Here is a reframe that changed how I relate to my phone: Every scroll is a prayer. Not in a religious sense, but in the most literal one. A prayer is an act of directed attention; you turn toward something and say, this matters. Every time you open an app, swipe down a feed, or tap a notification, you perform that action. You are saying to the universe, show me what is real. Show me what I should care about. The algorithm answers. And it doesn’t have your well-being in mind.
I spent 14 years as a Zen monk, first in France and later as abbot of Deer Park Monastery in California, in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh. One of the central practices we returned to, again and again, was this: What are you feeding your consciousness? The mind, like the body, becomes what it regularly takes in. Feed it fear, and it learns to expect danger. Feed it comparison, and it forgets what it already has. Feed it outrage, and it loses the ability to sit quietly with what is.
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