Don't be afraid

There is so much fear in the world right now. Have you noticed? It seems that there is just one threat or disaster after another. And everthing that we need in our day to day lives is getting more expensive.

First of all, it’s okay to be afraid. It’s understandable. No one is going to judge you because you are afraid. So you can relax. At least when it comes to this. But just know that you don’t have to be afraid.

We worry about the future of the planet, wars, the economy, our economy. All the way from the whole of humanity, down to us as individuals, we worry. Everything seems to be hitting us all at once.

I’m not going to say that this means one thing or the other. But doesn’t it all seem a bit odd?

Here’s a suggestion: Maybe it’s time that we who aspire to follow Christ start believing that we are taken care of? 

For me this entails that when it comes to problems of humanity that we don’t seem to be able to solve on our own, I decide to trust God instead. Trust that God will not just let the world perish. That God will never force that which is unacceptable on us in order to save the world or humanity. 

Knowing where I stand when it comes to this, will also help me draw a clear line when it comes to what political solutions I will never comply with.

If we don’t take a step back, just breathe and think about the fact that, in the end, everything is in God’s hands it’s easy to forget about joy. It’s easy to just react. Because this is what we’ve gotten used to. Make a panicked response to a stressful situation. Whether we do it as individuals or as a collective.

One major reason for this is that the default mode of our brains is to keep us safe. But that just won’t do anymore. We are on our way towards something new. Something where our egos and instincts can no longer guide us. Can you feel it? 

One thing that the Bible says, is that God has promised that in one way or another, he will take care of us. He has not said that everything is going to be easy or even that our survival, on an individual level in this physical body, is guaranteed. But he has promised that he won’t let the world go under until the end times. And even the end times may suggest a more symbolic interpretation. 

Now, those that want to control us want to keep us in a fearful state. Because it’s easier to get fearful people that are deprived of hope and meaningfulness to hand over their power.

So if you really want to stick it to the man so to speak, the only way forward is to learn not to respond in a negative, fearful manner. To stay happy, hopeful and trusting even when the world tries to bring you down is the only way out. 

Therefore, to be joyful and happy is an act of defiance. To refuse to let our chaotic world upset our balance. To choose to rely on God and on that there is a plan. Isn’t that great? The way that we fight back is by choosing happiness and embracing the positive aspects of life.

I know that it’s not always easy. Neither on a personal nor a global level. We might be struggling with one thing or the other on a personal level. And on a global level there are different things that grab hold of our attention in a way where we seem unable to stop thinking about them. Thus we worry. Thus we fall. Because we’ve learned a totally backwards way of functioning in the world. It’s not our fault. We have learned that this is the natural way of operating in the world. That it’s the only way.

Therefore, when we fall, we must realize that there is nothing wrong with us. We are not bad. We just haven’t learned that we have options.

If you don’t know where to start, I suggest that you start working on acceptance. This is a big step and I admit that, in it’s apparent simplicity and effortlessness, it’s often very difficult. Because we have a lot to unlearn and re-learn. But here’s the thing I want to stress over and over again: You are okay the way you are. You are okay the way you are. There is nothing wrong with you. You, just like me and everyone else, just lack the proper understanding. You don’t have to do anything about it. Everything is optional. You were created to love God and be loved by God. That’s it. Everything else is optional. You don’t have to do or be anything to deserve God’s love. And as long as we are ruled by our egos in any way, we are bound to make mistakes. It is what it is.

But once you can see yourself and your relationship with God, yourself, the world and the rest of humanity and everything else in a clearer light, maybe you can also start thinking of some logical steps that you want to take? Maybe you want to start prioritizing a bit? Or maybe you choose to do none of that, even though you know that you have a choice. God loves you either way though.

It’s so easy to get caught up in speculations about reality, religion and what all of this means, while ignoring the human condition. Which, ironically, is staring us straight in the face if we study what Jesus says. Sure, he mentions heaven, hell, prophecies and the likes. But all of this is open to interpretation. Many of his teachings regarding how to live and treat each other and ourselves are not however. They are often multi-faceted, but seldom difficult to understand.

We’ve been given a very complex machine to operate. A machine called the human body and brain.

Like any complex machine, the human brain and body have very specific ways of functioning. They have specific ways of interacting with their environment. Teaching how to do this is part of what I’m trying to do with my and my wife’s YouTube channel.

