An attempt at making sense of what's going on in the world as humbly as I'm capable of Part 3

If you want a good foundation for understanding what I'm talking about here, please read my posts: Identity and selective perception 1 and 2 and A way that smart people reach conclusions based on faulty premises.

Don’t you think that it’s a little weird that we just seem to be hit by one global crisis after the other?  As if something is not quite right with what we see or read in the news? Do you get a feeling of unreality when you look at the state of the world? Perhaps this feeling of unreality is something more than just your mind playing tricks on you?

I don’t intend to go into much evidence when it comes to the politics of the current situation in this series. Others have done that much better than I ever can. Towards the end of this post, I will however provide some information if you want to check out alternative voices that talk about what is going on.

What I want to talk about is the spiritual perspective. And at the core, I absolutely believe that what is going on right now is a spiritual matter. In the next post I will go into more detail about this. Here I will just say that this is not something that happens within a small, fringe group of New Agers and/or tin foil hats. All over the world, people are reporting that they are going through spiritual awakenings. I am going through one. The big problem is that the evidence that we are receiving is of a personal kind. This means that from the perspective of the current paradigm, there is no way to prove that what we experience is real, since modern values tell us to disregard anything that cannot be proven objectively, even if reality at its core is a subjective experience. Let me repeat that: Reality at its core is a subjective experience. We only have access to our subjective interpretation of our sense data. Please don’t just brush this off as this is very important. This means that we don’t have direct access to the “objective” world that is given such primacy as far as knowledge is concerned today. There is no easy way around this. But this is the condition that we find ourselves in.

I will talk more about this in the next post.

Now, if you are looking for more political information that doesn’t follow the mainstream narrative, Russell Brand has made several good analyses on YouTube and Sky News Australia is pretty good also. I’ve made a couple of attempts at making sense of the political situation as well. The best ones are the following: Voldemort part 2 and 3 and The calling part 12.

The voice of God and the truth barometer

We always have access to the voice of God through our thoughts. The difficulty is to separate it from all of the other noise. 

What I’m about to talk about here, should not be regarded as an infallible method for getting in touch with the voice of God. There are other factors here, such as expectations and purely physical emotions.

Many people, including myself, feel pleasant shivers along their spine when something rings true to them. I have also felt the same shivers, but much stronger, when I’ve felt the presence of God. So, may I suggest that maybe we feel these shivers whenever God communicates something to us? Because really, if God communicates with us all the time, which he does, how could it be otherwise?

As I said, there are other factors to consider though. I would say that this falls under the realm of intuition. The main issues, I would say, are expectations and wishes. Do I expect the shivers to come? Do I wish for them to do so? If so, then, as always when it comes to intuition, I may have interference.

I don’t know exactly why things work this way. But something that I am beginning to notice, is that in order for things to work smoothly on the spiritual level, I have to not as much do things, as get out of the way. I have to stop interfering and let God work through me. But it’s easier said than done, when I have cultivated the habit of letting my mind struggle with everything for almost forty years.

A way that smart people reach conclusions based on faulty premises

One of my most fundamental insights into the conditions that we live under, is that with regards to most situations, events and phenomenon, we only have access to our own distorted perceptions, of a very limited amount of the total input that pertains to the situation, event or phenomenon. 

With this in mind, I want to talk about a curious observation that I’ve made, especially among people that are generally regarded as pretty smart. Namely that they often tend to dismiss claims as untrue, because from where they currently stand, they cannot see how said claims could possibly be true. 

Let’s take something that I hear over and over again with regards to “conspiracy theories”. Namely that for certain conspiracies to be true, too many people have to be in on it and there is just no way that no one would blow the whistle. Or that those conspiring would never be able to get along and therefore the conspiracy would fall apart due to internal power struggles. 

Here I want to ask some important questions, aimed at expanding the information-processing perspective. Because so much is dependent on what perspective we take and what questions we ask ourselves.

I’m not saying that what I just said cannot be used to invalidate certain conspiracy theories. Perhaps these are even waterproof arguments against every conspiracy theory that exists and ever has existed. But do you really know this? What do you base such knowledge on? Do you know that there is no possible way to organize a cover-up in such a way, that only a handful of people know what is really going on, even though a large mass of people have to be involved in the totality of the conspiracy? Do you know for a fact that no one has tried to blow the whistle? Can you for example know that all people have basically the same psychology, which would make the cooperation required for the cover-ups impossible? Do you know that there are no ways around such obstacles? Do you even know that everyone that runs the world are humans?

