A world based on escapism cannot produce free individuals. It is not the system that enslaves us; we remain enslaved because we refuse to confront ourselves. If we did, everything would change. The endless pursuit of external validation would lose its hold on us. The consumer economy, which feeds on our dissatisfaction, would crumble. The corporate machine would falter because people who have found themselves do not sell their souls for mere survival. The political apparatus would weaken because minds that are no longer driven by fear are not easily controlled. It would mark the end of the slave mentality and the hierarchies that come with it.

Yet this shift does not begin out there. It doesn’t begin by fighting something external or trying to force change from the outside. It begins with one person willing to sit in the piercing brilliance of their own awareness. They must meet their mind, their pain and their restlessness and transform them from enemies into allies.

We learn to see our mind as a supportive and benevolent force full of light and potential rather than a dark void threatening to overwhelm us with uncontrollable inner chaos. It is in this emptiness that we can actually find a caring and loving foundation on which to stand. We transform our fear of the unknown and the abyss of emptiness into something familiar and trustworthy. Then emptiness becomes space for possibilities, rather than nothingness. It is there that we find our inner creativity: an unending source of constant transmutation and the drive to adapt, change, and create ourselves anew every moment. There, we find our inner light, which enables us to deal with whatever life throws at us.

But how do we break this cycle? How do we stop being ruled by what we refuse to face? It’s not through more, but through less, that we find solutions. The only way is to go in: a radical act of sitting still and facing what we have spent our lives running from.