On pleasure PART 1

Photo by Tomáš Petz on Unsplash

I think that anything that is such a significant part of life as pleasure deserves some conscious reflection. After all, God gave us our senses and our ability to feel pleasure by using them. Therefore I think that it’s clear that God wants us to enjoy ourselves. So why shouldn’t pleasure be important?

When I was in my late teens to early twenties, I was a total hedonist. After that, I’ve tried many different approaches to pleasure, without thinking truly consciously about it. As with many other things, I’ve ran into different teachings and ideas, often without thinking about the philosophy behind them, and adopted them as my own. This series of posts is my first attempt at actually reach some clarity on this. 

Basically, as with everything, I believe that just the thing that I’ve been missing for so many years with regards to pleasure: doing things consciously and with intent, is what is most important if we want to sort this out. And “sort this out” is the right way to put it. Because yes, most people, including myself, have made a mess of their relationship with pleasure.

I believe that we need to seriously start asking questions such as: How do I want to feel pleasure? In what ways? What constraints do I need to put on myself? Why? 

Doing this is not a way to make life more boring or less pleasurable. In fact, it’s the opposite. It’s about making our ways of feeling pleasure more refined, varying, exciting and better for us in the long run.

The "normal" is insane

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We pay huge businesses money to poison us with unhealthy foods and justify it by saying: “you have to live a little.” I’m not saying this to judge. I’ve struggled quite a lot with kicking unhealthy foods in my life and justified doing so in all kinds of ways. And until my mid twenties I was quite overweight. And besides, we do so many things out of habit without thinking about it and never question it. I’ve done this too. I probably still do, but since I do it unconsciously out of habit, I don’t know about it. But I try fo think about it, because even if I don’t dismiss everything about our culture, I don’t think that its values will bring us any kind of happiness either.

We accept a financial system where one percent ot the population has more than half the assets. We acquire debt so that we can, again pay huge corporations, to consume their products. Partially because we think that they are going to make us happy. But also partially because we constantly compare ourselves to others. We pay off these debts for years, while those at the top of the pyramid rub their hands together, living off of pushing these products to us, while we consume to chase happiness. And we spend most of our time and energy working so that we can continue being consumers.

We know that the cliché that the best things in life are free is true. Things such as spirituality, love, connection with other people, walks in nature and so on. And yet, if we look at what we prioritize, these show up pretty far down the list. Why, otherwise, would we spend a lifetime in debt so that we can own more stuff?

There is nothing new about these insights. On some level we know that it is so. But we don’t want to break free from it. Because change is difficult. Staying the same is easy, even if we do so at the cost of living with a constant dull, mental pain. 

I’ve just given a few examples here. And none of these examples apply to everyone or to everyone equally. What I want to encourage you to do, is to take a look at what you take for granted. What in your life do you truly value? What do you truly want? And what do you want simply because society and other people have told you that you want it?

Learning who I really am and how to act that way

A while back it hit me hard that earlier in my life, I lost sight of who I really was in trying to express my uniqueness, while I complained that others lost sight of who they were in conformity. In retrospect, it’s easy to see that it’s two sides of the same coin and that no one side is better than the other. I’ve written things about this before. And it is because I think that I truly have stumbled over something important here.

A standard response that you get from many people when we bring up questions about who we are is: “We know who we are, don’t we?” But do we really? Do our words and actions ring true when we interact with others? Do I really feel that it’s me speaking? Or is it a social mask, constructed from who I think that I ought to be? Made from who I want others to perceive me as? 

I used to be one of those people that said: “I don’t care what anyone thinks.” What I could have added was: “And I really really want everyone to know how much I don’t care what anyone thinks.” In other words, I did care. What I’ve learned is that those that say these things often are the ones that care the most. Often they are, just like I used to be, people that try to project a tough, rebellious image.

Jesus speaks of occupying and/or guarding one’s home on several occasions. One’s home is an obvious reference to one’s mind and one’s life. This, in turn means something very exact. What I mean is that I have noticed, both within myself and others, how often no one is home. The words that I and others say don’t really mean anything. It’s just part of a social game of expectations, appropriateness, perceived wants, needs and desires. There is no genuine connection. 