The last question was meant to provoke. But how do you really know? That something sounds too far out to be true has never been a guarantee that it is false. Why do we assume that we know so much more about the world today, than we did 2000 years ago? Hasn’t the whole of human history been one discovery after another, of how little we know about the world and existence itself?

I don’t think that Occam’s razor was meant to be used to discard any alternative explanation to the most obvious one. Especially when we lack firm criteria to determine which explanation is the most obvious one. Is it the one that the majority believes? The one spouted by the mass media and the public figures that function within the establishment? How and why is it so? Do you feel that the people that you put your trust in have earned your trust?

Smile

    Ramana Maharshi                                                    Ram Dass

I’ve noticed that many spiritual teachers have this peculiar way of smiling. It’s a smile that not just shows, but radiates peace, joy, contentment, liberation and a love for life. I’m talking of for example Ramana Maharshi and Ram Dass.

You may scoff at these people, saying that all they have accomplished, is to turn a blind eye to the harshness, coldness and meaninglessness of reality. 

I believe that the truth is just the opposite. That these people have seen through the suffering that, on the surface, seems to be an inevitable part of the human condition, if not today, then tomorrow. I believe that the key here, is to see that there is a difference between pain and suffering.

Ram Dass spent the last twenty years of his life with the right side of his body paralyzed and his speech impaired after a stroke. And yet, he seemed happier than ever. Because the life that he had lived prior to the stroke, had taught him to separate the actual situation from his reaction/response to it. To him, the stroke was just another reason not to identify with the body and mind. 

I usually don’t smile the way that these people smiled. If I became partially paralyzed, I would probably be devastated. Because I am not able to see life with nearly as much clarity as Maharshi or Ram Dass. But I’ve had my moments when I’ve felt this same smile in my face. This would, without exception, be the short moments when I’ve felt really close to God. At these moments, I’ve enjoyed every breath with gratitude for just being alive. I’ve felt unconditional love for everyone that I’ve interacted with and for humanity and the whole of creation. 

At these moments, I’ve felt first that I would always stay in that same state. Because it would be insane to want to go back to where I was before. Then I’ve started to fear losing what I’ve found. Then the grasping and holding on have followed. And inevitably, I’ve found myself back in my “normal” reality with its petty worries, concerns and annoyances. 

But just knowing that there is another state available, one that is independent of my every-day experiences, infinitely more real than the physical reality, takes the edge off of my pain. It seems a little less real every day. Even if I still get caught up in my negative emotions frequently, there is more distance to them. When the storms come, there is a part of me that just observes them. They become less and less intense. They last shorter and shorter periods. Over time, I become less and less attached to my external circumstances. I smile in joy, peace and gratitude for the wonderful gift that life is a little more often.

An attempt at making sense of what's going on in the world as humbly as I'm capable of Part 2

If you want a good foundation for understanding what I'm talking about here, please read my posts: Identity and selective perception 1 and 2 and A way that smart people reach conclusions based on faulty premises.

I wish to draw your attention to something that I know some have noticed, but that most commentators seem to miss. Namely what has happened to us. I will make a whole post on this. To understand what I’m talking about here, you need to understand a fundamental insight. Namely that attention is everything. Depending on what we pay attention to, we will get a completely different life and reality. So, what do you think will happen, if we are not even conscious of what we are paying attention to, in a world with unlimited access to distractions 24 hours a day? We of course have our smart phones, we have games, tv-series, pornography, sensationalist journalism etc. Doctors prescribe psychotropic drugs that make us more absent and numb our senses, often because of problems caused partially by our inability to focus. We are constantly under stress and pressured to always be accessible. Furthermore, social media is replacing human interactions and make us focus more on our appearances than our actual selves. 

It is in general pretty clear that our culture is destroying us mentally and emotionally. And it’s not as if there is no psychological research available that can tell us this. Coupled with this, we have a huge control system in place, that to a large extent is capable of running itself through advanced algorithms.

There is however a way out of this. We need to: Seek God first. Meditate. Pray. Practice mindfulness. Start looking at ourselves and our choices with as much honesty as possible. Bring as much awareness into our lives as possible. Don’t be afraid of looking at that which is shameful and painful. It’s going to be there whether we choose to look at it or not. Be honest with ourselves with regard to our habits, with as little judgment as possible. Start making conscious choices, instead of just letting life happen. Change will not come from us changing the political system. Change will come when we start taking responsibility for ourselves and our lives.