I furthermore suggest that you ask yourself the following question. What do we really know? I honestly don’t know the severity of the state of the world. I just know that I make the choice of trusting God rather than worldly authorities. And I make that choice every moment of every day. 

So, if you have a hard time not believing that we are not heading for a horrible, dystopian nightmare unless certain measures are taken, how much do you really know? Have you taken a careful look at the available data? Have you listened to those with an informed opinion that disagree with the views that are being presented in the mass media? Do journalists and politicians really deserve your trust? If you had someone that was continuously lying and manipulating you in your life, would you continue trusting that person? So why do that when it comes to politicians? What if it’s not out there in the world, but inside ourselves that the solutions lie? What if each and everyone of us will know what to do once we start looking in the right place?

The truth is that we might have to go through some hard times. But what’s in the future is very far from as certain as the doomsayers claim. And until we can work on cultivating a joyous spirit. The hard times will be easier then. 

Let go and trust God

What if it was possible to relax and let go? I’ve had glimpses of this kind of state. Now let me tell you about it.

I’ve reached sort of a turning point in my life. I’m not over the top yet, but something has seriously began to shift inside of me. Something that I know is the destiny for everyone.

There are still parts of me that are resisting. That want to make things hard. That do not want to follow the natural flow of life. That still want to think my way through everything. Even though I’m more and more seeing how absolutely limited and deceptive my thoughts are. I’m not the little silly voice inside my head. I know this. 

I know that it’s time for us to stop being afraid. God is in control. He’s always been. And he’ll act through us if we just let him. He could force his will on us. He has that power. But he never will. We have to let go and allow. And here I’m going to discuss how we do this. 

In the end, this cannot be conveyed in its fullness through words. It’s so simple and easy, and yet so difficult. And it’s right in front of us. In fact, it’s closer to us than we are to ourselves.

If we want to hand our lives over to God, we need to practice present moment awareness or mindfulness. If someone says that mindfulness is bad because it didn’t originate in Christianity, please don’t listen to them. They are stuck in their silly little thoughts. Their egos. Their thoughts are telling them that what their thoughts are telling them must be right. But one single experience of real truth will prove the limitation of such thinking beyond any doubt.

Mindfulness, in essence, is just about bringing awareness to the present moment. And when we do that something begins to shift. Just be here now! When we start doing this in the beginning, we will notice that our attention starts to drift. This is because we have learned this throughout our lives. We have learned to be caught up in our thoughts. 

But mindfulness is not what this post is about.

What I want to talk about here is handing our lives over to God. In every given moment. In every moment we can choose to trust or live in fear. If we want to resist or let go. 

Jesus was the ideal that we should always strive for. He came here to show us the way. And in one way or another, he’s promised that he will return. But when Jesus came here 2000 years ago, he came in a way that basically no one expected. What if it’s the same when he returns? 

Jesus told us that his will and the will of the father are one. In fact, he told us that he and the father are one (Joh 10:30). 

This doesn’t have to be hard. Circumstances might make things hard at times. But following Jesus should make it easier to handle whatever circumstances come our way. Jesus came her to set us free. For real. So if we feel that what Jesus taught is not making us free, we are not reading his message correctly. If you treat the Bible like a stale rulebook, where you constantly limit yourself from anything that might offend God, even if it’s not clearly spelled out in the Bible, you are reading it all wrong. I think that the example of Christian rock and metal is such a telling one. If someone says that it’s wrong, I just stop listening immediately, because I know that the words come from a mind that is caught up in thoughts. When you realize that it’s possible to argue for just about anything and make it sound plausible, you are one step closer to breaking free from the prison of your thoughts.

What Jesus offers is real freedom. This while life lived according to our own wills is not real freedom. This kind of life is a prison of our lower natures. For some it’s a dirty prison full of stench. One that has bars of rusty iron. For others, it’s a shiny, clean prison with bars of gold and all the comforts you could ask for. But it’s still a prison.

But we don’t have to fear the prison either. The prison is an illusion. You can look at the Bible as a type of instruction manual for life on the earth. But not an instruction manual that is a rulebook that you have to decipher. The really important stuff is pretty straight forward: Don’t judge. Cultivate love. Be honest and respectful. Examine your own behavior instead of pointing out the faults of others. That sort of stuff. 

If you don’t follow the instruction manual, all that happens is that life doesn’t work properly. And so you’re caught up in the illusory prison.

