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The Secret to Life - Building a Lifestyle of Lasting Fulfillment
- Matthew Harris
- Apr 11, 2023
- 11 min read
Full episodes available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, and other inspiration here
Insights for the Matt's Mindset Podcast drawn from: Insights for the Matt's Mindset Podcast drawn from: Tim Ferriss, Sam Harris, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Dr. Brene Brown, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Dr. Matthew Walker, Jonathan Haight, Roland Griffiths, PhD, Niall Ferguson, Chris Palmer, MD, Dr. Michio Kaku, Noah Feldman, Emile Durkheim, Stanley Milgram, Jean Piaget, B.F. Skinner, Abraham Maslow, Carl Jung Bill Gurely, Jason Calacanis, Jim Collins, Aryeh Bourkoff, Balaji Srinivasan, Ed Thorpe, Chamath Palihapitiya, David Sachs, David Friedberg, Howard Marks, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Peter Theil Rick Rubin, Todd McFarlane, Bill Burr, Terry Crews, Hugh Jackman, Matthew McConaughey James Clear, Stephen Pressfield, Seth Godin, Susan Cain, Morgan Housel, Jocko Willink, Ayn Rand, Ray Bradbury, Aldous Huxley, Friedrich Nietzsche, Marcus Aurelius, Tamara Levitt, Soren Kierkegaard, Jean Paul Satre, James Joyce, Malcolm Gladwell
Show Notes:
Introduction
Greetings to listeners
Quote from Isaac Newton and a Reading of the Allegory of the Cave
Discussion
The concept of the "Themes of Consciousness" and their modern-day application
The Secret to Life of the vibrations of love and gratitude
The examples of Jesus of Nazareth and the Buddha achieving enlightenment
The monomyth and the hero's journey and its practical application
Transcript:
Hello beautiful people. As I am Matthew Harris, this must be another edition of the Matt’s Mindset Podcast. And today we'll be discussing nothing more or less than the secret to getting all you want from life. As always, we’ll start with a quote.
"If I have seen further than most, it has been because I stand on the shoulders of giants." -Isaac Newton
Imagine that there are people living in a cave deep underground. The cavern has a mouth that opens to the light above, and a passage exists from this all the way down to the people.
They have lived here from infancy, with their legs and necks bound in chains. They cannot move. All they can do is stare directly forward, as the chains stop them from turning their heads around. Imagine that far above and behind them blazes a great fire. Between this fire and the captives, a low partition is erected along a path, something like puppeteers use to conceal themselves during their shows.
Look and you will also see other people carrying objects back and forth along the partition. Things of every kind: images of people and animals, carved in stone and wood and other materials. Some of these other people speak, while others remain silent.
Now, tell me. Do you think it’s possible that these captives ever saw anything but shadows their whole life?
Companion: Certainly not, for they have been restrained all their lives, with their heads facing forward.
And these captives would naturally give names to the things they were actually able to see and would feel as if this was reality. And now think about what would happen if they were released from these chains and these misconceptions.
Imagine one of them is set free from his shackles and immediately made to stand up, bend his neck around, take steps, and gaze up toward the fire. And all of this was painful, and the glare from the light made him unable to see the objects that cast the shadows he once beheld.
What do you think his reaction would be if someone informed him that everything he had formerly known was an illusion and delusion, but that now he was a few steps closer to reality, oriented now toward things that were more authentic, and able to see more truly?
And, even further, if one would direct his attention to the artificial figures passing to and fro and ask him what their names are, would this man not be at a loss to do so? Would he, rather, believe that the shadows he formerly knew were more real than the objects now being shown to him?
Now, if he was forced to look directly at the firelight, wouldn’t his eyes be pained? Wouldn’t he turn away and run back to those things which he normally perceived and understand them as more defined and clearer than the things now being brought to his attention?
Now, let’s say that he is forcibly dragged up the steep climb out of the cavern and firmly held until finally he stands in the light of the sun. Don’t you think that he would be agitated and even begin to complain? Under that light, would his eyes not be nearly blinded, unable to discern any of those things that we ourselves call real?
It would take time, I suppose, for him to get used to seeing higher things. In the beginning, he might only trace the shadows. Then, reflections of people and other things in the water. Next, he would come to see the things themselves. Then he would behold the heavenly bodies, and the heaven itself by night, seeing the light of the stars and the moon with greater ease than the sun and its light by day.
And then, I think he would at last be able to gaze upon the sun itself—neither as reflected in water nor as a phantom image in some other place but in its place as it really is.