I want to bring this back to what I said in the beginning. Namely that when we don’t think consciously about who we are and who we truly want to be, not who we want others to perceive us as, metaphorically other characters move into our heads instead. We will let the world, other people, our unconscious reactions to the world and other people and all kinds of irrelevant factors that we are not aware of, shape us into something that we are really not.

I’m probably using a lot of text to say: Stop playing roles, find out who you really are and how to act that way! But I wanted to put this into some kind of perspective. 

The value of mystical experiences

Are mystical experiences just spiritual “kicks” that ultimately lead us nowhere? Or are they maybe an encouragement to keep going on our spiritual paths? Do they bring us closer to God in some sense? Do they have other functions?

Before moving on, I want to clarify that I don’t believe that mystical experiences are necessary for living a rich spiritual and/or religious life. We can live and grow with God through prayer, through consciously allowing God to be with us in our everyday lives or through meditation, for example, without anything extraordinary happening. 

There is a discussion to be had about what constitutes a mystical experience. It could basically be anything from an ecstatic union with God to the simple feeling that an everyday event holds some meaning beyond the actual experience.

In this context though, I wish to talk about experiences that constitute a significant shift, away from our ordinary way of perceiving life and the world. 

An interesting thought in this context, is that dr. Joe Dispenza writes in his book Becoming Superhuman, that mystical experiences alter our way of functioning, because they expand our realm of possibilities. Once we see that there are ways of seeing and experiencing that go beyond our normal state, they become in a sense part of our overall experience. They expand our idea of the possible.

Another writer, James Defranco, says that through these experiences we move ourselves out of our normal frames that we experience the world from, and by doing so we dissolve rigid thought patterns. What does this mean? When we start noticing that we do not just have habits in our outer lives, but also with regards to our inner lives, it’s easier to understand what this means. Our minds have habitual ways of functioning. And when something happens that brings us out of our normal ways of operating, it becomes easier to start thinking in novel ways and thus see things from new and more expanded perspectives.

I would also add that these experiences, while not necessary, adds encouragement and reassurance that God is with us. As such they should be treasured as the gifts they are. And I would see it as more or less a duty to use these experiences to help others in their spiritual lives. 

3 crucial pillars of following Jesus

Willingness, knowledge and ability. These are the three pillars of following Jesus that I’m going to talk about today.

It’s a given that you need to be willing to follow Jesus if we are going to do so, so this one doesn’t need much explanation. We have to think that there is no better ideal to aspire to and, with all our brokenness and flaws, do our best to do so. It’s an ideal that we can never live up to, but we nonetheless succeed if we do our best to follow it. I myself am far from perfect when it comes to this. I have loads of baggage that makes its presence known daily and taints my commitments. 

Next we need to know how. What it means to follow Jesus. We need to know something about what it means to do so. What did he stand for? What example did he set through the life that he lived? What did he teach? And what did his teachings mean? This last question does not always have obvious answers. What does it for example mean to turn the other cheek or to remove the plank from one’s own eye, before trying to remove the one in one’s brother’s eye. It’s easy to turn such teachings into no more than beautiful words devoid of any true meaning, if we don’t ponder their significance for our lives.

Can I badmouth other people and follow Jesus? What about judging them? What about being hateful? Whining and complaining about trivial things?

It might surprise you that I say “yes” to all of these things. It’s when we do them intentionally that we fail to follow Jesus. Before we make a firm decision to change, we unconsciously adopt lots of behavioral patterns. This means that we may unconsciously badmouth other people or judge them. And we often let our emotions get the best of us and make us do and say things that are not in line with following Jesus. If we do these things, we fail to live up to the ideal set by Jesus, but we don’t fail to follow him. We can be the worst person in the world and still follow Jesus, if we do our best to do so. We probably wouldn’t be. In all likelihood, the more we strive to emulate Jesus, the more we grow in our ability to emulate him. But if, for one reason or another, it doesn’t happen, we still haven’t failed as long as we can truly and honestly say to ourselves that we have done our best, with all that it entails.

