To my brothers and sisters in the NEW AGE (and everyone else)

Truth matters! More and more so in the extraordinary times that we are living in. And what lenses you view the world through matter gravely. Because these lenses shape how you see the world, what you think about it and how you act in it. So you have to be careful what you allow into your mind. And what you allow to control your mind. 

Before we continue I want to ask a couple of things of you: Forget everything that you think that you know about Christianity and the Bible. Embrace the possibility that within Christianity there is room for more love, joy, vibrant bliss and ecstasy than you could possibly imagine or find anywhere else. That when Jesus said: “the truth shall set you free” he really meant this. Which implies that if we view the Bible as a boring rulebook that hinders us from doing what we really want to do, we have misunderstood it. Because yes, the Bible asks things of us, which other teachings don’t. It asks us to do some things and give up others. But it doesn’t ask anything of us that isn’t for our own good.

If we wish to bring some more clarity into what may be called “spiritual confusion”, we need to start by asking ourselves the right questions: “Does this really lead me where it promises to lead me?”, “How does this actually benefit me and those around me?”, “Where is this leading me?”, “How is it truly affecting me?”, “Does it lead to more clarity or more confusion?”, “What is the purpose of this particular practice that I’m engaged in?” and “Does it truly fulfill that purpose?”. Another question that also most definitely is important is: “Does this truly make me happy?”

I’m not pretending to know what your answers are to these questions. I only know what mine are, which I hope will become clear throughout this text.

One thing that I do know for a fact however, is that regardless of prior beliefs, God is not just some abstract creative force. God is deeply personal, has a will and communicates with us in different ways all the time. And this is a good thing, because this means that we have perfect guidance to rely on. That we’re not left to our own faulty reason when it comes to figuring our how to think, speak and act. Because even if we need to use our reason to the best of our ability, on our own we will inevitably be led astray. There are so many forces, both within ourselves and in the world that confuse and deceive us.

That God is personal, has a will and communicates with us I know as absolute truth. This I know from personal experience. I’m not asking you to take my word for it. What I’m asking is to try this way of viewing God out for yourself, pray about it, meditate on it and use it as the lense through which you view the world. Take it seriously and see where it leads you. For me, it also finally led me to Jesus and the Holy Spirit. These are now real to me. Not just abstract figures that I can read about in the Bible. And my relationship with them is growing every day.

Now comes the part where I might really lose you. Therefore I feel the need to explain what I’m saying before I say it. I believe that there is a reason behind why mainly Christians and New Agers are waking up to the state of the world. Because of this and other reasons, I’m not prepared to dismiss everything within the New Age, even though I firmly believe in the truth of the Bible.

Now, there is an awakening happening on the planet. One that is spiritual in nature. And I don’t think that anyone knows exactly what this awakening is. More and more people are awakening every day. We are awakening to the true state of the world and what powers are truly governing it. What powers are governing us. We are awakening to more and more spiritual aspects of our physical reality. And we are awakening to more and more aspects of what is going on inside ourselves. For many of us, this has become a lived, undeniable reality.

Furthermore, I firmly believe that everything that is true about this awakening is 100% biblical. This means that everything about it that is true must be compatible with the Bible. And everything that we ever need should fit into this framework. The only things that we need to discard, are empty things that don’t benefit us anyway. Things that just cause us pain and confusion. Again I urge you to ask yourself the right questions. Because it’s so easy to get lost in what sounds good on the surface, but does not keep its promises. And at least for me and my wife, it has been difficult to admit to ourselves that what we have invested much time and energy into, has not lead us where it promised. Where we hoped that it would lead us.

What exactly this means I have yet to figure out. Some people say that you should stay away from any spirituality that is not from the Bible or about the Bible. While I respect these beliefs and do not wish to dismiss them, I don’t feel that I, in good conscience, can accept them without thorough examination. 

For example, I find nothing in the Bible that contradicts the idea that we need to cultivate a non-reactive mindset. When we learn to just feel the emotions that come up in different situation without reacting to them, we can begin to allow the emotions to guide our actions instead of controlling them. Just like we should often not act on the first thought that pops into our minds either. If we learn this, I believe that it will make us better Christians. We may even clear the path for the Holy Spirit to act through us.

I also know for a fact that suppressed emotional energy gets stored in the body as tensions, which authors that often get grouped within the New Age, such as David Hawkins, have pointed out. 

