About 10-12 years ago I stopped reading newspapers, watching the news on TV or listening to it on the radio. I cut myself off from the psychological fear machine that is mainstream media news. Whenever I have caught it nad been unable to avoid it immediately, it is the same shit different date. It is all stuff that we can not change as it has already happened and it is manipulated to leave us in a state of constant fear.
My life improved massively from doing that, I was no longer sucking in all that fear on a daily basis. It really helped me to focus on much more positive stuff and my blood pressure would have dropped considerably.
I then replaced that with social media and then started to receive the fear of the media machine again plus the fear of other people and their dramas and worries. Well, I’ve cut out a great deal of social media now too. I switched off the drama and I rarely scroll through it.
So life is great, right? No more news, no more fear?
Well, there is one more news channel pumping fear of the psychological kind that is THE most powerful and dominating more than any other ever created by others…that’s right, my own mind.
So I have been on a journey for the last 2 years to switch that off too. That has been the most rewarding and yet the most challenging as there is not a physical ‘off’ button as such.
However, we switch it off through consciousness and the realisation that the real you and I are beyond our minds and thought, we are not our minds. It comes with the realisation that the only time that life is real is now and that psychological fear lives in the future that our mind projects into constantly. The ego and its stories of little me create drama and fear, it is its existence and without it, then it is threatened.
Switching all ‘news’ off is the key to a peaceful existence, where we can live in the moment and enjoy all that has to offer. It takes time, it takes practice, but like all things the habit builds. Am I the Buddha? Am I floating on a cloud of presence? No. But each day I move a small step closer to that, and that’s all I can do, a small step further from mine and others’ ‘news’ and its inherent fears and suffering.
Philip Dodson 