We're born as a free organism on this amazing planet, but soon, everything in our lives is reprogrammed and we no longer exist. We think we do, but we only happen to be operating within a system.
Each of us feels there's something more to our lives than this, but we keep rolling the same stone. Creating labels, giving values to them and setting attachments.
I am always thinking - who wants to bring children to this "Consumerism"... Our purpose became to compete what brand and how much we can consume in our lifetime. That's our value. We are wasting our entire lives to this. Try to look at yourself from the higher perspective. When did you stop being truly happy and free?
When you're a child, you enjoy the life as it is, because you have freedom. Yes, there are some rules involved, but you're still free and you're learning through exploring and experiencing situations. When we ship out of the school to work, all disappears. The system somebody created takes over and like it or not, you get integrated. You become slave driven by rewards of consumerism, but you don't see your true self anymore through so many labels you attach to yourself. It's almost like when you're a child, the system will not touch you, because you're underage and it'll be immoral, but when you hit the legal age, you're in it in full swing. Your vibrational frequency changes from joy to survival.
It will be really interesting to live one year without marketing. No brands, no labels. Funny enough, all futuristic movies have that, have you noticed? There are no signs on buildings, no advertising on doors, windows, streets, clothing, transportation objects....it's all clean. It's peaceful. If you have brands, the pressure is on. What you like versus what your surrounding is able to accept, what's in fashion, etc. It became another language to express ourselves. But is it? Are we really expressing something consciously or rather subconsciously? No matter how you perceive it, it'll be pressure one way or another. If you're poor, the pressure is that you want to wear higher quality brands, so you look richer than you are. If you're rich, the pressure is that you are living on the raised bar and you can't wear anything lower than that, because you can't look or be seen as someone poor.
People don't see the deception behind. You think you made yourself consciously special by branding yourself in some way and that this gave you identity, but subconsciously it's the opposite - by branding yourself, your true identity was taken away from you. The conscious mind responds only to the inputs from all your senses and creates thoughts, whereas the subconscious mind is much stronger and you can't lie to it. You just know. That's why you can't be truly happy by going shopping. When you buy a new branded object, it triggers feelings like happiness and a sense of validation that you deserve something, but it doesn't last long. Next day, you can go and shop again. It's about the act, not the physical object you bought. When you feel down, sad or uninspired, you feel like shopping. It's not because you need something, it's because you want to treat yourself. If the purchasing of the object would work, you'll remain happy and wouldn't have the need to go and shop the very next day again. But that's our battle to understand it. If you try to understand why are you truly doing it, you're going in the right direction, otherwise, it'll always remain pressure.
What does it mean pressure or suffering?
We don't see it that way, but we alone are creating the sufferings in our own heads. It doesn't exist outside that skull. Pressure and or suffering is not present anywhere physically, it just your own thoughts and the way you perceive it. You don't see things as they truly are, but how your mind understands them. And that's different.
If you and someone would be the last two people on Earth and you'll have an argument about which car or clothing is better, if you both suddenly drop dead, there will be no suffering. The suffering never existed. It did exist only in your two minds and in two different forms, forms each of you understood differently. Why are we spending our lives creating attachments to labels we create about everything, instead of truly living our lives? What is so better about it? What more satisfaction it delivers? It's a value we gave it, the label, nothing in its true existence actually has a label. If you take a closer look on any object under the microscope, these structures don't have labels, not yet anyway. These tiny atoms don't have strings with a brand on it. Duality. Your consciousness was taken away from you by making false beliefs and creating attachments to them, you're not trusted to make your own opinion on products/services, the marketing is here to tell you how you should feel about the product/service.
If you buy an object, be it a clothing or car, if it truly would satisfy your needs, you wouldn't desire new the next day. It is a temporary satisfaction of a feeling. Which feeling? You want to treat yourself. It's making your belief stronger, that you deserve things, that you're a good person or mostly, that you want to feel good because your life sucks at the certain period. Have you noticed that impulse if something is going wrong in your life, you need to treat yourself? Get an ice cream, buy new shoes, new dress...but you wake up in the morning and have the same feeling again. You can go and buy another shoes or dress. It's not that you need it, you bought new items just yesterday, but it's because you created the coping mechanism. Instead of dealing with the underlying issue, you replace it with a short temporary solution which feels good. But it's no solution at all. If it would be, the problem in question would disappear with that purchase. It never does. It actually creates more problems. Consumerism. Because of your demand, there are more resources wasted on something that is not needed. It's not the one pair of shoes you bought, it's the whole chain reaction. You've contributed to Marketing studies, what consumers trending, what's selling, etc. This allows new, cheaper brands with similar look/purpose to hit the market, so the battle for the customer can begin. Consumerism. Next time you're in a shop, have a look at the shelves. Do we really need all that crap? For what? We have selections of everything in thousands of variations. What a waste of Earths resources and how much we're wasting of it. Waste it's a proof we don't need things or can't consume them all. But there is a hope. Spirituality is spreading fast and people are awakening and expanding consciousness. The world will be a great place again when we will stop creating attachments to labels and exhausting our resources only to temporarily treat our sufferings.