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.

On pleasure PART 2

I’ve come to feel that often when the same pleasures are repeated over and over again with no variation, they just become empty gratifications of the senses. I think food is a very good example of this. If I eat something that I enjoy, but which I know isn’t healthy for me, over and over again, it doesn’t contribute anything beyond the momentary pleasure that it gives me. 

And it gives me some pain. Because I don’t feel good emotionally if I know that I’ve indulged in something that I know is bad for me. And in the long run my body obviously suffers as well.

Strangely enough, the emotional reaction doesn’t seem to occur if I enjoy something that I only have access to occasionally, or something completely novel. Or maybe it isn’t so strange. Because here one time is more or less no time. If I enjoy an ice cream from a cozy ice cream café with some exotic flavors in the sun a couple of times a year, it won’t affect either my weight or my bank account in any significant way. But if I buy an ice cream at the super market every other day, it will affect both. 

I will also have a harder time to completely enjoy the more refined pleasures, if I have already gratified my senses too much in other ways. Because then I’m adding more to that which is already too much.

Furthermore, this also affects our self-discipline. Because it’s about delaying gratification until I can experience pleasure in a meaningful way. 

If I manage to keep this principle, it will in all likelihood both enrich my life and help me keep my health. I believe that principle should be applied with some moderation. I should not beat myself up if I don’t manage to follow it completely all the time. We set intentions, we aim to follow them to the best of our ability, but we accept that change is hard and that we will fail and fall back into old habits from time to time. This goes for how we approach pleasure, as well as everything else where we wish to see a change in how we handle things.

At least, this is the best approach I can come up with.

Photo by Jeff Siepman on Unsplash

On pleasure PART 1

Photo by Tomáš Petz on Unsplash

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

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

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

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

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

The "normal" is insane

Photo by Theo Eilertsen Photography on Unsplash

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

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

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

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

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

Comfort is spiritual DEATH

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eternity perspective vs. finitude perspective

I know that I’m going to live forever. And yet, I often act, think and feel as if this is the only life that I’ve got. And so I get into FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) mode. And it doesn’t do anything good for me to think this way. Because this causes me to live in the future instead of in the now. It causes me to think of what I don’t have instead of what I have. It causes me to worry about what I may never have. In short, it causes me to push my happiness into the future.

I think that it has something to do with that my brain is wired to think of existence as finite in an absolute sense. Is it wired like this from birth, or have I been conditioned to view life in this manner? I don’t know. 

A funny thing in all of this, is that it is not just about adopting the eternity perspective because it’s the right one. Paradoxically this perspective will also make us happier in the now. Because when we know this, we shift focus from the results to the choices that we make. Our choices may affect eternity, but the results in this life won’t. 

Something just struck me. There is a moral philosophy called utilitarianism, which basically says that we should strive for the best outcomes. That this should be our guiding moral principle. An obvious problem with this philosophy, is that we can allow morally reprehensible things, if it leads to the highest amount of good in the end. But there is more. I, personally, have landed in a moral philosophy of coherence. And from a finite perspective, maybe utility trumps morals. But not from an infinite perspective. If we look beyond this life, it becomes much more clear why certain values cannot be broken, even if they lead to the maximum amount of good for the maximum amount of people in this life.

A little side-note there. Let’s continue.

When I look at life from a finite perspective it’s so easy to get lost in thoughts about all the time that I’ve wasted on nonsense. But from an infinite perspective, all that really counts is who I choose to be today and tomorrow and what I choose to do with my time from now on. And whether I succeed or fail ultimately doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that what I do feels meaningful. That what I do feels like what I’m meant to do. Then it’s up to God what results it leads to in the world. If I can look back at my life and say that I lived it to the best of my ability, both when it comes to morals and efforts, from an infinte perspective there is no failure. 

How I plan to live a productive, stress-free life

What hasn’t worked so far, is to wait for inspiration and then take inspired action. I need clear goals and a schedule for the day. And since I have a full-time job, I need to work quite a lot if I want to get closer to my goals. This is actually, now that I think about it, quite a large issue. Namely the issue of finding a way to work systematically and disciplined, without losing the joy of working and turning it into something that I do out of a sense of duty, rather than a sense of joy.