And here we come to the crux of the matter. There is so much dead weight in the New Age. And what I believe is that the Bible will help us to understand what we need to shed and what can be kept. Here I find two questions helpful: “Does this have any demonstrable practical use?” and “Is it compatible with Biblical teachings?”

I have just shown two examples of what I believe can be useful. Now I’m going to give you an example of what I believe should not just be discarded, but shun like the plague: I believe you should stay far away from channelers. For those that don’t know, channeling is when someone allows their body to be taken over by a spiritual entity so that it can communicate through them. 

The Bible is full of warnings concerning this type of activity. This is simply because we don’t know what these channeled entities are. And as far as I’m concerned the channelings that I’ve read about or listened to have not given me anything of practical value. It has mostly been either gibberish or ideas about the world that can neither be confirmed nor falsified. I believe that if these channeled entities really are higher beings, that are here to help us, they should be able to tell us things that are useful and not just feed us claims about how the world works. Claims that, again, cannot be confirmed or falsified. 

Besides, the Bible clearly says that after Jesus left his earthly life, God sent us his Holy Spirit. The Bible says that the Holy Spirit is with us all the time and that it has the same power to help and guide us as Jesus. So why would you need to turn to other spirits for help?

In other words, my experience tell me that, with regards to channeling, the answer is “no” to both of the questions that I just posed.

I would furthermore advice anyone wishing to study authors labelled New Age to approach them with caution. It’s so easy to buy into a whole package when we see that it contains some truth and wisdom. Me and my wife have both been led astray by teachings within the New Age that we now can see are not sound. 

In other words, I don’t believe that everything about the New Age is evil or satanic. But I do believe that most of it leads us astray. And I do believe that some of it would qualify as Satanic. At least when taken together. 

I believe that just like we can check what is sound against the teachings of the Bible, we can actually check what is unsound against the teachings of the Satanic Bible by Anton Szandor Lavey. I believe that Lavey, in very clear language, has laid out satanic doctrine in exact detail, while promoting it as a common sense philosophy. 

The idea that we are our own gods is the first satanic idea that comes to mind. Another one is that everything is relative. That there are no absolute truths. Together with this one comes also the trivialization of everything. That nothing is really serious and that we are mainly here to have fun and explore. And yeah, the idea mentioned in the beginning, of God as just an impersonal force, can actually also be found in the Satanic Bible. What I’ve noticed is that when we have no absolute truths to rely on, our perception of reality becomes distorted. When we take nothing seriously, we end up excusing all kinds of behavior by saying that “ultimately it doesn’t matter anyway”. And when we view God as just an impersonal force, we miss the whole point of religion and spirituality.

To conclude: Mine and my wife’s experience with New Age can be summed up as follows. We did find some usefulness in some authors often classified as New Age. The aforementioned David R. Hawkins is one of them. Two others that come to mind are Eckhart Tolle and Joe Dispenza. But for the most part, it sent us on a wild goose chase. We ended up seeking more and more knowledge, self-development and abilities, while in reality getting nowhere. We found that much within it that promises healing, power and knowledge actually breaks us, disempowers us and causes more and more confusion.

When we finally decided to embrace the message of the Bible and discard everything that was incompatible with it, we invited peace and healing into our lives. While that which on the surface seemed reasonable within the New Age didn’t hold up when tested against reality, the opposite proved to be true when it came to the Bible. What on the surface seemed unreasonable in the Bible, proved true when tested against reality. And the more we studied the Bible, the more we started to see the infinite depth that it contains. This while other teachings more and more revealed the shallowness behind their often many words. Which for us at least shows the truth in the saying of st. Paul, that “…the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God” (1 Corinthians 3:19).

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Getting clear on what I believe and stand for PART 9

In this final post in this series, I will talk about something that I believe is crucial when it comes to the times that we are living: to shift the focus from changing the world to changing ourselves. 

Even if we cannot know many of the ultimate truths, we can always understand ourselves better. We can get clear on who we are, who we want to be and what is truly important to us. We can always understand life and the world better. We can always become better. We can always become more present and pay more attention to what is going on. We can always widen our perspective.

On the other hand, I don’t believe that self-improvement should lead us away from feeling worthy. And I don’t believe that life should be an endless quest of self-improvement either. So, what do I believe when it comes to this? That is what I am going to try and bring some more clarity into here.

