The Grasshopper delivered his version of fire and brimstone the other day when he pronounced this from his pulpit: “Hell is in your head.”

I don’t think he was referring to the concept of hell being in your mind; it felt more real than that.

My best guess is he meant you are actually in hell when you are caught up in your thoughts.

We create a living hell every time we get ensnared in a fiery debate inside our head. If Hell is constant friction and gnashing of teeth, I can think of nothing that resembles that more than the flames we fan inside our mind.

What we fail to notice is that none of that blitzkrieg of banter has ever produced a productive result. It only puts more fuel on the fire. That’s hell.

To escape the fires of hell, it helps to notice that you’re in there. Once you notice that you are creating and fueling the agony, you can choose to grab a nearby seat (perhaps in Limbo) and just observe the raging fire of vitriolic rhetoric. It’s actually quite entertaining when you watch and don’t participate.

The minute you feel compelled to counter a point offered by “the other side,” you have bitten the tempting apple and reenter the fray. The result is that your peace of mind is taken away.

Observing your mind at work is a one-way ticket out of hell. Once you remove yourself from the fight, you are no longer interested in being right – only being at peace.

As an example of this phenomenon, you can enter a political debate any time you choose. Just call a local talk show and express an opinion or go to a local bar and do the same. Before too long you’ll be embroiled in a debate that has no end. That’s exactly what you do when you saddle up to the barstool in your mind.

Like anything else, the devil is in the details. Once you get caught up in the details, you lose sight of the bigger picture – that you have the ability, through observation, to leave this pit behind. This allows you to rise up to the level of peace, and that’s heavenly.

All the best,

John