"Lifestyle Minimalism" conflicting with "Burning through karma"

[EdgeGod900]

I have been applying lifestyle minimalism for some time now(meditation, university, and a bit of socialization) and I have gradually improved my happiness and satisfaction with it. But I recently watched the "Burning through karma video which lead me to now enabling my self to play video games and browsing the internet more frequently. This affected my schooling and meditation a little bit. So although I will probably be fine having the minimalistic lifestyle, I am scared of suppressing these urges because they might comeback with much more intensity.

 

Also, how does one distinguish between "Doing the most emotionally difficult" vs allowing your urges to control you until you are full.?

[LastThursday]

This seems like the conflict between avoidance (minimalism) and exposure (buring through karma). For example if you have a phobia of spiders then is it best to avoid them or expose yourself to them? Which is the best path?

In your case it looks like minimalism (avoidance) is harder to maintain than burning through karma (exposure). This is probably just your natural inclination or what you've been used to in the past.

Minimalism is fairly easy to understand. But exposure in the context of burning through karma is harder. The point of exposure is really about constant or over exposure. To treat a phobia with exposure, you have to consciously and purposefully expose yourself to your phobia over and over again, until it gets recontextualised. It's the same with the burning aspect of burning through karma. Burning is a good word for it because it highlights this over-exposure process. You are trying to recontextualise your urges by enacting them over and over again with conscious intent.

There are dangers with over exposure though. Firstly, that you don't do it enough. For example you never cure the phobia because you don't expose yourself enough to spiders for example. Secondly, that you become addicted. Some urges are best avoided beforehand than exposed because once exposed (e.g. to cocaine) it becomes exceptionally difficult to switch to avoidance in future. This highlights the fact that many urges are dangerous or unhealthy, you are causing lasting damage either physically or mentally by carrying them out. Most of the dangerous urges are obvious: smoking, hard drugs or risky sexual behaviour. These types of urges have other - safer - ways to be recontextualised, do them instead, and avoid them.