There are rules, man! Part 2

So, to understand this properly, we can’t think in terms of immediate consequences. It’s not like I tell a lie and the next second someone walks up to me and punches me in the face.

Instead we need to primarily look at our inner lives. My lies might or might not be revealed. But I will surely be afraid of it. This fear will make me less happy and affect my other thoughts. Even if it’s not obvious, this will in the long run affect my character and my decisions. One small lie will have a small, hardly noticeable effect. A big one will have a big effect. Depending on how I look at the lie, I may or may not feel guilty. But I will be afraid of exposure. 

On top of that, I’ve also met a couple of habitual liars, that don’t seem to know whether they are lying or telling the truth sometimes.

People may also pick up on subtle cues that I lie. They may have a gut feeling that I cannot be trusted. And if the truth comes out, it may have huge social consequences.

But there may be more subtle ways that for example lying affect us. I use lying as an example here, because most of us lie at least now and then and it’s what I have given most thought to. It’s also what is closest to me, since I don’t cheat or steal. But I do occasionally lie, even though I try not to.

What I’m talking about, is that lying might affect how truthful we are with ourselves. Because we do talk to ourselves. And what is to say that we don’t create patterns where we distort reality when we talk to ourselves, if we distort reality when we talk to others,. The concept of “lying to ourselves” is after all well established. And it must by necessity take place on an unconscious level, which means that it’s beyond our awareness and conscious control.

Now, let’s take this one step further. If you’re reading this blog, you probably believe that there is a spiritual side to reality. If there is a spiritual side to reality, there might also be real, unseen forces at play in our day to day lives. I have, for example, discovered that when I’m dishonest about something, something often happens that thwarts my plans. And if I get what I want through dishonesty, it often ends up being something that I don’t want. 

One question that arises, is whether all rules are created equal. I would say no and refer to the Bible. The pharisees are, among other things, a warning against making the whole of life about rules. Most of the time, Jesus seems to agree on the following of the rules. But he is very much opposed to the attitude that the pharisees take towards following them. And on a few noteworthy occasions, he and his disciples break them. From the context of the rule-breaking that we get from the accounts of them, it is also not at all clear that these are the most clear-cut cases where rules should be broken. In one instance, for example, the disciples don’t wash their hands before a meal, when this is what the Tora prescribes.

Thinking of this, I can only come up with one logical explanation. Namely that rules generally are there for us to follow them, but that depending on how much discernment we have, if we are being truly honest with ourselves, we are allowed some flexibility. The harder it is for us to stay on track and “do the right thing”, the stricter we need to be with our adherence to the rules. This also seems to indicate that it isn’t always on the surface obvious which rules we need to follow and which ones we can break. 

I would for example say that in general, we need to follow the laws of the country we live in. But a strict adherence to laws that we believe to be bad for one reason or another, is not called for. We might decide to follow them anyway because we don’t deem it worth the risk to break them. But I don’t believe that we have a moral obligation to follow them and if I’m right about this, this also means that reality won’t necessarily smack us in the face if we break them.

So, if this is correct, societal law cannot be neatly fitted into spiritual law. Mostly it can though, so we should be careful about breaking it. And it might not even be worth breaking laws that we deem faulty, simply because of the risk of getting caught and the stress that it causes us. As with many other things, the freedom that we can allow ourselves, from the perspective of our own and other people’s good, is in direct proportion to the development of our own moral compass, our ability to be honest with ourselves and to assess a situation. And unless we are prepared to take these questions seriously and give them some thorough, soul searching thought, it’s best to just do what everyone else are doing, unless what they are doing is clearly harmful.

There are rules, man! Part 1

The other day, I was listening to an episode of Jordan Peterson’s Biblical Series on YouTube. One thing that he said was “There are rules” and adding this stoner/hippie-like “man” that he sometimes does, which is so uncharacteristic of him.

I’ve thought of it a lot afterwards. And I think that he’s right. Basically, I think that there is an unseen reality of rules that govern the consequences of our action. I furthermore believe that it’s partially to be found in the unconscious aspects of our psychology.

This is what Peterson seems to mean: that there are rules written into the fabric of reality, or at least into our psyches. According to Peterson, you will never really get away from the consequences of these rules. They are not the same as the law, even though many are written into the law.

