There is an epidemic disease that is rampant in our culture. It is relatively undiagnosed and insidious in that the disease mechanism gradually enters the being and expands slowly over time until one is fully infected. Because the disease progresses so slowly, one gets so accustomed to it that the abnormality that exists in the body, feels natural. And since almost everyone has the aliment to one degree or another, everyone thinks that it is a normalcy to have the affliction. 

In many ways it is the stuff of horror movies as it also gradually infects the soul. But lately more and more people are waking up to its existence. 

Its called "Emptyitis". It's characterized by a sense of unhappiness, a lack of meaning and a feeling that one is inherently incomplete, deficient and not okay. There is an unconscious compulsion attached to the ailment that causes one to try to find one's happiness outside oneself. 

Often the affliction is associated with another disease called Buystuffism characterized by fits of purchasing and acquisition with cycles of immediate emotional highs and then emotional lows often accompanied by moments of vocal expletives of self-regret such "what the hell did I buy that for" or "boy did I get taken on that one" or "how did I get all this crap in my life".

The disease actually starts early in childhood with watching something called "TV shows" that are imbedded with a virus called a "commercial". Every one of these "commercials" carries an unconscious message, "you are not good enough", "you are incomplete", "life isn't full" "you are not right" Apparently, by the time a child is 16 they have watched over 180,000 of these and they are fully infected and are actively seeking a cure. 

The cure however quite remarkably, as researchers have discovered, also exists in every one of these commercials. It is something called "consumerism" Over the years; many, many pseudo-physicians offering "consumerism" cures have proliferated exponentially, backed by well-funded, solid psychological research. These pseudo-physicians (also known as advertisers) offer an incredible expanding range of unbelievable cures to Emptyitis. 

These cures are often characterized by external materialistic products that give one a sense of excitement, euphoria, fullness and well-being. The active ingredients in these cures are slogans such as: "the real thing", "I am Canadian", " We do it all for you", "Just do it" etc which motivate one to spend one's accumulation of life energy aka "money" on cures that these "advertisers" offer. For many years, it was thought "Consumerism" cured "Emptyitis".

The conclusion after years and years of consumerism is that they only offer temporary relief of fleeting happiness.  After some relief, people begin to feel empty and unhappy again and keep trying more and more cures with the same temporary result. As one Scottish consumer reported "The commercial said that I would look and feel really good using Spray and Wash on my kilt but afterwards I couldn't do a fling with it!"

The bad news is this: the so-called cures of "Consumerism" actually cause the disease of Emptyitis and its affiliate disease Buystuffism. To make matters even worse, there has not been found any effective lasting cure for this disease.  This has lead to many people in our modern culture to begin asking some very deep remarkable questions: 

"if I can't fill the emptiness inside with another hamburger and beer, where will I find true fulfillment?" 

"is there more to life than lower prices in Walmart?" 

"I thought I was a PC owner but now that my hard drive crashed, who am I?"

More and more people are asking these ultimate questions and are starting to look in the place they least expected to find happiness, within.  And like a tide that has turned back on itself, this search is allowing a new level of consciousness to arise; something called Awakening. Here's what some modern writers have written about this state: 

 "All of my worries about the future...and past hurts seemed in that moment of awakening, very small when compared to the vastness of which I was apart. In that moment I knew real joy..." - Oriah Mountain Dreamer

"When you experience who you truly are there is an abiding alive sense of peace. You could call it joy because that's what joy is: vibrantly alive peace. It is the joy of knowing yourself as the very life essence before life takes on form. That is the joy of Being, of being who you truly are."

As each person becomes conscious of the truth of Self, there is the realization that one's true nature is pure, complete and perfect in itself. There is nothing that can make one happy because one is already happy. It is inherent within true being. 

We are not deficient; we are already enough, already dwelling in full potential.  In our true nature we start off this way. And the real task of life is not to try to find happiness, not to try to be perfect. 

To discover that one is already integrally whole just dissipates the neurotic urge to "become a somebody" or a something, and to find something external to fill the void (which in reality is not there) The task is just to be the wholeness one already is and to work on presenting that perfection to the world and to bring forth one's true potential. 

We will also realize the good and bad news about "Emptyitis" The bad news is that we have been trapped in this insidious disease that there is something wrong with each one of us, for which consumerism has offered its cure. Even worse is: there is no cure. However there is incredible good news. 

The good news is this and it is laughable: the disease does not exist. It never ever existed in the first place. Consumerism made it up and we believed it. When we find out who we really are, we will need no cure. All we will need is to do is just be who we really are, be our magnificence and then we can truly get the starch out of our kilts and really have a fling!

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therapist
written by anna sousa, April 21, 2009

This emptyness is also fileld with insatiable ambition, the kind which also points to not being enough...

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