Short on prayer part 2

Happy New Year!

When we pray, we need to fully comprehend that God listens.

We don’t need to find the right words. God already knows what we want to say. We do, however, need to pray with sincerity. Sometimes - often in my case - prayers are just empty words. But when we pray with sincerity, we know that God listens and that God hears every little infinitesimal grain of insincerity. He still hears. He still listens. But what we say doesn’t mean anything.

When we pray with sincerity, things that we have hidden from ourselves will come to the surface. It gets brought into the light of God so that he can heal it.

Getting stuck in one approach

This has been coming up a lot lately. All of the examples are pretty boring, so I’ll just pick one. If you just want to point, you can skip to the last paragraph. 

Basically I’ve been doing stuff where I've gotten stuck in one approach to them. And I’ve felt pretty stupid when I’ve realized that I could do them another way. 

So, here comes the boring example: At my job, I was assigned to glue a smaller thing to a bigger. For some reason, the thought entered into my mind, that I had to put the glue on the bigger thing, which meant a lot more work and so on. Long story short, it would have been a lot more work. When I told a co-worker this, I was informed that I could just put the glue on the smaller piece. 

As I said, I’ve been finding myself in many similar situations lately. And I wonder how many more there are in my life, where I waste time and energy because I form a mental picture of how it has to be done and therefore exclude all of the other options.

Taking time to think

I’m not the first one in the world to notice that we distract ourselves a lot these days. 

Do our thoughts shape our lives? Does how we treat our thoughts affect what and how we think?

I know that I could be a lot better at this myself. I may not sit with my phone a lot. But I almost always listen to some audiobook or YouTuber when I do things. I work, read or watch movies when I’m at home. The only times I really just sit or lie down and think is when I’m tired and feel that I need to rest for a while. And quite often, as now for example, interesting thoughts come to me. Many, as the one that led to this post, are not ground breaking. But they usually expand my perspective a little in some small ways, if I don’t just let them pass me by, but think a little about them and what they mean to me and my life.

I always feel life breathing down my neck part 2

There is another side to this though. Throughout my life I’ve often been quite lazy and inactive. I’ve taken the comfortable route. Maybe not more so than most people, but couple this with some bad decisions, bad prioritising, some refusal to accept reality, avoidance of problems, procrastination and a general inability to organise one’s everyday life, and you have a recipe for a big mess that you have to clean up if you want to live a life that you’re happy with.

Now, I’ve gradually cleaned up this mess more and more. For the most part, it has been life forcing me to reluctantly face reality and do what I have to do to avoid total disaster. This is not how I want to live my life though.

And what I’ve realised, is that, even though it causes a lot of stress for me, I feel best when I’m engaged in stuff. When my life is moving. This is probably not for everyone, but I believe that I’ve been living a life that is very out of line with how I function. I mostly love having a lot to do, as long as the doing doesn’t consist of fixing unforeseen problems. And I feel worst when I’m not moving. When I just sit and chill on the sofa. Except for when chilling on the sofa is a reward I give to myself for having performed a good job.

I always feel life breathing down my neck part 1

It’s no fun admitting this. It was my wife that pointed this out to me. She feels like I’m always going somewhere. I always have something that I need to do. I can never stop to be fully present because of it. But she needs to see her part in it and put away her phone when she is with me, because it’s a constant distraction even if she isn’t always tinkering with it. It takes her attention away from me at least as much as my projects takes my attention away from her. It’s always present and at any given moment there can be a message that she has to check or even a phone call that she feels like she has to take.

Another weird thing, is that I’m able to be present when I work, meditate, dance or do yoga. But not when I’m just simply enjoying myself or the company of others. Because then I always have something productive that I could be doing in the back of my mind. And if what I’m enjoying costs money, this too is in the back of my mind.

I did something bad a few days ago part 2

The final choice of doing what I did, can be divided in two. I first made an initial choice, telling myself that I’m just going to do this one thing. Just to see how it is. Then I’m going to let it go. But about five minutes later, I had gone through with the rest of it. 