First I found this implausible. People lie, cheat and steal and get away with it all the time. But if you look at what lives these people live, it’s usually not very happy lives. Even if someone goes through his or her life breaking the rules in the ways I just mentioned and still become successful, there might be some real agony once death approaches. And even though I don’t believe in hell, I can’t say for sure that it does not exist. And even if there isn’t any eternal suffering awaiting anyone after death, there might be other consequences. Perhaps consequences that are more akin to a father disciplining a disobedient child.

But successful liars, cheaters and thieves are a small minority. The vast majority, at least among those that do it on a regular basis, are ridden with negative emotions. The vast majority also live in poverty or in fear of retaliation or the law. This is usually proportional to the quantity and severity of the behavior. 

I talk too much part 4

How can I become more conscious of my speech? I guess that one way might be to get away from thinking about how others perceive my speech, and into thinking about who I’m being with the way I speak. Because if I act like what I have to say is more important than what everyone else has to say, what does that say about me?

I talk too much part 3

As with everything else that is dysfunctional in one’s life, too much talking is mainly a matter of unconsciousness. At least for me. I’ve on certain topics acquired a habit of speaking in a way appropriate for a lecturer. As a matter of fact, I have in general acquired quite an impressive sets of patterns for how I speak, that emerge as soon as I’m not conscious of what I’m saying or how I’m saying it.

I talk too much part 2

I can’t really say that I love the sound of my own voice. But I sure act like it sometimes. When I get going on a subject that I’m passionate about, there is no stopping me. I sometimes, quite often actually, do have some worthwhile things to say and now and then I manage to say something funny that make people laugh. So I’m not one of those people (thank God I’m not one of those people! ;)) that go on for hours about things that no one is interested in. But I do brag sometimes, I ask too few questions, hold monologues, don’t listen properly and I often catch myself waiting for my turn to speak when someone else is talking.

I talk too much part 1

Why is it so hard to STFU!? 

I started to realize that I’m not in control of my thoughts somewhere in my early twenties, even though I didn’t begin to undestand to what extent that this was true until my mid thirties.

But I’m still in control of what I’m saying, right? If I truly believe that, have I ever consciously observed myself when I’m speaking?

Changes require consistency part 2

So why don’t we remove the things that aren’t consistent with the change that I wish to see from my life? Why don’t I do it?

When I ask myself this question, the answer that comes up is that when I have the ability to choose, I manage to convince myself that I might need those things in my weaker moments. But of couse this is utter nonsense. The only thing these things do, is help me to avoid dealing with my real issues. They help me to distract myself from my problems till I get tired, go to sleep and wake up to other distractions, when what I might need, for example, is to think through my situation carefully, or have a good cry.

Can we trust ourselves? Part 2

Maybe we can learn how we can trust ourselves? Maybe if we can clearly see the state that we are in and with God’s help find the tools to transcend it, we can recognize the voice of God without having to rely on external sources, confident that we won’t be led astray by the forces inside and outside ourselves. Maybe Neale Donald Walsh’s books should be read in this way. That is, not as a literal conversation with God, where God’s words are coming through perfectly. But rather as one man’s attempt to discern God’s voice, among all of the other voices that occupies his mind. Maybe, if we’re cautious of our impulse to accept different teachings as gospel (pun intended), we can study different spiritual teachers without fear of being led astray. 

This is something that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. As my spiritual journey progresses and I gain more experience as I go along, the lens through which I view what I read becomes wider, since I can compare it with my personal experience. I don’t think that there is any point for me to take to heart that which I cannot relate to. It doesn’t mean that I have to dismiss it altogether. Sometimes I might sense that there is something with certain teachings, even if I don’t understand them as I’m reading them. I know that this was the case when I first read Eckhart Tolle. I intuitively felt that he had understood something. And now that I am more present in the moment, now that I can see more clearly when I am resisting what is and now that have gotten more in touch with my inner body, I understand what he’s talking about. And I can see myself moving closer to the state of inner peace and silence that he’s talking about.

