Back before we could go online, everything was offline. We didn't call it offline because there was no online to create a context of off and on. Right now, online is the be all and end all. Offline is almost unreal it's so far from our familiar experiences of getting instantaneous, 24/7, interconnected, subscribed and continually feeds for us. Offline has snail mail, 7/11, disconnected constituencies and traffic jams.
Just as we could not conceive of any significant use for telephones before we started making calls regularly, we had no concept of online as a way of life before we began living with the Internet as constant companions. Just as we cannot conceive of being without telephone access for long, we need our feed from the online world too. But if there's something beyond online, it's inconceivable.
Marshall McLuhan was fascinated by our inability to discern what's coming to change our lives significantly. He understood how we were blinded by our success and mistook big changes as a variation on more of the same thing we've already got going. Nowadays, we assume any new connectivity would be online in one way or another. We stick to our familiar sense-ratios, frames of reference, labels and story lines.
I foresee an "unforeseen change" beyond online connectivity. It won't show up on radar until our disenchantment with online connectivity takes hold. (I'm already there!) There's a kind of connection our minds can make on their own that surpasses what we can get online. For now, I'm favoring the term "getting inline" to follow "going online". I've been experiencing this intensely for the past two months.
Our minds are the ultimate search engines. Perhaps we have access to a "universal mind". Maybe the quantum field is conscious of absolutely everything and we can tune into any of it. Getting inline seems like a paradox: by being unknowing, we get into all-knowing. When we get inline, answers to our questions come to our minds. We get inspirations we had not conceived of previously. We receive intuitions about timing, a better approach or a different definition of the problem.
When we're inline, we feel safe in this dangerous world. We feel like we're being guided to stay out of harm's way, crossfire and dead ends. We are continually being shown where the freedom is in our situation. It's revealed to us which offers are true or false and valid or bogus. We're given everything we need to make wise choices, effective decisions and successful moves.
To get inline, we go within. We silence our "monkey mind" and be still in our "mountain mind". We chill out and get into receiving mode. We let go and go with what comes out of the blue. We go into the dark and wait for what dawns on our mind. We empty out our fears, worries and agitation. We suspend our "already knowing the answer" to get an even better idea. We welcome feeling innocent, unassuming, trusting and humble. We hang in suspense about what will come out of the mystery next. We break our habit of jumping to conclusions. We discover how much it pays to not know and receive what to know inline.
We learn to do this by our success at it, just like we learned everything we do online. It cannot be learned from a book or a teacher. Getting inline is realized by getting it to work or getting the hang of it. There's nothing to it and everything to get from it.
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