TrueLife - The Labyrinth

Episode Date: February 1, 2022

Our life is like a labyrinth, if we can identify a pattern, find the Ariadne thread that runs through it, then we can help ourselves & others escape the worst parts of it

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear. Hears through ruins maze, lights my war cry, born from the blaze.

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Seraphini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the True Life podcast. I hope your day is going fantastic. I wanted to talk to you today about the pattern. pattern. You know what I mean by that? What do you think of when I say the word pattern? Do you think of a series of repetitive circles? Do you think of a maze in which you must find your way through?

Do you think of a series of repeating symbols, a pattern? Just say that. word to yourself pattern pattern kind of has a nice ring to it now I want you to think about all the patterns in your life let's talk about your daily routine is a pattern what do you do for a daily routine get up mosey around go to work do what you do come home go to bed wake up go to work come home go to bed wake up go to work come home go to bed maybe on the weekends or every now and then you are able to change your scenery. But even that is a pattern. Let's talk about some other patterns. What is your pattern of thinking? How do you feel about yourself? What is the inner dialogue you have?

Do you wake up in the morning and look in the mirror and say, hey, handsome, how are you doing today? Man, you're handsome. No, you're handsome. No, you're handsome. Kind of play with yourself a little bit like that do you have a pattern of speaking to those around you in a positive way or do you have a pattern of speaking to those around you in a negative way depending on where you are in life that can change the pattern of your relationships and a lot of times patterns are the direct reflection of labels that we use. If someone deems themselves to be the boss, hey, I'm the boss around here. I'll ask the questions around here.

I'm the boss. A person that thinks that way tends to become isolated. And it's their pattern of thinking. It's their pattern of labels that isolates them. Hey, I'm in charge. That means no one can help me. Hey, I'm in charge. That means I'm better than everybody.

Hey, I'm in charge, so they should do what I tell them to. Well, guess what? Nobody likes that type of person in charge. None of those people should ever be in charge. If you find yourself in a leadership position, you should ask yourself, what kind of leader am I? Some of the best leaders I have ever had the privilege to learn under said things. things like, I'm here to help you. How can I help you? Or they had such a passion for learning. It's such a passion for people that it wasn't as if they were, hey, I'm in charge of you. Do what the

hell I tell you to do. It was more of like, hey, here's what we got to get done. Here's how I think we should do this. What do you think? How would you do this different? The reason I bring all this up is pattern. patterns. Patterns of thinking. Okay, now let's flip it. Let's look at somebody who's maybe not at a higher station in life. People that tend to be on the bottom, maybe they hit a rough spot or depressed or they are riddled with anxiety. These types of patterns are very similar to the authoritarian pattern on the opposite pole. You know, think of, think of the rich, arrogant, asshole up top that was born into a family with money that has everything and now think of like a homeless person on the bottom that has a mental illness that doesn't think they're good enough for anything you see it's the same pattern of thinking only one is a positively charged and one is a negatively charged. Think of a magnet. If you have a magnet has two poles on it, the north pole

and the south pole. And if you were to cut that magnet in the middle, you would have a new north pole and a new south pole. But you would still have the north and south pole. No matter how you cut it, you're always going to have a north and a south pole. So it's not that they are the opposite. It is that they are the extremes of one. Does that kind of make sense? And so you can see the same pattern just going in the opposite direction. I think that's a better way to put it. So someone that doesn't care about themselves has a pattern of speaking to themselves in the fashion like, I'm never good enough.

I'll never make it. No one loves me. Bada, ba-da-da-da-bada-bada-bada. You know, just that sad song with the world's smallest violin. And on the opposite side is a sad song from a guy with the world's smallest dick. Right. So patterns. That's a good way to begin this conversation.

We started off with our daily routine as a pattern. Our inner dialogue is a pattern. Potentially labels we use as a pattern. Now I'm going to shift focus here. And I want you to think of, Have you ever done a maze? Maybe you have kids, and sometimes you get the Sunday paper and you sit down and there's this big maze in there. Or maybe you like to do mazes.

Mases are fun. Have you ever gone to someplace and done a garden maze? Over here in Hawaii, if you go to the dole cannery, there's this big garden slash hedges everywhere, and you've got to walk through this maze, and in the middle is a big pineapple. As we're thinking of these mazes, there's ones you can do on paper, there's ones you can walk through in gardens. But let's take it a little bit deeper. Let's do a little something a little more esoteric. Like, you know, I'm big on myth and I'm big on mythology because I think it is a way to communicate with the greatest thinkers of our time. I like to look at the mythologies of yesteryear, like logical puzzles that were left here for us to study and understand.

so that we can find our way, the same way the people before us found theirs. So that being said, let me try to incorporate some myth with the pattern. I'm going to tell you a myth here. I'm going to tell you a little bit about the labyrinth, which has a cool name, doesn't it? The Greek myth of the labyrinth and the minotaur at its center has ancient insights for us. and these insights that it holds the secret to the labyrinth, I believe is the secret to us finding how to live our best lives, how to navigate the treacherous monster at the middle,

which is probably our subconscious, and how to not get lost when we become overcome with emotions. So let me read you some context here and then we'll break it down as we go. The story of the Minotaur starts with Minos, who became king of Crete when Poseidon sent a great white bull out of the ocean as a sign Minus should rule. Minus had promised to sacrifice the bull to Poseidon, but broke his promise when he saw how beautiful the bull was and sacrificed a lesser animal instead. I think we could stop right there for a minute and think about how many of us have made sacrifices or how many of us had planned to make sacrifices but then realized how difficult the sacrifice would be so we decide to do something less.