As you can see, I managed to trick myself over and over again, slipping more and more. It is also worth noting that there is a potential continuation on a possible chain of events relating to the topic that I’m talking about. But I’ve decided to say no to my mind. No to my ego. And I pray to God that he will help me to stay committed to my “no”. 

I did something bad a few days ago part 1

Not something BAD bad. Not anything that most people wouldn’t find totally okay. But bad in a way that I prefer to leave it to your imagination to figure out what it was. So, why am I writing this post? Well, in the hope that I will learn something from the experience and that others might learn from it as well. By writing this down, making it clear that this was something bad and stating my clear intention of not doing what I did again, I hope to turn this fall into a fall forward. 

You see, it started in my thoughts several weeks before. And since the thoughts were connected with pleasant memories in the past, I chose to hold on to them. It was a choice. I could have chosen to just observe them and let them go. But this was not the choice that I made. 

Here is some context: As my two weeks vacation started, I started slipping back into some other old habits as well. These I wouldn’t call bad in the sense that I call that other thing bad. But they made me lazy and comfortable. And when you’re lazy and comfortable, you’re less observant and your will is weakened. 

Writing things down to create more inner order

Part of the point of this blog, is to put the things that I’m struggling into words. And I hope to do it in a way that others can learn from as well. I’m not the first person to realise that when you put your problems, struggles and your inner life in general into words, everything becomes easier to manage. If we look inside ourselves for just a little while, we will, at least if we are like most people, find that it is rather messy. We have a lot of half-digested opinions and beliefs and ideas about how the world and other people work. We have a few poorly defined goals and aspirations. We have made assumptions and arbitrarily chosen to believe some people over others. And to top it all off, all of this is in there in the form of an incoherent mess of words, sounds and mental images, that not seldom contradict each other.

This mess, in all its brokenness, can be quite elaborate, while we ignore such very basic and simple things, such as how we breathe, that we can never stop thinking (if we are like most people) or how our thoughts actually seem to work.

Writing down stuff about our lives, preferably on a daily basis, helps us to put things into perspective. We become more aware of our state and what it entails on both a collective and a personal level. We become more aware of which issues we share with other people, and which issues are personal to ourselves. And what unique shape the shared issues take in our own lives. In short, writing things down help us to put our inner lives in order.

A flat tire

The other day I was late for work because of. Since I work for a staffing company, I fill out my own time. Of course I had to adjust for the 25 minutes that I was late, which I did. But before this obvious decision was made, a whole process happened inside my head. I thought: “Well, I’m ahead with my work assignments, so there was no harm being late. No one is going to check my time report or care anyway, as long as I’ve done my job. Besides, being late looks bad. And if anyone, against all odds, decides to check, I can just tell them that I made a mistake. Since it’s easy to just click ‘ok’ on the time report without adjusting anything, no one is going to believe otherwise. Especially since I’m a model employee.”

My thoughts were of course not as clear as they are now, when I put them into words. But this was basically the process that took place, before I overrode it with the principle of not being wilfully dishonest, that I try to follow to the best of my ability.

The interesting thing here, is that I was only partially conscious of my mental process. And had I not remembered the honesty-principle, I might have listened to the other voice. In this case, the chance was very little. But it could have happened. In a less clear case, maybe I would have not remembered my guideposts. Maybe I wouldn’t even have known what behaviour I let slip by my radar.

Listening as a spiritual practice

After a long journey, exploring loads of esoteric subjects, I’ve come to realise that much of what is going on in our everyday lives can be spiritual practices if we approach it the right way. Our "ordinary" lives pass us by because they are always present. We don't see the magic that is right in front of us or the possibilities for transformation that it holds.

In Herman Hesse’s Siddharta, one of the final things that Siddharta has to learn is listening. Of course, Siddhardta didn’t just listen to other people. He just listened, without putting on the filter of thoughts that we normally do. And perhaps it’s easier to listen to the world than to other people. But that’s beside the point. 

The point is that to really listen, we have to open up. We have to go beyond ourselves and meet another person where he or she is. And we have to resist the impulses to interrupt to tell about our own experiences and/or give advice. And if we are going to give advice, we have to truly listen to the person, to know if it’s appropriate to give advice and, if so, how to give it so the the person will be able to take it to heart. 

