May is an exciting month for me this year as by the time you are reading this article in High Spirit my Fertility App will be available for download on iTunes for your iPhone and iPod touch.

‘Ok, back up Jules,’ I hear you say, ‘Fertility App! what is an app and also there is a lot of ‘i’ references going on too, like phone, tunes and pod touch?
An app is an interactive program that can be used with your i phone,  covering everything from finding the time of your next train home, playing your favourite computer game or locating the nearest pizza restaurant to your place of work.
In short I have over time been cautious of the technological revolution and the destructive sides to technology, supposedly making things easier for us yet actually sometimes making us more isolated, insular and less trusting of our intuition and less involved with nature.  I decided upon the ‘app’ as a way to embrace the positive sides of technology so as not throw the baby out with the bath water so to speak.
I have certainly on a personal level had two specific issues with technology which are probably best covered by the two quotes below.
All of the biggest technological inventions created by man – the airplane, the automobile, the computer – says little about his intelligence, but speaks volumes about his laziness.
Mark Kennedy
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.
Albert Einstein
All I can choose to do about technology is embrace the aspects that fit in with my own code of ethics and not become involved with the rest. The fertility app was a way I felt we could take one of the most important issues of our human and spiritual journey (Pregnancy) and offer a fully holistic programme that was affordable and all encompassing,  when people were searching to understand fertility options.
The app itself is the first of its kind on many levels. We have brought together a leading IVF specialist – Dr. Laurence Shaw – who covers all aspects of what to expect medically with IVF and fertility options and myself. I have recorded video explanations, audio guided visualisations, questionnaires and a 60 day programme towards optimum fertility looking at the emotional and spiritual causes of infertility and how addressing those areas can help.
The app is £3.99 and available worldwide to anyone who has an  iPhone or iPod touch. That means any mother, potential mother or couple who are considering having a child can bring into the comfort of their own home 24 hours a day, medical, emotional and spiritual information and healing – that to me was a big plus side of modern technology.
On the broader subject of technology and Spirituality, it will at the end of the day come down to technology reflecting your own beliefs, thoughts and emotions. If you believe that you are genuinely saving paper by e-mailing work that may have required reams of printed paper you will have consciously and subconsciously lived by that maxim and made it positive for yourself and others.
If there isn’t a conscious belief or statement of intent with your use of technology then it is the sort of tool that will creep up on you, knock you over the head and be ruling your life before you have given it a second chance of re-evaluation.  For example there are numerous cases of people using ‘Sat Nav’ (in car satellite navigation) in their cars and driving into flooded streets, taking 100 mile detours or literally driving off cliffs all because “The sat nav told me to go this way.”
If we use the example of Sat Nav first, there are lots of subtle shifts going on here spiritually if you use the navigation system religiously – excuse the pun – like many people do. First and foremost it disconnects you from your own intuition, from your own discernment and your own trust in your ability to find your way, and yes you could take this as a metaphor for your whole life.
The more you use something that you are basically handing over responsibility to the more reliant on that technology you become and consequently you lose another chunk of your ability to take responsibility. That can then become a patterned form of behaviour in a broader sense too. If you look at a map, make directions and then during your journey absorb your surroundings and mentally keep track of your progress there is a whole host of positive self accepting skills that you are employing compared to leaving it to the computer to direct you.
Mobiles are another example. On many levels they have certainly made our life easier and have many positives, but on the other hand I see people all the time in their own little worlds constantly on their mobile phone, forgoing quiet time, forgoing taking in their surroundings, forgoing real interaction with people, heads down texting, playing games, waiting for the message or having to use it, having to make calls – who is controlling who? Is the person controlling the mobile phone or is the phone controlling them?
Also when I was a teenager, I knew my parents, my friends and other important telephone numbers off by heart or they were written down and kept in my wallet or on me at all times, so if I needed to call one of them I knew the number.
The amount of times these days I hear people saying the battery on their mobile has run out and they desperately need to call someone but can’t as the number is in the mobile – Why? Because lazily they are stored as a name in the mobile and they didn’t think there was a need to memorise it or keep a written note of it. That is akin to the quote above where you can substitute the word laziness, for ‘didn’t think’ as in ‘technology was taking responsibility for me.’
There are numerous other examples in our everyday life where this handing over of responsibility and damping down of our intuition is taking place, as the sketch show Little Britain showcases ‘computer says no.’ It is always worth running a checklist through your everyday life and seeing where you are handing over your responsibility and intuitive trust to technology and then seeing if you are happy with that or could reclaim your power in some way again.
I’m not being a luddite with the few examples I have given during the course of this article, but wanted to open the window for all of us to embrace technology that we choose to assist us, but recognise where we are being led by it.
Which brings us full circle. Max Frish can be quoted as saying “Technology… the knack of so arranging the world that we don’t have to experience it”.  Which I fully agree with so as with the app, it is a technological tool fully geared to experiencing the world which we do through living and bringing life into it.

Jules Williams x