Imagine yourself as pure consciousness floating through the infinite expanse of the cosmos.
You are weightless. You feel the brilliant, warm embrace of the universe. You are one with all that is.
You feel a slight pull. You get sucked toward a white light in the distance.
You pop out of a black hole and are birthed into a sea of external stimuli. You feel overwhelmed, confused, and weighed down.
Welcome to the material world.
You see strange people acting in weird ways. Sometimes they whisper. Sometimes they talk. When they scream, it scares you.
They hold you, touch you, look at you, and speak to you. Sometimes you like it; sometimes you don’t.
There’s no way to process it all with a developing brain, so you internalize, copy, and repeat it.
You learn to yell when you want something and cry when you feel pain. But you’re always comforted when your mother feeds you.
Now you understand.
Material things = soothing.
Or at least for a few seconds.
Filling the Void
As a young child, you develop an ability to “regulate” or to form relationships with people, things, and self.
Because you cannot regulate straight out of the womb, you must be taught through experience. Those around you shape and mold you.
The material world anchors you with food almost immediately. The act of eating stimulates your capacity to create relationships for support. When you eat, you feel content. You now associate certain actions with an emotional response.
If your relationships with self or others don’t give you a sense of security or well-being, you resort to:
An attachment to the material that fills the void.
As you grow older, this conditioning sticks with you. You develop self-destructive habits. Now, at the first hint of emotional anxiety, you eat, buy, or drink it all away in a buzz of artificial hormonal elation.
Binge eating, material possessions, alcohol, etc., all give you what that first drop of milk gave you as a baby.
A comfortable relationship.
Uncover Attachment and Let Go
You come into this world, and the sensual riches of the physical plane stimulate your body. The words and actions of others program your mind.
The path of self-cultivation is to reduce the stimuli, become self-aware, and reprogram the mind.
By fasting, or reducing the stimuli, you remove the fog of material pleasure. Your energy is diverted towards self-observation. You allow yourself to become aware. You reflect on your attachments, question how they affect you, and release them if they no longer serve you.
The ego will fight back. Observe how it tries to push you back to sleep. Back to the comfort of your addictions. Back to the familiarity of your attachments. And the security of your conformist mindset.
Resist this urge.
Know that safety in the material is an illusion.
Find peace by letting go of attachments.
When you release attachments, you flow with life. You develop the ability to change your fate through conscious action.
You adopt habits and practices that strengthen your will and move your energy. You change your thoughts, which alter your feelings and refresh your perspective.
You are no longer the person you were before. You feel lighter. A flash of memory paints your mind’s eye.
You are pure consciousness, floating through the infinite expanse of the cosmos.