An attempt at making sense of what's going on in the world as humbly as I'm capable of Part 1

If you want a good foundation for understanding what I'm talking about here, please read my posts: Identity and selective perception 1 and 2 and A way that smart people reach conclusions based on faulty premises.

There is something strange going on in the world, within me and within many other people. That much I can be certain of. Things are not what we are being told by the establishment. And whatever else may be true, I’m certainly not the only one seeing this. Whatever else may be true about this, there seems to be a double awakening going on. One that pertains to who we are and our spiritual natures and one that pertains to the state of the world. 

This is what I believe that I can say for sure. But here the certainty ends. There are many theories about what is going on, on both the inside and the outside. And I wish that I could be as certain as many people claim that they are. But I am not. If you’re seeing and experiencing what is happening and identify as “spiritual but not religious” you might call it the Ascension Process. If you lean towards Christianity, you might believe that what we are seeing is the End Times. In this, two things are for sure: The strange experiences that me and many others are having, are connected with what is going on in the world. And what is going on in the world right now are not just random events happening by accident.

Identity and selective perception Part 2

I believe that once we realize beyond any doubt, that life and the world is more than matter and what we can perceive with the five senses, we need to accept the limbo that we inevitably will find ourselves in when we realize that our current way of perceiving the world will not lead us to the truth. And we need to do this without grasping for whatever new branches that are extended to us. Otherwise, we will just go from one confused view of the world to another, while once again convincing ourselves that we are standing on firm ground. 

This is so important now that consensus reality is falling apart. Otherwise, we will replace the faulty consensus reality with our own, equally faulty, individual reality, or the reality of some fringe group. And in all likelihood, we will sooner or later go out and try to convince others of this reality. 

What has helped me in this confusion, is my absolute knowing that God exists and has a personal interest in us. This belief makes me confident that the truth about what is going on will sooner or later be revealed. Because we are way past the point where what is going on can be written off as mere coincidences, human folly, random greed and power hunger. The world is about to change radically.

Maybe it’s something completely new. Maybe one of the “truths” out there will be proven to be the correct one. Or maybe it will be a mixture of the “truths” available. 

In short: Be careful what you believe and always question why you believe what you believe. Be cautious of the impulse to create an identity around your beliefs and try to be conscious of the fact that your identity always distorts your perception. And if you haven’t done so, a first step might be to ask yourself what your identity looks like, especially in relation to your current worldview.

Identity and selective perception Part 1

The content of this post can be summed up as follows: Our identity shapes how we filter and process information.

This post will be the foundation of much of what I am going to talk about, as I’m trying to make sense of the world.

Let’s start with an example that is a hot topic these days: The term “conspiracy theory” will mean two completely different things to a person who sees him/herself as a down to earth voice of reason that sees through nonsense, and someone who sees him/herself as a truthsayer who sees through the lies of the establishment. And depending on our identity, we will handle information related to the label completely differently.

I gladly confess that I belong more to the latter category and I in no way believe that I’m exempt from these biases (even though I think, for the sake of humility, it’s probably a good thing to stay away from the label “truthsayer”). What makes me believe that I at least have truth a little more on my side than the down-to-earth guy, is that I know for an absolute fact that the world is much more than we can perceive with our five senses. And no debating in the world is going to change this fact. 

So, this is the situation we find ourselves in: We only have access to a limited amount of input regarding a certain situation or phenomenon. We seldom have access to anything that even comes close to resembling the whole picture. And our identity, rather than cold objective reason, plays a huge part in what input we choose to discard and what we take to heart.

Other factors that play huge parts in what we take in, that have no relevance to what is actually true, are how things are being said, what emotional state we are in when the information is presented to us, in what context it is presented, in relation to what other information it is presented and how present we are while we perceive it. To name a few things. But let’s stick to identity here. 

People will also be uncomfortable when we act contrary to our identity, which adds a social aspect to it, where it’s not only us, but the people around us, that help keep us fixed to a certain way of being, which includes how we filter and process information. 

As long as we primarily use our intellects to try and make sense of the world, we will be subject to these limitations.

