I ran across an interesting quote the other day but have been unable to locate its source:“Your nervous system will always choose a familiar hell over an unfamiliar heaven.”That saying seems true to me. I don’t know how many people I have met over the years who repeated the same old patterns that made them unhappy just because they were familiar..I’ve known so many people who repeated the same romantic mistakes over and over because a certain type of lover felt familiar to the person with an unhappy home of origin.Many people choose religion, not to bring new insights, but to reinforce the trance holding their life together. Many people do not even suspect that healthy religion might illumines their world and open them to newly discovered truths. So many people choose their religion because it resembles the safe and familiar childhood memories of dull old hymns and reassuring but mindless cliches. Few people choose a religion that calls them out of their herd and into personal transformation. Should anyone be surprised when a political movement claiming to “make America great again” would defend Confederate flags and care more about the statues of old dead white men than reshuffling the cards so that America might be great to ALL its citizens? The great Zen teacher Suzuki said the secret of Zen is to always be a beginner. When Jesus talked about being “born again” I suspect he was challenging us to reboot our lives and see each moment with new eyes. We cannot reboot our lives from within the safe familiar walls of familiarity.Happiness demands that we let go of truths that have died and embrace the new world being born. We cannot find love so long as we seek people who match the romantic fantasies of our immaturity. We cannot find justice if we will not leave the culturally approved hierarchies of oppression. We cannot discover new paradigms of science if our only measure for truth is whether new ideas fit into what we already know.What a mantra of rebirth: “Your nervous system will always choose a familiar hell over an unfamiliar heaven.” Who would have suspected that the most dangerous place in our spiritual pilgrimage is our comfort zone?