Communicating face to face

I realise as I write this on the internet that it is a very useful way of letting you know my thoughts, that is, if you care to read them. You may or you may not. But, you know, I would much prefer to sitting down with you face to face on a hillsideand discussing our thoughts together. Somehow, it would be much more meaningful for us to have eye contact and to be communicating at soul level, for our eyes are the mirror of our souls. In this way, our thought processes would become animated and fully human and we would sense ourselves in touch. As John O'Donohue writes in "Anam Cara...": "When you really look deeply at something, it becomes a part of you. This is one of the sinister aspects of television. People are constantly looking at empty and false images; these impoverished images are filling up the inner world of the heart... Television and the computer world are great empty shadowlands." I do agree with this as I find, whenever I use the computer or television, that there is something missing, a sense of soul. And I think it is because whatever you are looking at is simply not real and certainly not human... "empty and false images". And that impoverishes our souls which in our modern world can feel very weak and unfulfilled anyway.

So, we must not forget the value of face to face communication. Nor must we forget when we are with others that we should read in their eyes what they are trying to say to us. In this way, we can sense our oneness at soul level and so communicate our thoughts in a truly meaningful way. The eyes talk.

Of course, if we're many miles apart then we cannot communicate in this way at that moment. And then, of course, the internet can become helpful up to a point. It is a useful tool. After all, how could I say what I am now saying without it, whether or not you ever read it. But if we use it to excess, then we use it at our peril as it will destroy our ability to communicate at soul level. And that is what is happening with so many children today: too much time spent on the television and the computer and too little time spent in communicating in a natural, social, human way. Yin and Yang, we need balance in all things.