This leads us to the third pillar: ability. How do we turn ourselves into the kind of person that is most capable of following Jesus? Here, I believe, comes the real difficulty. And I know that we are living hectic lives and that all of us don’t have the time or energy for self-examination and self-improvement. So we have to work with what we’ve got and trust that if, again, we do our best, this will be enough. I think that one crucial thing, which I talk about a lot, that we can develop, is present moment awareness. In other words, being conscious and present in the now, so that we know what is going on both on the inside outside. In this context, what this will lead to is that we become more aware of our own thoughts, words and behaviors. So that we notice when we for example judge or badmouth others. Or when we want to flee responsibility for our actions or the situation that we are in. 

In general, I believe that the ability to follow Jesus increases as our character develops. How often do you think about your character? I know that I didn’t think one bit of it for most of my life. Which has turned many aspects of my life into an uphill battle. At the core of this lies the simple but oh so difficult abilities to say no to ourselves and to make ourselves to things that we find uncomfortable. In other words, the ability to make ourselves live and act in a way that is in line with Jesus’ life and teachings. 

These are a few examples of what I believe that we can all work on and become better at. There are many others. It can be boiled down to, just like Jesus was in every way, strive to become the best version of ourselves that we can be. 

Getting clear on what I believe and stand for PART 2

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What I wrote in the previous post feeds nicely into the second thing that I stand for. Namely that we need to do our best, in all our fallibility, to emulate Jesus. To follow him and the example he set with the life that he lived. We of course all fall short of this ideal. But I truly believe that Jesus was the first perfect person in the world. One that lived free from sin. But I also believe that if one person manages to free him/herself from sin, that person will become like Jesus, no matter what he/she has done previously. 

A while back I wrote about how our lives are programmed by the world. And the thing is that there is a natural state that we can function from. And it is most clearly presented in the person of Jesus. Jesus walked fully with God throughout his life. You may debate whether the story about him is true or not. This does not interest me very much. We will always have a limited perspective of history and it will be harder and harder to discern facts from falsities the further back in time that we go. 

The important thing is that the story about Jesus is psychologically and metaphysically true. Psychologically because it tells us something about what the life of a fully functional person looks like. And metaphysically because it shows the perfect way of relating to the hidden laws that govern our being in the world. 

The way Jesus is portrayed, he lived with total love, kindness and compassion towards other people. And he lived in total obedience to God’s will. He accepted life fully, even up to the point of his painful execution. 

I don’t think that most people appreciate how radical Jesus’ message was. He was born into a culture of “might is right”. And if we look to the animal kingdom, this seems to be our natural state. This was the prevalent philosophy in the Western world. 

There have been other teachers outside of the West, such as the Buddha and Lao Tzu, that have proclaimed similar teachings. And I do believe that we have important things to learn from them as well. But I would argue that none of them embodied the perfect life. Only Jesus did. 

Some people have a problem with the idea of obeying God’s will. But what I’ve come to realize, is that we are so governed by forces that we don’t understand, that if we don’t freely choose God’s will, we give our will away to the world. This is what I will talk about in the next post that I will save for next weekend. 

Getting clear on what I believe and stand for PART 1

It’s crucial to sit down and take time to really think through what we believe and stand for. Otherwise we will hesitate and question ourselves forever. And the world’s ideas will more easily infect our minds.

There is a lot of talk about “my truth” nowadays. And since we are beings that only have access to our own subjective experiences, this is unavoidable. But there is an obvious difference between “what is true for me” and “what I believe to be true for everyone”. What I’m going to talk about here is what I believe to be true for everyone, regardless of whether we believe in them or not. If you think that this makes me the opposite of a moral relativist, you would be correct. It’s important however, to make clear that I don’t see any of this absolute requirements for living a good life. I, for example, believe that following Jesus is the best way to live a good life. But I believe that all of the world religions contain teachings that would lead to such a life. I even believe that there are secular philosophies that qualify, even if they miss the most important part of life. 