What I don’t need though, is stress. Things must be allowed to take their time. Instead I need to observe myself while I’m working. I need to look for where my efficiency drops and in general what I can do better. In other words, as with so many things, present moment awareness and self-observation is much more valuable than perseverance and a high tempo. 

I’ve noticed that I need a day off from have-tos. One day where I don’t have to do anything productive at all. I can do some fiction writing at this day if I choose to. But no studies or even blogging. This seems to be true for many people. So maybe this is another one of those things where the Bible proves to be right. There is a problem with this though. Since I work my regular job five days per week, I only have Saturday and Sunday for my projects. Because when I get home from work I’m too tired for most things. I can however do some courses and work on projects that don’t require too much mental effort. So if I’m mindful of my limitations and adjust accordingly, I will probably be okay. And as said, as long as I take a relaxed approach to my Saturdays, I will probably be okay.

However, re-reading this post I realize that I've already cheated with my Saturdays and worked hard on stuff that I said I wouldn't. So, it's not always easy to stick with one's decisions. But I'll have to treat this as a work in progress. I can't say that I've really cracked the stress-code. And honestly, if I want to live a truly stress-free life, I probably need to learn a bit more about things such as finances, budgeting and how to run a successful business. Things that are essential if you want to thrive in life, but that we, for some reason don't learn in school. Probably because we have to learn so many other things that are guaranteed to be useful throughout our lives... LOL!

And how do I balance this so that I don’t slack off instead? Because I at least, live under the constant threat of ending up on the sofa, watching movies and doing nothing.

Learning to recognize the ego both in the active and the relaxing part of me, is the first thing that comes to mind. Learning that the ego can both tell me to just keep on pushing when I need to rest, and it can also tell me that what I know that I should do today can wait till tomorrow. 

ACCEPTANCE and RELEASE

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stress PART 4

This final post in this series will actually be two posts because there was more to say about this than I initially thought. Here I will explore what works for me personally, when it comes to dealing with stress. Hopefully those that read it can get some food for thought when it comes to their stress that is related to their goals and dreams.

I don’t think that there is any way around having to put in a lot of time and effort if we want to get somewhere. But I believe that there are ways of doing it more or less stressful. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I don’t think that it’s fruitful to just grind on an try to get as much as possible done in as little time as possible. It takes all the joy out of it. And even though work has to be challenging, it also has to be fun and inspiring. This is a given. And yet, so many of us, myself not the least, forget about this. 

Now, let’s see what has worked for me so far.

I think that I need to grow with my work. It has to be not just work, but part of my overall growth and spiritual life. This means maybe above all, to cultivate mindfulness while I’m working. In this there is also a big need for acceptance. My financial situation is something that is giving me a lot of stress. But really, it’s not that bad. Me and my wife are not starving and we don’t have to be super careful with what we buy. And I tend to allow unforeseen expenditures to get me down quite a lot. And it’s not making anything better. As with many things, it’s about being able to take a step back and observe what is going on before my emotions get the best of me. If I can learn to see that nothing has happened, except that I’ve lost a little money, and just move on, my life will run so much more smoothly.

I need to do all of in a way that works for me. I cannot just decide to work in a certain way because it has worked for others. Surely, I need to study those that have walked similar paths before me. But I can most certainly not shoehorn my life to fit into their success formula. Because again, if I do things that simple are not me, I will lose the joy of what I’m doing.

Stress PART 3

Sitting down and going through the last two posts in this series has made me realize just how easy it is to forget one’s initial resolutions. In about a month, I’ve been back into hurrying and beating myself for not doing all of the things that I’ve planned to do. The truth is that the solution to this problem lies in the last post. I’ve just forgotten about it and kept on with my stressed out life. 

But I think that there is something more to say about this, before I can put it to rest.

If we try to make something of ourselves, we run up against all these obstacles. Or we have to settle for a life where we are more or less living for the weekends. Or, if we don’t work, we are dependent on the state and have very little financial freedom. At least, this is my experience so far. I was most free when I went to the university. I didn’t have a lot of money, but I didn’t have to struggle just to get by either. I could plan my days and no one cared what I did, as long as I passed the tests and turned in my papers on time.

I’ve also tried to run a business. This offered me some sense of freedom. But this freedom was overshadowed by financial stress and all of the hands that wanted to get themselves into my pockets, not least the hands of the state. 