And when listening to something that we don’t like to hear, whether it’s warranted or not, we have to learn not to react to our emotions. We have to be humble enough, to try and hear if the other person has a point to what he or she is saying. We have to watch ourselves and how we behave in the conversation.

The more objective our stance is, the better listeners we become.

Once we realise that listening is a skill that can be acquired many things change. Because it is a skill that most definitely can help us grow spiritually. We can become less arrogant and more humble by learning to listen. We can get out of our own self-centeredness and we can become more open and compassionate towards other people.

A thought struck me while writing this post as well. Perhaps the saying the “how we do one thing is how we do everything” is especially true when it comes to listening. I think that there are a few striking examples of this in my own life. I can be very thorough and engaged in the things that I do in general, just as I can be a good attentive listener. But more often than I would like, I lose focus on what I do and become sloppy. Just as I sometimes zone out and go into my own thoughts when I listen to someone. And I’m often (but not always) a good listener when someone comes to me with a problem. I don’t judge and I try to consider what the person needs. But the more the problem affects me, the less patient I become with the person. And the more prone I become to give unsolicited advice. It’s the same with events in life in general. I’m pretty good with fixing things that don’t affect me. But the closer to home that a problem or challenge hits, the harder it becomes for me to not get emotional, start resisting what is and mess it up because I’m not thinking clearly anymore. 

I didn’t expect that las section to come out. But now it did and I’m glad that I chose to listen to it… We of course need to become better at listening to ourselves as well. And I believe that we become better at listening to ourselves, by becoming better at listening to others.

On the art of listening

Do you listen more or talk more? When others talk, do you truly listen to them and try to understand what they are saying? Are you trying your best to understand them? Are you doing your best to make them feel understood. Are you attentive to the needs of the person that you are talking to?

If I’m being honest with myself, I would have to answer “talk more” to the first question and “no” to the others. It’s not a confession that I’m proud of. But admitting something is the first step to changing it.

And the thing is, that when we are “bad” listeners, we learn less from our conversations. And we annoy people. And we make ourselves less likable. And while saying more, we communicate less, since it’s difficult to get someone else to listen to us, when we don’t listen to them and try to understand their needs. When we’re just anxious to get our point across, with no regard for the other person.

And I believe that, as with so many things, a deficiency in our ability to listen, has to do with what we’ve trained ourselves to do. As I’m writing this post, I’m 38 years old. And I started to reflect on my ability to listen this year. It means that basically for 37 years, I’ve just let my listening happen the way it has happened. Since I’ve had a few interests that others have found interesting and strong opinions on a few subjects (which is something that I’ve let go of more and more, since I’ve realized how unimportant opinions often are), this has meant that I’ve talked a lot and listened little. And I’ve practiced doing this year after year.

It’s not something that I’m going to punch myself in the face because of. As with so many things that were right in front of me, it never crossed my mind that there was another way of doing it.

And as with so many other of these obvious things, the first step towards change is to, in my everyday life, remember that there is something that I wish to change. When I’m in conversations, I need to practice being aware of what is going on inside. Am I listening or just waiting for my turn to speak? Am I listening or planning what I’m going to say next? Am I trying to understand or just to make the other person change his or her mind? Am I asking questions? Are the questions sincere? Do I actually understand what the other person is saying? Am I asking questions to confirm this?

Now, as I said, it’s crucial to remember what we wish to change. I have noticed this in my own life. I know that being present in the moment is better than to be lost in thoughts while not really being there. I know that I have better conversations if to truly listen to what a person is saying, and yet, when the topic is emotional, I get swept up by those emotions and just think of what I want to say, while waiting to get my point across. And I know that other people have interesting things to tell me if I just listen and ask the right questions. And yet I find myself engaging in a monologue about my own knowledge, insights or plans. Have any of this happened to you?