Again, what we need to do is to choose God and to trust God in every given moment. There is no other way forward. We need to choose trust in our personal lives. And we need to choose trust when it comes to the events that unfold in the world. It’s not easy when we witness all of the chaos that is taking place. But whatever the circumstance, all is ultimately in God’s hands. The worst that can happen on a personal level is that we die. And the worst that can happen on a global level is that the world ends. If this happens, it’s the will of God. Instead of resisting, forcing and being afraid, why not just try to figure out what God wants, do that and leave the rest to God?

The more I let go, the better my life seems to work

Life is full of distractions. Have you noticed that? The world is full of things that occupy our minds. Things that we attach importance to. And the more we hold on to those things, the more messy things get. I feel that I’ve gone through some sort of shift with this lately. But be that as it may, tomorrow I may very well be caught up in all of the little petty problems of life again. 

And that is what they are. Petty problems. Petty concerns. Petty needs. Petty wants. This is what we all so easily get caught up in. Things have to be a certain way for us to be happy. And we worry about a tomorrow that we know nothing about. 

What should I eat? What should I drink? Will I be able to pay my bills? Will I be able to put food on the table? 

And these are real concerns for many people. From a global perspective, it’s real concerns for most people. But is it for me? Is it for you? Would it really have to be for anyone, if each and every one of us took responsibility for getting our priorities straightened out? I'm obviously not talking about being perfect at this. Just about bringing some consciousness into such matters.

This is the world that we are creating together. And uneven distribution seems to be built into the way that life itself functions. Because more or less everywhere, both in the human and animal world, resources seem to be unevenly distributed. And there seems to be no political solutions to this. The only difference between left and right seems to be how the inequality arises. In liberal, capitalist systems we get an uneven distribution through the market. In socialist systems the political class, and/or those that have so much money that they can pay their way out of any regulations, get the biggest share.

And we often seem to make things worse with loads of mindless doing. Mindless doing that is intended to solve our problems. But that instead push things in the opposite direction from what we say that we want.

Why am I talking about this? Because there is a place where we haven’t looked for solutions yet. At least not on a larger scale. This might also be the place that truly separates us from the rest of the creation.

This place is within. What good could that possibly do? Well, we’ve tried everything else and the world is still in chaos. More so than ever. At least during the past few years. Even though, materially speaking, life is better than ever. 

There seems to be a false and a true personality inside of us. The false one is more or less what is usually referred to as the ego. This false personality is governed by instincts. And it has all these requirements that it needs to have fulfilled in order for life to be good. Those requirements are not something that we have chosen consciously. We have just more or less randomly reacted to the external world. 

Maybe if we take a step back and start to figure ourselves out a bit, instead of running around frantically trying to solve everything that we perceive as wrong, we might actually be able to do something good. If we start separating what is false from what is true inside ourselves. Because maybe there is some truth to the statement: “As within, so without”. 

And to make it clear, we are part of something so much grander that our little thoughts cannot begin to comprehend it. And yet we are so caught up with our thinking. I don’t know exactly what is happening in the world. Only that it’s big. Really big. 

And even if I did find all of the answers that I’m seeking, I’m more or less certain that I could not describe it in words. I know that life and the world are so much more than we can comprehend with the five senses. I know that whatever it is, we are going through some sort of shift on the planet right now. I also know that it has something to do with the Bible and Biblical prophecies. But I also know that I and everyone else only have begun to scratch the surface of things. 

Something that I’ve learned through experience, is that we are all connected through some sort of energy field that runs through us all. And the more I say yes to my experience and stop resisting what is happening in the present moment, the more I can feel it. In other words, the more I let go, the better things get. The more I stop demanding that the world gives me what I want, the more blessing I receive freely. 

So maybe it’s time to stop worrying and start trusting. I’m saying this as much to myself as to everyone else. If we truly believe in God, that God is who he says he is and that everything is in God’s hands, maybe we also need to adopt an attitude that matches this belief. This goes for both our personal issues, as well as the global problems that we are facing today. Maybe if we start looking within and just stop doing the things that we know we should stop doing, this will be enough. Maybe solutions to what seems to be out of our control will present themselves effortlessly. Without the need for a tyranny and forced compliance. 

Maybe what we need is not more force, but more letting go. More focus on the essential, while we ignore what is unimportant or out of our control. And I don’t know about you, but when I look at my days I find so much junk that occupies my awareness. Where would I be today, if I had determined to not allow these things to distract me? Where would you be? Where can we be in a year, if we decide this right now? In ten years?

