Excerpt from the book: The doors of joy: 19 meditations for authentic living

The fear that pervades today’s society has led us to forget the value of chaos and to attribute to it only a sense of disorder and catastrophe. Let us return for a moment to Greek mythology; it will help us recognize the creativity of chaos and reintegrate it into our lives.

Chaos existed before anything else, a sort of floating, undifferentiated magma full of suspended energies. Then Gaia, the earth, Eros, love, Nyx, the night, and Erebus, darkness, arose. In a first impulse of love, Night and Erebus united and give rise to day and the ether. Then hatred and love appear, as if presaging a return to chaos.

Perceiving chaos as energy is enough to reduce our fear of all chaotic states and to overcome our strategies for avoiding them. Periods of chaos are wonderfully creative. They mark the end of a false sense of order and the emergence of a new force. If we have the courage not to run away from chaos, not to close our eyes, this state will give us the sensation of floating in an ocean of pulsating energy. The body absorbs this energy; the mind feeds on it and undergoes a phase of detoxification, a restful emptiness in which the seeds of renewal sprout.

In harmony there is a kind of soporific lethargy. The simple desire to settle into it is the most basic expression of fear. Piercing the bubble of harmony to penetrate the chaos in which harmony seems to float is the beginning of a great adventure. The encounter with the unknown that powerfully stimulates our mind and body, paralyzed by habit.

There is something questionable about the adoration of harmony. I would gladly imagine an altar on which to replace the Buddha statue with a sculptural work by César representing chaos, to which, every morning, we would offer our surrender in a meditation on the beauty of the chaos within us and its infinite possibilities. It is not situations that are chaotic, but our reaction to these situations.

Accepting chaos, floating within it as if in a benevolent ocean, is a joyful state in which fear has vanished. We will feel inspired, driven to let things unfold without wanting to control everything anymore. Control stems directly from the fear of being fully alive. There is no authentic joy unless one is touched by chaos.