To conclude, I would like to repeat that I don’t think that we should be too hard on ourselves. As I said, we often get so lost in the complexities of life, that we tend to ignore the simple things, such as in this case, how we listen to people. And so we learn to do these essential things in a significantly impaired way. There is no shame in this. It doesn’t make us bad people. Until we noticed, we didn’t know any better. And now that we know, we can change. We’re not perfect. There will be mistakes. I know that I’m stating the obvious here. But we so often forget to be kind to ourselves in the process of working on our serious commitments. We can’t always expect greatness of ourselves. But if we’re honest with ourselves, we know when we’re doing our best and when we’re not. And sometimes it must be okay for us to say: “today I just don’t have the mental energy to struggle with the habits that I wish to change.”

All it takes on our part is a serious commitment to change, in areas of our lives where we believe that change is needed. The rest is up to God.

Useful and useless thoughts

I often hear that in the modern world, we seldom take the time to just think. We always want to distract our minds in some way. Which makes us alienated to ourselves, since this means that we don’t take time to figure ourselves or our lives out. 

I’ve been there. In so many ways. When I was younger, it was a lot of mindless entertainment. Then, as I started to find some meaning in life and became at least a bit ambitious, it was books. And still some mindless entertainment now and then. 

But there is another side to this. Because when I decided to just sit down and think, or at least not listen to something every time I did household chores, I found my thoughts skipping randomly between topics. When I was done, I had thought about things like bills, what people thought of me, my body, groceries, tv-series etc. Consequently, when I was done being alone with my thoughts, I hadn’t grown any wiser. In some instances, I had even managed to get my mood down, by thinking of some problem that I couldn’t do anything about, or someone that I was mad at, or someone that was mad at me. 

This happened even if I decided to be present with my thoughts. Because it took ten seconds for me to forget to be present with them. Only now, many years after I first made this attempt, I am starting to remember to have a conscious relation to my thoughts when I’m alone with them. 

That last sentence sounded a little weird. Re-read it again to make sure that didn’t just read it, but understood it as well.

Are we victims of circumstances?

There seems to be two camps when it comes to this question. Either you are just that - a helpless victim of circumstances. Or you are the master of your inner life, that can respond any way you choose to what is happening by just changing your thoughts about it.

When I look at my own experience, the truth seems to fall somewhere in between. And where I am on the scale seems to shift depending on different factors. At the core of it, as with so many things, is how present I manage to be. If I can remain focused on what is going on, both on the inside and outside (primarily on the inside) I have much more control over my responses to the given situation. Furthermore, the more emotionally triggering a situation is, the harder it becomes to remain present. And once I’m swept away by my emotions, it’s almost impossible to reclaim my presence. 

I also have a choice between different thought patterns concerning a situation. What I cannot do however, is make myself believe that a situation that I find terrible is in fact good. Or even neutral. What is possible, is to train myself to find certain situations less and less intolerable. I for example don’t find financial setbacks as painful as I used to. But I still don’t like them. And it’s still easy to fall into thought patterns about how much work I’ve put in for nothing, when I unnecessarily lose money. But I can also think about how struggles help to strengthen my character, thus make me more resilient in the future and thus pave the way for future success. I can even think that God wants to teach me something valuable through my hardships, or that there is some other meaning to what is happening, that I cannot see from where I currently am. These thought patterns are all within my range of possibilities. And the more I choose one type of thought pattern over another, the easier it will be in the future to choose that type. 

In the past, I’ve been prone to choose the more negative type though. And it’s not easy to change. Change takes time and is uncomfortable. But now that I know a few basics about how I function, I believe that change will be much easier. 

I have found that the best way to approach unpleasant circumstances, is to observe them without reacting. This takes practice though. I used to beat myself up for not being able to remain positive in the face of hardships. I had more or less swallowed the idea that a positive mindset is just a choice. Today I believe that it can be a choice. But to make it into one takes practice. We have a lot of baggage to let go of. But it does come down to taking a step back and observe. Because when we react to things, we aren’t really there anymore. This is a little difficult to communicate, so bear with me here, because this part is important. We have unconsciously learned that we always have to do something in the different situations that we face. And so we force things. And when we try to force things, we try to do it on our own. When we stop forcing, we can allow God to take over. The first step is to learn to observe what is going on without trying to do anything. To learn that we don’t have to do anything. 

