The crash after overconsuming is like a climax of consciousness. It often begins as something fearful, anxious, even paranoid— and then explodes into an argument, a blowout, and a sense that whatever we have been consuming is bad or dangerous. Then we demonize it.
One of the sure signs we are past fullness is the beginning of the grip of attachment. This is where we are not merely enjoying anymore, we are hearing the call to go in another direction or do something else, and there is an internal refusal to do so.
At first, continuing to push into places where we have overconsumed feels good and is highly rewarded in culture. It is the root for most of what we call romance, pleasure, and luxury.
It is when we begin to constrict around, collapse, and fixate on something in such a way that the value-neutral openness begins to shift due to constriction. At first, constriction feels so good, like a huge relief from the state of going out beyond our range of what we enjoy—connection, production, creation—rather than deliberately taking a rest.
However, consuming until unconscious contraction kicks in is like when we activate the climax impulse rather than peaking. Intense reaction is the result of not stopping when full and allowing this grip or fixation to begin its automatic constriction until we explode.
Then, because the explosion is scary, we look back to the thing that we were doing at the point of explosion and blame that rather than blame our unconscious overconsumption.
If at the first impulse of wanting to constrict or hold, we stop, rest, or switch attention to something else, we find our world is a much kinder place. The ghosts that bring so much fear will reveal themselves as something we loved and tried to hold on to, rather than honor by letting them go and taking the time and energy to adequately digest the experience.
In fact, when we truly digest, we discover that not only does our intimacy with the experience become greater, we also get to have the second half of the experience—which is just as profound and as powerful as the first half.
Then, emptied of what has filled us, we can fill what is now empty in a way that truly nourishes. When we “peak,” we get the experience of letting go. When we eat a big meal and go for a walk, we get the pleasure of digestion. When we share how a great experience touched us, it connects us to the world outside of ourselves. Rather than losing the last experience, we gain a whole new one.