The creator of the universe actually listens when we speak to him

That’s the little secret of prayer. To remember who you are talking to. And that he actually listens. 

A while back I noticed that when I consciously directed my prayer towards God something happened. Something very significant. Namely that I understood this on a level that far exceeded an intellectual understanding. I understood it at the core of my being, at the deepest emotional level possible. I could actually feel God listening to me.

My creator, the eternal, omnipotent, omnipresent creator of everything, in whose hands everything rests and who loves me infinitely and knows me infinitely more deeply than I know myself, actually listens to me when I pray. 

After this my prayers changed for a while. They became more meaningful. More real.

But since then, I’ve gotten caught up in daily life again. I’ve stressed through prayers and they have often turned into words without substance. I think that I actually in a sense forgot that God is with me. Not on an intellectual level of course. I can never fully forget what I’ve experienced. My experiences have been so strong and undeniable, that I can’t ever give in fully to doubt. 

But there is another forgetfulness here. One that I cannot really put my finger on. It has something to do with the temporal vs the eternal. Where I simply get caught up in my ego and forget what is really important. 

This blog post became something completely different from what I had planned. But I just realized that this has been coming back to me over and over again. I think that this is what is meant by “being in the world, but not of it”. We do have a physical experience. But really we are always walking with God for eternity, here and now. And life is meant to be a continual prayer and interaction with God. Adam really walked with God, but as we fell deeper and deeper into our intellects, God became more and more distant. But it’s not going to be like that forever.

Bad habits on bad days

Have you noticed that bad habits tend to rear their ugly face whey you have a bad day? Of course you have. Everyone has. The last part you maybe didn’t know though. Because since many are dead set on looking perfect, they rarely talk about such things. 

This is similar to what in psychological terms is called the “what the hell effect”. The “what the hell effect” comes into play when you feel like you’ve already indulged in something, so you might as well do it some more. Here it’s more like: “I’m already in a bad place right now, so who cares if I make it even worse.” Combined with the craving for some instant gratification to escape one’s problems of course. Because when we escape into our senses, we get a temporary relief from our painful thoughts and emotions.

Even if I don’t plan on giving up when I indulge on bad days, it is as if something is pulling me towards doing just that. As soon as my balance is upset, it is as if something tries to use this fact to pull me even deeper into unconsciousness. Deeper into unconscious behavior. If this is subconscious neurosis, Vadim Zeland’s pendulums, archons, demons or the actual devil, I don’t know. All I know is that as soon as I’m feeling weak, I feel this pull towards making bad decisions that goes beyond just wanting to escape my pain. 

This is quite difficult to spot. We explain, make excuses for, rationalize etcetera. But the fact is, at least in my case, that when I feel weak and out of balance, I tend to have thoughts in my head that I normally would dismiss. I tend to act on those thoughts and I tend to slip into patterns of behavior that I under any normal circumstances would recognize as undesirable, saying something akin to: “Ah, what the hell!?”

What is INNER RESISTANCE and what can you do about it?

Most of us, including myself, carry around an inner resistance. You can feel this as a tightening of the muscles in your body and in your head. As a tightening of the facial muscles. This is because we unconsciously want to block the energy of the present moment. Above all, we resist our emotions and therefore we hold on to them instead. Often they turn into the aforementioned tensions in the body.

I know that this sounds like some vague nonsense. But it’s not. It’s a real phenomenon that I am trying to put into words as best I can. My wording may be lacking however. In fact, my wording is most certainly lacking. But believe me, this is real. You can feel this resistance in every given moment. And when you feel the resistance and bring your attention back to the present moment without holding on to it, you can feel a relief in your head and your entire body. 

You can feel this inner resistance as if something is blocked in the middle of your head and in different areas of your body. If you train yourself in being present in the body, you will feel it more and more. The less you are in contact with your body, the more likely you are to feel this resistance. Believe me. I’ve been terribly out of touch with my body for most of my life and I have literally thousands of tense nerves due to suppressed emotions. But I’ve also managed to release thousands. 