Breaking free from the PRISON of COMFORT

We were never meant to live like this. What has happened to us? Life should not consist of relaxation, comfort, pleasure, consumption and safety. Maybe when God said to Adam: “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground” (Genesis 3:19) it was not just meant just as a burden laid upon our shoulders. Maybe in a fallen world it’s not desirable to live any other way. Maybe life loses its meaning when we don’t have to work hard for anything anymore.

Let me ask you this: Do people that make safety and comfort their primary goals seem happy? I don’t have any statistics to back this up, but I’m pretty sure that there is a correlation between the use of anti-depressants and people’s level of comfort. I’m pretty sure that there is a correlation between depression and how many hours are spent on the sofa eating junk food. 

The world makes it easier than ever to be lazy, comfortable and engage in instant gratification. Today we have access to every item of convenience imaginable. We have endless access to entertainment and other distractions, fast food so we don’t have to cook, anti-depressants and sedatives so we don’t have to deal with our emotional problems, cars so we don’t have to walk, medications so we don’t have to take care of our bodies and wellfare so we don’t have to work. And since it becomes harder and harder to find work, while inflation eats up more and more of our salaries, there is less and less incentive to work. 

To top it all off, we can gratify every low desire imaginable like never before. At the store, in front of the computer, on our streaming services and on our smartphones. Shameful consumption that twenty years ago required an effort and to actually look another person in the eyes when we paid for it, can today be done entirely in secret. 

Until a few years ago I didn’t see these things as clearly as I do now. So I have my own demons to fight when it comes to the sad state that we’ve slowly been conditioned into. But I have let go of much since I started to see the troubled state of the world with clear eyes. And when I saw it, I knew that I had no choice. I can hide most things from other people. I can even fool myself that this is enough. But deep inside I know that it isn’t. My choices and actions will mercilessly shape who I am. I can never truly hide my behavior from myself. And I can certainly not hide it from God, who sees everything, knows every single thought that passes through my head and knows me infinitely better than I know myself. 

I’m not free from sloth and gluttony. But I refuse to give in to them and let them rule my life. I engage in overeating from time to time. Now and then I skip going to the gym. And I know that I cannot always trust myself to do the things that I’ve set out to do. Life often feels like an uphill battle. But whatever comes out of my struggles in the end, even if it’s nothing at all, it’s still better than resignation. 

Luckily we’re not alone in this. Just as God has a will for us and cares about our actions, he also understands us. Understands what we’re going through. Understands the world that we are living in. Walks with us in our struggles. Forgives our missteps and failures. 

This does not imply taking the position of infants, where we just assume that God will do everything for us, with no effort on our part. God does expect that we try our best. That we don’t just let go and give in. That we don’t start making excuses. And it’s so easy to start making excuses. I know. Because I’ve struggled with many sins throughout my life. And these struggles have entailed loads of excuses for letting go and giving in. Loads of justifications for why sin isn’t really sin, even though I know in my heart that it is. Justifications for instant gratification so that I don’t have to deal with the suffering and frustration that resisting desire often causes. Justifications that often sound insane when I look back at them. 

It’s easier than ever to just let ourselves go. At the same time, it’s harder and harder to make a different choice. If we want to feel powerful, free and alive the world will work against us. We will often have a baggage from having lived an unconscious life. Bad habits and debts to pay off are examples from my and my wife’s life. And if we want to build a business to stand on our own, regulations and tax burdens make things harder than ever. Regulations and tax burdens that big corporations easily can pay their way out of.

And temptations are everywhere. Which in itself is another challenge. Because it takes time and energy to resist them. It would be so easy to just let go, stop caring and let the government take care of us. Unhealthy food is the cheapest food, so we could easily stick to that, let our bodies decay, get comfortable and numb. Entertainment and distractions are cheap and often free. We only need a trip to the doctor and the pharmacy to escape our emotions. 

I know that I want to get out of this invisible prison that I unknowingly have allowed myself to get trapped in. To me it’s not even a choice. I’d rather live a life of struggle, frustration and disappointment every single day and die disappointed and struggling, than giving in to a meaningless life of comfort, pleasure and instant gratification. Because to me, this type of life isn’t living at all. This type of life is the equivalent of being a walking dead. You don’t live. You just exist.