I don’t know an easy way out of this. The best solution I can come up with, is to cultivate other faculties that we can use to make sense of the world. These would be faculties of perception such as intuition and the ability to sense energies, so that we can get a feel for the energy behind for example a statement. But the danger here, is that we are so used to using our intellects to comprehend the world, that the other faculties are very poorly developed. But this can be changed by practice.

So while developing these faculties, we need to be careful not to fall prey to the temptation of adopting an equally false worldview, when we have been given sufficient reasons to discard the worldview of the majority. Which we will, once we start to question it, while letting go of the idea that reality has to be more or less the way we perceive it, together with fear of ridicule that comes from believing things that many would consider as crazy. When we understand beyond any reasonable doubt, that “down to earth” is the real madness.

What's going on on the inside Part 3

When I’ve focused on the energies inside my body, I’ve noticed that they correspond with my physical sensations, my body’s, movements and even what is going on on the outside. I’ve  started to feel the mood of other people much more strongly. 

Furthermore, I’ve realized that I’ve numbed and pushed down many emotions in different ways. And that these emotions haven’t simply vanished, but have instead been stored in my body as tensions. I’ve also noticed these emotions get activated in situations that trigger them. This means that when something happens that upset me emotionally, if I manage to be present enough to notice it, I can feel that the areas where I have tensions tense up more than usual, and that this is the areas where I can feel the emotions most strongly. Finally, I’ve noticed that when I don’t react to these emotions and don’t try to push them away either, but simply let them be there, I can let go of them. I’ve released many tensions this way and my body feels much less tense today, than it did just a couple of years ago.

What's going on on the inside Part 2

The truth is that there is a lot of the things that I’ve discovered that I don’t understand fully. Just that I’ve discovered something significant that has been hidden in plain sight for most of my life. 

Looking inside has made me wonder about the connection between thoughts and emotions. What effect thoughts and emotions have on our day to day lives. I have discovered that when I shift focus between different body parts and the sensations in them I can create very different experiences. I can for example create a totally different experience for myself, depending on if I for example focus on the sensations in my fingertips or the taste in my mouth. Depending on if I’m lost in thoughts or engaging in what is actually going on or what I’m actually doing.

What's going on on the inside Part 1

I know that a key component in what is happening right now, is to become aware of what is going on on the inside. When we start feeling our bodies, we start to experience energies flowing through them. When we observe our thoughts, we see that many of them are just repeating themselves over and over again. It’s often negative content that makes us feel bad. But we can also see that some of them contain what seems to be messages. We notice that the stream of thoughts never stops. That we can’t stop it and that when we try, we soon seem to forget what we are doing. Maybe we start to ask important questions, such as: What are thoughts really anyway? How do they function? Maybe we start wondering why we’ve never asked this before, about something that goes on throughout all of our waking lives. Maybe we start seeing that we have much more choice when it comes to our thoughts. That how we treat our thoughts right now, is not our nature, but rather habits. 

There is nothing wrong with you Part 3

To talk about the “age of social media” has become a cliché. And yet we keep falling into the same social media traps over and over again. We can choose to only show our best moments. We can add photo-filters and remove anything that makes us look less than perfect. And the more we do it, the more it becomes a habit. Something that we just do without thinking about it. Without thinking about why, what it means or how it affects us.

I’m hardly the first one to point this out: We just see the highlights of most people’s lives. And even if we intellectually know that we cannot possibly be the only person in the world that has problems, this is more or less how the world seems. Consequently, this is to a large extent how we unconsciously interpret the world. This is at least my experience. But until I became aware of it, it was an unconscious process. This is something that is true of many things: What my intellect knows, is often not the same as what I unconsciously believe. And the more removed from myself that I am, the harder it is to see these things.

So, to conclude: There is nothing wrong with you. Most of us are confused and messed up in one way or another. And I believe that most people will allow us to be human if we dare to show our humanness to them. And those that don’t are not worth having in our lives anyway. In our distant past, our status within the group could mean life or death, and our brains are adapted to these circumstances. But we don’t have to be passive victims of our psychology. And if one person doesn’t accept us as we are, there are millions that will. 

There is nothing wrong with you Part 2

One of the things that I discovered when I started looking at myself, was that I kept people at a distance. Furthermore that I pushed people away. This was not something that I did consciously. It just happened and I don’t know exactly why, even though it obviously had to do with traumatic experiences during my teenage years. And by putting up this wall around me, I got further and further away from myself as well.