And now, he will begin to reason. He will find that the sun is the source of the seasons and years and the governor of every visible thing, and ultimately the origin of everything previously known.
That being the case, should he remember his fellow prisoners and their original dwelling and what was accepted as wisdom in that setting, don’t you imagine he would consider himself fortunate for this transformation and feel pity for the captives?
Now, suppose there were honors and awards among the captives, which they granted as prizes to one another for being the best at recognizing the various shadows passing by or deciphering their patterns, their order, and the relationships among them, and therefore best at predicting what shadow would be seen next.
Do you believe that our liberated man would be much concerned with such honors, or that he would be jealous of those who received them? Or that he would strive to be like those who were lauded by the captives and enjoyed pride of place among them? Or would he rather take Homer’s view, and “rather wish, in earthly life, to be the humble serf of a landless man” and suffer whatever he had to, instead of holding the views of the captives and returning to that state of being?
Well, here’s something else to consider. If such a man were to suddenly go from the sunlight to once more descend to his original circumstances, wouldn’t his vision be obscured by the darkness?
And so, let’s say he is with the captives and gets put into the position of interpreting the wall shadows. His eyes are still adjusting to the darkness, and it may take a while before they do. Wouldn’t he become a laughingstock? Wouldn’t they say, “You have returned from your adventure up there with ruined eyes!”? Would they not say that the ascent was a waste of time? And if they had the opportunity, do you suppose that they might raise their hands against him and kill this person who is trying to liberate them to a higher plane?
Then, my friend, this image applies to everything we’ve been discussing. It compares the visible world to the underground cavern, and the power of the sun to the fire that burned in the cavern.
You won’t misunderstand me if you connect the captive’s ascent to be the ascent of the soul to the intelligible world. This is how I believe, and I shared it at your wish, though heaven knows whether it is at all true.
Regardless, it appears to me that in the realm of what can be known, the Idea of the Good is discovered last of all, and it is only perceived with great difficulty.
But when it is seen, it leads us directly to the finding that it is the universal cause of all that is right and beautiful. It is the source of visible light and the master of the same, and in the intelligible world, it is the master of truth and reason. And whoever, in private or in public, would behave in a sensible way, will keep this idea in focus.
This passage is from Plato’s Republic, published around 390 BC, and is known as the famous “Allegory of the Cave”. In it, Socrates is describing to Plato’s brother, Glaukon, that we all resemble the captives who are chained deep within the cavern, who do not realize there is more to reality than the shadows they see on the wall.
It has inspired countless works of fiction and philosophy, recent examples including the Matrix franchise and the Truman Show.
So before continuing, I have but one last question for you: Would you like to take the blue pill or the red pill? If you take the blue pill, you exit the browser and go back to whatever you were doing. If you take the red pill, you keep watching, and I give you the secret to life.
It’s not so profound, nor anything new. The secret of life is that there are themes of consciousness. Life is ever-changing and unpredictable. Due to entropy, there is always a degree of disorder and randomness in the quantum system at any given time.
And due to the interpretation of the theory of quantum mechanics, known as the Many-Worlds interpretation, a wave function describing a quantum system does not collapse into a single outcome upon measurement but rather branches into different universes, each corresponding to a different possible outcome of the measurement.
According to String Theory, the tiny pieces that make up everything in the world, including you and me, are actually like little strings. These tiny strings are so small that nobody has ever seen them directly, but theoretical physicists have come up with this idea by studying the way the world behaves.
It's like playing a guitar; when you pluck a string, it vibrates and creates sound. In the same way, these tiny strings can vibrate in different ways to make different particles like electrons and quarks, which are the building blocks of atoms.
So our bodies are made up of atoms, which are composed of quarks and electrons, which are made up of little tiny strings vibrating at certain frequencies to produce certain outcomes. And all possible outcomes are possible as a quantum system does not collapse into a single outcome.
So the secret to life is to embody the vibration of love and gratitude. If you can embody the vibration of love and gratitude as often as you can, not only will you be happy and satisfied because you will feel love and gratitude on a daily basis, but you’ll attract and be attracted to people, places, and experiences that are also loving and satisfying.
There are 15 themes of consciousness. There are eight limiting themes of consciousness, which are, in ascending order: shame, guilt, judgment, hopelessness, grief, fear, desire, anger, and pride. These themes are the limiting themes of suffering, as defined by the Buddha and Jesus of Nazareth.
If you can transcend these limiting themes of consciousness, you can ascend to the self-empowered themes of courage, neutrality, willingness, acceptance, reason, and logic. These are the themes of the Enlightenment zeitgeist, embraced by thinkers like John Locke, Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant.