And what I can also see, is that the more I am in this state, the easier it is for me to have discernment. For one, I pay attention much more, which makes it easier to see what is relevant in any given situation. It also makes it easier to pay attention to the voice of God inside. And maybe the truth is that simple. That when functioning from this calm, present, silent state, discernment becomes easy. Effortless. But, as I said in the beginning of this post, as long we are not on this state constantly, we might need to know as much as possible about the condition that we are in. I believe more and more that Jesus’ teachings are what will come naturally to us, once we function from this state and not via all of the ego-voices that are not really us. This might be why some say that the ego doesn’t really exist. Because what we truly are, is completely natural and effortless. The rest is just constructs in our minds. It is not real. At least, this is what I’ve come to believe. I’ve also come to believe that the more we understand about our condition, the easier it is to see when we’ve gotten off track. Maybe this means that in the end, complexity and simplicity converge naturally and turn out to be two sides of the same coin. As above, so below.

Can we trust ourselves? Part 1

I want to begin this post by asking a second question: Can we trust any authorities? 

These are quite troubling questions for me. On the one hand, I understand enough about self-deception, the unconscious, unconscious motives, manipulative forces in society and a bunch of other stuff that imply that “no” would be the correct answer to the question in the title of the post.

On the other hand, I can’t see how the answer would be to just blindly follow everything in the Bible no matter what. I’ve experienced enough strange and wonderful things, that traditional Christian teachings simply don’t seem like a viable option. 

Let’s get into the absolute beginning of my spiritual journey. I was a Laveyan satanist (basically ago-affirming atheism, at least on the surface), from the age of 17 to the age of 23. I actually started questioning my beliefs a year earlier. But this was when stuff happened that gradually, over a few days or months, shattered my beliefs. I don’t really remember what exactly took place in my mind, but afterwards I’ve just received more and more reasons to strengthen my belief in God and a spiritual reality. 

Since I had vacation to take out, I took a week off from work to think things through. At the time, I lived in Gothenburg and in connection with the vacation, I visited the big shopping mall called Nordstan at the core of the city. I thought that I wanted something to read that could… What? Stimulate my thoughts and help me make sense of things I guess, even though I probably didn’t put it into these exact words in my mind. So I visited a regular bookstore. And as I remember it, the first book my eyes fell on was Neale Donald Walsh’s Tomorrow’s God.

So, I bought the book and read it over the week. And even though I felt a bit uncomfortable with the style of the book, where the author does sort of an interview with God, the book rang true somehow. 

But maybe Satan led me to the book to trick me somehow, just when salvation was within my reach. I’m not kidding here. If Satan is real (something I mostly don’t believe in a litteral sense), wouldn’t this be exactly what could be expected of him, when he sees that he’s about to lose his grip on my soul? The question of the devil deserves to be taken seriously, until we can dismiss it on firm grounds. We are after all talking about the beliefs of hundreds of millions of people, and it is a part of the narrative of 2.5 billion people, even if all of them don’t believe in him. And 200 years ago, the absolute majority of the people in the Western world believed in him.

But I’ll leave that discussion for another post. The point is that we have a tendency to filter the information we take in, keep what we like, discard the rest and view it in a way that supports the “truth” that we prefer. To make matters worse, we don’t always prefer the most favorable truth. Our culture and upbringing shapes what we wish to believe in as well. Plus that we have a bunch of other biases as well. We might have a tendency to believe boring or painful “truths” more, since we might have a tendency to believe more in someone that says something uncomfortable, than someone that just seems to tell us what we want to hear.

So maybe this is the truth. That there are no ultimate truths. And that we therefore are free to do what we want with no spiritual consequences whatsoever. Or maybe we can at least just discard everything that cannot be agreed upon from a religiously neutral stance. This idea seems pretty appealing, doesn’t it? We can just go out, have fun and enjoy life in any way the we please and then we’ll go to heaven when we die. Or reincarnate as a better version of ourselves in another life. I know that I find such thoughts appealing.

But then we come back to the problem of our bias towards believing what we wish to be true.

Changes require consistency part 1

I want to stop seeing crappy movies with no other value than entertainment and I want to stop eating unhealthy food while I watch them. So, it could probably be a good idea to not have these movies or that type of food at home. It’s a very small sacrifice, so why don’t I just do it? Why don’t you do it? It seems as if we just made the right decision when we have the strength to do so, we could avoid giving in to temptation in our weaker moments. 

Start acting as if everyone knew what you are doing

It is probably true that most people are too occupied with themselves to notice how you behave. But don’t we want to be genuine, open and honest? Doesn’t that sound better than false, closed and dishonest? Then maybe if we started to act as if everyone knew what we were up to, we would come closer to the former and further away from the latter.

