The Cyber Shrine: The Home Computer as an Altar of Enlightenment by Chad Deal
The Traditional Shrine
A shrine is a place constructed for facilitating worship to a specific deity, saint, ancestor, or higher power. From the Latin scrinium, meaning “case or chest for books or papers” and the Old French escrin “box or case,” a shrine will generally include things like candlesticks, tapestries, censers, flowers, and images of a deity or central personhood. Sacrificial offerings are made at a shrine called an altar. The sacrificial element could involve anything from a prize head of livestock to a particularly radiant piece of fruit.
A household shrine elaborates on this traditional structure, often comprising a more dynamic collection of objects from diverse spiritual systems. One might encounter Tibetan prayer flags strung over an image of the Goddess, reiki orgone disks placed around an enneagram, a copy of the books “Remember: Be Here Now” next to “The Tao of Physics”, a chalice inscribed with a pentagram containing a string of Buddhist prayer beads, or crystal pendulums hanging from a small gold artifact rumored to hold ten thousand souls. Each shrine’s diversity reflects the globalized spirituality of the practitioner.
The Cyber Shrine
By virtue of the Internet, the sacred texts of most every school of spirituality as well as a multitude of related material can be accessed from home. The absurd convenience of simply “Googling” virtually anything allows the modern practitioner to go to the core texts themselves and compile his or her own brand of spirituality, which rearranges and evolves as the practitioner makes new connections on his path. For these reasons, the home computer makes an excellent addition to your now intensely contemporary cyber shrine.
The cyber shrine is a powerful tool. Go ahead and light some sage first. Call in the Four Directions, invoke the Five Elements, say six Hail Mary’s, or open all seven chakras. As you feel yourself relax, open up a browser window but be alert. The maya of Facebook, MySpace, and the likes will be waiting for you, silently stalking, wanting nothing more than to seduce you into their veils of ego illusion and to relegate you to the lower bardos of cyber consciousness. Remain vigilant.
Imagine: your homepage, an Alex Grey image depicting energy meridians running throughout the human body, prompts your speculation about the nature of the Void, so you get on Wikipedia and search “black holes and Buddhism.” In no time, you have opened several tabs, alternately labeled “Quantum Mysticism,” “The Etymology of Ontology,” “Theosophical Writings on the Pineal Gland,” and “Ayahuasca Ceremonies in South America.” You meander upon a YouTube video about how to visualize the tenth dimension, which sheds some light on the whole Void question and also perks your curiosity about fractals. So you watch a few Mandelbrot visuals while cueing up some heady tunes. You meditate on your breath—or your big toe, your solar plexus, 2012, or the preferred deity of the moment.
Everything comes together.
You remain present during other YouTube clips: dancers performing the outlandish Gurdjieff movements, a colorful expose on Solfeggio frequencies, a documentary on quantum mechanics, Terence McKenna followed by Eckhart Tolle, and videos with names like “Are We Real?” and “The Holographic Universe.” The input is intense and scattered, but you sense it all nodding decidedly towards a certain nexus and suddenly your consciousness feels as if upon the brink of something … world wide.
You open up BrainWave Generator (www.bwgen.com), a free program which generates binaural beat frequencies in order to induce elevated states of consciousness. You put on your headphones, the beats pulsing in either ear simulates specific frequencies which correlate to different brain states (Alpha, Delta, Theta, etc.). You choose a setting called “Meditation 3 (after high mental activity)” and set the volume at 25% so the binaural beat is barely audible beneath your music. You go Zen.
A voice suddenly yells “STOP!” and you wonder briefly if you should freak out, but it’s just the Daily Ponder (www.endlesssearch.co.uk), a free program which interrupts at preset intervals to remind you to attend to the Ponder of the Day. “How can one make the first sacrifice of comfort, which is a prerequisite to any sacrifice?” it asks, followed by “Remember to Sense your body and observe your emotions while Pondering.”
You mull this over. “Ah yes, sacrifice. The Universe must be telling me I am ready to upgrade my platform from cyber shrine to electronic altar.
What shall I sacrifice first?” you think. But, as usual, the cat does not respond when you call, and you don’t want to kill the cat anyways. On top of that, you haven’t got any fruit in the house. So you decide to sacrifice yourself instead.
Cyber seppuku, you realize, is a time-honored tradition with a fresh twist. One reaps all the benefits of self-eradication without the hassles of disembowelment. You seize the opportunity, allowing your body to lose itself. You consciously sacrifice your worries, your mental chatter, your ego, and its program of “I:” your programmed identity, your programmed sense of shortcomings and glories—your holographic image of yourself. You find yourself One with the entire web of existence.
Now you navigate with a different ease; a re-informed finesse. You approach both your altar life and your altered life with new intent and zeal. Your hyper-post-modern electronic altar roaring to life. You are a Cyber-yogi. You can do anything. On a whim, you download a program called Psi Ops Cybershaman VII (www.gocs1.com), and if you ever figure out how to use it, you could probably do even more anything.
The Point
The “cyber scenario” above represents a smidgeon of the possible uses of computers in your home shrine, but remember that all the information and electronic gizmos in the world (as fun as they are) don’t mean a thing unless you apply them to your practice. The point: adding conscious integration of intellectual knowledge onto your path of awakening. Rumor has it you need only look within for all answers, so be an attentive Cyber-yogi. Don’t let an enlightening stroll through cyberspace turn into a meaningless trudge trough cyber-maya. When used consciously, the computer is a powerful tool. But always leave plenty of time for yourself, listening to inner silence, emptying the mind of thought, and releasing attachments. Breathe deeply. Relax. The greatest shrine in the world, after all, is you.Chad Deal is a freelance writer from San Diego, CA. His work has appeared in Toyon Literary Magazine, SanDiegoEntertainer.com, Examiner.com, and The San Diego Reader. He really enjoys fresh papaya, Reuben sandwiches, and sunshine.