A good example of this might be your New Year's resolution. Maybe your resolution was, I'm going to lose 100 pounds. But then you start running doing some sit-ups, you're like, you know what, I'll just lose 12. A lot of people end up giving up. up way too early before they even start hitting hard times. Poseidon was angry when Minos broke his promise, so he punished him by making his queen, Pasifac, fall in love with the bull.

Out of this union, the Minotaur was born. I know what you're thinking. That's a bunch of bullshit. It's not. It's a myth. Come on. Just deal with it. Minos had recently conquered Athens, and he demanded as tribute that every year Athens would send seven maidens and seven youths, seven Utes, remember Joe Peschi? Seven Uts, seven Utes to be sacrificed to the Minotaur. Theseus was a son of King Aegis of Athens.

Theseus' story is a long and complex one, and he is one of the great heroes of Greek myth. So we will only be looking at the portion of his story that, involves the labyrinth. Theseus volunteered to join the band of Utes, who were to be sacrificed. He traveled to Crete, and as soon as he arrived, Ariadne, King Minos's daughter, fell in love with him. She offered to help him conquer the labyrinth and kill the Minotaur. If he would marry her and take her away from Crete, he agreed. Ariadne gave him a ball of red thread, and Thesius unrolled it as he penitent. penetrated the labyrinth, which allowed him to find his way back out. He found the Minotaur deep in the recesses of the labyrinth,

killed it with his sword, and followed the thread back to the entrance. Thesius took Ariadne away from Crete, but then forsaked his promise to marry her by abandoning her as she sleeps on the beach of the island of Noxos. She thinks she is about to die. That this is the end of her story, she is discovered there by the god Dionysus, who falls in love with her and makes her his wife, and was the only husband among the Greek gods to remain faithful to his wife.

So let's think about that a little bit more. How is it that one can find themselves in a labyrinth? Well, you could argue that our life is a labyrinth. They're born and thrust into this crazy maze of ideas. If you're lucky you have some mentors or a family member that can hand you a ball of thread. But even then, even if you have people around you that you care about and you love, the chances are they're in a different labyrinth and they're in their own labyrinth, that as much as they care about you, they can offer you tips and tricks,

but they're not in the same labyrinth as you. so you're going to be on your own. I think the idea of the ball of thread, this idea of having something that can point to the past, that can show you the road you traveled to get there. You know, there's a similar set of ideas in Hansel and Gretel, remember the breadcrumbs. So there's this idea

about looking at where we came from to understand where we need to go, especially when you're lost in the labyrinth, especially when there's a giant man bull wanting to kill you in the middle of the labyrinth. And it just seems to me like such a poetic metaphor in that, you know, you have this half beast, half man. Well, isn't that, aren't we all half beast and half?

man if you allow your emotions to rule you that's the beast if you allow your higher self your your union of logic and love your empathy your reasoning if you allow the synthesis of these things your higher conscious self to make the decisions in your life not based on emotion, but based on empathy, based on the feelings of truth that wells up inside of you. If you can listen to the signs and the sounds that surround you and you can concentrate and focus on that, then you can make the better decisions. If you can take in the totality of the environment, environment. You'd be given signs that you wouldn't see if you relied on a narrow focus. And I think that that is one reason why the thread is so important. Right. The thread that runs through the labyrinth, it points to our past. It points to the path. It points to previous decisions. And as long as we have, have even the smallest thread, we can begin to find our way out of even the largest labyrinth.

I think it's a beautiful way of thinking, and it helps me in times of turmoil when you're on the sea of chaos in the middle of the night and it's dark and the storm is coming and the waves are crashing over the boat. That's when you need to just calm your mind, relax, and begin thinking, have I left a trail of breadcrumbs? Have I planned for an occasion like this? And if not, what will my plan be now? Do I have an Ariadne thread that points towards the light? that points towards a way out of here. I think we all have an Ariadne thread. You just got to find it.

Have you ever been so confused or so caught up in something that you don't even know where you put your keys or you don't know where you set your phone down or you had your car registration and now you can't find it? Well, if you can't find any of those things, how are you supposed to find this small little thread

that's going to get you out of the predicament that you're in. You've got to quiet your mind, relax for a minute, and look around. I think that's what's meant by stopping and smelling the roses. Every now and then, you just got to stop, quiet your mind. And if you can do that through meditation, or if you can do that by going to the beach or going for a walk,

or even finding a quiet room in your house, and just observing something beautiful. I think that's a great way to find your Ariadne thread. It's a great way to help your mind out of the labyrinth of madness that this world has become. And so today, as you go through your day, think about the world as a labyrinth. Think about your life as a labyrinth. Think about your emotions as a minotaur. And don't let that minotaur sneak up on you while you.

you're going through the labyrinth. And if it does, understand that you have the sword of truth and can slay the minotaur. Understand that you have had the power all along. If you want to get really good at it,

turn around and make the minotaur your friend. Explain to him, hey, we're half brothers. I need the power of the beast to help get me out of this place. I no longer want to fight with you. I bet you know the way out of here. show me, your life is a labyrinth.

And if you look, the direction you need to go has been laid down before you. Trust your instincts. Trust who you are. Enjoy the scenery and make your way out of the labyrinth. If you find someone in the labyrinth on the way, help them get out too. That's what I got for today. I love you guys. I hope you have a fantastic day.

Let's get up. Get out. Go-ah. You know,