What Sita’s abduction has to teach us about the feed

Sita is in the forest, in the years of exile, and she has wanted for nothing. Then a deer steps out at the edge of the trees, its coat of gold, jewels worked into the hide, light coming off it in pieces. She had never wanted a golden deer, had never seen one, and the wanting is already total, enough that she sends the husband sworn to protect her into the woods to catch it for her.

The deer was not a deer. It was a demon named Maricha, sent to draw her out into the open. She had been made to want a thing that did not exist, and from the inside there was no seam to it. It felt like her own wish, the way every wish she had ever had felt like hers.

The feed was always a trap

“Every social media company has one part whose only job is to decide what shows up on your screen. People call it the algorithm, a set of rules a person wrote down for a machine to follow. Nothing mysterious in it. The feed was built to keep you there, and for years it ran on plain rules a person could read. The trap was built before AI touched it.”

The AI that had already gone to work on you has no face and no window, unlike the chatbot you type to. It had been sorting your feed for years before that, working out its own rules from millions of examples no one can read back. Keep you watching, the aim never changed. Most of what you watch now is chosen by it, not searched for. It felt like choosing the whole time.

Maya

My tradition has a word for this. Maya. People translate it as illusion, a trick of the eye, something out there to see through. It is closer to an illusion of wanting, a desire that did not start in you, that arrives feeling like your own.

There are three lies folded into the deer, stacked one on the next.

The first is that the wanting is yours. It is not. Sita had not spent a year longing for a golden deer and at last found one. There was no longing until the deer stepped out. The want and the deer arrived in the same instant, from the same source. A temptation, you can see, you feel it pull and you decide. Maya is the pull you never feel as a pull. You cannot say no to a hook you cannot feel.

The second is that the deer is real. It is not. Behind the gold there is a demon, and behind the bright clip there is nothing at all, only the next one.

The third I missed the longest, and it is the worst of them. Even if she caught it, it would not have been enough. The deer was bait, and bait is not meant to be eaten. It draws the animal into the open, and the catch was never on offer. A want that someone puts in you cannot be filled by the thing it points at. She would hold the deer and feel nothing, and the wanting would already have slid to the next gold shape at the treeline. This is why the feed has no bottom, why the enough that would let you set it down is the one thing it is built to keep just short of reach.

In our teaching the pull comes in five forms. Lust, anger, greed, attachment, and the wish to be seen. We miss them in ourselves, where they are quiet, dressed as staying informed.

For years my pull was anger, dressed as being informed, geopolitics, who was funding whom. One headline would open a sitting, and forty-five minutes later I would come up holding a verdict, certain I understood. The feed had a clearer picture of what catches me than I do, so I gave the small version of Maya a name. Algorithmic Maya, the veil made personal, run by a machine that knows the part of my own wanting I am blind to. It used to take a lifetime to learn a person this well. Now it takes a week.

The deer costs

The deer was doing a second job while it ran. Rama went after it because Sita asked him to, and when he did not come back she sent Lakshmana after him too, drawing both men guarding her into the trees after a thing that was never real. While she stood there alone, Ravana came and took her.

The feed works the same way. While you chase the bright nothing, the real thing is carried off behind you. That real thing is your attention. You think it costs nothing, because no money leaves your hand. They are paid in money, hundreds of billions of dollars a year, between the handful of companies that run the feeds. It is the price they were paid for keeping you reaching after a deer that was never real.

It does not let me off either. The feed studied me through my own hands, every clip I slowed down on. It only ever caught me on a hook already in me. The only veil I can lift is my own, and it is the one I cannot see.

The question I have left

An algorithm follows rules a person wrote. AI writes its own. That difference is real, and it is not what matters. The feed was a trap on plain rules. AI made it a far stronger one. Neither the rules nor the AI was ever the danger. The aim was.

The danger is that there is a deer at the edge of my own forest, gold and not real, and I want it, and the wanting feels like mine, and most days I cannot see it for what it is. Point this machine at your clarity and it will leave you alone. Point it at your compulsion and it will build you that deer, all day, getting better at it every day.

