Nothing Happens out of Nowhere

13:18

Nothing Happens out of Nowhere

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5

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talks

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Meditation

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Everyone

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2

What if nothing in your life happened outside the laws that govern everything else? Nothing truly happens out of nowhere. Every choice, reaction, loss and turning point comes from something that existed before it, even when we cannot see the full chain. This story explores the idea that all is law: that life is not made of random isolated moments, but causes unfolding into consequences. Nothing appears without a history, and nothing disappears without leaving something behind.

Addiction Triggers Emotional Regulation Compassion Judgment Personal Growth Self Compassion Mindfulness Addiction Recovery Mindful Awareness

Meet your Teacher

Kingston, ON, Canada

Meet your Teacher

Kingston, ON, Canada

Transcript

Hey everybody, Jason here. So I wanted to tell another little story. I mean, Years ago when I was working in addiction treatment, I had this guy, He was sitting across from me and he had completely, Absolutely blown his life up again. And I mean that by, Again, He'd been doing well for a while, You know, Working, Showing up, Talking to his family again, Getting a little bit of trust back, If you will. And then, You know, Within a couple of days, He had managed to destroy almost most of it. He used, I mean, He disappeared. He spent money that really wasn't his. He lied to everybody that was really trying to help him and find him. So, You know, He shows up in my office and he looks like complete shit and he said, You know, I don't really know why I keep doing this. And I remember being super frustrated at the time because he had already really talked about why. I mean, He'd talked about triggers. We talked about the people, You know, That he was around. We'd even talked about what happened when he got money. We talked about loneliness, Boredom, Shame, Anger, You know, All of it. You know, We made the plans. He knew exactly what to do. I mean, At least on paper, Right? So, You know, So part of me wanted to say, Do you know why? Like, You just keep choosing the exact same thing. And there was some truth in that, Right? So, But it was, It was really incomplete because nobody really does anything for no reason. It doesn't mean, I guess, The reason is good, And it doesn't mean the behavior is acceptable. It doesn't mean nobody is responsible for anything. It means events don't just appear, I guess, Out of empty space, Right? Everything actually comes from something. He didn't wake up one morning as a completely healthy, Peaceful, Emotional, Regulated person and decide for no reason to destroy his life, Right? There was an actual sequence, Because there really always is. So I asked him to kind of slow it down, Right? Not really give me a summary. Give me the actual day. Where were you? What happened first? What did you feel? Who did you call? The regular stuff. What thought came up? What did you do next? That type of stuff. And so I guess when we broke it down, It was almost really painfully ordinary. You know, He had a fight with somebody close to him. So he felt rejected. He didn't sleep. He missed work. It goes on and on. And then the shame started, Right? He told himself he had already screwed everything up. Somebody from his old life messaged him. You know how the story goes, Right? He had money and he knew exactly where to go. So, I mean, By the time the drug entered the story, There was already basically 20 things moving toward it. So. They didn't remove his responsibility, But it changed the picture. You know, The relapse itself wasn't random. It was lawful. Cause followed by cause. Condition followed by condition. One thing leaned into the next and I kind of started thinking about how often we look at the final event and judge it like it kind of, I guess, Arrived alone. You know, Somebody loses their temper and we say, You know, What the hell is wrong with them? Or something like that. And then somebody lies, Cheats, Drinks again, Shuts down, And somebody actually pushes everyone away. Like we see in addiction. You know, We see the last five seconds of the process and act like we've seen the entirety of the whole thing, But the truth is that we haven't. We see the explosion, We see, I guess, The pressure building, We see the behavior, But we don't actually see the chain, Right? And again, Understanding the chain doesn't mean pretending the explosion is fine, Right? If somebody hurts you, Yeah, They hurt you. If someone commits a crime, They obviously will need to have some kind of consequences. And I mean, If somebody's dangerous, Compassion doesn't mean standing there while they destroy your actual life. Lawful doesn't mean harmless. It means caused, Right? The distinction changed a lot for me in that because I used to divide things very quickly into, I guess, Good and bad. You know, Good person, Bad person, Good choice, Bad choice. And those categories, They can be useful. I mean, We need values. We need boundaries. We need to know when something causes actual harm. But reality itself seems to move through law, Not necessarily moral labels. Fire burns the hand of a good person and a bad person in exactly the same way. Gravity doesn't check your actual intentions and trauma doesn't only affect people who deserve it. A child doesn't choose the nervous system they actually inherit, And nobody chooses the family they're actually born into. Or the culture that shapes them, The genes they receive, Or the first experiences that teach them what love or even danger feel like. And then we grow up and call the result our personality. We just say, Well, That's just how he is. But nobody is just really how they are, Are they? They became what they are through causes. Let's call it temperament, Parenting, Fear, Reward, Punishment, Loss, Repetition. You