Leading A Simple Life: 5 Steps to Aligning with Peace.
What does it mean to lead a simple life? What does it look like? What does it feel like? And most importantly—how different from your current life is it?
I’m starting todays lesson off this way, to get you thinking very factually.
What is Simplicity?
Simplicity is a way of thinking, acting, and communicating that allows you to move with the current of life rather than fighting against it.
Simplicity is highly spiritual, healing and incredibly enjoyable. But because we’ve become so allured by the habit of wanting and getting, strengthened by our addiction to immediacy, we’ve lost touch with it.
So what does simplicity mean?
It means a state of ease. As a personality trait, it’s a quality of being easy to understand, free from complication, and a presence that is plain without extra decoration. Simplicity is an ease in thought, an ease in the choices a person makes, an ease in effort, and ultimately an ease in how a person leads their life.
Simplicity often refers to a lifestyle choice. A simple life, centered around removing excess in order to make room for the bare necessities and the enjoyment of them. A simple life is a life of nature, presence, peace, and quiet moments that bring a genuine sense of fulfillment, rather than “chasing more.”
Simplicity may not be a “busyness,” but it is effort.
Simplicity does not mean you’ve taken a day off from your duties nor does it imply dialling back your involvement with your inspirations. Simplicity is also not the absence of a wild hunger to live. To choose simplicity means you’ve learned that life operates in a frequency. And that by becoming one with this frequency, you move with the current of life rather than against it.
5 Steps to a Simple Life
If you feel exhausted, fragmented, or "small," it is most likely because you are out of alignment with the current of life—with your biological and spiritual design.
To help you return home to yourself and to find an ease that has you sitting upon the rooftops of life, I have distilled key principles from the Vedic path into five essential steps.
Step 1: Slow Down the "Velocity" of Your Thinking & Effort.
Simplicity starts with a change in speed. When we slow down, we instil a steady, sustainable velocity (speed) to our thinking, to our effort, to our aspirations, which in response slows down our view of life.
Think of it like this:
If you slow down the scene of life you are observing—you are altering your reality.
Have you ever watched a movie and couldn’t quite understand a certain scene, so you hit rewind and went frame by frame to clarify your confusion? By doing this, you gave yourself more time to:
See what was happening
Interpret and comprehend what you were experiencing
This is why simplicity is part and parcel with spirituality. By choosing simplicity, you are slowing down your velocity of thought, which is slowing down the velocity of feeling, which is in turn slowing down the velocity of your reactions—giving you control over how you witness and interact with life. This reduction in speed enables you to effectively become one with the frequency of your natural environment, witnessing the subtle scenes that pass by unnoticed.
So to distil this even further, try to just slow down when you are in an environment. Whether your in your car, at home, in the lineup at a grocery store, sitting on a park bench. Slow down, observe, and pick up on the subtle currents of the wind moving through the leaves. Acknowledge the patterns of nature around you. Give yourself permission to soften.
Step 2: Diagnose Your "Intellectual Adolescence"
Before you can rise into our inherent truth, you must reflect on your current state. Most of us operate from a seat of "intellectual adolescence.” In this state, we are lead by impatience, dependency and incompetence, influencing an insecurity and lack of gratitude towards our body and potential.
Check your internal dialogue for these three markers of ungratefulness:
The Body: "It’s not beautiful enough."
The Environment: "Swimming in the lake is not enough; we need a boat. We need a floaty."
The Senses: "This fresh food isn't tasty enough; it needs more flavour."
Recognize that these examples of thought are driven by a deep, unprocessed hunger “for more”. To move toward simplicity, toward peace, you must first witness the "neurotic" habits you’ve been using to mask your discontentment in life.
When you reflect on how you currently live your life, what do you notice? Is it simple, is it steady, is it stable, or is it busy? Are you looking to the next thing, or are you resting in the zen-garden of now?
Here’s a thought-exercise for you:
Reflect on how you wake up, how you look in the mirror at yourself, how you choose your clothes, how you eat your food, how you make your plans, how you work, how you think, how you feel, and how you tell the truth.
If you can see this example in yourself, you can see how at a philosophical level you are unconscious of how ungrateful you are in a moment to moment basis and how you live for others, but not yourself.
Step 3: Relax Grasping for the Four Material Derangements
My life changed drastically when I realized I was chasing ghosts. To align with a simple life, you have to witness how you are chasing these Four Material Derangements, and prioritizing them:
Fame: Driven by a deep-seated fear of insignificance and held hostage by the opinions of others, the desire of fame triggers a chronic state of performance anxiety. It flips your consciousness into a permanent "audition mode," where you are constantly morphing your authentic expression just to fit in and buy applause. The problem is once you are there, the people in your life aren’t genuine relationships but rather an audience, a metric, or prop to validate your existence. Because fitting in is tethered to validation through the minds of others, it is governed by extreme impermanence. No amount of public acceptance or applause can cure an inward sense of empty isolation. This pursuit makes you highly reactive and irrational. You start grinding the gears of your life towards curating a flawless digital avatar while burning through your actual mental peace. You sacrifice your integrity just to protect a temporary reputation. The "Somebody Complex" in you needs notoriety to feel relevant and alive. The "Nobody" in you recognizes that true significance is internal—that you don't need to be witnessed by the world to exist profoundly.