Everyone’s wall doesn’t look the same. Mine was one of toughness, intellectualism and rebelliousness. Someone else’s might be of, for example, beauty, success and a glamorous social life.

What I’ve realized is that when we are too occupied with our surfaces we become superficial. The more we polish our facades, the more we identify with these facades. And the less we look at our real selves. And consequently, the more we try to hide our shadows, the more we also hide them from ourselves. But they are still there.

I want to live in a world where we are not afraid of each other. Where we can be vulnerable and share shameful secrets without fear of judgment. And if I want this change, I have to be part of that change. I have to dare to be vulnerable. I have to stop fearing judgment and I have to become aware when my impulse to judge kicks in, so that I can choose not to engage with it.

There is nothing wrong with you Part 1

Most of us carry around these heavy burdens. But we don’t talk about them, because we are ashamed. I think that people have always raised facades around them. People have always wanted to look better than they are. The only true exceptions are those that are so broken, that they see no point in trying to hide their brokenness anymore. Whether it’s one aspect of their lives that they cannot keep in the darkness anymore, or whether their whole lives are totally messed up.

There are quite a few exceptions of course. But the norm is to hide our weaknesses and amplify our strengths. Bonus points if we manage to trick ourselves into believing that we are these infallible selves that we want others to see.

When I look at myself, my thoughts, words, actions and motives, I just find more and more dirt. I’m often selfish, prideful, arrogant, narcissistic, self-centered, judgmental, sometimes manipulative and I sometimes act cowardly. Just to name a few things. But until I started to become more present, more mindful, and started to seriously look at myself, I didn’t know any of these things. And the more I see it in me, the easier it seems to be to see it in others, but without the judgment that comes from only seeing it in others. On the other hand, if I have yet to discover something that I see in others within myself, judgment often comes like a knee-jerk reaction. But I don't want it to. Because I don't want to judge others.

Are we just smart animals?

I’ve pondered the significance of the teachings of Jesus a bit lately. I think that most would recognize that Jesus has had a huge impact on mainly the Western civilization. But it is an impact that has stretched far beyond it. But how huge this impact really was and still is, took some reading to realize.

One thing that struck me just now, is that Jesus’ radical love message in a sense calls us to leave our animal nature behind. The animal world is governed by survival of the fittest, dominance, ruthlessness and gratification of urges. In short: it is governed by instincts. The majority culture of the society that Jesus lived and taught in was governed by such values.

I think that most could also agree, that if everyone at least attempted to live as Jesus taught, no matter how faulty they were in this pursuit, the world would probably be a paradise. Even if all of us were miserable creatures, with extremely low self-control, we could still create paradise on earth, if everyone made a sincere effort to follow Jesus.

So, what Jesus taught was something that run contrary to our nature, but that has the potential of creating a world that we actually want to live in. Something that actually struck a chord with so many people, that he shaped our civilization more than any other historical figure. In spite of it going against our animal nature.

I think that is worth thinking about.

It seems to me, that if we follow our animal nature, we do what comes natural. But we end up creating chaos for ourselves and others on a personal level. And the more people that act like animals, the worse our societies become.

I think that this also is worth thinking about.

EVERYTHING is a dialogue with God

This IS the final step on the journey. And it's a huge leap that takes time. 

If God is everything that has ever been and ever will be, how could it be otherwise? God is speaking to you in every single moment. In every single NOW that you experience. We can misunderstand the communication, but this is the truth. Our destination is to know that we always walk with God, the way Adam (metaphorically) did in the Garden of Eden. The fruit of knowledge of good and evil, I believe, is a metaphor for how we allow our own distorted intellect come between us and God. We can live with God in the Garden of Eden here and now, if we recognize that we are already walking with God and adjust our inner state accordingly. Ultimately, every thought should be part of an ongoing, inner prayer, or the voice of God, that comes to us through discernment and our openness to hearing it in the midst of our minds’ constant chattering and the noise of the world, with its demands and twisted ideas about what’s important and what is going to make us happy. The more we cultivate present moment awareness and keep God in our minds, the stronger this discernment grows.

Learning to listen to ourselves part 2

The confusion between the job of our different faculties mentioned in the previous post, is one of the major reasons why we constantly seem to do things that are not in our best interests, but seem right at the time. What would happen if we started asking ourselves what we truly want and need? What would happen if we stopped caring so much whether what we eat will add a few extra millimeters to our waist or whether it will contribute to an overall caloric deficit?