An interesting observation about worming

In my old life, I often tried to worm myself out of taking responsibility for different things. What I’ve noticed on several occasions, is that I still feel like this is what I’m doing, even when I’m giving an entirely honest explanation. I end up feeling guilty, before I take a step back and realize that, wait a minute. That’s actually exactly what happened and/or my motives were exactly what I said that they were.

Slowing down part 7

When I rush, I sooner or later crash into a wall. I burn all my energy pushing through instead of working smart. And the messed up thing, is that this feeds into other patterns as well. Because when I burn out, I often end up on the sofa, watching some crappy movie that doesn’t demand too much attention, with candy and snacks in front of me. And while I do want to indulge in this sometimes, it’s not something that I want to do habitually because I don’t think of what I do and therefore don’t manage my energy properly.

When I rush, I don’t think about being in my body. I don’t think about basic things, such as breathing correctly or relaxing,

Slowing down part 6

Thinking of what I’m about to talk about now makes me sad. You see, I’ve met lots of interesting people in my life. People that I nowadays have no contact with. Because I didn’t feel that I had time for them. Thinking of the friendships that I could have had and what I could have done together with those people really burns in my heart. I can’t say that stress was the only factor that caused this. I’ve in the past had an unconscious tendency to push people away. But swinging between being busy all the time and crashing because of my stress has certainly not helped.

Is energy only needed to set things in motion?

I do a bit of dancing in the morning as part of my morning workout. In this dancing I’ve discovered sort of a flow state, where I intend to do certain moves and then just relax into the rhythm, using my whole body and as little muscular tension as possible. This has the effect of me more or less letting go of my body, and I can be very present in the moment and reach what I would describe as an altered state. I don’t do anything that my body isn’t normally capable of, but I definitely transcend my mental limitations that normally restrain my body. 

What I noticed the other day, is that when I set the intention of doing a certain move, I have to use a little bit of force to change direction. How much or little force I have to use, depends on how fast I can get back into the flow. Sometimes I lose myself in thoughts, which is something that more easily happens when a change in direction occurs. When this happens, I soon find that I’ve exhausted myself. And if I observe what my body is doing, I discover that unnecessary strain and tension has crept into the moves as well. 

I then tried this with the rather simple tasks at my work, when I remembered doing so. And the results were similar to those that I experienced dancing. 

I don’t know if this was related, but when I lost the flow and presence, more I got more clumsy and careless than usual. I tipped things over and was not thinking at all about what I was doing. It was almost as if life wanted to show me that I was no longer in this higher state.

It feels as if using as little energy as possible is key here. And that this can be applied to all areas of life. Right now, I can’t see how this could be applied to more complex tasks. But somehow I believe that it could. Maybe I actually get into contact with something higher (dare I say God?) when in this state? And maybe there is no end to what this higher (God?) can do through us, if we just let go and allow?

Teachings outside the Bible? Part 1

This is something that troubles me quite a lot. I feel called to Christ. I can’t deny that this is where my experiences have been pointing me. This, I believe, means that I have to take everything in the Bible seriously. But I also cannot deny that my experiences have led me into territories far outside of conventional Christianity.

Being as honest as I possibly can, I find certain attitudes about religion and spirituality troublesome. Among them are the attitude that says that like from a smorgasbord, we can just pick and choose anything we like from different spiritual traditions, that we can do whatever we want without consequences and that discard anything that we don’t like. But I also find the view that everything that comes from religions outside of Christianity is the work of the Devil equally troublesome. Furthermore And the idea that sinners will suffer for an eternity, I find most troublesome of all ideas.

I noticed that I find lots of ideas troublesome. But at the end of the day, since I have no right to decide for anyone but myself and I’m no authority on truth, they are mainly troublesome as far as my personal relationship with them goes

Anyway, when it comes to the ideas about the Devil and hell, I have not found anyone giving a real argument as to why this would be necessary. All I see is other statements presented as arguments, such as that it has to be this way to motivate us not to sin, or that God also has to be a just God. I mean, why would we have to have punishment to motivate us to not do what’s best for us? Aren’t the inevitable negative consequences of sin, the ones that play out either in our inner or outer life right here and now, whether we are aware of it or not, enough of a punishment? And what kind of justice is there in eternal torment?