When I look at what our culture tries to turn us into, I see disconnection from ourselves and disconnection from others. I see numbness. This is not what I want for me or anyone else. I want to feel alive and free even if it’s painful and frustrating. And I’m willing to endure anything to escape our invisible prison. I want to be fully human, the way God intended me to be. And I refuse to become the willless animal that the world wants to turn me into. 

Free will is one of God’s most precious and vital gifts. Let’s not waste it.

Conscious choices

Why am I doing what I am doing? This is a rather simple question that I think that we would do well to stop and ask ourselves now and then. Because it’s easy to get caught up in doing, whatever one is doing, for the wrong reasons. Or do something one does not really want to do. Or do what one should postpone to another time. Either because one needs to do something else, or because at the moment, one does not have the time, energy or enthusiasm to do a good job. In short, it’s easy to get caught up in activity. Or to just drift wherever circumstances lead one. Or to be driven by musts that are really just in one’s head.

I’ve noticed that we have such a tremendous tendency to stop making conscious decisions. All the time. We lose focus and then… boom! We’re in activity-autopilot. 

I think that making conscious decisions is something that we can and need to train ourselves to do more regularly. And the thing is that we are never alone in this. We have God and his Holy Spirit to guide us if we just learn to listen. You might not recognize that this is the case. But I can promise you that things will happen as you pay more attention to what is going on inside your head. Whether you believe that God exists and can actually speak to you or not.

And yes, this is a small, simple thing that we can do that will have a tremendous effect on our lives. Stop and ask ourselves a simple question from time to time. And really listen for the answer. 

If there is something that we are in dire need of right now it’s focus. Focus trumps willpower every time of the day. Just think of all the little bad decisions you make throughout the day that make life harder for you. It can be such a simple thing as to allow your attention to drift to social media for five minutes. Or you stay caught up in your thoughts while performing some task, which makes it take five minutes longer than it has to. Make fifty similar decisions throughout the day, every day, and you have a serious problem. 

We often try to whip ourselves into doing this or that without thinking. We decide one thing and then we run on auto-pilot till we have completed the task. And often we don’t complete the task at all. Instead we end up doing something else entirely, such as checking our social media feed or search for information about something completely unrelated to what we are doing. Can you recognize yourself in this?

It’s important to note that I’m not talking about efficiency here. Not necessarily at least. The world is full of self-help gurus that tell us that all we need to do is decide what to do and then do it. If it was this simple, everyone would be a success and the world would be perfect. Sure, there is a case to be made for developing more discipline. This is something that is lacking in today’s society of instant gratification and endless streams of leisure activity. Which, by the way, is there to keep us distracted, dumbed down, lazy and numb. Those that produce these things are usually not malevolent. Just greedy. But they are unknowingly working for truly malevolent forces. 

What I’m talking about is becoming intimate with ourselves. About getting to know ourselves and our real needs. You see, I used to listen to these ideas about just whipping oneself into doing whatever one sets one’s mind to. And I always, eventually ended up doing something else instead. Then I beat myself up for not being able to trust myself. Or, if I manage to stay more or less on track, I did a poor job with what was doing. With the result being a lazy, slow job with an end result reflecting the effort that I put in. 

What I’m talking about here can even be the opposite of efficiency. If what I truly need is to lay on the sofa all day, this is what I do, if I can. I’m not saying that this is something that I should do. But if I need this to recuperate, this is what I should do.

If I don’t make these conscious choices, I might drift to social media instead. We often do these things to give our overworked minds some rest. And then we’re not really resting at all. 

It I, on the other hand, take some time to just be, I’m almost guaranteed to come back to the task at hand with renewed energy and focus.

I’m using social media a lot as an example in this post. And for a good reason. Because I think that it might be our worst time and energy thief of our day. Social media preys on our need for rest. It gives us a false sense of rest, while in reality depleting us even further. And it’s got the insidious “it’s only a couple of minutes” factor as well. 

There are of course countless other examples. But I hope that you get the point.

Ultimately, the task of making conscious choices under the wise guidance of God is a spiritual practice. A spiritual practice that is a powerful weapon against the forces of this world that want to keep us in invisible chains. 

We live in a fallen world. A world that isn’t what it should be. A world that is not what God intended it to be. But God wants us to have what we need. Even in this fallen world. And if we let him, God will guide us. When we ask questions such as “Am I making the best use of my time” and really listen, God will answer. We may not be able to perceive the answer perfectly immediately. But if we practice, we will grow in our discernment. And when we are unsure, we can seek out the Bible for guidance.

