This is a very practical episode.

Here I want to present you with a powerful conceptual lens to help you navigate all of life.

And that lens is traps think of life as a dungeon full of booby traps and your job is to use intelligence wisdom

consciousness intuition and experience to foresee and avoid all of these traps.

Traps are not so much set by evil people, although sometimes they are.

But the most important traps are the traps of your own mind, of course.

The psychological traps.

And really, you're learning to navigate the trickeries of your own mind and mind at large, which is what the universe is.

Mind or consciousness, as we've discussed many times before, is a very tricky thing.

A general theme of our work here has been seeing how reality is all about illusion, deception.

And of course, illusions create traps.

And intelligence is your ability to see through those traps.

But what is a trap really?

A trap isn't just something that's bad.

It's not just a mistake.

A trap is something that's bad but seems good.

Traps are enticing.

A trap presents you with some large gain and value only to cost you greatly in the end.

Think of how a mousetrap works.

You got that juicy piece of cheese for the rat.

But what's the cost? Instant death.

So it's that alluring quality of these traps,

...