But there might be something here that I don’t understand. The more I struggle with the Bible, and spirituality and religion in general, the more I’m forced to confront the limitations of my own thinking. And if I’m wrong about the incompatibility between a good God and eternal punishment, I sincerely want to know about it so that I can change my beliefs. But I won’t take any sloppy argument, that often isn’t an argument at all, as proof that I am.

But I can not walk around in fear of every unsubstantiated claim that someone makes. If I sound a bit angry when I talk about unsubstantiated claims in this context, it is because I am. Even for someone with a fairly developed capacity for critical thinking, it is difficult to always apply this to all input that we are confronted with. Especially input that triggers fear. And on the other hand, if there is something to the claim presented to us, we might discard it altogether, if the person presenting the claim does a sloppy work with it. In this case, the claim, if I try to present it to the best of my ability, be: “There is one true religion, one true religious worldview and anything that comes from other religions, that cannot directly be found in this religion and religious world view will lead me away from the only right and true path.”

Having laid this groundwork, I will explore this more deeply in the next blog post on the topic.

Slowing down part 5

I came to think of one thing that happened recently. I moved to an apartment. By the entré of the apartment building there are mailboxes. I was so used to have the mail delivered into the mail drop, that I just put my name on it and not on the mailbox without giving it any thought. And then I wondered why I didn’t receive my mail. I simply was so used to things working a certain way, that I didn’t stop to think about it.

I often don’t stop and think about things.

Slowing down part 4

Now, let’s look at some of the more insidious ways that rushing affects my life. Rushing does not just make work sloppy and unconscious. It makes life the same way. When I rush, I get into the habit of not listening to me. What do I really want in this situation? No time to think about that! Just go with the first option that presents itself! Does this sound familiar to anyone?

This means that authenticity gets a beating when I rush. 

Slowing down part 3

So, let’s look at how this rushing has manifested itself in my life. Let’s first take the obvious. When I rush through doing things, I often end up doing them slower because I don’t think about what I’m doing, so I just do without efficiency or thinking about whether I’m doing things in the right order. On top of that, afterwards I often have to spend time correcting mistakes that I’ve made or in other words fix the consequences of sloppy work.

Slowing down part 2

I can honestly say that I’ve spent my life somewhere around waiting for tomorrow and rushing so fast that I miss the now. It’s pretty sad if I think about it in one way. But I’m starting to suspect that when things fall into place and this lesson, along with a few other ones about completely dropping self-sufficiency, pride, love and putting my trust in God, really sinks in, I will look back at my learning curve with joy.

Slowing down part 1

Among the advertisements on YouTube, there is a guy posing in front of expensive sports cars. In one of the videos he begins with a close-up of him, saying something like: “Wow wow wow wow WOOOOOOW!!! Slow down!”

The ad is for some self-development/make money course. I don’t really know. It doesn’t matter here. What matters is the point he’s making. Namely that when you rush through life, you miss all of the important stuff, both as far as enjoyment of life and opportunities go. And things often end up taking more time.

About the movie Spree

I have a confession to make. I’m a big sucker for satire and dark social commentary. These are not always the most spiritual movies. But I think that the movie has something important to tell us, that touches us on a spiritual level. I don’t believe that its cultural message is the important one. At least not the one that is most obvious: that social media makes us hunger for attention in a way that feeds our narcissistic tendencies (which people have been pointing out for a long time now). No, I think the real lessons here, are first that the movie interacts with the viewer in an interesting way. And also that it’s a cautionary tale about lack of authenticity.

So, I watched Spree, with Joe Keery from Stranger Things. In it, Joe Keery plays Kurt Kunkle, a rideshare driver that tries to make it as a social media influencer. But after ten years he still has no following. So he starts killing his clients and posts it on his YouTube channel. During the movie, we get to meet his victims, that also have their social media aspirations and hunger for the same attention as Kurt does.

The characters in the movie are very unpleasant, shallow and self-centered throughout. And even if I don’t know whether this was something that the creators intended, but I feel that I as a viewer am left with a choice. Do I look at these characters as despicable people, worthy of my contempt? Or do I see them as poor, lost people controlled by forces that they don’t understand? Do I maybe even turn my eyes on myself, to see if I can find uncomfortable similarities between my and those characters?