About the Author

Shireen Chada has practiced meditation with the Brahma Kumaris for 32 years and directs the organization’s Tampa meditation center. She also sits on the National Coordinating Team for Brahma Kumaris USA. She is the author of eight books, including Awakening from the Matrix, Soul Fitness, and Experiencing God, and co-hosts the Spiritual Sense podcast. At shireenchada.substack.com she is working through the Ramayana chapter by chapter, reading it for what it teaches about the mind, alongside essays on contemplative life in an age of feeds and algorithms. She leads meditation retreats internationally and has logged something close to 22,000 hours in formal practice, though she would say the number matters less than what it wore away. Her writing keeps returning to the same question in different clothes. What is actually yours, and what only feels that way.

About The Tampa BK Meditation Center

The Tampa BK Meditation Center has been teaching Raja Yoga meditation to the Tampa community since 1982, free of charge and open to anyone. It is part of the Brahma Kumaris, a worldwide spiritual organization with meditation centers on nearly every continent. The center holds weekly drop in classes on Sundays and Thursdays, along with retreats and special programs throughout the year. bktampa.org

Address: 12615 Orange Grove Drive, Tampa, FL 33618

Awakening from the Matrix: Your Hero’s Journey to Breaking Free & Fulfilling Your Destiny

by Shireen Chada

What if everything you’ve ever believed about yourself and the world is only a sliver of the truth?

Awakening from the Matrix is a transformative guide that invites you to break free from the illusion of identity, roles, and routines—and remember who you truly are: a soul, a being of light, destined for greatness.

Blending cinematic storytelling, ancient wisdom, and deep spiritual insight, this book reimagines your life as a hero’s journey. Drawing from The Matrix film, mythology, and the teachings of the Brahma Kumaris, author Shireen Chada reveals how to decode the inner system of spiritual distortion (Maya), navigate karma, and reclaim your original power.

Whether you’re facing burnout, spiritual stagnation, or existential doubt, this book offers a powerful system reboot—one that upgrades your consciousness, dissolves limiting scripts, and helps you live as the spiritual hero you were always meant to be.

Featuring meditations, modern archetypes, and a clear spiritual map, Awakening from the Matrix will help you:

• Unplug from illusion and reclaim your soul identity
• Transform inner enemies into fuel for growth
• Integrate ancient truths into your modern life
• Discover your higher purpose and live it boldly

If you’re ready to answer the call, take the red pill, and rise, this book is your companion through every stage of your awakening.

The Ramayana Within
What an Ancient Epic Reveals About the Human Mind

by Shireen Chada

Every retelling of the Ramayana asks you to watch Rama, Sita, Ravana, Hanuman, and the others from the outside, like a story that happened to other people, a long time ago, somewhere else. This one doesn’t let you do that. It asks you to find yourself in the story. Each chapter opens inside one character at the exact moment they made a choice. Not the moment before, when it was still easy. The moment itself. Kaikeyi convinces herself she is doing the right thing while she does the wrong one. Ravana hears his own conscience twice, in scenes most retellings skip, and silences it both times. Bharata is handed a throne he has every right to keep. He puts it down. Desire. Attachment. Ego. Love. The invisible choices that shape a life long before anyone else sees them.

For thirty-two years, Shireen Chada has taught Rajyoga meditation. The reflections that follow each chapter grow out of what she has watched in that time. People wanting to change and not changing. Wanting to see clearly and
looking away anyway. You don’t need to know the Ramayana to read this book. You need to have known what the right thing was, at least once, and done something else.

For More information, please visit Author’s web site https://releaseyourwings.org/

About Shireen Chada

Shireen Chada, with over 20,000 hours of meditation experience spanning 30 years with the Brahma Kumaris, is a renowned spiritual teacher, retreat facilitator, and content creator. As the creator and presenter of the Release Your Wings YouTube channel and co-host of the Spiritual Sense podcast, Shireen shares her intelligent, refreshingly creative, and unmistakably authentic wisdom with a global audience. She has designed and facilitated transformative meditation retreats and workshops nationwide, developed comprehensive audio courses on spiritual development and created three popular meditation albums alongside a deck of spiritual power cards. Shireen’s five meditation books — God’s Blessing for You, Soul Fitness, Oh My Goodness!, True Hollywood Blockbuster, and Insperience the Divine — further showcase her ability to powerfully uplift the soul through accessible spiritual guidance.