In a paradoxical sense, we are all already worthy, at the same time as we all fall short of what we potentially could be. On the one hand, we need to be tough with ourselves and constantly push ourselves out of our comfort zones. And on the other, we need to be kind to ourselves, forgive ourselves for our mistakes and shortcomings, and allow ourselves to simply feel pleasure and enjoy life. And somehow, we need all of this, the tough struggles, as well as the soft and playful, to feel meaningful and enjoyable. There is no sense in struggling for struggling’s sake. And there is no sense in empty sensory gratifications either. 

Where we need to begin, I believe, is in self-observation. We need to observe how we behave and speak, as well as what is going on inside our heads. This can be quite shocking at first. At least it was for me. When I started looking at myself throughout my everyday life, I found an almost entirely different person from who I thought that I was.

This is something I believe that we cannot get away from. If we wish to grow we must get to know ourselves.

If we want to do this in a healthy way, I believe that it is crucial that we compare ourselves not with others, but with who we were yesterday. I can honestly say that this has been a problem for me. When I see all of the people that have taken leaps out of their little selves and stepped into their bigger selves, I often feel discouraged. I’ve had to eat a lot of humble pie since the time when I walked around looking down at the world. And humble pie often comes with a bitter aftertaste of self-judgment and self-criticism. 

Then, at the end of all of this, I believe that there is some point where we can give up all of this speculation about what things should be and what they shouldn’t, just let go, always act out of love and follow the flow of life. I believe that this is a really simple state. We just need to realize on a deep level that everything is okay and as it should be. You might look at the world and say: “Are you kidding me?!” But if everything is in God’s hands, how could it be otherwise? And maybe it’s just my ego that likes all this complexity. That enjoys these endless speculations about life and my being in the world. But so what? I like to think about what it means to be human in general and what it means to be me specifically. Even if it’s ultimately possible to just let go and allow God to carry me through life. 

But I’m not there yet anyway, and in the meantime I need to think of how I best can live, grow and enjoy life while I’m still to a large degree governed by my ego. Besides, if I look at those that have arrived at their destination, it seems as if they all have had to take the road of complexity, before arriving at the simplicity that has been with them all along. And I have a feeling that when I reach it, I will look back at my journey, with all its struggles, pains and feelings of hopelessness, with nothing but joy and gratitude for all that it has entailed. 

Photo by Nandhu Kumar on Unsplash

Getting clear on what I believe and stand for PART 8

My interests don’t compete with your interests. I believe that this is an illusion. Sure, if we believe that we are just decaying matter, destined to brief, pointless existences before we return to total oblivion, we might get the idea that we have to stimulate our five senses in ways that feel pleasurable as much as possible before we die. Not that it ultimately matters. But if we are no more than smart animals, why not live in a way that is consistent with that belief?

This used to be my belief until I started to understand that God exists. That there is such a thing as a spiritual reality. My belief was basically that when you die you die. And whatever you have experienced up to that point won’t matter, since everything that you are and ever have been will be as if it has never existed. And since these are the conditions everyone else lives under as well, whether my life makes the world better or worse ultimately makes no difference.

Now that I know that God exists and that life does not end with death, this changes everything. I don’t need the threat of punishment or the promise of rewards in the afterlife to want to become a better person and live in harmony with the world and other people. I know that from this perspective, even though pleasure is not unimportant, the pursuit of consumption and pleasure as the highest priorities in life means that one totally wastes one’s life on nothingness. From this perspective, which is the correct one, our relationship with God must necessarily come first. And our relation to ourselves, the world and other people must come in second. And all of these things are tied together. If you are dysfunctional in one of these areas, you will be dysfunctional in all of them. And almost all of us are dysfunctional here to different degrees. 

Do you understand what I’m getting at? When we realize beyond any doubt that life has meaning, and that we need to look at life from the perspective of eternity and not finiteness, everything changes. Our priorities change. It makes no sense to compete for resources, strive for power and glory, seek gratification of the senses, or even to spread our genes for their own sake. We can still do all of these things if we find joy in them and can do them in a non-harmful way. But everything in our animal natures, that which is related to the survival instinct and places us in the frame of “survival of the fittest” becomes null and void in the face of a higher reality. Simply put, when we see that something is more important to us, and something is less important to us, it makes no sense to choose that which is less important, if it comes into conflict with what is more important.