I’ve noticed that when I am in contact with my body and my emotions instead of using my intellect, I will soon get a message about what I need. It all seems to come down to this over and over again. Paying attention to what is going in inside and around us. When I don’t, I hand my power over to a combination of unconscious forces within me and constant bombardment of messages from the world, about what is important and what I should pay attention to.

I touched upon this in tha last post, but I think it is part of something bigger that I’m beginning to realize. Namely that we have gotten used to function in a very limited way, by using our thoughts to determine almost everything and thereby failing to pay attention to what the rest of us is trying to tell us. I’m suspecting that the more I break free from the invisible prison created by my thoughts, the more I will know things that I’m today only making qualified guesses about, often based on the often conflicting information from various authorities. Or even worse - I might simply be doing things out of habit because I’m in too much of a rush to stop and bring awareness to the present moment.

I want to conclude this post by repeating this: Pay attention to what is going on, within and without. As yourself: What is your experience trying to tell you? Make it a habit of asking this question as often as possible. When someone else is directing your attention, you are by definition not free. 

This is about being in touch with ourselves and our own values, instead of being lost in thoughts that are often not even our own, while trying to do what those same thoughts tell us that we ought to. 

Learning to listen to ourselves part 1

I realized this when I woke up in the weekend the other day: I’ve not cultivated the habit of listening to myself properly. Of listening to what I need. To what my body needs. What my soul needs. In many instances I’ve just considered what my mind thinks about something.

What happened was that I couldn’t sleep, but I felt that I needed to stay in bed. But a part of me wanted to rush up. This time I listened to the part that wanted to stay in bed. When I laid there, tensions started to dissolve and eventually I fell asleep, waking up a little less than an hour later, feeling well rested.

Had I gotten up the first time, chances are that I would have been tired, in a bad moon and more or less spoiled my day. This is something that has happened before. My thoughts usually go something like this: I can’t lay here wasting time when it’s impossible to fall asleep again anyway.

Recently I’ve noticed that there is something magical about asking ourselves questions. It’s almost as if it’s programmed into us to know what we really want and need. We’ve just learned to only ask our thoughts. And our thoughts will come up with all kinds of rational arguments for why one thing is better than the other. Even though they are totally unreliable when it comes to so many things, since they take such a limited amount of factors into consideration. 

In this case, my mind only saw some practical factors, such as that I will get more hours out of my day, while not thinking about how my body felt about it, that I by not listening to I will be less effective and less happy during the day and that I might fall asleep in front of the movie in the evening, thereby wasting a movie experience.

Food is another good example. I might think about what will be nice to eat in the evening and thereby buying some snacks or something. Or the opposite: I might think that I should choose some healthy but boring alternative, when I really want some snacks. 

In the first case, I may end up with some empty enjoyment that wouldn’t be better than a healthy alternative. And in the second case, I might end up unsatisfied, going to the store again or buying something even “worse” the next time.

The way I see it, the problem runs deep. We have not properly learned to discern the different parts of ourselves. We often confuse the job of our thoughts, our body or our emotions. We just allow the first faculty that makes its presence known to guide us.

A breaking point

I’ve touched upon the experience that I’m about to describe many times before. But then it has scared me. It felt as if I was going to dissolve. Or that something else was going to happen. But this time, I decided to let go of the fear, trust and embrace.

What I felt was the unity that I share with God and all of his creation. All is one and all is love. And yet, this is not a oneness that threatens our individuality. It is impossible to adequately put this into words, but I am going to try. It was as if everything fell into place in this one single moment. As if the whole world had led me to this somehow. That every little detail of the event was planned beforehand. The love and unity that I experienced was beyond thoughts and identity. Beyond the body. Without beginning or end. And yet, I was very much still in my body. I was very much me. Just so much more. It was an experience of so much love, that I just couldn’t take it. I wanted so badly to stay in that love. But I couldn't. It was over in a matter of seconds and then I was back to normal.

In other words, I’ve reached a breaking point on my journey. I’ve written a couple of blog posts that have a bit of fear in them. I won’t delete them, because my blogging has in many ways been a way for me to document my journey. And it’s not as if these posts are untrue. They are just written from a limited perspective.

