Don't drown the still small voice

"Human society has invented many ways to drown out the voice of the gods by mimicking them. Allow the radio to blather on and it becomes a drug whose absence is a terrifying void: television provides sufficient kinetic stimulation for you to feel justified in lying that you have in some way done something just by watching it: computer games create the illusion of a life-environment you can master: loud music suppresses all other sensations: even words themselves can be the greatest barrier to understanding: relationships likewise can shelter you from truth. All provide a temporary defence against that desolate emptiness you sense.
"When you’re hungry you think overwhelmingly of filling your stomach with food: but if your first reaction is to rush out for junk food, or sweets, or alcohol, is that a balanced diet? 'I don’t care,' you may say, 'gimme, gimme!'
"That’s what you’re doing by allowing your senses to become addicted to the quick fix offered by electronic media. It isn’t, spiritually, a sustaining meal; it's a carbohydrate snack promoted by people who need to keep you hungry to keep you consuming. It's no coincidence that psychic emptiness is experienced in the same part of the body as hunger — the gnawing ache, or butterflies with hob-nailed boots! Christ said 'Blessed are they that hunger: for they shall be filled.' You don’t eat properly unless you’re empty. A balanced diet means establishing a natural cycle of need and fulfilment. Contraction/dilation are part of the duality by which the body is nourished. Spiritually, you can't expect to feel full all the time.
"In the natural cycle there are times of fullness, times of digestion, but also times of waiting to be filled, as much as times of actually consuming. If you’re a child you wait to be fed. If you’re an adult you seek food for yourself. Need motivates the search but, based on past experience, your expectation is that its be met. So in spiritual growth: don’t be afraid of feeling empty, it's the natural low point of the cycle which precedes the high. Don’t dash out for psychic junk food to assuage the first pangs of hunger, or stuff yourself with spiritual carbohydrates. Just as you prepare meals for yourself, so prepare yourself for meals. Why always eat alone? Make your eating (edification) a time of sharing and joyful interaction.
It's not difficult to tell the difference between wholefood and junk, if you’re honest with yourself. Ask yourself: 'does it fill me with an interactive psychic energy that really nourishes and inspires me for days? Or does it just assuage my hunger so I can go on watching the TV of someonelse’s life?'
"Seek the natural rhythm in all these things, and rejoice in it."