I’m teetering on the edge of the twitterverse, about to fall. After years of avoiding it, I finally accept that it’s not merely a distracting stretch of passing scenery on the human journey. After all, what’s on our minds is the journey, is it not? All action is a result of preceding thought, deliberate or random. The idea is to somehow acquire the discipline to make it more the former than the latter. “Mind” is the ether we’re made of. It’s the unified field/God particle that physicists spend lifetimes trying to reduce to an equation. Everything we think, consciously or unconsciously, exists anyway in real energetic form. The more we think it…the longer and harder we focus on it…the more form the thought accrues. “If you dream it, they will come.” The only difference is that before Twitter and texting, we kept most inconsequential (and some consequential) thoughts to ourselves. Now we’re out there like billboards—transparent and exposed. Now we can put a name to the thinker.

This medium serves us because while it exposes some good, it also exposes the tendency toward negativity and abuse in all of us. Twitter didn’t invent the thought, just the venue. Any social media, but especially Twitter because it’s so spontaneous, encourages all thought to rise to the surface. Once exposed, as a human family we can examine the contents of our collective Mind. Think of it as a closet. First you have to take everything out to see what’s in there. Just because something’s hidden doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Maybe some of the hate and prejudice in the lower cabinet is putting out a foul odor. Maybe the entertaining adolescent behavior in the middle drawer no longer serves you as a responsible partner or parent. Maybe you’ve run out of room for the piles of old belief systems crammed in the corners. Once you see it all spread out in the hallway, you know exactly what to do with it. Keep it in the closet and you’ll never sort it out.

The next time someone complains that the world is a mess because of social media like Twitter, remind them that we live in a world of duality. Everything that comes into this world has and always will have the potential for good and bad. It’s we who decide how it will be used. Maybe one of these days we’ll see our collective inner Self in the mirror of Twitter and become accountable not only for our deeds and words, but for the thoughts that give rise to them.