Which brings me to the first thing that I stand for: faith in God. I don’t believe in God. I know that God exists. It is not important to me to convince others about this because of some need to be right. But since I know this for a fact, that everyone can have a relationship with God, that this is the biggest joy of my life and what I believe is the whole purpose for our existence, I of course want this for everyone else as well. This has changed my life on so many levels. It has transformed me as a person, given me meaning, a sense of purpose, made me feel much more, enjoy life more and… I could go on forever. Having this constant presence in my life is wonderful. And to get these little signs and other experiences that constantly reaffirms this knowing, and guides my actions, fills me with wonder and excitement. 

Of course it’s not always easy. Before finding God I never worried about morals, character or where my life was going. This felt more safe in many ways. I considered life pointless and I was fine with that. When it ended, it ended and it didn’t matter what I had done during my journey from start to finish. Now I worry a lot more. But it is a meaningful worry. 

This also feeds into my next strong belief. Namely that what will get us out of the mess that we are in, is not to try and change the world, but to understand and change ourselves. That this is how we go from creating the hell on earth that we are now seeing, to heaven on earth. And I truly believe this. That we have the means to create paradise on earth. But we have become deeply corrupted by the ways of the world. The ones that tell us to take as much as possible before we die. To hold grudges, to judge other people and to categorize others as more or less valuable depending on their achievements and material possessions. 

What is the alternative to living by this essentially animal nature? I think that the best alternative is to do one’s best to follow Jesus. And I will talk about this in the next post.

Comfort is spiritual DEATH

Relax. Take it easy. Get comfortable. Feel pleasure. Consume. Numb your thoughts with social media and TV-series. Numb your emotions with happy pills. Feel safe. 

Comfort is an invisible prison. Insidiously it has come creeping up on us. This need for life to be easy. To follow the path of least resistance. And the clock keeps on ticking. Life passes by seemingly unnoticeably. One day we might wake up and wonder what the hell we have prioritized.

This has happened to me. Or it was really more of a gradual awakening. But there is one word that keeps coming back when I consider how we spend our time, energy and money. How I’ve often spent my time, energy and money. The word is “madness”. We stuff our faces with processed foods full of additives, unhealthy fats and carbs with a high GI because it tastes good. We save all year so we can spend our vacations laying on a beach drinking umbrella drinks. And we spend the rest of the money on appliances that will help us avoid doing anything that exhausts us more than necessary. 

On our jobs we only work when our boss sees us. Because we see it as a bad thing to make an effort if we’re not rewarded for it or to avoid punishment. Laziness has become an ideal to strive for, even if we don’t like to name it “laziness”. 

Our wallets do not decide our level of freedom either. They only decide what kind of metal our prison bars are made of. If we have little money, we take as much as possible if it’s free or cheap. If we have a lot of money, we buy luxury items. But it’s the same numbing comforts and pleasures, even if the former most of the time kill us physically a little faster. 

I saw this quite long ago. I have seen it more clearly some times than others. But then I come up with these excuses: “Just this once”, “I deserve this”, “It’s been stressful and I need to relax”, “What’s wrong with enjoying life?”

But whatever comes with a literal or metaphorical hangover cannot be okay to indulge in. Not ever. No matter if the hangover comes in the form of feeling like crap or a day or two, or if it’s more of a slow process, where one’s whole life becomes like a drawn out hangover of consequences due to daily choices that numb the spirit and eats up one’s life force. Choices that have stopped being choices and have instead turned to habits and behavioral patterns. 

I believe that in this case anger is quite a healthy response. Not towards ourselves, but towards a culture that preys on our lower natures. You did not do this consciously towards yourself. No one would. Our lives are very much governed by assumptions. And because of the nature of assumptions, until we are made aware of them, they are hidden in plain sight. You did this because your culture told you that it was the right thing to do and no one ever gave you the idea of questioning it. 

Now the question is, do you want to feed your comfortable prison? Or do you want to use your anger to feed the flames of your passion to break free? Do you want to allow distractions and pleasures to lull you even further into sleep? Or do you want to bring conscious awareness into your life, actions and choices and wake up?

