By Paul von Bergen
Why is it that when we have all this space in the world, most of us like to cram in together in cities. Is it just because of work opportunities? Is it because of the arts? Do we think we will miss out on something otherwise? Perhaps we get a buzz out of traffic jams and living in small boxes!
Living in the cities has a massive impact on our conditioning as our senses are bombarded like never before. Our eyes and ears are constantly absorbing messages and noises and our poor brain has to use a huge amount of energy just to process the information.
What happens is our brain builds up barriers to de-sensitise us. We literally become less senstitive to stimulae in order to deal with so much stimulae.This means that we become only sensitive to the more gross things in life, and our brains are not able to detect the subtle things. Unfortunately the subtle energies are the most amazing and profound ones.
It’s pretty ironic that the closer we live together, the further we seem to get apart. It amuses me that every day I see hundreds of people sitting in internet cafes emailing friends on the other side of the globe, yet most of them don’t even know their neighbours.
The cities are fast, competitive and dominated by business and money. That conditions us and becomes our norm. It’s only when you get out for a long while that you notice it. It’s easy to get numb to the city madness. If you’ve ever done Vipassana meditation and then returned to the city you will know what I mean.
The city is a dangerous place with vehicles everywhere. We produce much more cortisol (the stress hormone) and adreline under these conditons, and this strains and stresses our physical bodies. We breath air that has come from car exhaust pipes.
There is an unbelievable amount of all-spectrum radio-waves from phones, satellites, WI-Fi devices, microwaves and Bluetooth zipping around our brains. It is difficult to imagine a less healthy environment.
Luckily for us in Australia our cities are by the coast which gives us slight relief. I could not imagine ever living in somewhere like London again…