The days of the great search engines are over. People are locked out of a meaningful personal life with all the information that is constantly streaming. They want a heart station instead of a work station. They don't need technical support but actual real help. If Google and the internet are to remain relevant they will have to give what lifts and moves the human spirit. Inspiration, creativity, community and love, yes love, are what drive and fulfill the human soul. Electronic intelligence has reached a final edge. What is on the other side is not more data, goals and organization but experience, intentions and time to wonder.
What people want are practical steps to finding the God particle in one's own life. What is beyond the clouds is found in the depths of the human heart. The light of awareness is pregnant with personal and planet reaching opportunities. How does one successfully come to term, giving birth to something remarkable, oneself? SMS no matter how often and how much does not satisfy our separateness. The knots tying us up, the wounds unhealed, deserve our attention. We have only begun to touch the surface of insourcing. The adventure we seek and the answers are within. People want an apprenticeship learning to live in the sacred. We want beauty, magic and the something that is not easy to describe but is quickly recognized when it is present. We want to come home to something that is not bigger or better but accepting, non judgmental, where there is indescribable love.
There is a map Google has never made. There is an important language that is not listed in their translator. What are the practical steps for reaching potential, the human potential for me in my life today? The map waiting to be made is a map of the human heart. Where is inner peace, compassion, purpose and how do I reach it? There is something called heart essence that is the fuel for life. It feeds the nerves, softens our thoughts, introducing us to the cosmic sound that is singing no matter how loud or chaotic our thoughts. The geeks of the future are people who are living on heart essence, happy and free.
If Google and Silicon Valley are to give something of value to the world, they will have their employees do something more than meditate to be present. They will meditate in the depths of their being on the galaxies of inner heart stillness. Where is the venture capital for realizing the existence and potentiality for the life of the soul? This is when the mind is the servant of one's heart. Instead of thinking out of the box, the true innovators will be absorbing the infinite within, finding seeds of grace that grow and serve the universal nervous system that connects everyone and everything. Silicon valley must get out of its own neurosis, the obstacle of their rationality. They have to debug their minds. Networking is an inner process where time disappears, patience, trust and inner harmony expand in an unlimited vastness, the light of understanding.
Creativity, community, inspiration and love form in the unknown. The unknown is not something to fill in. You don't want to figure it out. There is nothing to do. What we previously thought is just nothing is in fact everything. Buddhism begins here. Emptiness calls for something other than new programming. You want to remove all programs which serve only to keep the mind busy. Stress and disease result from a lack of inner space. The best new software is that which helps awareness anchor inside the vast space of the heart. Here is where there is room to feel, to be and to explore. The empty room is where we begin everyday without fear or worry. True life begins when we are not busy filling up our day with new information, something to do. The app that is most valued will keep us in an air of trust and inner knowing. There is a spiritual heart inside our heart.
All the gadgets lead to a superficial fashion and culture avoiding risk, human vulnerability, taking us everywhere but where life is really lived. Instead of more games and extreme sports, clarity and purpose is much more binding for body,heart and soul. Exercise, movement, can be connected to heart and feeling. Faster is no longer the best. Small is not cool unless it means being small in self importance and big in service to those around us. Instead of chat rooms, we need listening rooms where we not only listen to one another but listen deeply within ourselves. The Google campus has supposedly just about everything. Is there a silent room? Silence is much more than a tool for cleansing excess thought. There is the world of no thought. The space inside, between and underneath our thoughts is where we absorb a goldenness to all of life. Silence is the home of our inner sanctuary. Self acceptance and the courage to change the world begin here.
In the future, cookies will follow people, tracking and reminding everyone where they feel most alive, connected, on line with their spirit as well as their mind. The vision will not be to attract new customers but support each other to become a better person. Life is more than surviving drama and guarding against the latest virus invading our personal domain of what innocence is left. Life is about nurturing, bringing our unique talent, our gifts into the world. There is a spirit, a presence, in the heart of each of us to receive and to offer. I imagine the Google of the future liberating our life force whenever we are online.
Someday when we Google someone, it will not say what they do but who they are. Internet activity will be plugging people into joy. This joy is more than the goodies GPS finds around the corner. This joy is reaching out to just the right person in this moment, visiting a special park, and knowing about an inner path of forgiveness, gentleness and humor to transform the challenge in front of us. Instead of taking people away in some mental escape, the next Google will be bringing people together to celebrate the source code, the essence which calls each of us. The successful outer life will be built upon a strong, caring and plentiful inner life. The smart phone will be pulling us to a wholeness, connectedness and wisdom to do less, be more, linking what is true and important. Uploading and downloading will be a directed broadband of purposeful, good choices. Inner peace serves in every circumstance in every part of the world. What comes after Google is life where heaven is unearthed in each of us.
We invite you to join us in the exploration of silence, nature and heartfulness meditation at Silent Stay Retreat Home & Hermitage near Napa, California and Assisi, Italy.