With this higher perspective in mind, I don’t have to fiercely protect myself from others either, because it’s your loss and not mine, if you do something as stupid and pointless as hurting me for your own gain. 

The conclusions that I draw from this line of reasoning come in the form of a few questions: If you know that God exists, love is at the core of everything, that you will live forever and that all that belongs to your animal nature are things that you will have to leave behind when you die, what things are important to you? What do you need to prioritize? What is meaningful? What leads to true, meaningful happiness? I think that seen in this light, the cliché that “the best things in life are free” holds true. So why should I compete and cause harm, when there is something so much valuable in life that does not require any of that?

Photo by Jaime Spaniol on Unsplash

Getting clear on what I believe and stand for PART 7

I believe that it's important to put things into perspective. To understand oneself and oneself in relation to the world. And to understand what world one sees when one does that. So, where do you stand in relation to the questions that I've asked myself during this series? What questions do you find important?

In this post I’m going to talk about what I believe about the world and the times that we are living in. I know that our political systems today are thoroughly corrupt. And I know that today there is a sinister political agenda for world domination centered around the World Economic Forum. Since I’ve written other posts about this, I don’t want to dedicate a whole post to this right now. I’ll leave links to these at the end of the post plus a link to a video explaining the whole situation. I know that there is a small chance that I and others are wrong about this, but everything so far points in this direction. At this point it’s more or less out in the open on WEF’s own homepage.

What I want to spend a little time talking about is what I believe should be done about this. Because I don’t think that this is a battle that can be won through resistance. Neither do I believe that we have to fear the future. I believe that fear is the last thing we need in the situation that we are in. This is because in the end, the basic choice in our lives is one between love and fear. The WEF want us to choose their solution out of fear. Fear of not being able to take care of ourselves, fear of the future of the planet, fear of scarce resources, fear of debt etcetera. What they don’t want us to do, is to come together in love, harmony, respect and unity to build something better. So this is what I, and many others believe is the solution to the situation that we are in right now. I/we believe that the way out is to build something better that is not dependent upon these structures. 

I can honestly say that I give in to fear now and then. I can often feel stressed out because I have allowed so much of my life to slip through my fingers. And because I have so much mess to clean up in my life. But I know that there is a higher meaning to everything. One that is hard to see the full scope of from my current limited perspective. So I have to do my best to trust that things will work themselves out, if I just do my best with what I’ve got. I know that me and my wife are not alone in this. Many others are waking up to what is happening on the planet, both the good stuff and the bad. So we won’t be alone with whatever is left of our mess when things really start to move. And in this everyone is valuable. I'm valuable, even if I haven't got everything together and my life puzzle completely figured out.

I also have a feeling that we are protected from the worst disasters that can befall us, even if this is something that I cannot say for sure. Whatever the case may be, I know that my and everyone else’s souls are immortal, which does provide lots of courage for the times ahead. The worst thing that can happen is that this life ends. Seen from the perspective of eternity, it’s probably not the disaster that we often make it out to be. It’s probably a good thing to not wish for death, to do our best to avoid it, but at the same time realize that fearing it is futile, as well as irrational and detrimental to our wellbeing. It’s both inevitable and not final.

Link to a really good YouTube video about the Great Reset (not mine)

My posts about the Great Reset:

We will not comply!

Changing the world?

Will we have a dystopian future? PART 1

Will we have a dystopian future? PART 2

Getting clear on what I believe and stand for PART 6

I know that there is a spiritual awakening going on on the planet. Whatever that means. I'm still trying to figure this out.

My spiritual awakening has entailed a component that is very much Christian. This is however not true for most that go through these awakenings. And yet, from what it seems like to me, this Cristian component is universal and not just particular to my or a few people’s spiritual awakenings. This does not mean that I believe that everyone else is wrong or evil. What I believe that this is a piece of the puzzle that is not yet in place. It’s not for me either I might add, since I myself am not sure what to make of this yet. All I know is that it isn’t leading me to any type of conventional Christianity. Neither the conservative nor the liberal kind. Basically I’m much too open to ideas, teachings and perspectives outside the Christian world to be conservative. And I can’t say that I buy in to every word of st. Paul, even if I take the things that I have a problem with seriously. 