But truly, I know now that there is nothing to fear. All will be well. God is love and God loves us infinitely and forever. God will never truly force anything upon us, even though from our finite perspectives, we cannot see how this can be so. But when we spend eternity with God and those that we love, not limited by what is currently holding us back in this finite existence, we will know that it is so. All will be well. Now that I’m starting to come out of my darkness for real, I know this. All will be well. This is what I am here to do. To tell as many as possible that all will be well. 

All will be well

Lately I’ve been experiencing strange and wonderful things. I have touched upon the oneness and unity that I share with God and all of his creation. Afterwards, the same words that were revealed to the mystic Julian of Norwich kept echoing in my mind: “All will be well.” I shiver in delight just thinking of these words. All will be well.

Here is what I know when I don’t let my own, personal fears distort my experience: There is nothing to fear. We are all beloved children of God. Even those that do terrible things. Our only purpose is to love, be loved and express love. All will be well.

Inner peace is always possible here and now. We can always walk with God in peace, by bringing presence and awareness to our experience in this moment and allow God to permeate it, and by letting go of everything within ourselves that is based on fear. It is really as simple as a choice between love and fear. The difficulty lies not in the choice itself, but in seeing through all of the insanity that the world has taught us is normal.

If we observe our speech and behaviors carefully, we can see that they all stem from either love or fear. We already walk with God in every precious moment. Most of us without knowing it. It’s possible to feel God’s presence and turn life into an intimate communication with him. It is just a matter of what we pay attention to. The scary things that go on on the outside, or his loving embrace on the inside. If we choose to walk with God, we can create heaven on earth right here and now. We choose how dark it gets before the dawn. But the metaphorical dawn is coming, just as certainly as the one that comes every morning. All will be well. 

Humility again

I keep coming back to this word. It’s something that I constantly notice that people lack. Everyone except me…

Just kidding. The truth is that I find it so difficult not wanting to be someone in the eyes of others. Not wanting to be considered intelligent, educated and insightful. I often catch myself making statements that are meant to show off my positive qualities, while trying to not come off as boastful.

Even when admitting my lack of humility, there is a touch of pride in it: “Look at me how humble I am because I’m willing to admit my lack of humility.”

The Calling. Part 12

The world is slowly opening up again. So soon we will be back to normal, right? 

Now, I’m no economist. But if you have an already unstable world economy and you introduce a situation, where you shut down the whole of society so that one in five businesses have to declare bankruptcy as a direct consequence of it, take measures that deteriorate people’s mental health, thereby making them less productive and more prone to behavior that costs money for society, pay enormous sums of money to corporations that are going to “save” us and take all kinds of costly measures to handle the situation, make the biggest wealth transfer in history, from everyone else to the richest people on the planet, wouldn’t that have rather serious consequences? And shouldn't those that govern us know this, considering that they have access to all the best experts in all relevant fields? In light of this, do you really think that the actions of our leaders are simply due to fear and incompetence?

And an equally important question: When the consequences come, are you going to trust the people that made the decisions that created the mess, together with the only people that benefitted from the mess, to come up with the solution? 

As I’ve said in another post, I don’t know what I can say about this without being censored. But go to YouTube and search for “world” and “reset” if you want to know more about what I’m talking about. Russell Brand has made great videos about this.

This is not meant to spread fear. Everything is in God's hands and you are infinitely and eternally loved by God. But it's time to start thinking about who to put our faith and trust in. 

Connecting with other people

One of my core wounds, maybe THE core wound, is that I have problems getting really close to other people. It easily becomes just two intellects talking. 

The funny thing is that somewhere in the background, I’ve seen that I have a great capacity to connect with others. If I manage to not get swept up in negativity or take things personally, I’m fairly good at finding good qualities in people and treat them equally. I’ve also noticed that on good days, people like to be in my presence. Which was not the case when I was younger.

What I’ve realized, is that if I want to talk to people so that they actually listen to what I say, I need to connect with them first. The same words will be received completely differently depending on whether or not there is a connection.

Learning to walk

I am more and more becoming aware of different layers of reality. Of how I have a whole network of energy inside myself that I can come into contact with just by focusing on it. But since I’ve had my attention firmly placed in the five-sense reality, I have the experience of a toddler just learning to walk, when it comes to these other aspects of reality. 

These aspects are just as real as the physical, five-sense reality. They actually seem to be the same as the five-sense reality. The best theory that I’ve encountered, say that at the core, everything is energy, but we can decode this energy in different ways. And one of these ways is the one that creates the five-sense reality. 

