The Virtue Trap

Morals and virtues are very important, but make sure to pick the right morals. Be extremely skeptical about them. They can trap you if you're not careful, and bad morals even caused me to completely lose all my love and passion. About four years ago I was curious about the big questions of life, and wanted to find answers. Questions about what makes someone happy, what the meaning of life is, why we are here, questions like that.

I stumbled upon the New Age community, which actually dared to speak about these topics! Previously I was atheist, and didn't really dive too deep into these questions, so people speaking about these kinds of topics were completely new to me. They were actually considering that there was more to life than what met the eye. They made points that what people sense is way more confined than what actually exists in the universe, and that we might not even know the full scale of what exists out there, which made a lot of sense to me.

I learnt about the way the whole universe was made out of frequencies, how the ego worked, what crystals did, symbolism, angels. I got answers to my questions, and a lot more. Apparently, I came here on a mission to help the earth reach a higher level, and I liked the sound of that a lot. I was now initiated and had special knowledge, I finally got to know my predetermined "purpose". The universe had reached me, so I was told, and now I had to play my part.

What did this mean? I had to look out for evil, had to keep myself protected from their influence. I needed to develop my energy systems, because it might've been unprotected! I had to purge and purge and purge bad habits. They might've been demons trying to possess me! I even had to learn good magic in order to protect myself.

Well then, that's what I did. Proud of my newfound purpose and identity, I got to work purging all bad things from my life. I wanted purity, to transcend myself. I was told that was my goal, and that approaching that goal would give me happiness. I started wearing crystals, started being extremely helpful for others, started having daily habits to "keep my chakras clean" and to develop my energy body.

I got into the purge, purge, purge mindset, and anything about myself which I didn't see as part of my identity just needed to be purged. My irritations about others? Purged. Wanting to buy something cool? Purged, it's material pleasure after all, which was bad! I learnt that money was like energy, and that I needed to keep my energy to myself, so I just didn't spend any money on things I liked. Nice food, a piece of candy? Purged. All material pleasure, so it was bad. All things material were shunned, because I learnt that the spiritual was better, and the material would only hold me down and give me misery.

I eventually got the feeling that I was missing something, something completely vital to my experience, something I was completely starving for, but I just couldn't put my finger on it. It felt miserable, like a gaping black hole in my heart I couldn't close. Looking for that missing thing, I thought that maybe I just hadn't cleansed myself enough, and I looked at my diet.

I became vegetarian, because eating meat could also be infecting me, because I was eating death energy. Made a lot of sense at the time. I also had to say to others that I was fully behind that decision, and that I was not just pretending to not like meat anymore, because I needed to be strong, as that would develop my willpower.

This lasted for years, and eventually my taste for meat subsided. So did my taste for all other food. Eating became completely pleasureless. I was eating from a distance. I could see the taste, but I didn't feel pleasure from eating at all. Social interactions, even with friends, were also performed from a distance. Always laughing at their jokes, helping them with their problems, trying to appeal to them, making it look like I was the perfect person. All my encounters were tactical, planned, and cold. I could lay in the grass looking up at the starry night above, and feel completely nothing. I would see stars, but only stars. I felt like a zombie inside. Living, but actually dead. Life was stripped away, and I was just performing the actions. I was just a spectator, and the sense that I was missing something only grew bigger and bigger. Not necessarily depression, but just emptiness. I couldn't feel anger, passion, and love anymore. All pleasure was gone. Those were taken away, while my fears still remained.

Next to the gaping hole, the everlasting hunger, I kept having the sensation that my whole psyche was built on foundations of sand, which could crumble at any moment. In retrospect this was completely true, but at the time I just said to myself that I could hold on, that at some point it would get better and I would finally find the dear, dear life I was scrambling for. I would find what was promised to me.

Well, I didn't, and I considered going down dark paths in order to get my needs met. I had to fulfill my hunger after all, because I felt like an anorexic, a martyr, and I've felt like it for so many years. The thought didn't even occur to me that it was of my own making. The worst part was that I was physically completely healthy, so there were no illnesses I could point at.

Eventually I got interested in the way echo chambers form, because I wanted to find out how people could become so overtaken by them. By this research I made the ironic discovery that I was myself trapped by them, and have been working on escaping them for about half a year now.

I've made the discovery that discipline, in its extreme, has the potential to completely wreck all your love and your feelings. I just focused on purging habits by brute force, New Age style, and purged everything that made me human.

If you have strong morals and virtues about certain things like alcohol, or sex, or what foods you should be eating, diets, anything that involves material pleasures, be extremely critical of them and assess them with a lot of skepticism. Don't make my mistake and kill all your love with your discipline. Material pleasures are good, they are part of being human, and should be embraced in proper moderation. Enjoy them in their fullest, but don't become addicted.

If you want to get rid of copes, addictions and bad habits, don't do it by sheer force, do it with self-love. Try to find out why you are engaging in those practices, try to find the source of the problem. Purging the habit by force won't help in the long run if it's caused by a problem you have. The forces we're working with are stronger than our willpower. Be kind to yourself, and try to resolve whatever is causing you to do those things first. The parts of us engaging in bad habits want to be heard, not supressed. Removing the behaviour itself is less important to focus on.

For all my critique of the New Age movement, I must admit that it taught me a lot about symbolism, magic and the big questions of life. It did open me up a lot to those things, which I appreciate, but still most of it is lies. It appeals to your ego and says you are special, so you believe their lies. It twists the fact that humanity knows nothing in a disgusting way to justify anything and everything. They use it to push their explanations of the unknowable things onto you. They give you flawed methods to fix your problems. New Age is not it, sadly. Following it directly kills your love. At least, that's my experience with it. It's probably different for each, I couldn't tell you.

Currently I'm in the process of recovering my love using a new belief system, based on a lot of existing ideas I've encountered and am trying to bring together. A new set of morals and virtues, focused on embracing new experiences and questioning our existing beliefs. One where we know how our minds get hijacked by ourselves and others, in order to stop them straight in their tracks. It's in the prototyping phase, but I'm having some great results so far.

If you've made it this far, I hope you've found some value in this post. I don't really feel qualified to write about this kind of stuff, but hopefully it could help someone, maybe with similar experiences. Please leave a comment down below, as I'd love to hear your perspectives.