Differentiating Parasocial Relationships with the Divine
The advent of the internet has caused massive fluctuations in our social lives and how we relate to one another. Not only is this impacting our personal lives but it also impacts how we perceive the Divine. This is massively because how we relate to each other on the internet can often be created via parasocial relationships – aka, relationships that don’t exist outside of the imagined experiences with another individual.
This can often look like following your favorite YouTuber or Tiktoker and getting a feel for their personality – their likes, their dislikes, understanding how they operate, etc. which there is nothing wrong with, to be clear.
Understanding a human experience outside of your own from other walks of life is how deep connections can happen and can develop a more well-rounded understanding of our universe therein. Now more than ever, do we get to see how someone from the other side of the world lives. My most memorable experience online is learning how an African woman lives her day to day life in an African village and how she deals with the environment, the day-to-day essentials, and what she does for fun. Another recent one I have enjoyed was following a woman who lives in the middle of the Grand Canyon with her kids in an indigenous village and learning what it means to live somewhere that cars cannot access as well as the culture.
It is an amazing tool, being capable of learning and witnessing the incredible feats of humanity and how they cope with their own individual realities.
As with all things, there most definitely is an imbalance to be had. It comes from having only parasocial relationships instead of organic, non-internet bound relationships that can be free to grow without the constraints of being online. This is scarily dwindling with each incoming generation. Interpersonal relationships and how we cope with daily lives with each other has began to cripple our ability to live our lives instead of the lives of others we see online.
This is, of course, affecting our spiritual lives, as well. It begins to cheapen our experiences with the Divine and develops shortcuts that were never supposed to be there. People begin to either consciously or unconsciously expect a certain caliber of relationship to happen without them putting in the time and effort or do the necessary work required to be aligned with the Divine enough to be able to access this.
Most “beginner” advice points to giving offerings and asking for things in return or doing research and building an altar for the Deity of choice. This is good and all – of course all of those things are important and integral. You should know how to build reciprocity and also understand the culture from which the Deity was created and how that might affect how They interact with you.
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The advent of the internet has caused massive fluctuations in our social lives and how we relate to one another. Not only is this impacting
