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Habits are acts of unconsciousness. They might seem like second nature, but they are obstacles to conscious living. What is needed is awareness, perception, and consciousness; in short a connection to our source of being. This is the source of inspiration. And where inspiration flows, the habitual doesn’t exist.

Some people take pride in cultivating good habits. But a good habit is as binding as a bad habit. If you are locked up in chains, does it matter if some of the chain links are made of iron, and some of gold? The effect is the same. You have no freedom.

Instead of a good habit, like eating a good breakfast each morning, what is needed is conscious awareness. Perhaps some mornings you don’t need breakfast at all. For instance, if you relied on consciousness, you might be more in touch with your body’s needs and discover that sometimes it needs to fast.

But habits are of two types. There are those habits that we have consciously created with a desire for a healthier or more balanced life, like eating a healthy breakfast each morning. And then there are habits created unconsciously, like watching five hours of television every night, or worrying, or smoking, or eating junk food or drinking three or four beers a night. These habits, formed unconsciously, become addictions at worst, and curtailers of life, at best.

Unconscious behavior signifies a lack of perception. And perception is crucial for success in anything we do. In baseball, the pitcher has to have a perception of the batter. In football, the quarterback has to have perception of the defense he is throwing against. In the stock market, the trader has to have perception of the market. In war, the soldier has to have perception of the enemy. It should be clear to everyone that success in anything doesn’t happen without perception.

But for some reason, most people think they can go about their daily lives (outside of their career) without the need for perception. That is a denial of life’s responsibility.

Anything performed unconsciously means that it is a creation of the ego-mind. The ego-mind doesn’t like change. It has the habit of identifying with the familiar. If you start going to Starbucks every morning on the way to work, after a week or so, it will become a habit. The habit takes top priority. It doesn’t matter if you are late for work, or if your budget can’t afford the extra $3 a day you spend there, or if the caffeine raises your heart beat. This becomes part of you who are. It’s your identity. And damn the consequences.

People believe that they are their habits. To deny the habit would amount to a denial of who they are. And as long as they are living a habitual life, void of conscious choices, they will never discover their source of being, the pure consciousness that is the animating principle in their life. The habit becomes a barrier to wider possibilities. To live your life by habit is to allow your life to run on auto-pilot. It brings a lifelessness to the human experience.

That’s why so many people become so alive during a critical illness. Their habits have been broken. They start to get in touch with who they really are. I heard a director of a cancer clinic say that her patients often say they wish they had their illnesses years earlier, because of the positive changes the experience brought them.

I remember when I had a major illness just before my 21st birthday. I was hospitalized for 20 days. All of my habits were broken and I started to discover aspects about myself that I didn’t know existed. I didn’t know until then that I could write. I didn’t know until then that I had a thirst for knowledge. I didn’t know until then that I had an inner life filled with bliss. The illness created a revolution in the way I lived.

It was as if my old self died and I reincarnated into a new life, but with more consciousness. For the fist time I took an interest in total strangers, in nature, and in learning. I remember driving 75 miles to spend a Sunday afternoon talking with a philosophy professor at the University of Kentucky even though I was a student at the University of Cincinnati. This had nothing to do with research for a paper. It had to do with feeding the hunger of my soul. Before my illness that never would have happened. It would have been too far beyond the bounds of my experience. I would have stayed home and watched NFL football.

In this way, habits keep us from discovering the passion of life. They form a circle around the limits of our experience.

When life is under the control of the ego-mind and its habits, there is no freedom. Life is robotic and nothing but a series of reactions. There is a hindrance of creativity and spontaneity. There is a lack of inspiration. The truth of the matter is that the ego-mind takes over life and consciousness takes a back seat. Inspiration, intuition, and awareness are denied.

When a person is living a habitual life, they have no control. It’s as if they are in prison taking orders from a guard. The scope of freedom is akin to the freedom a prisoner has behind his bars. When we live our lives out of habits, freedom is no longer available to us. Who can be spontaneous and write a poem or a piece of music when the habitual programming dictates that we have to watch our favorite television shows each night? One of the best selling novels of all time, Catch 22 was written by Joseph Heller when he decided he didn’t want to spend his evenings after work watching television. He broke a habit and a career of literary success was born.

Take worry, for example. People worry out of habit. They think it is normal and so they do it. But worry is nothing but unconsciousness. It has nothing to do with the present moment. It is an entanglement with an imagined future that has no substance. It does us no good, it saps energy, and prevents inspiration, intuition, and happiness. It is the mind seizing control of life from consciousness.

Habits don’t concern themselves with what is. They are repeats of what was. If you are planning to live life on auto-pilot, without concern for consciousness and discovering the highest possibilities of life, then what are you here for? Habits represent a delay in going forward with life. It’s life being hijacked by the mind.

People hate so much being told what to do, but they don’t seem to notice that they are at the mercy of their habits demanding what they do and when they do it. It amounts to an unexamined life, and you know what Socrates had to say about that: “An unexamined life is not worth living.” He also said “There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.” If people refuse to examine their lives and bring some awareness into what they are doing, they are wasting time and doing more harm than good to the world.

Life is a precious opportunity, far too valuable to be wasted living a life dictated by habits. When you begin each day with a fresh perspective of what that day offers, and what you can offer from your talents and perception, then each day will bring a new sense of aliveness and inspiration. Trust that. Allow it into your life and you will have no need to follow habitual routine.