Uniting the worlds of technology and spirit
by Steven Vedro
I have always loved communications technology.
As a child, I sat content for hours in front of the big short-wave set in my uncle’s living room, searching for voices from far away. As a ten-year-old, I learned Morse code. As a teenager I operated a pirate radio station, regularly ruining the neighborhood TV reception whenever I started my home-brew broadcasts. In college, I spent most of my time at the campus FM station. My summer job as a TV film cameraman paid for much of my tuition.
I have produced television programs, designed educational video networks and Internet sites, and assisted PBS stations making the change to digital broadcasting. I’m the kind of person who can enjoy a walk down a country lane, looking at the wildflowers while calculating the line loss in the cable television wires on the poles overhead.
Even in the midst of my technology work, I knew something was missing in my approach to life.
I began studying meditation, which eventually led me to the study of esoteric healing techniques , then the philosophy of tantra, or energy yoga, and its system of network concentration points called the chakras. Words like channeling, radiation and field intensity took on meanings quite different from the technical jargon I had mastered years before.
While this work opened my heart, I was not at peace with the continued separation of my work and spiritual life. I did not want to quit my “day job” as an educational technology consultant. On the other hand, the experiences I was having as a student of energetic healing touched a deeper desire to be of service, one heart at a time.
I also was bothered by my “more spiritual” friends’ reaction to technology. It troubled me that they took pride in not owning a television or in how much they hated their computers.
These two sides of my life came together at an energy healing retreat in 2006. Our work on the last day was to imagine our own deaths. After we had fasted and meditated all morning, we lay with our eyes covered, resting on pillows as we listened to a guided meditation taking us through the tunnel into the white light.
I remember the experince as if I am there now.
I have died and am waiting outside of Heaven’s door. My spiritual guides, long-dead family members, angels and teachers are gathered to meet me. I see them shaking their heads. After a while. they approach me.
“Steven, Steven,” they say gently, “we told you to go work with Light in the world. We didn’t expect you to take us so literally!” And in a rapid series of images, I see my life’s “energy work” flash in front of me — theatrical lighting designer, stage electrician and spotlight operator, film projectionist, radio transmitter engineer, designer of fiber-optics and wireless video networks. All that work was close and yet not quite on the mark!
I returned from the mediation feeling troubled. Had I really only heard half the message? Was my entire love for communications all a cosmic misunderstanding? Was I supposed to give up my technology career to start a New Age counseling practice? Was a 900-number “healing line” in my future?
No, I concluded, my work was to try to bring these worlds together — using the metaphors of communications to help make understandable the more arcane teachings I had learned in my energy healing and meditation circles. From this experience, came my intention to write the book that became Digital Dharma.
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Steven Vedro’s spiritual and personal transformation work includes twenty-five years of meditation and energy healing study and practice. He is the author of Digital Dharma: Expanding Consciousness in the Age of the Infosphere. For information: www.srvedro.com |
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