On the other hand, I do believe that the Bible offers many valid teachings and valuable perspectives, that clash with our current secular morals. This includes questions that woud place me outside of the liberal Christian fold, even if I try to never be judgmental here. I don’t believe in eternal damnation, but I do believe that we can damage ourselves through our actions, and not just those that cause obvious harm to us. And I believe that we can create our own personal hells here on earth if we fall deep enough into our unconscious behaviors.

So, this is a little something about my beliefs about Christianity. I look at the Bible and the life of Jesus as blueprints for how to live and what attitude we need to take towards life, if we want to live in harmony with God, each other and God’s creation. In other words not as a set of laws that we can break and get punished for. Or a set of beliefs that we need to force ourselves to believe, also in order to avoid punishment. 

My thinking about this is a work in progress though. But this is what I've concluded so far.

Photo by Arturo Rey on Unsplash

Getting clear on what I believe and stand for PART 5

Tying the previous two posts in this series together, I want to talk specifically about the potential I believe lies dormant inside each and everyone of us. As I said, I believe that the truth is to be found in the Bible. But I don’t believe that it’s wise to dismiss everything that other religions and spiritual systems have to offer. I want to emphatically state that this does not mean that I’m a proponent of some “anything goes” liberal theology. I believe that there is a natural flow behind everything in life and when we choose to engage in actions that run contrary to this natural flow, there are always consequences. 

However, what I believe is that if we find something inside ourselves, such as the chakra system or different energy channels, they must have been put there by God. These at least are not spelled out in plain words in the Bible, but can be found in other religions and spiritual systems. I don’t think that they are necessary for our spiritual lives and our connection with God either. But if we feel inclined to explore these things, there might not be anything wrong with it either. Maybe what is most important in the Bible, is what Jesus taught about how we should treat each other. And maybe the warnings against other religions are open to some interpretations. 

What I’ve come to believe, which is what I brought up in the beginning of this post, is that at the heart of everything is connection. In other words interaction with other living beings. Ultimately interaction with our creator. This is why the message of Jesus is the most important message of all religious doctrines. Jesus taught us how to live fully with God and with each other. But if opening our third eye or our heart chakra can help us to become better at living as Jesus lived, should we then conclude that this is wrong because this was discovered by Hindus? Or if Buddhist psychology, that tries to understand the nature of suffering, as it relates to our habitual resistance and attachment to our experiences can deepen our understanding of what Jesus taught, should we regard this as wrong? Or if meditation and yoga can help us to let go and live in acceptance of what happens in our lives, in other words of God’s will, should this be regarded as wrong?

I know that I may be wrong about this. And I don't believe that any of the above is necessary for living a good, spiritual life. But if I feel called to these things I don't think that I can allow fear of making the wrong choices dictate my actions.

Photo by Sharon Pittaway on Unsplash

We don't need the SURVIVAL INSTINCT anymore

Jesus said: “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.” 

As with many other quotes from Jesus, I believe that this one has several different meanings. I believe one of them to be that when we make survival and things related to survival the most important thing in life, we will waste our life. 

This is especially true in the times that we are living in right now. People’s survival instinct make them stockpile money way past when they have enough to get them through hard times. It makes us live in constant fear of the future, fight each other for resources and do all kinds of things to preserve our lives. It makes us agree to things that we normally never would. Something that we have seen a lot of during the past three years and which we will in all likelihood see more of in the near future. 

The survival instinct causes us to live in fight or flight mode, in a society where the natural threats are gone. And instead the emotional energy is stored in our bodies as tensions. It’s what turns those that we love into enemies, because our brains interpret them as threats to our lives when we get into conflicts with them. It’s what causes us to see other people as enemies and competitors in general. The survival instinct hinders us from coming together and cooperate, instead of “looking out for number one”. 

We do not need this anymore. In abundant countries there is no such scarcity anymore. And this is not even a necessary state in poorer countries, even if a change is a few steps further away in those. 

I think that it’s hard to completely get away from the fear of death. Even if I know that life goes on after I die and I have a strong belief that I will find something wonderful on the other side, the unknown is still scary. But if I let this fear guide my actions, I will probably be even more afraid in the future, when I look back at an inauthentic life, where I may have acted against my conscience to preserve it. 