Once you start noticing this, it might seem like a daunting task at first. But every time you release a tense nerve, you will feel a little better. Your body will feel a little better. Just try and be present in the moment as often as you can. Start feeling your body and what goes on inside of it. Try and meet every emotion that comes up with acceptance. Try to feel how it feels in the body, while staying present in the moment. Observe your thoughts, as they bring you out of the present moment and out of your body. Bring your attention back to the present moment and the body when they do. You can also focus on your breath to come back to the present moment.

You can do this anywhere and any time, but you will forget it. And you will feel an unfounded resistance, even though this literally requires no effort. But with time you will train your memory and remember it more often. And you will experience a sense of relief. As if a burden that you didn’t know that you’ve been carrying around is becoming lighter and lighter. Attention and present moment awareness are key here.

B.S justifications for behavioral patterns on auto-pilot

We often let our behavioral patterns run on autopilot without really questioning them. One of my behaviors is to sit down and watch a movie or some TV-series when I get home from work several days per week. I’ve been telling myself that I needed this in order to keep up motivation. The other day I chose to take care of a few things that needed fixing instead and finished the day off with reading a bit. And I discovered that this gave me much more energy and motivation.

This might sound trivial. But is it? How often do we tell ourselves that we need something that we don’t really need in order to function properly, just because we have gotten comfortable with it?

And we keep on telling ourselves this or that to justify why we cannot or should not change. “This is just who I am”. “I need this to function”. “My life would be boring without this”. You know the deal. I’m not saying that these might sometimes be valid reasons to hold on to a bad habit. Sometimes the bad habit fills a function that we cannot do without for the time being. I’m only talking about my particular experience here, knowing that I cannot be the only person in the world with this type of experience.

I’m also not saying that we should beat ourselves up because of our bad habits. God is with us no matter what our lives look like and I if anyone knows how hard change can be. It’s the stories about why we cannot change that I want to get at. Because these stories make it so much harder. Because our beliefs have a tremendous effect on our emotions and our actions. And we have the power to question our beliefs. And we have the power to change them if we come to the conclusion that they are based on faulty premises. Oftentimes it is as simple as finding an example from our experience of life, where our current belief proves faulty. 

As for the habits, unless we have a valid reason for believing that we need them, we can just simply acknowledge that we have a hard time breaking a certain habit. Period. And then we can work from there. 

Perhaps we come to the conclusion that we simply don’t feel like going through the trouble of breaking the habit in question. Or there may be other valid reasons for holding on to it. But whatever we do, I think that it is important to be as honest with ourselves as possible as to why we do something. Because since our attitudes affect who we are and how we behave, just simply committing to being as honest with ourselves as we can be, will have a tremendous effect on us and our characters, no matter how we finally decide to approach a certain issue in our lives.

Self-Observation can be shocking

I’ve come to the conclusion that everything in my life is a dialogue between me and God. I assume that it is the same for other people, even though I only have access to my own experience. 

I know that this is not the way most people see their lives. I didn’t either until maybe a year or two ago. 

If you believe in the Law of Attraction, you might say that you attract the circumstances that you have in your life, usually by your beliefs, what you choose to focus on or your thoughts. Some also believe that reality is showing us who we are.

I believe that this last idea comes closer to the truth. It sounds much more like an interaction with a living being. 

To understand this line of thinking, you have to understand how long it took me to start seeing what was right in front of me with regards to my life. To see all my bad habits, egoistic ways of acting, hurtful words, irrationality, all the lies that I’ve been telling myself etcetera with something that even vaguely resembled clarity. 

The thing is that I actually thought that I knew myself. Now I know that, even though I had done some sincere soul searching, much of my self-image was based on a strange mixture of, among other things, ego-inflation, low self-esteem, self-deception and selective memory. When I look back at some of my justifications, unconscious or conscious, for some of my behavior, I can only exclaim: “What was I thinking?” 

But my past is in the past. I can do nothing about it and not accepting it is not going to help anyone. It’s my present, that which I have the power to change, that is the problem. I’m responsible for my current situation. All of it. I didn’t know it at the time, because I was unconscious of my actual circumstances. But the fact is that I in a sense forced God’s hand. God gave me exactly what I needed to show me who I was, but I kicked and screamed and resisted and here I am.