But I know that there are other ways. Ways that don’t mean that we have to work ourselves to death before we can enjoy a little bit of freedom. Ways where we can truly take our power back. Ways where life can be fun and exciting and not just a race to keep up with the rest of the world. Do you see the problem here? We all rush to get ahead of each other, to do thing better and faster than everyone else. We try to be more beautiful, stay young longer, accumulate more money and more stuff than everyone else. Or we resign and accept a life of mediocrity. No middle ground. This is nothing new. And yet, this weird illusion is upheld by everyone. And now and then someone comes out and says “The emperor is naked”. But as long as most people agree to keep on living the insanity, the emperor can have as many or as few clothes on him as he wants to. It will make no difference. 

I truly believe that we need to put as much time and effort as we are capable of into something that we find worthwhile. And we need to do it in a way that works for us. This, I believe, is more or less unique to every individual. And we need to find the ways that work for us personally. This is something that I will explore in the next and last post in this series. 

Non-resistance

Every time that we bring awareness to the present moment and what is going on in it things change. This is a choice that we can make in every moment. And when we choose awareness, life starts to open up to us and we become less prone to get caught up in thoughts and emotions.

I have noticed that in every given moment, we can choose our mindset. Most of us, myself included, have learned to resist and/or force things depending on what situation it is that we are facing. We try to force and control. Sometimes we do have some power to control the situation and sometimes we don’t. But we always want something other than what is. 

It takes some time to notice this and how it functions. But the more we observe ourselves, the more we will start to see all kinds of things that were previously hidden to us. 

There are several signs that we have gone into resistance. We start to get angry and frustrated. We sigh. Thoughts of the type Why can’t it just…? enter our heads. Our actions start to feel compulsive instead of like real choices. If we speak to someone else, we can easily detect how our voice changes. How it becomes more sharp and a complaining tone comes into it. We also may start to overtly complain about the situation at hand.

The resistance can even be felt physically. We tense up in different areas of our bodies and if we are really observant, we can feel how this resistance starts at the centre of our heads. We try to make reality different inside our heads. 

This is about learning to function from a different mindset. One where we allow the things that we cannot control to be as they are. One where we don’t attach labels such as “good” or “bad” to what is happening in the moment. We just allow things to be what they are, bring as much awareness as we are capable of to what is going on, without forcing it, and calmly choose the actions that present themselves. When we are here and now and observe what is going on, instead of being caught up in wishing for things to be different, the best actions usually present themselves effortlessly. 

It does take a lot of practice though. I myself am very far from perfection when it comes to this. And the thing is that it is another type of practice than we are used to. This is not about acquiring a skill in the usual sense. It’s not about exerting an effort. It’s about learning to let things flow on their own accord. Without effort. To let go and trust.

Stress PART 2

Here is the reason why I wish to explore stress and how to change one’s life to experience less of it in a few posts: 

In the last post I hinted at the fact that I’ve recently come face to face with stress that ultimately stems from a feeling of powerlessness. I’ve desperately tried to work on alternative ways of making money, as I, for private reasons, no longer see my current occupation as one that I wish to stay in for too long. But instead I’ve found myself feeling tired and burned out. I haven’t gotten nearly as much done as I had hoped and felt guilty for it. It is clear that much of what I’m doing right now isn’t working.

Stress comes in many forms. The obvious one, which I also believe is tied to other forms, is that there never seems to be enough time to do the things that one wants to do. That one always is in a hurry to tick off all of those things on the to-do list. Then comes financial stress. This type of stress ties in with always being in a hurry, because some of those things on the to-do list are supposed to generate money, so that we can get out of the stress of being financially burdened. 

Then there is the stress of not being in control of one’s life. This often means that one does not plan one’s time properly and so comes the time-stress into the picture. And when one is not in control, one makes mistakes that cost money and so there is another stress factor. As many of us messy people know, there are whole organizations and companies that make much of their money from exploiting mistakes of this type. 

The thing is that I started to write these posts a while back. Then I forgot about them and picked them up yesterday, when looking for something to post, since I haven’t kept up with my blogging lately. Oh the irony! Seriously though, I think that it’s some sort of sign that the first post I actually started going through was yesterday’s. So I have known for quite a while that I live in a dysfunctional situation. And I’ve sort of had the solution right in front of me as well. 