A non-reactive mindset

It’s difficult not to react to things. Something happens that we think shouldn’t happen and we get an emotional reaction. The emotions translate either into thoughts or actions. And we end up making things worse, either on the inside or the outside. On the inside by suppressing them so that they get stored inside the body as tension. Or on the outside by acting on them and thereby for example get into conflicts or break things.

We cannot choose how we feel. But we can choose what we think and how we act. We can choose actively to bring awareness and acceptance into what is happening in the moment, both inside ourselves and outside ourselves. And this, in turn, will affect our emotions.

I think that fear is the root of the negative emotions. Fear is reactive. Love is proactive. When I for example get angry, I’m really afraid that I will get hurt or that I won’t have my needs met. If something for example breaks, it triggers a whole cascade of different fears. Fear that it will waste my time so that I won’t manage to do things in time, fear that I won’t afford to fix or replace it and that I won’t have the things that I need in order. These are of course my fears that get triggered. Yours might be different. And it can often be difficult to know why we feel what we feel before we have started to think consciously about it. An interesting thing is that just by thinking consciously about something we start changing it.

The point is that I can choose if I want to feed this emotional state with my thoughts and actions or not.

When we primarily just react to things we also become predictable. And this, I believe, is worth thinking about. Because right now algorithms predict our online behavior and provide us with stimuli to manipulate us. But I truly believe that if we start living in the now, from a place of conscious awareness, make proactive choices instead of reactive ones and are clear about our values and why we have them, we diminish the chance of machines turning us into robots. Because we are truly wonderful, glorious children of God, destined to walk freely together with our loving creator. 

And conscious awareness is key here. The more we become aware of our actions and take responsibility for our unconscious behavior, the better we will become at getting out of our reactive mindsets. We must not allow our thoughts to provide us with nonsensical explanations of our reactive behaviors. Rather, we need to se these behaviors for what they are. A non-reactive mindset really doesn’t take any effort to cultivate. But we need to keep reminding us of it over and over again. This is the key. To remember to not get swept up in unconsciousness.

Will we have a dystopian future? PART 2

There is hope! More and more of us start to realize that we are all glorious children of God. That our natural state is love and support for each other. That we don’t need an external force to make us cooperate and create heaven on earth. That we, once we connect with God and see things clearly, will want to do it anyway. That there is no conflict between one’s own happiness and living in the service of others. On the contrary, people that live only for themselves most of the time live pretty sad, hollow, meaningless lives. 

What I’ve realized is that what the criminal elite does, is a perversion of true values. The Marxist principle of "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" is great as long as it is not forced on anyone. As soon as it’s forced on anyone, it turns from something very good to something very evil. I think that at the heart of the matter, this has something to do with love and conditions. It is something that should be done out of love for one’s fellow beings. And those that receive more than they contribute, should get to do so with no strings attached. And also because that which is given should not be considered a right, but should be received in gratitude.

What communism does is the opposite. It forces everyone to give what they can and having one’s needs met comes with conditions. This kills the concept of unconditional love on both ends. It imposes this system on people with no regard for the inner lives of the individuals that are parts of the system. To it we are just ants in an anthill. 

This is what the World Economic Forum wants for us. But it’s not for misguided altruistic reasons. They want to rule the world with an iron hand, disguised as benevolence and care for humanity. 

What we need to understand clearly, is that our free will and our motivations are everything. The goal may have many similarities: Basically a sustainable world where we take care of each other and work together to build something better. But whether this is chosen by our free will or imposed on us from the outside makes all the difference. 

Will we have a dystopian future? PART 1

Photo by alex kristanas on Unsplash

In the times we are living in it’s important to not give in to fear. And I’m saying this as much to myself as I’m saying it to you. More and more people are going through their spiritual awakenings. That means that more and more people are seeing through what is going on. And whatever happens, we need to remember that everything is in God’s hands.

So, what is happening exactly? It is pretty clear what the criminal elite wants for us by now. A technocratic society with unlimited power and freedom for them and communism for the rest of us. Basically a global, hi-tech version of every communist society that has ever existed. They are centered around the World Economic Forum and they are starting to install their puppets into the governments around the world (I will link to a video about this at the end of this post). This is not a crazy conspiracy theory. Everything is spelled out on the WEF's homepage, even if it's sugarcoated in jargon about saving the planet and making the world more equal.