I can honestly say that I have some of this unhealthy craving to be seen. And honestly, I don’t really know how to deal with it. Because I put out a lot of content online. And I feel that I have something to say that other people might be interested in. But behind the things that I do, there is this longing for attention and significance. It is not the main motivating force for me. But it is there and I recognize it as a huge ego-trap. And looking back at my previous attempts at publishing content online, I've been guilty of the same type desperation as the mail character of the movie. Which is not something that I'm not particularly proud of.

In this way, I think the movie tells us something important about what our social media culture can do to us. If we approach it unconsciously. Because if we are turned into narcissists by our culture, it is because we let it by not thinking about the people we are and are becoming.

Every fall CAN be a fall forward

Some spiritual teachers say that we always fall forward. Another saying is also that life happens for us and not to us.

I believe that these two statements go together. I’ve also come to believe that the second statement is always true, while the former only is true if we make it true. And in a sense, we have to make the second statement true as well.

What do I mean by this? Well, it all depends on how we process it on the inside. If we choose to just resist our hardships and not learn anything from them, it will feel as if life is happening to us and a fall will just be a fall. Maybe in the grander scheme of things, everything that happens, including total defeat and death, is a learning experience. But if we don’t want to wait until after death to see if our failures might have taught us something, we need to start paying attention to how we process things.

The day before writing this I had a fall. It’s of a personal nature, that is not suited for this blog. At least not at this point. 

I’ve fallen in this way before. But something interesting happened. I didn’t fall as hard as the last time. And it made me realize that I have to deal with my stress. That I need to take care of myself in more ways than just working out, meditating and eating healthy. But there will be a separate post on this. 

What I want to get at, is that there is a lesson in all of our experiences. Even the ones that we and our lack of character are the causes of. It’s so easy to get into negative self-talk, with thoughts like: “I’m hopeless”, “now I’m back at square one”, “I’ll never take control of my life” and “I’ll never amount to anything”.

But this is very limited thinking. And that’s all it is. Thinking. We can change our thinking by choosing whether we want to believe our thoughts. And when we understand this, it also becomes easier to choose our thoughts.

For one, our “bad” behavior is never the whole truth about ourselves. If we take a step back and observe our thoughts, we can see that we convince ourselves of all kinds of stuff that we regret later.

But if we instead resist what is happening, explain things away and refuse to learn anything, we will likely just get more and more lessons, until we get a lesson that destroys us. In most cases it’s unlikely that things go this far since the lessons become clearer and clearer. But we can make it more and more difficult for ourselves. 

The real big things happen on the inside, when we choose to take to heart what God is trying to teach us. Because often it is quite obvious what we need to do to make things work better, whether it concerns our relationships, careers, finances or something else. We just don't want to be humble or uncomfortable enough to actually do it.

And depending on how we process things in our minds, we will either fall backward or forward. Depending on how we process things, we will either take control or let life happen to us. And paradoxical enough, real control begins with us letting go and trusting God. Because as long as we let the ego take charge, we haven’t learned the biggest lesson yet.

This is something that I still struggle with by the way.

Thinking of different scenarios

I caught myself thinking of different scenarios where things could go wrong, most of them quite implausible. That sounds like a waste of mental energy.

Changing plans

As I’m writing this, I could have felt a lot better if I had changed my plans the day before. Things ended up taking longer than I had planned and it turned out that I couldn’t do a few other things either. But I still went ahead with the rest of my plans, which left me slow and tired today, when I easily could have just decided to do something else. I am often inflexible in this manner.

Alcohol part 2

The thing is that I’ve been feeling very connected to myself lately. I’ve been meditating and getting in touch with my body a lot and seen some remarkable results. I wonder if this is how alcohol is supposed to make you feel when you’re in touch with your body. I’m not sure whether I’ll ever drink again or not. If I do, I’ll let you know how it made me feel. But we’ll see. The way I feel about it right now, is that I don’t want to take anything that makes me feel this way into my body. I’ll probably see what happens if I just drink one glass.

Alcohol part 1

Those that know me know that I’m no moralist when it comes to intoxicants. My foundational belief is that all have an absolute right to do whatever they want with their bodies and what we choose to put into them, is a matter between ourselves, God and our loved ones. But I haven’t drunk alcohol in a few months. Then, the day before writing this, I decided to buy a small bottle of wine, just 33 centiliters, and drank it together with some bread and cheese. 