I’m very far from being perfect at this. But I have experienced it. And there is such a huge difference here, that it means everything. On the one hand, we struggle with the world and everything in it. On the other, we relax, let go and when we know what comes natural, which we will in the same degree as we manage to let go of the impulse to force things, we can choose to simply do what comes natural. But for such a long time, we've learned to not do what comes natural. We have learned to live in a struggling, reactive mindset. And change takes time. And is uncomfortable. Furthermore, it's uncomfortable in a completely different way from normal change. Because the uncomfortable doesn't come from something that we have to struggle with to overcome. It comes from an inner resistance that causes us to feel anxiety. This resistance can't be attached to something tangible. It comes from nothing but the ego's unwillingness to give up its illusion of self-sufficiency. And yet, even though, ultimately, it is an illusion, its pull seems more powerful than any challenge we've ever faced. But it is an illusion.

I will try to explain this more clearly in future posts, because it’s important in a life-changing kind of way. But difficult to explain. Maybe because I’m trying to force an explanation… ;)

I wish to conclude with the following: Some people are strong on their own and seem to do fine without God. I’m not one of those people and I don’t want to be either. Whether we need God to carry us or not, we always need God in our lives. If my weakness helps me remember this need, then my weakness is a strength. I have a feeling that life will be easy, once we allow God to be fully present in every part of our lives.

A helping hand

I have started to notice something interesting. Namely that the more present I am in what I’m doing and what is going on in general, I seem to be guided somehow. For example: I know what a good walking posture should feel like. Since my body is full of blockages and tensions though, I often fall back into a less than optimal posture. But when I’m present with my body and actively try to not go in and force anything with my mind, its movements and what is going on around me, it is as if my body assumes the right posture. 

It’s the same with breathing. 

From my experience, it feels sort of as if letting go and just allow is the most natural thing in the world, but at the same time the most difficult, because we have for such a long time practiced to force things. I believe that when we relax and let go, we actually allow God to take over and do things for us instead. 

We can't stop thinking

To many, this isn’t news. But to many it is. It was for my very intelligent grandfather when, seven years ago, when he was 96, I told him this. We didn’t speak much more about it, but I think considering that he was a very curious person all the way to his death, he must have found this fascinating. Thinking about it, I wish that I would have followed up the discussion some more. We could have probably had a very i interesting talk about it. But sadly, this was before I started to realise just how unconsciously I was approaching many thing in my life.

But I’m getting off track here. Maybe there is a point to getting off track sometimes though. 

What I want to get at, is that we have this constant wordmachine going on in our heads, that also generates diffuse images, sounds, songs, scenes etcetera. And for a long time, I more or less unconsciously assumed that I was this wordmachine, without giving much conscious thought to how it functioned. Or why it was there and did what it did. I even, again mostly unconsciously, assumed that I was in control of it. 

I believe that the above description of my thoughts is more or less true of most people. And the more I think of this, the more interesting (and also a bit frightening) I think that it is. To repeat: We have a constant wordmachine etc. in our heads that we unconsciously assume is us, and this is something that many people go through their whole lives without reflecting upon. With this reasoning in mind, I want to conclude with a question: Do you or don’t you think that thoughts play a significant role in shaping our actions and lives?

Short on prayer

I’ve realised that I can treat my experience of prayer in vastly different ways. In prayer as in no other practice, it has become clear whether I’m doing something heartfelt or not. If I’m there, if I’m really speaking to someone and if there  is any true meaning behind my words. I have often caught myself approaching prayer as just something I expect myself to do. I’ve used some nice words about gratitude, forgiveness, guidance or whatever. But I haven’t really been there. I haven’t really thought about what I’ve been saying. Often, I have been somewhere else in my thoughts. And I haven’t intentionally directed my prayer towards God.

I know that this type of absent-mindedness can be found in many of my activities. But as I said, I’ve seen it most clearly in prayer. Felt the difference between it and really being engaged in what I’m doing.