The important lesson here, is that when we shift focus from feeling like a victim of circumstances, to actually trying to see what they are trying to tell us, something happens. Because I’ve truly started to see how there is a lesson in all of the challenges that we face. ALL OF THEM! We might say to ourselves that a situation appeared because of circumstances that we had no control over. But, at least for me, I’ve noticed that there were always some bad choices prior to the situation that enabled it. I could have been more informed. I could have avoided a place that I knew was dangerous. I could have made more wise investments. I could have been nicer to a person whose help now would be valuable. I could have seen the reality of a situation, instead of making it into something that it was not inside my head. Etcetera. 

The good news is that now that I’m pretty okay with being where I am, even though my proverbial cards are more or less spread out on the table in front of me, I feel more capable than ever to make the changes that are necessary for me to be who I know that I can be. 

What is the EGO?

In spiritual circles there is a lot of talk about the ego and our need to free ourselves from it. But few seem to give much thought to what the ego really is. I’m quite embarrassed to admit that I talked about the ego for many years, without really understanding it. 

I’m going to try and give the best definition of the ego that I can and then go into more detail about what I actually mean by it: The ego is all of the false beliefs about who we are and what is important to us. 

It is our false beliefs about what the world, the things in it and other people are. It is our value judgements about ourselves and other people. It is all of our negative emotions. It is our need to control things and for things to be a certain way. The belief that we need things to be a certain way or that we need to have certain things in order to be happy.

The ego is our identification with all of the above. The unconscious belief that this is who we are. The false identity that we have unconsciously shaped around these things.

Until we start waking up from our unconscious state, we continue to take on these unconscious beliefs about who we are and what we need to be happy. They mainly come from friends, family, school and in general the culture that we live in. Or the ego is shaped by our experiences and how we react to them. We form behavioral patterns to cope with specific types of situations in our lives that become stronger the more we practice them, whether they work or not. These patterns are also parts of the ego, as they replace our genuine response to the situations that encounter. Sometimes these responses work. But many times they don’t. No matter what, they are always less than if we act from a genuine place of conscious awareness. 

We can recognize the ego every time that we attach importance to being someone in the eyes of others, whether we wish to impress them with our intellect, moral superiority, good looks, our social status, career or things that we own. We can also recognize it when we feel embarrassed about things that we have done or said, or our lack of social status or material possessions.

We can also recognize the ego when our thoughts and actions seem habitual or when they seem to happen to us, rather than by our own conscious choice. We can recognize the ego every time we scheme and look at our own wants and desires, rather than what is actually good. When we look for satisfaction and comfort rather than true happiness. Because true happiness is never contrary to the true needs of others. 

This is not by any means an exhaustive list of the ego. But hopefully it can give some insight into how it operates. And once you start seeing the ego for what it is, I believe that there is basically no way back. You will probably start to notice it more and more and draw your own conclusions about it. 

One of the best descriptions of the ego that I’ve found is actually the seven deadly sins from Catholic theology.

We don't know what is going on inside other people

This really boils down to the fact that we do not have access to anything other than our interpretations of the sense-data that we take in. The fact that we cannot say anything for sure about anything except our own direct experience. I think that if one understands what this means, it should come as quite a shock, because it sort of changes everything when it comes to how one by necessity must view the world and other people.

I think that this is a fact that more people should reflect upon for several reasons. The most obvious one is compassion. Just like with human history, personal history only offers onlookers glimpses. We know that, for example, a major event has taken place. We might also know some details. But we are oblivious to the absolute majority of the details. And we know even less about the person’s inner state when the event took place. What was his/her relation to the relevant factors of the event? His/her degree of maturity or awareness when the event took place? How has he/she processed it since?

I think all of what I’ve said so far is pretty self-evident. And yet, how often do we think this way when we interact with others? Wouldn’t we treat others with more compassion if we did? I know I would. But instead, I often fall into the habitual thinking that I already know what a person’s behavior means. What that behavior tells me about that person. 

While I often tend to judge a person by their words and actions, I also tend to be naive in other situations. Namely that I often unconsciously assume that people are more or less who they say that they are and that their intentions are what they claim that they are.