I think that it’s important to keep one thing in mind. Namely that most people that know about the World Economic Forum and their plans for a Great Reset have a very negative view of them. And that the World Economic Forum most definitely know about the spiritual awakening that is happening. Which means that they are probably trying to rush their agenda. They act as if this is something that everyone is just going to get on board with, even though, so far it seems like very few are interested in doing so. 

What they are counting on is that people change their minds when they crash the world economy, as they count on people needing them to survive. Couple this with some propaganda about the need to combat climate change and protecting us against increased civil unrest or situations such as the one we’ve been in since 2020 and there will undoubtedly be those that see no other way out. These would primarily be those that see no higher meaning with anything, believe that this little tiny life is all that we’ve got and therefore sees The Great Reset as their only hope for a somewhat tolerable existence. 

To top it all off, if you’ve read the two big dystopian classics of the 1900s, 1984 and Brave New World, the future that we’re heading towards seems eerily much like a mix of the two. If you haven’t read them, I would say that they are essential readings for the times we are facing. 

There is hope though. And I will talk about this in the next post.

Learn more about the WEF's agenda here.

Embracing uncertainty in our STRANGE NEW WORLD. PART 3

It’s a fact that, even if we are facing the challenges ahead collectively as a species, and even if the fundamental conditions of our existence are the same for everyone, we are all ultimately on our personal journeys. I have my own experiences and I try to make sense of them to the best of my ability, but it’s clear that we all draw very different conclusions about what is right and wrong, true and false. 

For me, I guess that it really comes down to the choice between love or fear. Should I hesitate all the way out of fear of making mistakes along my spiritual path or do my best with what I’ve got? Should I fear that I might one day make a mistake that could lead to my ruin or try different things to see what does and does not work? I know that I want to do what’s right and avoid doing what’s wrong. In all of my fallibility and brokenness and with all of my personal problems, I try to be a good person. And I pray to God that he will show me the way. What more can I do?

At present the need to embrace uncertainty, together with the importance of present moment awareness seem to come up from different sources, without me looking into these subjects specifically. For example, I started listening to a YouTuber named Aaron Doughty again just a couple of hours after I had been thinking about these things. I haven’t listened to him for a while. He talked about exactly this - the need to embrace uncertainty and how bringing awareness into different aspects of life is the biggest factor if we want to change things. 

I have learned that when I think about something, and encounter information about it shortly after, there is usually something to it.

So, maybe it’s time to choose what to listen to as well. Because memory and perception are very selective. This means that if we perceive the world from a place of fear, we will find more fearful things in it and we will remember more fearful things. And if we perceive the world from a place of love, we will find more expressions of love in it and we will remember more of those things. This is simply how our perception works. 

To conclude: I believe that at the heart of the Bible is the radical love message. This is something that is hard enough to follow. If I observe my thoughts, words and actions, I find so many ways that I fall short of it on a daily basis. So maybe this is where I need to start, keep on doing the spiritual practices that give me results and seem to make my life better and not worry so much about whether they are right or wrong. Maybe have a little faith in that if I need to change certain things, this will be clear to me eventually, instead of letting the fearful thoughts of others get to me. Because I have enough to deal with when it comes to areas of my life where I know that I need to be better. If I constantly worry about this or that thing, that cannot be proven anyway, I will have less energy left for those areas.

Photo by Davide Cantelli on Unsplash

Embracing uncertainty in our STRANGE NEW WORLD. PART 2

I’ve absolutely rejected the idea of running around proclaiming that the end is near and that we all need to repent or face eternal damnation. But, as I’ve said in previous posts, I’m finding good reasons to believe that biblical end-times prophecies are coming true. It isn’t hard to relate certain parts of the Book of Revelation to events that are taking place right now. And there are other sayings by Jesus and st. Paul scattered throughout the New Testament. There are the wars and rumors of war, famine, diseases, the mindsets of people in the End Times, the global tyranny that is on the rise, the persecution of Christians (look at what is happening in for example India, China, Pakistan or Egypt right now) and so on.