Jesus, for example, said: "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light" (Matthew 11:28-30). He also said: “do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own” (Matthew 6:34).

Does this sound like the words of a person that wants your life to be an endless struggle to measure up, in a world where the bar is raised higher and higher all the time? A world where you are never really enough? A world that both sedates you and kills your spirit with fast food and mindless entertainment, while at the same time asking you to perform more and more?

We need to start making conscious choices. And conscious choices start with saying no to the ways of the world and yes to the will of God. To learn to do this in every given moment. To learn what God wants for us. Because when we understand what we truly want, our will and God’s will are one. How can it be any other way? 

Every moment holds to possibility of making a conscious choice or go back to auto-pilot. And the more we figure out what we truly want, which is what God wants also and choose consciously to act accordingly, the more we allow God to shape us in his image. As he intended from the beginning.

Work when you need to work. Rest when you need to rest. Have fun when you need to have fun. Grieve when you need to grieve. Play when you need to play. Labour when you need to labour. Give when you need to give. Keep when you need to keep. Joke around when you need to joke around. Be serious when you need to be serious. Everything in its proper place.

Don’t let the world or your ego rule over you. Make conscious choices. In every moment.

NON-RESISTANCE and the BEAUTY of life

Life can be so beautiful when we seize with the activity for a little while and take the time to just stop and experience what is. I suggest that you pause reading this blog post and take the time to just listen to Antonín Dvořák’s Serenade for Strings in E Major. It should be the first song that comes up if you search his name on Spotify. And why not listen to the song that comes afterwards while you’re at it

Just listen without thinking that you have to be somewhere. Do something. Just be there with what is and take in without resisting or holding on to anything. This is God speaking through a person. And if you are calm, quiet and silent, you can hear God’s voice. Here and now can be so filled with beauty, joy, wonder and love. But we miss it when we resist what we don’t want or grasp for what we don’t have. And the thing is that the real game is an inner game. 

We are always in some form of activity. Thoughts are an activity. And most thoughts are on auto-pilot. Fear and anxiety are activity. When we feel fearful and anxious something moves inside us. And we either resist it or try to find an outlet for it. Both of these options are activity. But we also have the option of just being still. Of just accepting what is. The secret here is that we don’t have to do anything. We feel that we have to do something. Because we have been conditioned to think that we always have to do something. That our egos have to step in and try to fix the situation. But the thing is that we are connected to something so much more powerful. We are connected with God, the almighty. But if we want God to work through us, we must drop the illusions. We must seize with the ego’s endless activities. The little me, the one that really is nothing, merely an illusion, needs to step aside. God is infinite love. Infinite energy. And at the same time, God is also infinitely intimate and personal. This is another secret. You cannot have the infinitely big without the infinitely small. As above, so below. This is the beauty of oneness and duality. To be able to experience oneness in a meaningful way, you first need duality. But this has to be experienced to be understood. I’m not sure that I completely understand it myself. 

The more I can just live in this acceptance and gratitude for what is, the more joy I find in just being. When I for example just allow myself to be overwhelmed by a piece of classical music, without any resistance or need for things to be a certain way, I can find a wellspring of overflowing love and joy inside of me, that just wants to burst forth when nothing hinders it anymore. 

To conclude: I hope you enjoyed this text. I let it flow from the spirit that I’m talking about throughout it. Maybe it doesn’t make sense. Maybe it does. It’s always hard to put powerful experiences into words so that others can understand them. But to me, what I have written here is one of my most important insights. Everything is about letting go. About living in gratitude of what is good, instead of resistance towards the unwanted, or longing for what is not. It’s about taking action from a divine place instead of from the ego. It’s about allowing life to unfold joyfully through oneself, instead of forcing life to comply with the demands of the ego. It’s the easiest and hardest thing to do, both at the same time. All we have to do is to not resist what is. If you understand this correctly, you understand that this is not a ticket to complacency. What it is, is about acting because we truly want to, and not because we feel that we have to. In every little infinitesimal moment in life, we are give the choice of resisting or not resisting. When we don’t resist, everything flows with joyful effortlessness.

