves. We are driving each other apart! And social media doesn’t seem to be helping, but hurting us. We spend more time talking to screens and text than we do with people, real flesh and blood humans.

How do we solve this? How do we become more connected, with a sense of belonging, communalism, communion, with community, with genuine communication, with face-to-face interaction, with heart-to-heart engagement, with soul-to-soul compassionate interaction, with mind-to-mind Oneness, with at-one-ment, with nonduality, with wholeness?

I suggest that we need to change our minds, which is what the original word for “repentance” in the Greek New Testament meant (metanoia). We need to transform our consciousness, and realize a more collective consciousness, a unitive consciousness, a nondual consciousness, a Christ consciousness, the Buddha-nature. We need to transfigure our minds. We need to slow down and contemplate. We need to transcend our thoughts. We need to let go of our barriers, defenses, walls, divisions, ethnocentricity, tribalism, exclusivism, dualistic subject-object perceptions, we need to transcend all of these things. We need to stop dividing ourselves, separating ourselves, differentiating without integrating, classifying without including, conforming without diversifying. We need to start talking to each other again, face-to-face.

We can do this. I know it is possible. We are One. That is our true ultimate nature. I’ve seen it. I know it. We are It. And as long as we alienate ourselves from that, from what we really are, we will be trapped, imprisoned, cut off in the lone and dreary world. Liberation means connection. Salvation means belonging and Love.

The New Friendship Room—Live!

For these reasons, I’m going to start holding casual hangouts and chats in the Friendship Room again. But I’m going to try something new this time. I will stream the video only (no audio) on Facebook Live for anyone and everyone to join in the conversation. The room I think can handle up to 50 people capacity, so please join us. If someone wants to have a completely private discussion, we can take it private and password-protect the room (I can also stop the Facebook Live feed).

I’ll probably hop on weekday mornings for an hour or two, and you’ll probably see me pop up in your Facebook feed if you’ve friended or followed me on Facebook. You can even tell Facebook to notify you when I go live. If you’d like to schedule another time to talk, please do so; there is a simple scheduler on that webpage that you can use, and I’d be happy to chat with you about the weather or anything else. I just want to talk. That’s it. It doesn’t have to be special or deep or religious or mystical. Just face-to-face talk, about anything.

I think this will improve our conversations that we often have on Facebook, but only in text. We do more talking at each other there, than with each other. We will be able to see each other, face-to-face. We will be able to see our real flesh and blood faces. We will be able to hear each other’s real voices. We will be able to sense inflection, emotion, nuance, sincerity, feeling, etc. It will be a kind of virtual commons or community. Let’s try it.

I hope that if you are feeling lonely, depressed, isolated, misunderstood, anxious, disconnected, and want to connect with another human being, a real person, or even if you just want to have a friendly chat with another person face-to-face, that you’ll consider joining me. Let’s chat!

I look forward to getting to know you better.