The point of these posts however, is not to give a comprehensive overview of Biblical prophecies coming true. If you want to look closer at this, the internet is full of information about it. It is interesting to note however, that one of the absolute cornerstones throughout the Bible, from that of prophetic warnings in the Old testament, to the prophecies about Jesus, to the prophecies about the End Times, is precisely prophecies and their fulfilment. 

Even if I haven’t looked into it, I also believe that it is very possible that the different kings in the prophecies in the Book of Daniel in the Old Testament will fit neatly with the main actors on the global stage today. 

And I don’t know what to make of this. Because as many know, these prophecies are pretty serious stuff. They are pretty violent, full of cataclysmic events and suffering. 

But I want to approach this as openly as possible. Because I quite frankly don’t know what is going on. I understand very well how much our upbringing shapes our beliefs and perception of the world. Which means that I most definitely can’t trust the judgment of anyone else. Or of myself for that matter. So I have to be very careful with believing things without sufficient evidence. 

A big problem is that as humans we crave certainty. We want things to be simple. Especially if we think that there is danger in being wrong. And if you think about it, this is quite natural, as for the absolute majority of our evolution as a species, our continued existence has relied on us being right about the world. So, what happens when we bring in this need of certainty into spiritual realms? Realms that are more real than anything physical, but where we cannot check our beliefs against reality in the same manner, as for example whether an area is full of sabre toothed tigers or not. I think that this is quite an interesting question. 

The conclusion that I’ve come to, is that even though the potential of being wrong with regards to spiritual matters is something that scares me, there must come a point where I just let go and trust. I often ask God for guidane. And I know that God is listening. And the only guidance that I receive, is that all will be well and that I shouldn’t be afraid. It’s really only the wordmachine in my head that tells me otherwise. And when I look at those that tell me that the end is coming and that sinners will be judged, they seem to only speak from their intellects as well. And if my reasoning here is sound, it follows that the intellect alone is not reliable in spiritual matters. 

Embracing uncertainty in our STRANGE NEW WORLD. PART 1

We are living in extraordinary times. There are two very distinct ways of looking at what is happening in the world. Both perspectives are spiritual in nature. One is the less known Ascension Process / spiritual awakening and the other is the more classical Biblical End Times. I am finding good reasons for believing in both of these perspectives, but I have a hard time making the fit neatly together. This is something that I find troubling. I find it troubling because I truly believe that we are living in the most important time in the history of the planet. And if this is true, it seems vital to do one’s best to try and understand exactly what is going on. Vital because what we believe to be true, will inevitably determine how we relate to what is going on.

In this three part series, I will juxtapose said perspectives. In the first post I will look at Ascension Process / spiritual awakening. In the second post I will look at the End Times. Finally, I will wrap it all up in the third post.

The spiritual awakening, whatever it is, is definitely happening. The question is what is happening. 

I have my own experiences and the experiences of others to rely on. I know what other people are saying about it: That the frequency of the planet is rising. That we are going into the 5^th dimension in what it known as the Ascension Process. That this is why I feel this weird energy rushes and that this is why all of my dysfunctional ways of thinking, bad habits and destructive behaviors are coming to the surface. 

People are saying that there is a timeline split between the old and the new earth that is emerging. That our bodies are transforming to from carbon based to crystaline-based. That the tyrants that are governing us from the shadows are on their way out. That we are manifesting this reality together and in a sense, our thoughts and perception is what creates this reality. That quantum physics confirm this. That these are the real reasons the world has turned upside down. And so on.

And why not? Once you realize, beyond any reasonable doubt that the world is not what it appears when you observe it with your five senses, anything becomes possible.

Photo by Mohamed Nohassi on Unsplash

Salvation by faith?

Yes, this is what many seem to believe that the Bible proclaims. Just believe in God and Jesus? Is it really that simple? And that arbitrary? And above all, what about those that cannot force themselves to believe the right things? 

First, I don’t want this post to be perceived as a declaration of beliefs, but rather some reflections upon beliefs and what one can deduce from them.