Later, in the modernist movement, which rejected traditional values and conventions and instead embraced a willingness to experiment with new forms of expression using reason and logic. If you can further transcend these self-empowered themes of consciousness, you arrive at the transcendent themes of ecstasy. Freedom, happiness, love, and inner peace. These were the original values of the postmodern movement which rejected the modernist interpretation of reason and logic being man’s highest virtue and instead tried to focus on peace, love, happiness, and inner freedom.
Think of John Lennon, Martin Luther King Jr, Bob Dylan, and the artists of the counterculture movement.
So that’s all great, right? You choose to embody love and gratitude, and nothing can ever go wrong again, right?
Here’s the red pill truth. Once you choose to embody a higher consciousness, most of the things that are currently in your life will begin to feel incredibly chaotic. You have unshackled yourself from the cave and begun to try to see things as they truly are.
As you raise the frequency of the vibration your cells are vibrating at, you notice the chaos all around you. Like the captive in the cave who was free, your eyes hurt when you try to look at the torch high above you.
Things have always been chaotic, you just didn’t notice because your internal vibration was aligned with the outside world.
But now that you are much more peaceful, much more grateful, much more loving, you are able to observe the chaos, just as you are able to observe your swirling thoughts and emotions when you are in a state of meditation. You are an awareness that is viewing the chaos, rather than being in vibrational alignment with the chaos.
Also, now that you are embodying peace, love and gratitude, there’s like an alarm that goes off. If you want to be pop culture, Agent Smith is alerted you’re trying to break free of the matrix.
If you want to be religious, the enemy, the devil or Satan, is alerted.
If you want to be a humanist or a modernist, it has been described as the “fat, blind inertia”. It has been called many things over the millennia.
Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste I've been around for a long, long years
Stole million man's soul an faith
And I was 'round when Jesus Christ Had his moment of doubt and pain
Made damn sure that Pilate Washed his hands and sealed his fate
Pleased to meet you Hope you guess my name
Once you embody this state of gratitude and love, you are aligning yourself with the consciousness of God, the Christ consciousness.
And so the enemy begins to try to take you out of that vibration, usually in the form of obstacles or people.
These obstacles or people can be very alluring. They’ll look good, smell good. They’ll present you an offer. And sometimes the offer is a “good offer”. It could be more money or crazy lustful sex. But the offer will take you out of the frequency of love and gratitude and back to one of the lower frequencies.
Like Satan’s three temptations of Christ. His temptation to Jesus to turn stones into bread, because Jesus had the power to do so. The temptation to throw himself off the temple, because he knew God would protect him. And the temptation to lower his consciousness and worship Satan, and in return Satan would give him any earthly pleasure he desired, which were Satan’s to give. In the Book of Job, when God asks Satan where he was, Satan replies, “I was walking around my estate.” The kingdoms of the world are Satan’s to give.
The limiting themes are his domain. Juxtaposed this to the three temptations of the Buddha.
According to the tradition of Buddhism, Siddhartha Gautama was tempted by the evil spirit Mara as he was attempting to achieve enlightenment. He was tempted with visions of beautiful women, the limiting theme of desire.
Then the limiting theme of fear, threatening him with armies of demons and monsters, and the limiting theme of hopelessness, challenging his right to enlightenment and the validity of his teachings. By overcoming these three temptations, Siddhartha Gautama became the Buddha, and by overcoming his three temptations, Jesus of Nazareth became Jesus Christ.
These stories are not accidental. They fit perfectly into Joseph Campbell’s theory of the monomyth. Joseph Campbell was a comparative mythology and comparative religion professor whose famous book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, inspired George Lucas to write Star Wars. Most, if not all works of storytelling throughout all time include the hero’s journey.
The hero’s journey is an inherently human experience, just as storytelling is an inherently human experience. Every story, from the Epic of Gilgamesh to the Odyssey, to the New Testament, to Star Wars or Harry Potter, is either a manifestation of or a reaction against the hero’s journey.
So, the secret to living a happy and fulfilling life is to cultivate a mindset of love and gratitude so that you can vibrate on that frequency and attract other things that vibrate on that frequency into your life. But by doing so, you are making yourself the hero of your own life, and as a result, you will have to undertake the hero’s journey as you continue to climb out of the cave and see things as they truly are.
It’s not an easy journey, which is why I felt called to make these videos to help those who have decided to embark on this journey. Light and love, my friends. Go in peace to love and serve.
Outro: Fantasy by Bazzi
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