know, The things that actually happen. The things that never happened but should have. Every human being is an event with a history, Right? So I started noticing this at home too. Um, One day, One of my sons, Uh, Lost it over something. I can't even remember, Um, A game, A toy, Something didn't work exactly the way he wanted. And my first, My first actual reaction was, You know, This is ridiculous because from where I was standing, The reaction was way bigger than the actual problem. But then I started to look at the actual whole day, Right? He was tired. Uh, He hadn't really eaten that much, Uh, Something already upset him earlier and he had been holding it together. And then one little thing happened. And, You know, The whole thing tipped over. The toy itself wasn't really the cause. It was, I guess, The final drop, You know, And I think we as adults, We kind of do the same thing. We just have a better language for pretending that we don't. You know, The cashier was rude, The traffic was bad, Or the wife or husband said something in the wrong tone. But, You know, Maybe we're already carrying three days of stress, Poor sleep, Fear, Money, Issues, Problems, And some old wound we don't realize has been actually touched. And then somebody leaves a cup on the counter and suddenly we're acting like our life has collapsed. I mean, The cup itself didn't create the reaction by itself. It landed inside conditions. And basically, Well, Everything lands inside conditions. And that's what I mean when I say everything is perfectly lawful. I don't mean everything is good. War is lawful. Addiction is lawful. Abuse is lawful. Hatred is lawful. They arise from causes. Let's call it fear, Greed, Trauma, Ideology. Power, Dehumanization, Obedience, And even history itself. So I mean, One condition creates another until something terrible becomes possible. Calling it lawful doesn't really make it sacred. It means it didn't come from nowhere, Though. And if it didn't come from nowhere, Then changing the causes matters more than simply condemning the results. I mean, We're good at punishing outcomes, But we're much less interested in examining what keeps producing them. We kind of wait until the person is addicted and then ask what is wrong with them. We also wait until the child becomes violent and then kind of ask where the violence came from. Could even be a family member, Right? They fall apart and then act like simply just one argument did the whole thing. But the truth is, You know, Things grow. They grow quietly and they grow lawfully. You know, The seed itself doesn't become a tree because it made a moral decision. It becomes the tree because the conditions allowed for it. And you know, The same is actually true about anger. Compassion, Addiction, Wisdom, And even hatred itself. Whatever we repeatedly water will tend to grow. And that means change is lawful too. So if suffering has causes, Then reducing those causes also matters. And if anger has conditions, Then changing the conditions matters. Right? There's nothing supernatural that has to be added to this. So you plant something different. Pathway. You stop feeding one pattern and begin feeding another and then slowly the results change. This teaching also changed, You know, Kind of how I view myself because I used to look back at certain versions of me and think, What the hell was wrong with that guy? Right? You know, Why'd he react that way? Why did he stay in that situation? Why'd he believe that? Oh man, Why was he so angry? And you know, I still have to take responsibility for what I did. Lawfulness itself is not a trick for escaping, I guess, Accountability. But I can also see that it didn't appear fully formed out of nowhere. I was actually carrying conditions too, Whether that be, I guess, Fear, Pride, Experience, Ignorance, Or just simply old habits. You know, Things I understood badly and things I had never really questioned. I was acting, I guess, From a level of awareness that I had at the time, And it doesn't make every action okay. But, You know, Hatred towards the old version of me doesn't really create wisdom, Does it? But understanding does. And you can interrupt it earlier. You can catch the thought before it becomes, I guess, Speech or behavior. You know, This is where freedom seems to actually appear. Not really outside of causality, But inside of it. A tiny condition enters the sequence, Whether that be awareness, A pause, One breath, Even an honest conversation. And the chain then begins to move in another direction. You know, The man in the office had not done something good. He had harmed people. He had lied. There was consequences. But he wasn't a demon who had randomly chosen evil, Right? He was a human being caught in a sequence that he had helped create and no longer really knew how to stop. Our work is to see it clearly enough that next time, He might interrupt it before the final step. And that is compassion to me. I'm not saying everything is fine. I'm saying everything has causes, Right? And if we're brave enough to look at the causes, Something can change. Good and bad judgments we place on what happens. But beneath those labels, Reality actually keeps moving lawfully. Conditions arise. Consequences follow. Seeds become what was planted. And when I remember that, I find it extremely harder to hate people. I can still oppose what they do. I can still say no. I can still hold boundaries. But hatred itself begins losing some of it, Of its actual certainty. Because I start asking different questions now. Instead of what kind of person would do this, I ask what had to happen for a person to become capable of this? Now, The question itself doesn't excuse them, But it helps explain the world that produced them. You see what I mean? And maybe that is where real change can actually start. Everything is perfectly, And I mean perfectly, Lawful. Not always good and not always fair. Sometimes absolutely terrible. But nonetheless. . . Washer. Nothing comes from nowhere and nothing changes until the conditions change. Thanks for listening. Namaste.