Insanity is Repeating the Same Behaviors, and Expecting Things to Change

There is evil in the world, and that evil wants to enslave us in sad hopeless lives.

Evil wins when we rob ourselves of joy and possibility and get stuck in a loop. When the hopes we had become a prison of disappointment and self-defeat. When bitterness and suspicion rule our hearts.

As babies we are born with a deep expectation of joy and fulfillment. Madeline and Ethan, our youngest grandbabies, look out at the world with a joyous and welcoming smile. They are so well-nurtured and safe that they are ready in every moment to laugh and play. They great everyone they meet with bright expectation and openness. The delight in their faces draws others to them. Their lives are fulfilling and safe and happy. Nature gives this light to babies, and experience takes it away in far too many cases. God bless the parents who raise babies like these, the safe happy babies, who become good people with trusting and inviting and nurturing souls.

There is evil in the world, and the evil seeks to enslave us. Evil wants us to lead hopeless lives, to replace the safe, nurtured inviting soul within us with emptiness and sorrow.

The chief tools of evil are powerful negative emotions. Guilt. Fear. Anger. Sorrow. Regret. Inadequacy. Anxiety. Loneliness. Doubt. Evil creates a prison and we confine ourselves to a squalid corner of it, next to the overslopping bucket that serves as a latrine. The bucket is rarely emptied. The stench of self defeat fills our nostrils and infects our every thought.

When you are locked in these dominant negative emotions they define your every step and all your encounters with other people. Your suspicion arouses their suspicion. Your anger triggers their anger. Your negativity becomes an unwelcoming force field that echoes throughout the world and defines precedes and predicts your every experience. The joyous welcoming face you had as a baby is replaced with a bitter or angry or fearful one, a mask of defensiveness, and every step you take is an unwelcoming tread in darkness. The light is off. The darkness never stops putting it out.

Misery will find you and keep you in its grip. You will become a slave to habits. You will repeat patterns and revisit the same awful moments over and over. Fights, arguments, quarrels, struggles, and dirty looks will greet you wherever you go. You are surprised and resentful to find how frustrating life is, what jerks people are, but what you fail to realize is that the jerks and rude jackoffs you meet are merely mirrors into your own lost soul. People are reflecting back what you are giving out. You have become the perpetual victim of your own lost enslaved soul.

It is so sad to watch someone you love live out this kind of misery, and to be pulled down into the misery yourself. Deep within all of us is the proud, whole, confident, well-loved baby we were meant to be, the joyous and expectant child. Evil strengthens its grip on the world at every turn, fills its jails with cells of despair. Outrage and sorrow keep us there. There is no need for a key. In the prison society we create, we become the sadistic guards and impose random and crippling punishments on each other. "See, you knew this would happen. This is how it is. Don't listen to the voice within you that tells you it ought to be different. This is where you belong."

We give ourselves a daily beating, and the world administers blows that accompany our own. The blows of self-defeat and painful memory echo in our perfect ears. We recoil at the hideous and sore-infested monsters we become. We become repulsive in our masks of hatred, the cloud of darkness that envelopes our being. Lonely, dark and guarded, we walk into every room and every encounter with lost and fearful faces, and every place we go becomes like the prison within us. Our faces and our posture say, "I'm hurt and I'm angry. I'm guilty and defeated and sad." And the evil in the world senses our distrust and sorrow and piles on with more misery. The hounds of hell will never leave us alone.

It doesn't have to be this way. Life isn't meant to be a sorrowful death march, a crushing weight of sorrow and neglect. There is hope in the world. There is beauty. Good is stronger than evil, and ultimately wins. But we have to find the happy expectant child within us, and nurture it back to life. We have to unlock the key to our anger and sorrow and release ourselves from the prison of doubt.

Or we can keep repeating the same miserable behaviors with the same awful results. The choice is ours. Empty the bucket of misery, or let it foul everything we experience forever.

This is important: the journey to life and sanity and hope is not meant to be taken alone and without help.

We have to connect to other people.
We have to learn to celebrate and nurture ourselves and those around us.
We have to have a spiritual practice, a reflection and understanding that strengthens and sustains our hopeful core.
We have to replace the self-defeating and destructive habits in our lives with something of value.
We have to create community, laugh and dance and sing and comfort one another.
We have to recognize that evil haunts the shadows, and constantly seeks to reclaim us, to reclaim us for the prison of sorrow and misery.

Today I will take the first steps toward being whole and nurtured and nourished. I will nurture and nourish others, and embrace their hopes along with my own. I will expect joy and success and claim it. I will live reflectively and appreciatively. My curiosity will awaken, and slowly the happy expectant child within me will define me again.

It is a challenging journey for all of us, because we have been in prison for a long time. Remember that evil doesn't have to win. Hope is stronger, and more resilient than you can possibly imagine. I want love to win in your life, and I want it to win in mine.