there's little monsters they pop up and you could whack them with a hammer like whack-a-mole no problem if you wanted to but if you don't do that for 360 000 decisions then they all aggregate into this looming chaos monster and the probability that that thing's going to eat you is or that you're going to live in its belly because that's where you end up very bad idea and it's often the case that people just don't have enough time and energy left or willpower or character by that time because they're destroying their own character there they've
had it you cannot help them you cannot fix it they're done they can't be rescued from hell remember i told you about those experiments with the married couples the ones that are going to get divorced they walk into the little bed and breakfast and it's hi dear and with a kind of no no i smile it's like that's a predatory smile it's like i kind of like you but these are really teeth and they're for eating you know really it's not pleasant and so they're interacting with each other both of them are really nice but
they're not they're not nice at all they're carnivorous right to the damn core and so on the surface it's all roses and sunshine and like a little inch below it's all like they're gr like if you could see their unconscious you'd see two people with their hands around each other's throat and their body knows that because up goes the cortisol up goes the heart rate they're sweating away you know that's the belly of the beast that's what that is and your body it's smart it knows where you are you're you know you can ignore it
which you do you know it's like oh this isn't too bad it's like yeah it's it is it's really bad it's really really really bad and you do that long enough it's like good luck for you you know you've you've polluted your psyche and your surroundings to such a degree that you can't fix it and it gets worse than that because if you stay there long enough you won't even want to fix it you'll be so angry at yourself or the other person that you're going to try as hard as you can to do everything
you possibly can to make it as bad as you possibly can and since you have virtually an unlimited imagination for evil it can get really bad so when you get into a self-sustaining spiral at some point that's a that's a hellish descent and the reason that hell is bottomless is because no matter how bad it is there's some damn devious nasty horrible little thing that you can do that you will do that will make it worse so you know people who think that hell isn't real they're just not paying any attention at all imagine that
you are we're in a bad relationship and maybe you weren't that happy about it but you know it was better than no relationship at all and then the person that you're in a relationship betrayed you and maybe they did that because you actually weren't that happy with the relationship anyways maybe they did that because you're a little bit naive or maybe they did that because you're a little bit too easy to get along with and as a consequent a little bit on the boring side and so when they first leave you it's a catastrophe because
your world falls apart but when your world falls apart you're somewhere new as possible to learn something new in that place so you might learn for example that you should be a little sharper the next time that you go out with someone or you should be a little bit more careful about picking up on clues that your partner's bored with you or that maybe you should stop associating with lying psychopaths and your life would be a lot more positive and stop thinking that you have the capacity to redeem somebody that is not after redemption in
the least and what that means now and then is that when you fall into the belly of a whale and you're swallowed up by something that lurks underneath that you can come out the other side transformed and that's actually how people learn every time you learn something you learn because something you did didn't work and that exposes you to the part of the world that you don't understand every time you're exposed to part of the world that you don't understand you have the possibility of rebuilding the structures that you use to interpret the world that's
often why it's more important to notice that you're wrong than it is to prove that you're right one of the things that you're supposed to learn in university is precisely that it might be useful to listen to people that annoy you on the off chance that they know something that if they tell you you can use instead of dying talking to people who agree with what you say is like walking around in a desert you already know everything that they say the reason you're associating with them in that situation is so that they never say
anything that challenges you because you're afraid that if you go outside of what you understand that you won't be able to tolerate the chaos but it isn't the case people have an unbelievable capacity to face and overcome things they don't understand and not only that that's essentially what gives life its meaning the buddhists say life is suffering and you think well if that's the case why bother with it and people do ask that question and they ask it in ways that result in their own destruction and worse in the destruction of others and suffering is
real and it's inescapable so the question is what do you do about it you notice in your own life and you can do this by watching your own life i often ask my clients to do this say look watch your life for a week and pretend you don't know who you are because you don't know who you are at all what you understand most about yourself are the arbitrary presuppositions that you use to hem yourself in and you act as if those presuppositions are true so that the revelation of the full nature of your character
won't terrify you people hide in their own boxes and it's not surprising but it's not a good idea because life is too hard to hide in a box you can't manage it if you do that if you watch yourself for a week you'll see certain things you'll see some of the time that you're resentful and annoyed and those are times when you're either taking advantage of yourself or you're thinking improperly some of the time you'll be bored in which case you're either undisciplined or you're probably pursuing something you don't want to pursue and some of
the time you'll actually be engaged in life and the times that you're engaged in life you won't notice that you're there right the distinction between subject and object disappears when you're engaged in something that you find meaningful the purpose of life as far as i can tell from studying mythology and from studying psychology for decades is to find a mode of being that's so meaningful that the fact that life is suffering is no longer relevant or maybe that it's even acceptable and i would say as well that people know when they're doing that you know
when you're doing that in part because you're no longer resentful you think geez i could do this forever right there's a timelessness timelessness that's associated with that state of being from a mythological perspective that's equivalent to brief habitation of the kingdom of god that's the place where you are that's so meaningful that it enables you to bear the harsh preconditions of life without becoming resentful bitter or cruel and there's nothing that you can pursue in your life that will be half as useful as that your nervous system being an evolved structure is evolved for a
universe that is composed of the interaction between chaos and order those are the most fundamental constants that we know they transcend the mere perception of objects everywhere you go is chaos in order traditional chinese doctors go into people's houses to diagnose why it is that someone in that house is suffering and they walk in and they think there's too much order here i've been in houses like that that's a house where all the furniture is covered with plastic that's a house where if you put a glass on a wooden table the mistress of the house
runs over with the coaster slips it under immediately and gives you a dirty look that's a place where there's so much order that no one can survive because the person who runs the house is a tyrant and then you can walk into a house that's completely different and you can even see this in your own room if you want everything's in complete disarray you can't even look at that place you're sick the moment you cross the threshold because everywhere you look there's parts of untransformed chaos yelling to you do something about this loser
