From my notes:
Life scams: How the motions of life, of your life story, can scam you.
I'm not sure how many there are. But here is one:
You feel great in youth but have problems: the opposite sex / romance, not being respected, being trolled by friends/foes/emotions, lack of confidence, lack of outward success.
Then as you struggle to resolve all those things, you gradually or in obvious phases or moments come to not feel great. Maybe you enter a time where life is terrible. But, somehow or other many of your characteristically youthful problems resolve, with increased experience or being "broken open" by life stresses. Now, the temptation is to settle on this nice life, follow your instincts and pleasures, and become shallow, forget God to a large extent and not be altruistic. Your natural ability to be serious, to will, to long for somewhere other than "here", is broken down by stress, and that broken-downness allows you to enjoy social validation, a kind of "peace", health, well-being, and pleasure. You can be an ordinary human, and no one will object.
Somehow, you have to see the temptation and spiritual attack in this, see what it would be easy to see as good as dangerous and mixed. You may have to remember to have courage to restore yourself to seriousness, quietness, and another kind of "peace".
The scam works by beating you into a place where you "just want to be happy" and then offering you a way to be happy by giving you what you had longed for for years.
(It gives you some of what you had longed for for years.)
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