Let me begin by posing a couple of questions: If I say that I believe, but I don’t let it show in my actions one bit, do I truly believe? That is to say: If I don’t act as if God is watching me, do I truly believe that he is? And if I don’t allow my faith to transform me, do I truly believe? If I think that I need to lie and deceive others to get what I want or to avoid what I don’t want, do I truly believe? If I put my faith in Jesus, but don’t, in all my brokenness, with all my weaknesses and faults, strive to follow him as best I can, do I truly believe in him? 

If I look at my own life through the lense of this reasoning, I can easily see that I often fall short of it. I can see that I have faith sometimes. But I can also see that there are many times that I don’t. 

I took a course in New Testament Greek a few years ago, but never finished it. So I’m hardly qualified to talk about translations. But I remember that the original word in greek for faith is “pistis”. As may of you know, words that on the surface seem to be the same, can have very different meanings to those that use them.

I haven’t read anything more about this word than the translation, but I still believe that the full meaning of it must be something in line with the reasoning in this post. Of course, I write this with the awareness that religion during biblical times, was a natural part of people’s lives in a whole different way than it is today. But there are still numerous examples of people living as if it was no more than mere fantasy. And of people that had a hard time believing that it could actually have a tangible influence on their lives and shape the events in them. Even after having seen miracles, many couldn’t believe that something beyond ordinary reality was happening, as is perhaps best exemplified through Doubting Thomas. 

In other words, it can hardly be enough to just say: “I believe in God and I believe in Jesus Christ as my lord and savior.” But many protestants take it to mean just that, while catholics put more emphasis on the actions. None of this seems to fit neatly with either the message of the Bible or with how reality works. And I believe that the missing component is that we show what we believe through our words, actions and attitudes. If our words, actions and attitudes don’t fit with what we say that we believe, we may have to ask ourselves how strong our faith is. And if the honest answer is one that we don’t like, the best response is probably not to judge ourselves. I would say that the best response would be to seriously ask ourselves the question: “What can I do to make my faith stronger?” I think that the answer to that question has to do with two things: How we strengthen our connection with God and what kinds of persons we choose to be in our day-to-day lives. 

Photo by Timothy Eberly on Unsplash

Guided by God or guided by the ego?

Everything should come natural to us. But we need to be deprogrammed from the world’s programming. We can live with an absolute, intuitive knowing of what to do and how to act.

What I’ve realized through putting myself through a rather harsh self-analysis, is that it is extremely difficult to know what I actually want in many situation. And to do just that. Or what I really think about this or that thing. 

I’ve gotten so used to consider all kinds of irrelevant factors when making decisions rather than my true will, such as what is socially acceptable or in general what other people think. I have also become rather good at hiding this fact, even from myself.

I have gotten so used to believing that the real me won’t be accepted, that I’ve gotten lost in my persona, the social mask that we all put on. But I believe that this is true for most people. Most just don’t realize it. And in my past it might have been more severe in my case than for most people. Because at some point I unconsciously decided to adopt an image. Put on a show. Become a character. Something like that. I wanted to separate myself from other people and show the world that I wasn’t like the rest. And what instead ended up happening, was that instead of becoming more of a unique individual, I became less like myself.

I think that something similar might be happening to many people that try to “express their uniqueness” by attaching all kinds of labels to their identities nowadays. You know what I’m talking about without me having to be too specific. I’m talking about the kind of self-expression that is encouraged by society and our cultural norms. The kind that is often shared on social media.

If you have the kind of attitude that I used to have it’s going to shape you. And in my case not in a good way. At least not directly. But indirectly I believe that it allowed me to see these things more clearly. Come to think of it, it has been like this with many “errors” that I’ve made in my life. They have allowed me to see aspects of the human experience and our being in the world more clearly than I would have without them. 

What I want to get at, is that since I started to become more present and get more into contact with myself and my true feelings, I have also started to more and more clearly discern the still voice inside, that others talk about. It comes in the form of an inner knowing about what to do and what is right or wrong. It’s still very much drowned out by the world. But it is getting stronger as I am being more honest with myself and don’t lie to myself about what it is saying.