So, it’s time to learn to walk by putting more and more focus on these other aspects. The interesting thing is, that when I focus on these other aspects of reality, the effect is not that I withdraw from the five senses and become neglectful of the physical. On the contrary, focusing on, for example, the energies inside, puts me in a flow state, where everything just seems to run more effortlessly. And if I’m focused on the energies around me, I become able to detect more of the subtle nuances of other people’s behaviour, or the things that God wants to tell me through the events in my life.

But thoughts that "slip by" can teach us something

When we stop believing our thoughts and instead start thinking of what they are saying about us, something happens. We can start looking for clues to what is broken inside of us, or what negative beliefs that hide inside us. This is very liberating. I, for example, have noticed quite a few judgmental thoughts inside my head. But when I chose to just observe them, while knowing that they are not me, they lose their power. As with so many other things, we take control simply by bringing awareness to them.

Don't let thoughts slip by

This is sort of a continuation of  yesterday’s post. This realization came because of something I experienced during meditation yesterday. I’ve been aware for quite a while, that thoughts disappear when I observe them and that when they do, I become present in the moment. And other things seem to happen, such as that my third eye seems to open up and I lose my sense of the physical, of my body and the rest of the world. 

But sometimes thoughts come through that don’t seem to disturb my peace. I’m fully present with them. And they are distinctly different from my usual thoughts, in that they seem to speak to me and they seem true in a sense that my other thoughts aren’t. Yet, at the same time as they seem to speak to me, I’m in more control of them than my usual thoughts, in that as long as I’m fully present, only thoughts that I accept into my mind comes into it.

But as soon as I lose focus, other thoughts can creep in. In fact, I’ve realized that when it comes to any thought that is derived from any other state than present moment awareness, are not fully my own. They slip by, often undetected. And if I’m not careful, I might very well end up believing them.

Think only about now

Something struck me while meditating a while back. When my thoughts were focused on what was going on in the present, such as how my body was feeling, the slight movement that my body did by itself to adjust my spine etcetera, the thought didn’t seem detrimental to my meditation. But as soon as they drifted off into the past or future, my focus was disturbed and I got lost in them. 

Thinking of this afterwards gave me an interesting insight. Almost all thoughts about the past and the future are useless. Not only useless. They profoundly disturb my peace for no good reason. The only time that I can find that it’s useful to think about the past, is when I consciously wish to learn something from it, or when I consciously conjure up a positive memory to elevate my emotions and/or strengthen it. And the only time when it is a good thing to think about the future, is when setting conscious, clear intentions about it or when I think about what I’m doing in the now, in relation to my intentions for the future.

It is interesting and a little scary to notice, that I, and more or less all people that I’ve ever known or come into contact with, have given very little thought to how our thoughts operate. And that we habitually let our thoughts just go where they please. We do this even though it doesn’t take that much to just become aware of what is going on inside our heads from time to time and give the thoughts a nudge in a preferred direction.

My spiritual awakening part 8

During our conversation by the mailboxes, Jessica asked me if I wanted to come over for coffee some day. So the next day, I wrote a message on Facebook, asking her if I could take her up on the offer. And a few days later, we were having coffee at her house. 

We ended up talking for several hours. It turned out that we did not just share many spiritual views. We also had many copies of the same books in our bookshelves, we were both vegan, not particularly fond of political correctness, we both came from Värmland originally, had jews among our close ancestors, had lived in Gothenburg at the same time, had backgrounds in the metal subcultures and we shared many other similar life experiences. 

It feels good looking back at this now. We’ve been together for almost four years now and gone through much together. We’ve struggled and had conflicts, like most couples do, but we’ve never lost the respect for each other and we’ve never resorted to petty stuff, such as name-calling. But even so, it’s easy to forget these beautiful moments, when things get tough, the miracles stop (yeah, real miracles! - I’ll get to that later) stop happening and the struggles of everyday life kick in. It’s easy to focus on the bad rather than the good, thereby holding on to the painful memories, while allowing the joyful ones to fade. This is what I, sadly, to a large degree did for a long time. And I did so while Jessica shut her eyes to everything that was not working, while only seeing the good.

And it’s true that you keep memories alive by thinking about them. So if the past is considered to be part of reality, I guess that in a very provable way, you actually do create your reality by what you think about. I guess this would be true about the future as well. If you think about all the good things that might happen, you live in more positive expectations, thereby creating a positive future in the now, independent on what will actually transpire in the future.