Staunch Materialist. Materialism is born out of ego and becomes your identity. It is the opposite of pure presence, freedom, spaciousness, and quietness.
I was a staunch materialist. So, there’s this idea of the 3D realm, which basically says that everything that exists is what you can see, touch, and taste. You can experience it with your five senses of sight, smell, touching, hearing, and taste. What is really interesting is that there are actually six categories of sensation. The sixth sense is our thoughts, feelings, emotions, and other internal senses. This sense adjuncts all the other five senses and can also get in their way.
As a Materialist
As a materialist, you’re so stuck in your five senses that you don’t see your sixth sense. You don’t experience your thoughts, your feelings, and your emotions. You don’t see them from the outside. What you do see from the outside is the material realm, whatever you can see, hear, touch, taste, and smell. The problem is that these senses don’t make the complete you. They can’t give you the wholesome experience. You can look at your cell phone several hours a day, but it cannot be a part of you. You are only experiencing it outside of yourself. Even your body is not you. You are what is inside your body, and inside that, and yet even more, beyond that. That’s the truth of reality. Everything else out of your body is just helping you survive, learn and grow.
As a materialist, I was taught that survival means, go to university, get a job, show up to work, and excel. In doing so, try to lead people. The idea of being a leader gets instilled in us. For me, it got instilled even deeper when I was in the military. I was taught that most people are looking for leadership, but very few are willing to step into that role.
Missing Out
As a materialist, you might miss out on thoughts and feelings being objects within your experience. They do not seem to really exist, they are simply ‘you’. And if your thoughts and feelings aren’t real, you can’t comprehend the subtle realm of higher dimensions, deities, angels, higher beings, ghosts, and God. Some people don’t realize that we need to evolve to access this subtle realm. They are judgmental about everything which is not visible. They question that if, for example, ghosts do exist, why don’t we have it on tape? Why aren’t these recordings all over YouTube? They have formed an impenetrable bubble around them. Everything should be provable with tangible second and third party verifiable data, or it’s not real. That is what I call staunch materialism.
A Materialist Perspective
That was my perspective once. I saw everything objectively. I thought that was the right opinion. And, I remember thinking life was great, and I was doing well because of the material benchmarks I had set for myself. But, I only measured my success according to these benchmarks, like having a high six-figure job as a senior architect at one of the biggest companies in my province at the age of 30.
I was so high in the pay scale at my organization that if I wanted a raise, I would have to work elsewhere; And, I didn’t want to stay there for another 30 years because career projection-wise, I was at the end of the road.
Having fancy suits, expensive watches, a fancy car and house, fancy friends. I attended high-end business meetings and functions with champagne, scotch, and cigars. I believed those were the gauges to measure success because I was told so from a young age. All I wanted was to join that club of success. I was taught that to be successful, you had to dress a certain way and talk a certain way. I had to network with the right people by going to these functions. All this was money-focused.
Dangers of Calculated Living
Even when I was making really good money and had everything I wanted, there was still this deep feeling that something isn’t right, and I wasn’t fully aware. I felt the anxiety of playing that game and running in circles after money. If I was meeting someone, I had specific talking points in line with my objectives. I knew from the get-go what I wanted out of this meeting with this person. Everything was utilitarian.
This was a very lonely place to be. A place in which I was playing a role according to the person in front of me. I did what I had to, to extract what I needed. I looked at everything from a material perspective. And, I was leaving nothing to chance. I was not experiencing people and simply discovering the possibilities, I wanted to always manage the situation according to my objectives. I had to curate and create and build everything right as per plan. For my plan, I wanted to know everything beforehand, even if it was not even possible. It was my intention to have everything sorted out before engaging in a conversation with the other person.
Caught Up in My Own Head
At that time, I was in a lot of conversations. I would get so caught up in my head, trying to calculate, curate, and present that face, that if I didn’t have an itemized list of things that I was going to go through, I would get completely lost. There was so much going on up there in my head. I tuned out of the conversation, miss bits and did not know where to go from there. My thoughts got in the way. This anxiety of knowing everything before it could happen created a lot more necessity to curate and create. I didn’t want to show up and just experience it. My worry was to manage the reality and discover what’s going to happen.
It is very dangerous for people to live in such a calculated lifestyle. People have mental breakdowns due to the stress of others seeing their true selves. The real danger is that even the people closest to you don’t see the real you. The face you present is what everyone sees. No one knows and sees the real you. Therefore, nobody really likes the real you. That’s a really lonely place. That’s where this deep loneliness comes from, in a lot of people. Nobody is experiencing the real you. That was the whole point of our existence. It’s really sad and isolating. You don’t get the heartfelt connections.
Staunch Materialist & Loneliness
That loneliness gets you further away from what you really want. As a staunch materialist, you may get more material gains by managing things and being efficient, but that is success in the material realm. You can absolutely follow that path and get that success. My experience, however, is that it just pulls you further and further away from what really matters, the deep, heartfelt connections with people. People should see and experience the real you. You should not have to hide and curate everything, you should not have to deal with all of these distracting thoughts.
When you can look at a tree and experience the tree, and it’s a great experience. Just a simple tree is a great experience if you allow it in. So, imagine how great it would be to experience a human if you allow it. It is a beautiful feeling. I experienced it a lot in my loneliness when I was trying to keep up my fake persona, I felt empty and wanted to fill it. I was unable to fill that void because I didn’t know how to get in touch with my real, unfiltered self. Because at the end of the day, I know the guy that I am, and nobody’s experiencing me. How many people really know that side of me?
Crisis Direct-Line
If we are not careful with the use of our fake face, we will certainly face a middle-aged crisis and mental health issues. People even commit su1c1d3 and m@ss sh**tings because they are just so fed-up with hiding. They want to be seen.
At the end of the day, we have to be brutally honest with ourselves. We have to be very grateful to the universe which has helped us in our journey. And, you have to be constantly critical of yourself and take the corrective measures to get to the right path. You have to constantly go through your internal baggage and bring the problems to light to solve them. Ego, you relinquish your ego, become humble and spiritual.
Help. You can get help from “finders”, the people who specialize in digging into other’s minds and drawing out the information; And, you can ask them a question that you are seeking an answer to and let them extract your genius. This information can help you step into that role of the integrated leader and really embrace what you have to offer.
