Samvatsari

• How long can you resist checking your mobile phone for a WhatsApp message, Facebook update or an email?
• How often do you feel an urge to share your latest picture or your recent activity online with your friends?
• How many of you twitter when driving, look for your cell phone as soon as you get up or pose for selfies to post on Instagram?

It’s difficult to resist these trends in today’s era, isn’t it? We might feel that we are connected to people every moment around the world but the bitter truth that most of us will agree to is that, we are disconnected more than ever to those around us. This has led to more stress, lack of trust, misunderstandings and conflicts in our relationships, now than ever before. Over-connectedness to our smartphones, tablets and other gizmos is probably one of the reasons for this menace. Hence, a new challenge that has found place amongst other challenges like a weight loss challenge, happiness challenge etc. is the challenge of TECHNOLOGY FASTING!

“Technology fasting” refers to disconnecting ourselves from all gadgets and connecting to people instead. Medical research says that, while we are fasting, our bodies are in an autophagic state – which means the body is healing and cleaning our cells. Technology fasting gives us scope to free our mind from the umpteen things that we keep doing on our phones, iPads etc, most often to avoid interacting with people because of the fear of not being able to deal with them.

Param Pujya Dada Bhagwan says that, “If someone clashes with you, you do not clash with them; if you can prevail in that, then common sense will arise. You should not clash with anyone; otherwise, you will lose your common sense. There should be no friction from your end. Through another person’s friction, common sense arises in you.” He says, “Common sense is necessary in worldly interactions. Common sense means ‘everywhere applicable’.”

This common sense helps deal with the tough situations that arise in our life without getting nervous.

So let us make this Samvatsari a bit more special with the ONE-DAY TECH FAST challenge and instead connect to people personally. “Samvatsari” is a day of forgiveness, an occasion to ask for forgiveness for any hurt we caused other people with our mind, speech and body and to forgive others. Why not do the same with people whom we meet today? Let us take this small step and make our TECH FAST more meaningful.

So are you ready for it?