At night I woke up with this slightly “mushy” feeling in my tongue, which I recognize from being hungover in my past. And when I woke up in the morning, my body felt heavy and I felt a bit shut off. After 45 minutes, I started to feel a slight nausea. And as I’m writing this, a little more than an hour after I woke up, I still feel sluggish and sort of disconnected from myself. 

Ego-lifting part 2

So I’ve put on too heavy weights. And learned the hard way, that you can lift a lot more if you do it wrong. So I’ve suffered a couple of injuries. But that’s not the big loss. That would be the fact that I’ve worked out for many years without learning a really valuable thing about weight training. That if you lift the right weight properly, and instead of lifting as heavy as possible, you try to be as present as possible, do the lift the correct way, feel the body and have real contact with the muscles that are doing the exercise, the workout will be both more effective, more pleasurable and less painful. I’ve also discovered that I feel less worn-out after a workout if I do it this way.

In other words, I needed to learn to see the ego in my training and make it a priority to drop it.

Letting go and choosing love

We are not our thoughts. Our thoughts are not reality. Our thoughts are not right. 

But what does this really mean? Well, basically that we can step back and choose what makes us most happy and what we care about. We don’t need to be attached to anything in the world. We can choose to be attached if we want to. And I’m not sure that it’s always a bad thing, as long as we remember that we can let go of the attachment any time that we want to. Maybe most of the meanings that we give to things are just illusory. Maybe we are just love and have the possibility of always choose love. Love for ourselves and for each other. What would it mean to always choose love, unconditionally, for ourselves and each other? Can we really imagine such a thing? If we tried, what actions would we take? How would we treat others? What would we say? Both when it comes to how we talk to others, and how we talk to ourselves. Because we do talk to ourselves. What would it really feel like to always choose love? What would we, to the best of our ability, think of other people? Of ourselves? What would our lives look like?

In short, what would it mean if we let go of all the thoughts that doesn’t serve love? If we did our best to not believe in them. What would it mean to take the question of always choosing love seriously?

Cleaning up our thoughts

I have for most of my life believed that thoughts are a private matter. That it’s up to me what I choose to fill my head with and that it doesn’t matter much either to myself or anyone else. That they are a private matter is in a sense true. But that they don’t matter is not true.

I used to fill my head with all kinds of negative thoughts about other people. Sometimes I thought thoughts akin to “if you only knew what is going on in my head right now.” I also indulged in all kinds of fantasies and played up little scenarios of taking revenge in all kinds of ways on people that I believed had wronged me. In a particularly hurtful situation, I fantasised about writing a suicide letter to the person that hurt me so that she knew that it was her fault that I was dead and then hang myself. 

Now, I’ve stopped believing in the Law of Attraction. At least as some mechanical law that says that we attract what we focus our thoughts on. God might decide to give us gifts or harsh lessons depending on what we fill our heads with. But that is something completely different from how we usually see Law of Attraction.

And here is the point. Here is one of two main reasons why our thoughts matter. Our thoughts affect us. That’s a given. They affect how we feel. And not just those really negative thoughts. All of them. If I’m judgmental towards other people in my mind, I become more judgmental in general. If I’m kind towards others in my head, I become kind towards others in real life. If I engage in destructive fantasies, I increase my chances of starting to seriously consider what I’m fantasizing about. 

I have started to see just how much things shift inside my head. I convince myself of all kinds of things. Things that often begin just as an idea that flies through my head. Sometimes I manage to convince myself of the exact opposite of what I originally intended and I often lose sight of what is important, when passions start to drive me in some direction. Sometimes I manage to convince myself that what is driving a clearly passion driven decision, is really rational considerations. 

Knowing all of this, I realize very clearly that it’s time to clean up my thoughts. And I will remember this until about thirty seconds after writing this post. And then my thoughts will start living their own lives again. But hopefully, with time, I will become better and better at reminding myself of just how unreliable my thoughts are.

Ego-lifting part 1

So, I go to the gym regularly. That makes me a little better than those that don’t…

But seriously though, I’ve approached my workouts with a fair bit of ego and force. I’ve wanted people to see how strong I am. I’ve wanted me to see how strong I am.