Money: Driven by a fear of impermanence and held hostage by a future of not having enough triggers a deep, primal panic. It flips the nervous system into survival mode, and once you are there, the people you love stop looking like family and start looking like competition or liabilities. You convince yourself that "just a little bit more" will finally bring peace. But because money is tethered to the material world, it is governed by impermanence. No amount of money can cure a deep-seated fear of scarcity. This panic makes you irrational. You start grinding the gears of your life, working endless hours, and burning through your vitality. You sacrifice your peace and family to protect the temporary (a bank balance). The "Somebody Complex" in you needs wealth to maintain status and feel significant. The "Nobody" in you recognizes that money is simply energy that if used correctly, can help keep the vehicle moving—nothing more, nothing less.
Sex: Driven by the primal urge to escape isolation and held hostage by the cheap dopamine loop of momentary pleasure, this derangement triggers a restless, hunting mentality. It flips the nervous system into a state of chronic hunger and searching, where you’re constantly seeking a temporary biological "high." Once you are trapped in this cycle, the people you interact with stop looking like sacred souls and start looking like pleasure objects, conquests, or tools for your own immediate gratification. You convince yourself that the next encounter, the next fantasy will finally make you feel whole. But because sexual stimulation is entirely fleeting, it is governed by the law of diminishing returns. No amount of physical friction can cure a spiritual ache for oneness. This fixation clouds your judgment entirely. You start grinding the gears of your life, chasing short-term physical peaks that leave you feeling hollow an hour later. You sacrifice your relationships, focus, and self-respect to protect a temporary biological release. The "Somebody Complex" in you uses physical desire to feel desired, attractive, and validated. The "Nobody" in you recognizes that one, sexual energy is for procreation and two, if this sacred creative force is used correctly and channeled inward, becomes the very fuel for self-realization.
Power: The desperate egoic urge to control external outcomes, people, and environments because you cannot control yourself. Driven by a terrifying fear of vulnerability and held hostage by the illusion that you can manipulate people and reality to your will, power triggers a hostile, hyper-vigilant state of mind. It activates the “protectionist mentality”, and flips the nervous system into a permanent defensive posture. Once you are there, the people around you stop looking like companions and start looking like stepping stones for advancement, people that can be manipulated, threats to be neutralized, or subordinates to be managed. You convince yourself that if you just acquire a little more authority, a higher status, or total control over your environment, you will finally feel safe. But because external control is a total illusion, it is governed by constant volatility and hostility. No amount of dominance can cure an internal sense of powerlessness and self-doubt. This obsession makes you cold and rigid. You start grinding the gears of your life, manufacturing conflicts, playing political games, and burning through your capacity for understanding and reasonability. You sacrifice your peace, your humility, and your open-hearted connections just to protect a temporary throne of influence. The "Somebody Complex" in you demands power to feel bulletproof and superior. The "Nobody" in you recognizes that true power is not the ability to control external outcomes, but the absolute mastery over your own internal state—nothing more, nothing less.
When you stop prioritizing these Four Material Derangements, the "busy" urges that drive and distract your life begin to evaporate. You have to understand that you aren't losing anything; you are clearing the neurotic urges so you can finally hear the resonant frequency of your own soul.
Step 4: Synchronize with the Elements
At your very core, you are a borrowed accumulation of your surrounding elemental environment. To find grounding, you must return your physical biology to its source.
Earth: Eat living, fresh foods / ground barefoot
Water: Drink fresh, clean water / cleanse in the river, lakes and streams
Sun: Bathe your skin in the pranic biophotonic light
Air: Breathe fresh air / clear the inner stagnant air / cleanse your bare skin in the wind
Ether: Be in and imagine you are surrounded by infinite space
As your busy life is replaced with these simple acts, your elemental structure begins to synchronize with nature. The fragmented versions of "you" will begin to collide and merge and move with you in one cohesive direction.
Put you bare feet on the ground
Dress in natural fibres, coloured with plant dyes
Eat fresh living foods
Bathe in the rivers and lakes
Take solo retreats into the deep forests
Become one with the resonant frequency of nature
Step 5: Trade Urges for Awareness
Realize that steady, relaxed thinking cannot arise out of a life driven by constant urges, clutter, disorganization, and material excess. Simplicity is a way of living, solving and communicating that prioritizes Less over More, Presence over Pressure.
Case in point, I’ve always had a strong mind and a good heart, but in my early years, due to a lack of mentorship, I allowed myself to become a degenerate, choosing to fit in instead of being who a truly was.
Like you, I wanted more. I wanted to be cool. I wanted to fit in. I wanted to be rich. I wanted to be known. I wanted power. And this “want and effort” persisted for so many years. Even in the face of intense hardship, struggle and loss—I kept trying to “make it work".
And like you, I often asked myself if this “Would ever end?”
And it did. My life changed drastically when I slowed down. In this simplicity I woke up out of my unconscious sleep and became conscious. I started thinking differently, feeling differently, eating differently, dressing differently, and ultimately I became conscious of my busy unproductive daily patterns. I stopped pursuing fame, money, sex and power.
What happened next was nothing short of extraordinary. The elemental structure of my biology started synchronizing with the elements of nature. And as my busy life was taken over by simple living, all fragmented versions of me that I had created, collided. And for the first time in my life I was moving holistically in one unified direction.
Your journey toward simplicity is a return to your true Self. If you feel a yearning for this ease, I invite you to leave a comment below. Let’s discuss how you can take your first step away from the noise today.