The thing is that once a person realizes clearly that they have a persona, a social self, and an inner self, they will have a conscious choice of what to display outwardly and what to keep inside. About how large the discrepancy between the inner and outer self is going to be. This is something we do naturally without thinking of it of course.

As with the fact that we cannot know someone’s emotional life just from what we know about them or from observing them, this is also self-evident. But do we really think of what this means? All of our choices have consequences for our characters. What happens, for example, with a person that decides consciously to put up an act to gain advantages over others? 

This, I think, is most important when it comes to public figures. Not just because many of them most definitely must have made this decision. But also because, even if we know this, we often unconsciously respond to what they are saying as if it comes from a place of sincerity.

ACCEPTANCE and RELEASE

I had an amazing experience this morning. I woke up, feeling some anxiety in my chest. In the rest of my body. Apart from the chest, it was mostly in my legs. But I didn’t feel any impulse to do something about it. I felt no impulse to resist it. At the same time, I could really feel my body. Really feel at home in it. My face muscles felt tense in several places. But I didn’t feel any impulse to do anything about it either.

So I just laid there and felt energies and sensations in my body. After a while, those muscle tensions that I just accepted started to relax by themselves. The anxiety was gradually replaced by a comfortable calm. Just by laying there on my back, accepting everything in the present moment and resisting nothing. 

Thoughts came and went away. The anxiety in my chest did the same. I remember thinking something like: Negative thoughts almost never have anything to do with reality. They are just words that we attach to emotional states. I didn’t think it in this exact wording. This was the spirit of what I was thinking. But as I laid there and just allowed the thoughts to pass through my head, my thoughts were not as precise as when I’m not typing them on my keyboard. 

After a while, I felt the impulse to get up. So I did, even though I still had some tension left in my body. Because I knew that if I they didn’t get released now, they still would do so later. The tensions that I’ve struggled with for years don’t matter anymore. As long as I just accept them unconditionally, they will disappear by themselves.

After having had this experience, I’m thoroughly convinced that this is the big shift that we all have to go through. The realization that everything is okay. That we don’t have to do anything about anything. We might feel that we want to do something. But we don’t ever have to force anything. And oftentimes it’s better to just let things be and they will resolve themselves. 

There is probably a lot more that I can say about this. But I’ll just let it be for now…

Askng the right questions

Photo by Emily Morter on Unsplash

We often get so stuck thinking of what we want, that we speak and act mindlessly. And so we fail to adjust ourselves properly to the circumstances and the people involved. And seemingly small factors can change the outcome of a situation completely. 

I was in a situation at work recently, where everyone thought that everyone had the relevant information, until one simple question was asked that changed everything. It resulted in me getting more money than I initially would have, with a lot less conflict. 

This made me think. Had not this one question been asked, the situation would have looked completely different. This does not go just for what questions we ask others. This also goes for the questions we ask ourselves. In a sense, this makes language magical, but seemingly without involving any type of metaphysics. Our words change our realities in a very literal sense. They cause new thought patterns to emerge, both within ourselves and in others. They give us access to information that was previously hidden to us.

I’m going to end this post on sort of a sidenote. What is the most important question I can ask myself right now? Go ahead and ask yourself this question too. See what comes up.

I think that the most important question I can ask myself right now is: What do I need to prioritize right now? 

The inner guidance

Photo by Marek Studzinski on Unsplash

Love or fear? Maybe it is this simple when push comes to shove.

I am noticing a more and more clear distinction between when I try to use my little rational mind to do and understand things and when I allow something higher within me to take over. When I act from my little ego, what my understanding and what comes out becomes pretty mediocre and boring. From this position, it becomes painfully obvious that there is nothing special about me and that the world is full of people that are smarter and more capable than I am. 

But when I manage to set my ego aside, sometimes something magical comes out. I’m still pretty new to this, so it’s not always easy for me to discern whether this higher - dare I say God - works through me, and when it is little me that has a go at it again. 