If I on the other hand live after what I truly value in spite of the dangers that it may entail, chances are that when the end comes, no matter when it comes, I can look at my life as meaningful. If you want to see a good story about this, I would recommend the movie Million Dollar Baby. 

And I don’t think that it’s ever too late for this. Sure, our individual lives come with their limitations. But no matter where we are, we can always start choosing to say no to survival mode. Not in a way where we start taking risks. It could be that. But what I’m talking about first and foremost, is to stop taking actions out of a fear of dying.

Many people are losing their hope of the world. On an individual level we can always surrender to the present moment. Accept what is and what the future may bring. Maybe this is what we need to do on a collective level as well. Maybe we can flip the dystopia that we see looming on the horizon. Maybe if we stop trying to desperately hold on to our lives, we can turn the dystopia into a utopia.

Photo by Avel Chuklanov on Unsplash

Vulnerability requires real toughness

In my past I used to put up walls around me. Me and my friends had a pretty rough way of speaking to each other and I definitely was one of the most active driving forces behind this jargon. I felt proud of not caring what anyone said to me. The positive side of this is that I can still take a joke and I don’t have to take everything that others say to me seriously. But the negative side is that this goes both ways. Just like I didn’t take in things that could hurt me, I didn’t talk about things that made me vulnerable either. 

When I started going through my real spiritual awakening, I suddenly found myself sensitive towards things that I previously would have brushed off as nothing. I had an initial awakening many years ago, but lost sight of it after a while. It became undeniable that something strange was going on first when I med my wife a little more four years ago and we started to have one strange experience after the other together.

But back to the main topic: vulnerability. I could suddenly not deny that others could say things that hurt anymore. Understanding this, I coul also understand that words can have real power. What I say can hurt. What we say to each other matter.

Now, I’m not talking about some politically correct nonsense, where we have to walk on eggshells around each other so that we don’t accidentally say something that can be interpreted as racist or sexist. I still believe that offence is taken and not given. And I believe that in this context we need to turn things around anyway. Turn things around in the sense that we stop demanding things from others and turn towards ourselves instead. We can complain forever about what others are doing to us and whether or not they are doing it on purpose. Or we can look at our own wounds, why certain things trigger them and how they cause us to say and do hurtful things. 

This is how we get out if this cycle of victims and perpetrators: we stop making others responsible for how we feel and open up to each other. Vulnerability is not the same as being whiny and weak. I was that for a while as well (and can still be sometimes), but this is not to be vulnerable in a positive, responsible way. But it’t easy to be vulnerable in this way when walls that one has built up around oneself during one’s whole life suddenly starts to crumble.

Vulnerability is about courageous trust. About knowing that others can use our vulnerability against us, but choosing to trust that they won’t. To accept the fact that some may and live with the consequences. Ultimately, as with so many things right now, it comes down to whether we want to live in survival mode or not. And in the times that we are living in, survival mode is inevitably going to turn our lives into nightmares. 

Trust and openness takes time to build and in the beginning many of us will get hurt. In a sense, this is a new type of battle. One that is the opposite of taking up arms together and going to war. Instead it’s about our individual, inner struggles and laying down our weapons and shields, both the literal and metaphorical ones. About giving others the chance of choosing not hurting us even if they can. 

Photo by Adrian Swancar on Unsplash

The journey to self-love

Self-love isn’t easy. Neither is it the narcissistic monstrosity that is promoter by our culture. That is the opposite of self-love. Our culture’s idea of “self-love” is about projecting an image based on pride and taking what we can from the external world.

Real self-love is about our insides. And let me right now confess that this is one of my greatest struggles. Why? Because I’ve done lots of things in my past that I’m ashamed of. Lots of things that I, at the time, thought that I could just bury afterwards. But the cliché, that we can never escape from ourselves, is true. We can pretend that our actions don’t mean anything to us till the day we die and not grow one millimeter. But the day that we truly start caring about ourselves and our lives, they will come back to haunt us. 

Therefore, self-love is about bringing all of our darkness to the surface so that we can forgive ourselves and let it go. Real self-love is not a happy-pill that we can take and instantly feel good about ourselves and our lives. It’s a bitter medicine that needs to be taken many times before it has any effect. Because in order to love ourselves, we first need to take responsibility for ourselves and our lives. We need to dare looking at ourselves and not shy away from what we find. 

