The depravity of the universe in the mirror

good chapter this week. tough to swallow, but good.

I sometimes wonder whether we are moving through time or time is
moving through us.

I believe that the greatest trick of the devil is not to get us into
some sort of evil, but rather have us wasting time.

If you don't love somebody, it gets annoying when they tell you what
to do or what to feel. When you love them you get pleasure from
their pleasure, and it makes it easy to serve.

It was as if we were broken, I thought, as if we were never supposed
to feel these sticky emotions. It was as if we were cracked,
couldn't love right. couldn't feel good things for very long without
screwing it all up. We were gasoline engines running on diesel.

I do buy the idea we are flawed, that there is something in us that
is broken. I think it is easier to do bad things than good things.
And there is something tin that basic fact, some little clue to the
meaning of the universe.

We have to be taught to be good. It doesn't come completely
natural. In my mind, that's a flaw in the human condition

Sometimes I think, you know, if there were not cops, I would be fine,
and I probably would. I was taught right from wrong when I was a
kid. But the truth is, I drive completely different when there is a
cop behind me than when there isn't

It is hard for us to admit we have a sin nature because we live in
this system of check and balances...everybody is watching everybody
else. It is as if the founding fathers knew, intrinsically, that the
soul of man, unwatched, is perverse.

The problem is not a certain type of legislation or even a certain
politician; the problem is the same that is has always been. I am
the problem. I think every conscious person who is awake to the
functioning principles within his reality, has a moment where he
stops blaming the problems in the world on group think, on humanity
and authority, and starts to face himself.

He cannot accept her affection because she is loving a man who
doesn't exist. He plays a role. He says he is an actor in his own
home.

I wondered how beautiful it might be to think of others as more
important than myself. I wondered at how peaceful it might be not to
be pestered by that childish voice that wants for pleasure and
attention. I wondered what it would be like not to live in a house
of mirrors, everywhere I go being reminded of myself.

All this flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through;
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, reassurance, pleasure, and the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin;
I talk of love - a scholar's parrot may talk Greek -
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

I think every well-adjusted human being has dealt squarely with his
or her own depravity.