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Everything gets quiet, for just a second, before you hear it…

The rumble that arrests your attention, and makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up…

Flood! And now everything’s being swept away, you included!

Oh my gosh, did you just get caught in a huge rainfall? Not really. All you did was open up your browser, and go online.

Call it a flood, a glut, or just the price of living in the 21st century, there is a lot of information (that’s an understatement) coming your way every moment of everyday.

With so many emails, blogs, websites, forums, articles, instant messages, phone calls, tv shows, newspapers, magazines, movies… trying to stay on top of it can easily feel like trying to stay dry in a flood.

How do you do handle it all?

Obviously, you’ve got to be selective. There’s no way any one person can stay on top of everything that’s happening in the world. It never has been true, and never will be.

And yet, the sheer volume of information sources out there, and the urgency of their headlines, would have you believe that you’re somehow falling behind if you don’t become an information junkie, and try to absorb it all like a big sponge.

So the question becomes, “How do I manage it, then? How do I choose?”

Well, how do you choose what kind of food you eat?

When you go to a buffet, do you eat a little bit of everything? You might try (and it might take you three plates full to do so), but that ends up being overwhelming in itself, and ultimately, not satisfying.

Instead, you choose only those foods which you know you like. Instead of half-spoonfuls of everything, you get one spoonful of three things. And not only is your digestion better, but because you enjoy each dish you eat, the meal is that much more fulfilling.

And the parallel here is…?

When it comes to information, trying to take in little bits of every single thing that comes your way is just too much. Instead, the key is knowing what sources actually nourish you, and taking what you need from those.

And how, pray tell, do you know that?

Shakespeare said it best, through the character of Polonius, in “Hamlet”:

To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.

The more you are true to yourself, i.e. the stronger sense you have of who you are and what’s right for you, the less you will be caught in the flood of what’s coming at you from the world.

It’s about boundaries

Without that strong sense of self, you are less clear about what you need or don’t need. And with that sort of loose boundary around your needs, it’s easy to look at all the information circulating out there and think, “Hmm, maybe I need that [to feel complete], let me just read a little more…”

But once your sovereignty is stronger, the compulsion to devour endless buffet lines of information diminishes.

But, what if I miss something?

Ah, the voice of fear shows itself…

It’s easy to fear that without opening yourself up to all that information out there, that you’ll miss something, or even stay small in some way because you aren’t staying current.

In truth, the opposite is actually true: Having a strong sense of who you are (and from that, what you need) makes you large, spacious, and full – from the inside, not the outside. It allows you to know intrinsically when you need to act with what you have already, and when you need to reach out for more.

Okay, so how do I be true to mine own self?

Knowing yourself, and having clear, strong boundaries around your personal integrity, happens through having a clear relationship with the Divine.

What I mean is this: If you define yourself through your relationship to the world, then your heart is always looking outside of you for your measure of who you are.

(You might want to read that again; it’s an easy one to gloss over…)

But, if you define yourself through your relationship with the Divine, then you are looking inside of you for your measure of who you are.

Carl Jung said,

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart…. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

Essentially, the reflection you’ll always get from the mirror of the world is that you are small and separate, because, by definition, we live in a world of duality: it’s either ‘self’ or ‘other’. You are you, and I am me.

But when you tune into your heart (using a practice like the Remembrance* for this is golden), and feel what gets shown to you through the mirror of the Divine reflection (where there isn’t ‘self’ and ‘other’, but just ‘one’), you see sufficiency and fullness. You can feel how you, no matter where you’re at, is “enough”. There’s no such thing as lack when your heart is full.

Ahhh.

Sounds good… but, how do I navigate in the world like that?

Good question.

Rather than try to swim through the flood on your own, get into the lifeboat of your heart. Feel who you are, and what you need, from a place of connection.

And then, when you go to your favorite forum/blog/networking/news site, or turn on the tv or go to a bookstore, you’ll be able to stay tuned into your own knowing of what you need, and pass up the bazillions of gallons of water that flood through your (cyber)space, only drinking what you need.

Whew. Okay, now that you’re more internally solid, let’s look at how to manage the flood.

Back to the buffet…

Let’s go back to the analogy of the more-than-you-could-conceivably-eat buffet. Rather than taken half-spoonfuls of everything (the manifestation of a fear of lack), you’ve got one spoonful of three dishes on your plate.

Enough. Beautiful.

So, now the question is…

How to best digest what you’ve got

Because if you scarf it all down faster than a car at a yellow light, you’re going to have indigestion.

Trying to read, watch, or listen too quickly and without attentiveness leads to indigestion of the mind. Indigestion means “not digesting completely”, which in this sense means you may have read the words, but you didn’t really absorb the meaning.

You’ve plowed through a dozen blogs, but not reflected on what you’ve learned, integrated the information, or formed any meaningful ideas. You’ve scarfed up the buffet without even pausing to savor a bite of it.

That’s no good. Because it’s absorption that you want.

How to absorb your meal

Absorbing the information means that you’ve taken the concept presented to you, and brought it into your system in a way that allows you to make the most of it.

It’s the difference between scanning an article and saying, “Okay, I got it,” versus taking time to think, reflect, and even question what you’re reading.

To say to yourself, “Hmm, okay – I see what they’re saying, and it makes sense enough to me,” or, “Alright, I see the point they’re making, and if they’re right, then that brings the way I’ve been doing it so far into question. Let me take some time and ponder this one a bit…”.

Oh, and by the way… whether you agree with what you’re reading or not doesn’t matter. What matters is that you understand what’s being said, and either assimilate it or (pardon me while I continue the analogy)… um… excrete it, depending on whether it’s right for you or not.

And just how do you know if it’s right for you or not?

That’s the $64,000 question, isn’t it?

Let’s break it down, shall we?

• Chew it: Make sure as you read it, you pay attention to the key concepts that stand out to you (they could be the main points of the piece, or marginal bits that for some reason, cause you to take notice).
• Take it slow: Even if you’re a speed reader, or tend to skim often, when you get to a particularly juicy bit, you’ll want to slow down and savor what you’re reading, just to make sure you’re getting the whole message. Reading it out loud does wonders for your comprehension, too.
• Feel its impact: Here’s where it starts getting fun. When you read something, the first understanding you have of it comes into your mind. But then, if you sit with it longer, its real meaning will start to sink in to your heart. You can actually feel it drop in to a deeper place inside you and go ‘clunk’, like dropping a brick in a swimming pool, and listening for the ‘clunk’ when it hits the bottom.

The eagle has landed

When information ‘clunks’ in you, it means you’ve got it. It has gone from being a mental idea, floating around outside you, to a grounded concept that has landed inside your consciousness. And now, it’s something you can use.

When you eat food, whatever you absorb gets used by your body to nourish and sustain you by becoming a part of your physical body. Similarly, whatever knowledge you absorb can become a part of your body of knowledge, ready for you to use. But, until you actually use it, you won’t really know what you’ve got.

Use it or Lose it

Once that information is inside you, the way to find out its real value is to use it.

Act on it. Explain it to someone. Write an article or blog post about it, but put it in your own personal context (that’s digestion at its finest). Teach about it. Share it. Apply it in your life. Create with it.

This is how you’ll come to know just how useful it is. And when you act on what you’ve learned, you bring your own distinct, flavorful understandings into it as well, which ripens the knowledge and makes it uniquely yours.

And that’s what lets you have a dish to share with the world, too.