As soon as there is an element of pride involved, or that I want others to see me a certain way, I lose this connection. I also lose it as soon as I’m not honest with myself, when I’m not present, or when I don’t accept the present moment. There is no escape from this. I can either act from “little me” and try to gratify little me’s petty wishes and desires, that have nothing to do with God’s will for me. And get nowhere. Or I can set little me aside and open up to God’s will. There is no getting away from this. This goes for everyone. Not just me. I can either do my best to be who God wants me to be and do what God wants me to do. And maybe, just maybe, there is something great waiting for me in the future. Or I can keep complaining that my life isn’t what I want it to be and try to make the world give me what I want and be sure to get nothing other than more of what I don’t want. 

It's okay to have bad days

I have a tendency to feel that I’m back at square one when I don’t manage to keep my emotions in check. And I feel that all the work that I’ve done on myself has been for nothing. And it feels like the bad mood is going to go on forever. And because I let this feeling go unchallenged, I probably hold on to my bad mood much longer than I have to.

I think that this is something that needs to be talked about. Because I think that this is a huge stumbling block, as well as a cause of much suffering, for those of us that are committed to change. Because that is what we are, right? The spiritual awakening process necessarily entails confronting loads of baggage that we have inside ourselves. And when you look at most public figures that talk about this, you can easily get the impression that, while they certainly have som bumps in the road, they are more or less living their dreams and manifesting tons of abundance.

I’m not one of those people. I’ve accumulated so much baggage during my almost forty years, that I’m many days totally overwhelmed by it. What keeps me going is that I know what I’ve experienced and that I have my wife by my side. I mean, I’ve received actual proof that God exists and that the world is totally different from what my five senses tell me. How cool is that? And I’ve had my wife with me to confirm that I’m not just going crazy.

When I listen to many self-help gurus and and people in the Law of Attraction sphere (I’ve realized a while back that I’m not a big fan of the Law of Attraction by the way), I almost get the feeling that there is something wrong with me because I don’t manage to be happy, grateful and think happy thoughts all of the time.

But I can hardly be alone in feeling that, yes, I’m on a wonderful, magical journey. But it’s also one that entails a lot of struggles and sometimes downright misery and suffering. Problems that I cannot just see as challenges, face them head on with a smile and say “bring it on”. Problems that I would be happy to miss out on the opportunity for growth that they contain, if I just could be rid of them.

At the same time, I know that I’m the one that has created all of my problems and I know that I have no other option than to try and fix them to the best of my ability. The alternative is to throw away all of the wonderful things in my life because of my emotional and financial difficulties. And that is not really an option when it’s put in its proper perspective. Because somewhere, even in my darkest moments, I know that there is something so much bigger than the world with all its petty problems going on here.

When we form beliefs and opinions

I’m going to go ahead and sound really dumb here. But maybe it becomes one of those the-emperor-is-naked moments to some people. What I’m going to say is that when I analyze how I’ve formed a belief or opinion, it has often not been because of some rational deliberation. 

I don’t have a concrete example, so I’m going to make one up that is representative of this: I hear someone whose judgment I trust express a belief or opinion about something. I find what the person says fairly reasonable and a few of my own experiences actually support what he/she is saying. Maybe it’s one possible conclusion that can be drawn from what I already know. Here I want to pause for a second, because this is important. Here, I believe, is where many people go wrong. We know A and that from A B might follow. But not necessarily. Then someone might offer some ideas that contradict B. But since I’ve already made an emotional investment in B, I find reasons to discard those ideas. And instead I find other ideas, that I don’t at all put under the same scrutiny, that support B. And so I hold on to B for reasons that are in no way reasonable. 

Seeing it written out like this, this looks pretty absurd. But in reality this is, at least in my case, how my beliefs often are formed, when I don’t pay attention to what is going on inside my head. Which is something that happens quite regularly, even if I’m becoming better and better at it. And if you say: "This would never happen to me", chances are that you haven't really payed attention to your thought processes.

What is authenticity? PART 2

A question that I myself asked in another post on the same topic is:  “Are YOU there in the things you say and do?”

