Rule number seven: pursue what is meaningful not is not what is expedient
Yeah, well the meaning is what you have to, to buttress yourself against the
tragedy of life, it's like engagement, we're having an engaging conversation
You know we'll walk away from this and hopefully the people who are watching
they'll walk when they'll think that was worthwhile, it's like okay, think about
what that means, it means that despite the fact that you're a fragile, damaged
mortal creature, you found something to do that announced itself as worthwhile
That's meaning. It's an instinct, like it's not it's a deep deep instinct
It's, it's maybe the deepest instinct, it's like a form of vision except it's
not a, it's not like an embodied sense, it's not a specified sense. Meaning tells you
when you're in the right place, and the right place is between chaos and order
and those are real places, your hemispheres, like your right hemisphere
is roughly evolved let's say to deal with things you don't understand, that's
chaos and your left is there to deal with things you do understand it, you
can't just stay with the things you do understand because you already
understand them, and you can't just stay with what you don't understand because
then you're lost (yeah) well you need to be in the middle of those two and you
can tell when you're in the middle because everything lines up and you you
feel engaged and that what you're doing is meaningful it's like that's what you
pursue. Expedience is you do the thing that gets you off the hook the fastest
right, now well that, you play that game across time it doesn't work, it sends you
down because you're sacrificing the future for the present, meaning doesn't
do that, meaning says I'm here where I should be and you can't tell why it's
just that everything is right and you you get this physiological sense
Right place, right time, right conversation you know and that's usually a conversation
where you're both trying to expand the way that you look at the world, well so
you follow this meaningful path that's your buttress against the tragedy that
produces resentment and malevolence, is meaning is
the antidote to that and that's the fundamental religious truth and it's
really true, that's the thing that's so, life is suffering that's true
there's malevolence that's true, meaning is the antidote to that, yes and it's not
it's not some kind of fragile epiphenomena, it's the deepest thing so
and people need to know that it's so important to know that
and there's a feeling associated with it too right? A physiological feeling because as you're
saying that I feel that, I mean I'm sort of lucky as an interviewer, I sometimes I
interview people and I don't get that but I find in the best interviews that I
do and even in portions that we've done here when I really am in it with
somebody and I can see that they they know what they're talking about, they
believe what they're talking all that I feel sort of differently I actually feel
differently even even just looking at you not this specific second but there
are moments where it's almost like, it's not blurry or something but like a
little, colors are a little heightened (yeah) yeah absolutely but you can actually
feel saying powerful and it's interesting because for me the only
reason I do this show is cuz I wanted something like this to be and I didn't
see it, you know like I was like where, where are people having meaningful
conversations, where are people expounding and ideas and all that
I started doing it and now people come up to me and say man that what you're doing
has meaning to me right so that that's a pretty powerful thing right there yeah
well then people say well meaning isn't real, it's like no that's wrong it's
actually the most real thing, it might even be more real than suffering and
evil, it's possible and they're like I think about about this technically you
know I'm, this isn't a metaphysical assumption that I'm making and you do
feel it it's you feel it in your body it's not just a a mental thing it's not
an idea, it's a place, it's a place because we're
in time and space right and a place is it is a place you know three dimensions
of space but it's also a time and when the place and the time are set up
properly you're in the right place and your brain is telling you that your
being is telling you that yeah you got it right right you know, it's gonna fall
apart cuz you're not gonna be there all the time right you get that pretty quick
often right like that's just part of life yeah well you say you know you go
see a great movie, it's like hey you're in the right place
at the right time and it you're engaged, you're completely engaged in it it's
because, it's because it's there's no other way to put it you're in the right
place at the right time and the meaning is the signal of that and so the purpose
of profound religious contemplation in some sense in the deepest sense, profound
philosophical contemplation is to learn how to be in the right place at the
right time all the time, now you can't because you you're not
perfect but you can be there a lot more than you are and you can actually
practice it, and you practice it by paying attention you think you watch
yourself during the day like you don't know who you are or what you're doing
and you notice, oh yeah, right there I was listening to that piece of music or as
having that conversation or as doing this piece of work then I was there for
like ten minutes okay why I was doing something right, I don't know what it is
I want to, or I wasn't doing something wrong you know and so I got this little
illuminated moment it's like okay I need to figure out how to be there more often
so there's this line from the Gospel of Thomas which was discovered in like 1957
and it says the kingdom of God is spread out before the eyes of men but men do
not see it, that's basically it and that's kind of what it's referring to
it's like there are times when you're in the right place at the right time and
then you're where you should be and you don't notice that, you don't say oh look
wow there's something about this, this is right I got to figure out how to do this
more, right because that sucks you out of it immediately even if you could do that
right, right, well that's also partly why it's hard and and you're not really
trained to notice that because it isn't something we ever talk about, it's like
you're in the right place at the right time okay why what did I do right what
did I do I need to do more of that so maybe it's only half an hour a week when
you first start noticing and then maybe with three months of practice you can
get it up to like an hour a day and then maybe you can get it up to four hours a
day and god only knows where you could get it if you if you keep practicing you
know, you you can, you can be there we don't know what the upper limit of that
is (yeah) you know if you're in a crowd where the music is really kicking in the
band is, you know the band, now and then you'll get a band
just they're on the same wavelength that's just something else and you can
feel it snap in so a concert will go from good to great and all of the
audience is participating as well right they're all moving to the same rhythm
and you get this intense feeling that everything is lined up and is in the
right place it's like yes, yes that's why people go to concerts because they get
they get the chance to have that happen and it's sort of like this, it's this
vision of how life could be you know and then you know you go home and things
fragment again but at least for a minute everything came into Lineman
harmoniously and that's what you're trying to do is to get every level of
being harmoniously lined up like music, like a symphony that's what that's why
people like symphonies because everything lines up and then you're
there you know so that's what that's what you want to aim at
Yeah, if I can take it to a basketball metaphor I mean this is what when players talk about
being in the zone, when you're different you're just throwing it up and and
you're not even thinking and it's going in and you don't even realize it and
often when they talk about it after that you know they won't even realize that
wow that was a seven minute stretch, they think of it as a thirty second little
thing, that's right, time goes away, yes well that's the Dao, that the Daoists
talked about, that's the zone, that's the line between chaos and order and to be
there is to be in the right place that's why people watch sports like part of its
the competition in the victory and that's all fine but the serious
thing is those moments when you're in the zone with the players because
they're acting out being in the zone and everyone loves that in the Quidditch
game in Harry Potter there's two games going on at the same time, there's the
ordinary game which is just a game and there's the seeker game and the seeker
is going after this golden thing that flickers in front of them and if they
get that thing then not, they win and the team wins well, she (author) got it exactly right
I got, that little thing, the snitch that yeah everyone is chasing is actually an
ancient Alchemical symbol for the union of chaos and order, I don't know how in
the world she figured that out, it's called the round chaos, it's unbelievably
obscure, if you look it up on Google I think the only reference to the round
chaos is from my website, I learned it from reading Jung, I don't know
how she figured it out (Wow) but so the seeker is seeking this thing that
glimmers in front of them, right, it moves everywhere right that's Mercury, that
winged messenger of the gods right and so you're chasing that now and then you
get it and everyone wins so yeah that's that's meaning, yes, that is meaning