Grief

Recently our cat got hit by a car and died. Her name was Bella. She was small, cute with brown-orange, black and white fur. She had a tail that was very big for the tiny body and it almost always stood up, which I’ve learned means that the cat is happy. She was full of energy, almost always friendly, almost always purred when we petted her and she talked a lot. She often meowed back when I meowed at her and often came up to us when we were outdoors. 

Since I've talked a bit about emotions on the blog lately, I thought that this would be a good time to talk about grief. How I experience it and what can be said about it.

This cat was special. I know that most people probably say this about their pets, but I can honestly say that I’ve had several cats in my past that were not as special as this one, even if I loved them just as much. 

Even though Bella was not fond of other cats, she was very social with people. When we had visitors that she hadn’t met before, she liked to jump into their laps. She loved to lay in mine and other people’s laps and even though it could take her some time to find the right position, once she did, she quickly got very relaxed and comfortable, while she enjoyed being petted and scratched. 

Bella was also a very trusting cat. She liked to be petted on the belly, which is something that trigger most cats defense instincts. She even liked to be stroked backwards and the few times that she bit me, she always stopped herself before it started hurting. 

I could say a lot more about Bella, this wonderful little animal that is no longer with us. But I think that I’ve said enough to give you a picture of what made her special. And there is so much that I want to say that this text by necessity will be very long. Even though I usually dedicate a bit of time and effort to the things that I write, the subject matter this time deserves more than usual.

Throughout my life I’ve had my share of grief. I’m not ready to talk about this publicly in too much detail and neither do I at this point find it appropriate, but people close to me have died. When it’s expected and because of old age it still hurts. But it doesn’t feel sad in the same way as when someone, pet or human, is taken suddenly and/or too early. 

This is of course stating the obvious. But when you try to put things in perspective, you need to include the obvious. 

Another obvious fact, is that there is a distinct difference between the experience of losing a person and that of losing a pet. I’m not going to get into a lengthy analysis of this. It will suffice if I say that while the initial pain may feel the same, the hurt from losing a pet subsides after a while, while the ripples from losing a human may go on forever, depending on how one nurtures the wound. Losing a person may shape one’s whole life, which is something that I am an example of. But nonetheless, losing a beloved pet hurts like hell.

I don’t know if it’s correct to use the term “too early” in this context, since I know that there is a divine order to things. But if we use the term as “anything other than of old age and diseases related to old age”, the term is accurate. Language is funny that way. It contains a lot of vague terms that are evaluative rather than factual, and that only have meaning in relation to something else. And in a sense, it says more about my inability to accept tragedies as parts of the natural order of things, than it does about the tragedy itself. I know that they are. And yet, I somehow don’t feel that they should befall me or those close to me. 

I’ve gone through the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. I’m still going back and forth between all of them. I’m spending more and more time in the later stages though. But I’m still repeating the scene when she got hit by the car in my head from time to time, somehow trying to make it into something other than what it is. Somehow trying to stop it inside my head. Or I’m thinking that what happened is objectively speaking wrong. Because Bella was not the kind of cat that should die from getting hit by a car. She was too gracious, happy and full of life to end in such a way. There is no logic to such thinking. But it’s still there. 

I’m sometimes angry at the driver, because I believe that he was driving too fast, too close to us and that he should have been more observant when driving through a residential area. But no blame is ever going to bring our cat back. And I don’t know exactly how fast he was driving or if he had any reasons beyond his control for being distracted.

At the same time, I think that I have to allow myself to be angry, but without believing that my anger is necessarily justified. I only have access to my perspective and nothing is going to get better from me believing the worst. I could tell myself that he probably hated cats, loved to drive fast through residential areas, cared nothing for anyone but himself and that he probably was drunk and text-messaged on his phone. And it might actually make me feel better in the short run, because anger feels better than grief. But in all likelihood none of it is true, it won’t bring Bella back and if I don’t want to become bitter, I should refrain from believing such thoughts.

In short, I believe that it’s often better to allow ourselves to be angry unconditionally, without trying to justify it. And to try and see thoughts as just thoughts, while not confusing them with reality.

At an early stage, I made the conscious decision of feeling what I was feeling. To not try to push down emotions or run away from them. And acceptance was actually a part of my grieving process from early on. I tried to be as acutely aware of my bodily sensations as possible, since grief, just like any emotion, is felt physically. Accompanying the feelings of grief have also been feelings of anxiety and fear. Some of the fear was naturally triggered by witnessing the event. But I’m not sure that all came from there. I think that some fear was brought to the surface together with unprocessed grief that also was stored in my body from before. 