What do I mean by this? I have a few embarrassing examples from my past, when someone has sincerely asked me for advice, and I’ve responded with some platitude like: “just be yourself” or “just do it”. I don’t know if this was my exact wording. Probably not (hopefully). But the point is that there was no connection between two people in this interaction. It was just a repetition of worn our phrases that did not really come from me, and which were not really addressed to the person I was talking to, with regard to the specific situation that we were discussing. There was no substance. No forethought and no present moment awareness. I may as well had said: “Grevjush brajafreo medanajal bahalk”. It would have been just as meaningful and helpful. 

I don’t want to make this mistake again. I want real connection between real people. But authenticity is hard. As with so many other things, it comes down to awareness. To be able to take a step back and not just respond with the first thing that comes up. To really see and feel the person that we’re talking to. To allow the heart and the brain to work together in the conversations that we have with other people.

What is authenticity? PART 1

“Am I doing this because I truly want to, or because I want others to see me a certain way?” 

A friend asked himself this question a while back, regarding to changes that he is trying to make in his life. Then he discussed the issue with me. I do believe that I tried to answer to the best of my ability. But the question made me think. 

The first answer I can think of is a question: Can’t it be both? We might have a genuine wish to change. But in this wish to change, there might also be a part of us that seeks approval from others. Our wish to change and our need for validation are really two separate issues that intersect. The best thing would be if this wish came purely from ourselves, because the more independent we are from the opinions of others, the stronger we become. But the need for other people’s approval is something that most of us have to varying degree. 

The simple question that I believe is the appropriate one is: Do I truly want this change? If the answer is “yes”, go for it! Do everything in your power to make it happen. And don’t worry if you also do it to seek approval from others. Treat them as separate issues. Maybe the change that you seek to make right now is a more pressing matter? Maybe the need for approval is something that is better to work with over a longer period instead?

Attempts at figuring everything out...

Nothing is what it seems. The world and everything in it is something other than I thought it was. I know this now. And since I realized this, I’ve been so caught up in trying to figure everything out, that I’ve been driving myself crazy because of it. There is just so much that I want to know. So much that I want to understand. 

I’ve reached a few conclusions that I discussed in a recent blog post. But I can’t be satisfied with those. My thoughts keep on spinning. Keep on trying to guess what is going on. Sometimes they fly off into really bizarre explanations that I’m not even going to discuss here, because you will definitely think that I’m crazy. But it’s probably not that strange. I don’t know where you who is reading this are on your journey. But I’ve encountered undeniable evidence that the world and the systems within it are very different from what I’ve been taught to believe. That we cannot trust our five sense at all and logic and reason are very impotent tools for understanding reality. And yet, these are the tools that I’ve been told to use to make sense of everything. So my brain continues to make one suggestion after the other about what is going on, while it really has nothing to base these suggestions on.

So, maybe it’s time to let go and just trust the process. Maybe it’s time to focus on what I do know and build from there. When you know beyond any reasonable doubt, that reality is more than what can be perceived with the five senses, it follows logically that anything becomes possible. And from this, basically two options follow. With nothing else to go on, I can either drive myself crazy by continue to guess, or let go, do my best, be my best and hope for the best. Because this, whatever it is, is definitely happening.

And honestly, there is so much in our everyday experience that is totally magical when we lift our heads a little bit and just observe what is really going on: To truly inhabit our bodies. To really experience our senses. To truly connect with other people. A thought just struck me: Perhaps we need to start with this physical experience, right here, right now, if we want to access what is beyond it. Because whatever is beyond it, and there certainly is something, right here and right now, this physical experience is what we have in front of us.

Everyday life and the spiritual life are one

I’ve noticed that many mystically inclined people tend to frown upon more “regular church goers” or their equivalents in other religious traditions. And many of those church goers for their part, seem to look at mystics with some suspicion. As if mystics somehow operate outside the boundaries of acceptable religion and thereby associate themselves with dark forces. 

What I’ve come to realize is that most of us need a little bit of both. Some of us might be more inclined towards just being good people that strive to follow Jesus in our everyday lives. While others might sit in meditation, experiencing higher realities throughout most of their days. But for most of us, I think our spiritual needs are best being met by being somewhere on a scale between these two extremes. Most of us can’t have mysticism without the everyday-part. Because our everyday lives are spiritual lives. We don’t just meet God in meditation, yoga, contemplation, prayer, the reading of sacred scriptures and other spiritual practices. We also meet God in our everyday lives. We meet God in our interactions with other people. We meet God when we share meals, work or when we go to the gym. 

