Facing Up to Facebook

I have had many invitations to be a member of Facebook but from the very beginning of its inception I had a huge resistance to it. Since the days of Socrates’ call for individuals to ‘know self’ there has been a philosophical, psychological and spiritual momentum in that inner direction. Both Buddha and Christ call on us to ‘love self’ and, indeed, there are ancient Indian and Chinese texts that announce that ‘it is the Self that should be known and it is the Self that should be loved.’ Lao Tzu, the Chinese sage claims that ‘it is wise to know self and learned to know another.’ Rumi, the thirteenth century Sufi poet, wrote that ‘a person only becomes an adult when he takes responsibility for Self and for all his own actions.’ In more modern times, psychologists like Carl Jung, Roberto Assagioli, the founder of Psychosynthesis and many others urge us to take the longest and most exciting journey inwards to Self. It is my belief that Facebook has become the greatest distraction from that most important interior work.

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