Minimalism as a Mindset
Midway through the path of spiritual seekerhood, there will come a point when life seems to shake everything up. You may even have gone through a period of shaktipad or dark night of the soul experiences. You may find yourself starting over, moving to a new town or a smaller space, living with friends, letting go of a job, or forced into a lifestyle that you feel is less than you deserve, like waiting tables, etc. The testing will come in accordance to each person’s core karmic issues that they hold in relation to their 6 chakras. This episode of disruption may bring a lot of friction and discomfort. But this is actually a good sign and shows that life is trying to get you to let go of the Matrix's flash and wake up to a more fulfilling life. Your ears and eyes will turn to a multitude of spiritual philosophies in the search for answers and one of the paths you may be called to is the art of minimalistic living. Some sects like monks, sikhs, or priests preach the importance of shunning materialism and tout the benefits of a minimalistic lifestyle as a way to get closer to spiritual truth. But this is only half of the situation. The truth here is that you only have to completely remove something from your life until you are no longer defined by it. Most people become defined and adopt the life scripts and struggles of the Matrix as a way to "rise up" to a better lifestyle. But this too is a trap. The Buddha reminds us that living with attachment or desire is the root of suffering. When we detach from Matrix desires and temptations, we live in a state of knowing prompted by gut instinct, as we reflect Source, rather than a state of karmic reacting. This knowing guides us to the opportunities we need for fulfillment in every chakra frequency, which includes physical vitality, career/fortune, relationships, family connections, power/communication, and spiritual living. We tap into the power of our gut instinct rather than reinforcing the memory patterns of past karma through our programmed desires to achieve, attain, love, procreate, etc. Students of any faith may sometimes take the call to asceticism too far and swear off all the fruits of the world and live in poverty, but this is also another form of suffering and embracing the path of the victim and the martyr. We must find a way to move into a mindset of minimalism rather than being defined by a new ascetic lifestyle of “look how spiritual I am because of the life of poverty or service I have taken up.” Remember, relevancy is generated by the ego in many forms, and those who oftentimes view themselves as selfless are just experiencing and prolifcating an egocentric way of living at the opposite extreme. Once we embrace the rocky storms of life that seek to destroy our materialistic foundation, or our definition by our relationships, station in life, beauty, or any other thing, we accept that we are ready to move on to the next phase of our journey. Eventually, we come to realize that this human meatsuit is just a vessel we occupy and all its lifestyle attachments are part of a greater consciousness experiment for the opportunity to grow limitlessly.