But most of us also need to truly feel a connection with God that goes beyond mere belief. For some it can be to simply see a deeper meaning in events in their daily lives, where others just see random accidents, while for others it can be experiences of total bliss and ecstasy as they completely let go of the world and merge with God. Or anything in between. 

I believe that there is a reason why Jesus focused so heavily on ethics and why the more mystical aspects of of his teachings were toned down or veiled in symbolism or allegory. If we don’t allow our spiritual experiences to shape us as individuals, our character and how we conduct ourselves in our everyday lives, these experiences become empty. But we also want to avoid that our lives become consumed by dry, spiritless legalism, that many of the pharisees served as a warning against. 

I believe that this is ultimately a question of the importance of letting the brain and the heart work together. 

Confusion - What do we really KNOW?

In this post, I’m going to try and separate what I know from speculations. I’m not asking you to take my word for anything. But I encourage you to look into it for yourself. Seek out information. Meditate on it. Pray about it. 

So, what do I know really? I absolutely know that what we are seeing with the whole situation that has been going on the past 2.5 years and what we’re seeing with Russia and Ukraine, have spiritual reasons behind them. Take it for what you will. I’m not saying that I will never suffer from what is happening in the world. But what I do know, is that the only answers to the crisis are spiritual ones. I’m not looking for the ego-gratification of convincing anyone that I am right. I’m not interested in debating or who has the best arguments. The only thing I’m interested in, is speaking what I know to be true to anyone that listens. To shine some light in the darkness, maybe bring someone a little bit of hope and relieve some suffering. And if no one listens, I’ll keep on talking anyway. 

During my life, I guess I have been a seeker. Now I’ve found something, but I’m not sure exactly what. There are a lot of people out there that are confident in their explanations of what is going on. Perhaps some of them are right. All I know is that I’m not one of those people and that I haven’t found sufficient reasons to fully trust any of them. And I have even less reason to trust the official “truths” about what is going on. I can be more or less certain that they are untrue. 

So, I’m to a large degree as confused as most people. I wish that I could be as certain as many others seem to be. At the same time, I don’t believe that uncertainty is a negative thing. It’s a scary place be in. But not a bad one. And since many of those that are certain hold contradictory views to each other, all of them cannot be right. And my guess is, that someone who is very sure of him/herself, would generally be much more uncomfortable being thrown into uncertainty, than someone already living there. 

What more do I know? Well, I know that there is a God and that this God is personal. I know this because this God has made his existence known to me and many other people in different ways. I also know that everything that happens, both to us as individuals and on a collective level, has reasons behind it, even if those reasons to a large degree are shrouded in darkness. I know that there is some sort of plan. That what is happening now is not just random events that can end up in any way. 

I know that the world is much more than what can be perceived with the five senses. Exactly what, I don’t know. But I know that there is some sort of energetic reality, that somehow corresponds with the one that we can experience with the five senses. 

Finally, I know that we are being fed lies about how the world works, politics and the systems that we live in. That we are being fed these lies by the establishment, whether it is by the mass media, politicians, other public figures or the education system. How deep the proverbial rabbit hole goes, I don’t know. But where I stand today, I’m prepared to keep an open mind even towards the most crazy, far out ideas about how things really work. Because I believe that I have been given sufficient reason to doubt more or less everything that I have been told is “true”. 

Growing through our issues

We often tend to forget that when we deal with a problem, we don’t just solve the problem. We, as people, change as well. 

Basically, the more baggage we have, the more potential for growth we have. Which is good news for me. Provided that I don’t give up. Because just as we grow every time we deal with our problems, every encounter with a problem also provides us with a reason to do just that. To give up. 

Feelings of anger, hopelessness, fear or shame, tensions, bad posture, procrastination, lack of responsibility, overeating, selfishness, difficulty handling money, low self-esteem, addiction, judgment, pride, self-deceit, difficulty staying focused. These are all issues that I either have dealt with or still have in my life. And I have dealt with all of them to some degree.

