The next big ‘thing’: speaking to spirits via your smartphone
I’m just going to keep throwing out random stuff about just how bad, spiritually, smartphones really are.
I know the people who are addicted to them, and in denial, or worse, ‘despair’ that they can actually do anything to fight back, will either just ignore these posts, or depart the blog.
That’s OK.
For the people who still have a bit of spiritual ‘fight’ left in their souls, there are a billion and one reasons why every movement a person makes to extricate themselves from the smartphone, social media and internet, on however small a level, is ultimately what gets them through the test.
Remember, when ‘Covid’ just disappeared overnight, all the restrictions, lockdowns, green passports – it all just disappeared overnight?
Why?
Because God decided that particular experiment of each person’s bitachon and emuna had run it’s course.
That’s the only reason why it ended.
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I think the same is going to be true of all this tech, too.
When God is ready, He’ll pull the plug on it, at least, the bits that are really satanic and destroying so many people’s souls.
The question is: how are you going to react, when that happens?
What consequences are you going to be stuck with, once the illusion disappears that people need smartphones for anything much?
That is the question.
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In the meantime, there are now people on Youtube selling apps that let you ‘communicate with spirits’ = communicate with demons, directly via the smartphone.
This is one example from Spain:
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Look at that guy’s face… (or maybe, just don’t.)
Point is: the computer, the keyboard, the smartphone, can function just like one big ouija board, and can very easily take over a human being’s soul.
If that human being lets it.
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We think we’re ‘using’ the phone.
Really?
The phone is entrapping more and more bits of our soul.
If we let it.
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The good news is, every tiny little movement you make to ‘freeing’ those bits of your soul from the smartphone translate into huge spiritual strides forward.
The Baal Shem Tov taught that a person really is where their thoughts are.
If our thoughts, our ‘life’ is all in the phone… that’s where our soul essence is trapped, too.
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Just some more food for thought.
I know this stuff is a huge test for all of us.
But the point is: the ones who pass it are the ones who actually don’t just get yeoush and give up on it ever being any different.
The tech test is going to end soon, just like the Covid test did.
The only question is, how much of your soul is going to make it through, and out of the phone, before it goes down with it.
Your points aren’t lost on me. I know the rav wants what is best for me. I am making small changes that can work for now, living where we do where everyone uses whatsapp to communicate and there is no such thing as email for all of the necessary messages. I wonder how the non charedi schools work in Yerushalim but if they also use whatsapp to the same degree at least one parent has to have it. I also don’t know if I would want to leave the rav’s whatsapp group, it is a lifesaver for me and a huge amount of support. I translate all the articles into English from the rav’s site but the whatsapp is invaluable for real time info and updates as well as tefillot from the rav, yartzeit info, trips to Kever Yosef or Chevron. How else would I find out about these things? How do you hear of things before they happen? If something is in Hebrew, it goes right over my head sometimes and all the rav’s Hebrew posts are also on whatsapp. That is how I follow everything. Are you sure the rav doesn’t approve of the whatsapp for this purpose? If not, why would these great people post all of the info about the rav on countless groups? Seems counterproductive if they’re supposed to get off smartphones. Just trying to understand, not start an argument.
First thing to make clear, is that while the Rav is framing the all-or-nothing argument – and there are still some people who can, have and will respond to it, and do exactly as he says and ‘smash their smartphone’ – for most of us we are not dealing with the black-or-white approach, and it boils down to our DESIRE to one day be able to smash our smartphones.
How we get there is an incremental approach where we take down it’s use step by step, over time, and keep looking for ways to reduce it further, and keep breaking our hearts in hitbodedut that we’re stuck in the prison of the smartphone – it’s an enormous spiritual punishment.
Next thing, is to say that people from the outside have no idea what some of the people near to the Rav, facilitating the Whatsapp groups, for example, have been through, nor where they are really holding spiritually.
I am not part of that very lofty group, but I can tell you that I got the internet out of my house totally between 2008-2014/5, and have never had a smartphone. When my husband needed internet to go back to work, we had ‘internet on a stick’, and he had an external office.
That continued that way until Covid 19, when everyone was at home and ‘zooming’ for school etc, and then we were forced to get wifi.
Even now, I only plug the router in at home when it’s needed, and otherwise, pull it out.
A few years back, I went to ask the Rav if I could totally come offline again, stop doing my blog, etc. I was sure he would say ‘yes, get right off!’.
He didn’t.
I can’t tell you how gutted I was, that I didn’t get permission from the Rav to ditch all the online outreach – including all the mistakes I make, all the arguments I get into, all the soul-searching it requires, all the bizayon it attracts – and just sit at home being a ‘perfect tzaddeket’ with no internet, and no smartphone.
Hopefully, there is more than one path to shemayim, including for people stuck blogging online who get into some very difficult and even painful conversations, because all this stuff is, I agree with you, extremely challenging.
The one gabbai I know personally at the Rav was told by the Rav to go cold turkey off all computers and internet for months, a few years ago – and he did exactly as the Rav told him.
A person like that is not like most people, even if they are forced to use a smartphone to connect more people, especially more anglos, to the Rav.
In the same vein, if the tech is being used primarily for outreach – i.e. someone really is passing on the Rav’s messages, info about the prayer gatherings etc, and otherwise hates, hates, hates using their smartphone and tries to avoid it as much as possible, clearly, they are not going to be joining 4 million other Whatsapp groups, wasting all their time watching Youtube, or ‘doom scrolling’ behind the excuse that they need a smartphone for work, or to be in touch with their kids’ teachers.
If in doubt… people should maybe ask the Rav themselves, about what they should be doing, or not, with their phones.
But the point is, to at least DESIRE to minimise it as much as possible, instead of making excuses.
I also don’t want to get into arguments, and I know how challenging all this is truly is. But, I also know that just like with Covid, the few people who don’t get pulled into the herd mentality, even when it’s super, super hard to maintain that line, benefit from doing so in so many ways, ultimately.
And, they also prove to many others that it IS possible, and inspire others to also start taking their own baby steps towards turning this tech prison trap around.