In other words, this also opened up a lot of old wounds inside of me. Here I think that it’s important to recognize that while the emotions are energy that can be released by being accepted and fully felt inside the body, one must not forget that they relate to an actual, tangible, physical tragedy. And as such, it needs to be healed by thinking and talking about it too. 

Depression is the stage where I’m currently in most of the time. I haven’t worked out and hardly done any other physical activity since it happened. I don’t really feel like doing anything, except watching movies and TV-series. And I’ve slipped back into old patterns of overeating. It would probably be better if I moved around a bit. If I got my energies going. But I just can’t bring myself to do it. I guess that there is some sort of balancing act between being kind and lenient towards myself during difficult times, and pulling myself up to avoid permanent stagnation. Honestly I don’t know where to draw the line here. As I’m writing this a week has passed, I still don’t feel like doing anything and my vacation is just going to waste because of it.

At least I’m sitting here writing this down. I guess that’s something. But I haven’t done much else. Maybe this will resolve itself, because I do have these moments of acceptance. It’s not just the regular type of acceptance, where what has happened really sinks in, I shrug my shoulders and say “Well, I guess life has to go on”. No, this is an acceptance where I feel very little resistance towards anything. One where I actually feel really alive and in contact with myself. In these moments, I can feel a strange hope that everything is going to turn out fine. That those that I have lost, both recently and long ago, are not really lost. But it doesn’t take long before I’m back in resistance and depression again.

Moving on, I want to talk about the fact that there is something special about sharing grief. I mainly share my grief with my wife and her daughter, even though many others were stricken as well, since more or less everyone loved that cat. When we share grief, we come close to others in special way. Because no matter how close or far away we are from those that we share the grief with, there are few situations where we so intimately can understand each other’s emotions. There are few situations where we can come so close to feeling each other’s emotions. And this means something. This might be a limitation, but it’s easier to care and sympathize when you know what someone else is going through. And I believe that, handled correctly, this can help grow one’s overall capacity for compassion. 

This also challenged my trust in God. Since there is some meaning to everything that happens, there is clearly some meaning to this as well. I can see the call to not taking those around me for granted and how this has brought us closer together. But I’m also left wondering why something like this has to happen, for us to learn to be more loving, present and appreciative. Fearful thoughts even enters my head. Since this is not the first tragedy that I’ve faced and since my life has contained many hardships, there are many thoughts such as: What if God doesn’t love me? What if God wants to punish me by dangling a little bit of happiness in front of me, just to take it away again? What if those that I love are taken away from me for no other reason than to cause me pain? What if I deserve the pain?

I don’t truly believe this. But as with so many other dark thoughts, these keep on haunting me. I guess that the big problem is that as soon as we move out of the realm of what can be known with certainty, anything could potentially be true. And when we’re in pain our speculations will naturally be colored by the pain. 

Finally I think that in all of the tragedy, we need to always try to make something of it. Besides re-evaluating my relationships, I’ve also thought a bit about what the accident itself means. What happened was that our sweet, wonderful cat was hit by a big monster of a pickup truck. One moment she came up to me, purred, was happy to see me and I was overwhelmed with love for her. A minute later I carried her dead body into our apartment. These things and much much worse happen in our reality and in one sense we need to accept that as much as possible. Because resisting reality only causes us to suffer more.

At the same time, I want to do my best to make reality a little less brutal, painful and grief-stricken. I don’t know exactly what I mean by this. But I haven’t always treated everyone with kindness. I want to do my best to do so, even with people that do not always make it easy for others to be kind to them. I want to pay more attention and never be in that kind of rush, that I risk being the one that hits someone’s cat with my car. But this goes further. I’m often stressed. And even if I’m most of the time not in my car when I’m stressed, I’m still contributing to a world where saving time and getting from one place to another as fast as possible, becomes so important that we no longer see what is going on around us. 

I know that life requires more than softness and kindness. We often need to suck it up, handle our emotions like adults and apply discipline and focus to what we are doing. But when I can, I want to do my part in creating a world where that which is small, soft, sweet, innocent and trusting, does not get hurt by that which big, cold, hard, fast, and careless. I want to live in a world where life ultimately triumphs over death. Maybe you think that I draw too much from a dead cat here. But this is what comes out when I try to put what I feel about the even into words.