And most of them have made want to give up and curse my unconscious past, where I either unknowingly created these issues for myself, or they arose due to the circumstances that I found myself in and my inability to cope with them at the time. 

But my refusal to just live with my limitations has also made me grow a lot. Today I know myself pretty well. I’ve become more confident, less judgmental and my ability to understand other people has grown because of it. And maybe the biggest thing is that it is quite a humbling experience to be confronted with all of the dirt one has in one’s life. Even though bursts of pride still flare up in me from time to time. And humility is most definitely one of the most important qualities to grow if one wants to get closer to God. Maybe the most important. 

Seeing all of these things inside me, has also made me understand the fallen state that we are all in. And seeing my ability to handle my difficulties grow, has also given me glimpses of what God intended us to be and what we need to do to start moving in that direction. It has also allowed me to understand many of the deep psychological truths in the Bible and to understand the concept of sin in a different way from most people. Not as something that makes us bad and deserving of condemnation, but as a statement of fact regarding our brokenness and unconsciousness, and their inevitable consequences for our characters and behaviors. In seeing this, I am also trying not to beat myself up too much, as self-acceptance is important and not always easy.

By the way, did you know that sin originally means “missing the mark”?

Living one's insights

It’s one thing to have insights and another to put them into practice. I catch myself more or less daily, acting against my better judgment. Because old habits are so ingrained in me. 

This has something to do with memory. I simply forget that I know a better way of doing things. I simply forget that I know better than doing certain things at all. And I forget that there is a better mindset to do things from. 

As with so many other things, this has to do with awareness. I lose myself in emotions and thoughts. I lose myself in the past or in the future, instead of being here and now. I lose myself in wishing for things to be different. And so I do things automatically, out of habit. 

I come back to awareness, awareness, awareness. It’s all about awareness. When I’m here and now my mind expands. I gain access to higher ways of functioning. When I lose awareness, I fall back into old patterns. Often I even forget that I can choose to bring awareness into every given moment. That every time that I lose awareness, it is a simple choice to bring it back to the present moment. It does not take any effort at all. But our minds are so used to everything taking effort, that it fools itself into thinking that this also takes effort. And so it resists it. 

God's kingdom and heaven on earth

In the Book of Revelation it is talked about 144.000 people that are going to rule together with Jesus in from mount Zion over the earth. This is likely symbolic language. Jehovahs Witnesses for example, believe that these are people that will rule over the earth from heaven.

An interesting thought came to me with regards to this. And I’m not in any way saying that this is a matter of fact. But hear me out.

Many mystics, both within Christianity and other religious traditions that use Christian terminology, believe that heaven is an internal state and not an actual place. And there is some support for this in the Bible, in that it talks about heaven and paradise as if they were two different “places”. So, what if these 144.000 are actually people that have realized heaven within, i.e people that have reached some form of spiritual enlightenment. And what if these are people that are going to build the new kingdom, separate from the corrupt kingdoms of the earth. 

There are a few other details in this. But if we accept that even such passages in the Book of Revelation that on the surface seem literal, might also be symbolical, these become easier to swallow as well.

There is an obvious link between the Book of Daniel and the Book of Revelation and there is in the Book of Daniel a heavy emphasis on the corrupt kingdoms of the earth, that are finally to be replaced by the kingdom of God. 

Now, these 144.000 cannot rule until they have fully realized heaven within themselves. This means that until they have set aside all of the ego’s petty desires and wishes, they are not fit to rule.

History has seen few examples of enlightened rulers and in all likelihood none that have been totally enlightened. As a rule with very few exceptions, our rulers have been chosen among the biggest egos. But I believe that this, in one way or another, is coming to an end now. 

The end-goal, I believe, for all of humanity, is to live in total freedom, freely choosing obedience to the will of God. But before this can happen, ego-less rulers that are truly there to serve in total humility need to govern the masses. The choices are really simple. Love over hate. Good over evil. Humility over pride. Forgiveness over judgment. But until the veil is lifted so that one sees this choice clearly, one needs truly benevolent rulers. Rulers that cannot become corrupted by power.