What I’ve found going through this process, is that this is much like peeling an onion. And the more layers I peel off, the more hurt I find. I’ve thought that I’ve brought my most shameful aspects to the surface many times, just to discover that there is even more there.

But I think that I’m finally starting to get to the core of the issue. And it’s strange to see how all of this struggling and complexity was in some way necessary. But that it at the same time led to a simple end. Namely that at the core I just ensnared myself in a bunch of thoughts. Thoughts that have nothing to do with who I really am and that I’m free to either believe or dismiss. 

I’ve done lots of destructive things. But in my confused state I actually believed that I was doing something totally justifiable. And every moment is a new moment. I’m free to choose something better. And every time that I become aware of an unwanted thought, I can just let it pass. I know that my relationship with God, myself and other people, plus what I believe that I came into this world to do, are what’s important. And anything that is not in line with this needs to go. 

I don’t need to believe thoughts that run contrary to who I really want to be. Who I know that I already am behind all of the layers of ego that I am not. I already love this person. That which I cannot love about myself is an illusion.

Photo by: Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

Getting clear on what I believe and stand for PART 4

I have come to strongly believe in openness and understanding. I believe that the truth is to be found in the Bible, first and foremost in the person of Jesus. But I cannot believe that all other teachings are false. This does not mean that I believe that everyone should believe the same things or that everyone is equally right. But I believe in the importance of unity among those of us that believe in something higher and that want a better world. And I believe that we can and must discuss our differences in an open, respectful manner. 

I know that something very strange is happening on the planet. That the world isn’t what it seems. I know that there are people that run the world from the shadows and that they don’t have our best interests at heart. Ultimately, I believe that these people are as misguided as anyone that does harm to others, albeit in a much more sinister and elaborate way than the average sinner. And I believe that the correct response to this is to build something better, be clear on who we are, live as authentically as possible, do our best to simply avoid what these people have to offer and turning the other cheek if we get attacked.

If we want to do all of this, I believe that it is crucial that those of us that truly want something good for the world an humanity, start setting our differences aside. That we start cooperating and listening to each other with open minds and hearts. Not because we need to change anything unless we want to. And certainly not so that we can find fault with each other’s views, so that we then can set them straight. If we truly believe in the rightness of our beliefs, we don’t convince others of this by talking. We show it through the people that we are, who we are becoming, the lives that we live and the lives that we are creating for ourselves. 

We need unity and not division if we want to be as strong as we need to be in the times ahead.

Photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash

Getting clear on what I believe and stand for PART 3

I know that we have so much more potential within ourselves than we have been lead to believe. We are not little pointless creatures that live meaningless lives where we have to grasp for every little pleasure that we can get our hands on, before we wither away, die and descend into oblivion. 

It doesn’t mean that we should always take ourselves dead seriously. But I believe that we should treat ourselves with a bit of dignity and respect. We were not meant to work jobs that we hate so that we can watch TV-series, play video games, eat junk food, and chase likes on social media on our spare times. Or pay off debts because of over-consumption. Or get drunk out of our minds and chase sex in the weekends. If this truly makes you feel fulfilled, then go for it! But if it doesn’t, maybe there is something better out there. I would say that this type of life, even if we live under the illusion that we are making free choices, is not a life that we choose freely at all. It's just stimulus response, stimulus response, stimulus response... Sensory gratification, instincts and habits.

Therefore I truly believe that it is time for each and everyone of us to take a look at ourselves. At how we choose to live our lives and what we choose to give our time and attention to. There are some tough times ahead of us. But those tough times are meaningful times. If we understand this we can find joy in our hardships. Not just because we know that they are leading to something wonderful, but because we know that they contain a meaning that was not so clear before. Because we know that we walk with God while we experience them.

We can still suffer even if we are pain-free and sometimes, struggling and dealing with hardships is what makes us feel most alive. And no matter what, if we try to numb ourselves and run away from our challenges, life will catch up with us eventually. It did for me. I choose to accept that and do my best with it. 

I know that I would gladly trade comfort and security for true meaningfulness every day. Even if it means that I have to struggle, feel negative emotions and take risks. I believe that everyone who truly and honestly thought this through would. 

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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. 

Getting clear on what I believe and stand for PART 2

Photo by Mads Schmidt Rasmussen on Unsplash

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.