It goes something like this: Stop hurrying first! When I hurry, I fail to plan things adequately. Instead I spend loads of time sort of knowing what to do but not really. I end up having to stop and think of every step, both interrupting my work flow and wasting time. When I hurry, I also do things sloppy and have to correct mistakes afterwards. And last but not least, when I feel stressed about things, I fail to take care of things in my everyday life. I become absent minded, so that I put things at places where I don’t find them, miss making payments and in general fail to take care of my everyday life properly. This in turn ends up costing time and money in various ways, which in turn contributes to my stress even more. Can you recognize yourself in any of this? 

Stress PART 1

2022 has for me so far been a year of discovering what does not work for me. Stress is one of those things. Simply put, if it seems like the world is running too fast, it might just be in my head. And if it’s not just in my head, it’s futile to try to keep up with it anyway. And maybe, just maybe (this might just be the height of wishful thinking, but who cares?) the world will slow down to allow me to catch up ;). Because I don't think that the current situation is making anyone happy.

Because it has become just as much a cliché to point out that we are living too fast, as it is to always be busy. So I’m not going to do that. Instead, I’m going to take a look at my stress and what I can do differently about it. Because I’ve lived with a lot of stress. I still live with it. And so far, it’s not making me happy and I feel that there is a better way to get more things done, while feeling less pain and getting more out of life.

The first thing I’ve noticed is that when I just try to get as much as possible done in as little time as possible, I don’t do things in a smart way, I rush and have to correct errors for sloppy work afterwards. This also means that I’m not very effective. It’s much easier to give in to mindless stuff when you’re tired and try to whip yourself to do work. Finally, I also sooner or later crash, causing even more loss of time. Which is also time where I don’t totally relax, since I feel guilty while I’m taking it. 

Bringing conscious awareness into everything

As with many other things, the first step to changing this, is to set the intention of becoming aware every time my focus starts to drift and consciously bringing it back to what's in front of me every time that it does. I believe that if I persist, I will become aware more and more often. This has worked when it comes to my job. And it works with many other things. 

What I've realized, is that at my job I’m pretty focused on what’s in front of me and do things very efficiently. But when I sit down with projects at home, I tend to lose focus easily and become distracted. And I’ve realized that this is actually a habit. I’ve allowed my work that I do in my spare time to become sloppy and unfocused.

This also goes beyond mere lack of efficiency. When I do things in this manner, I also much more seldom get into a flow state. This means that I more often do things from a place of ego and of trying to force things, which means that I get access to much fewer novel ideas than I could. 

What do you bring out in other people? Part 2

Functioning from the higher place does not always bring out the same in other people. But if it doesn’t, you will instead be able to see their mechanicalness if you stay present. And if you’re fully conscious, this should also not bring out judgment in you. Judgment is obviously never good. But judging someone else’s unconsciousness and mechanicalness is a little extra hypocritical, since judgment, as will be made clear here, by necessity only comes out when we ourselves have become unconscious and mechanical.

To remain conscious in the face of someone else’s mechanicalness is difficult though (Sidenote: I believe that there are degrees to which we can be free, conscious, in contact our higher selves etc.). At least it is for me. If you are like me, you will be tempted to see the mechanicalness as the whole truth of the person and thus dismiss him or her as nothing but mechanicalness. Because our brains have this nasty tendency of not being able to see beyond the present situation, while at the same time for the most part being lost in thoughts about the past or the future.

First: As stated earlier, most people drift in and out of various degrees of consciousness, even though there also are many that more or less are sleepwalkers. Second: you don’t know what is inside the person in front of you, that is waiting to come out. And my guess is that if you have really started to awaken into awareness, it wasn’t your own effort that made you wake up. It sure wasn’t for me. My guess is that your awakening was either triggered by something you stumbled upon by accident, some other external event, or you don’t really know how it happened. Your thoughts sort of just started to drift towards certain subjects, leading you into revelations about who you are and the nature of reality. My awakening was a combination of all of the above. 

So why would you judge someone that is in a place that they have no control over? Knowing that you could just as easily be the unconscious one? And maybe, just maybe, if you were fully in your authentic self, you would bring out nothing but authenticity in other people. I don’t know. I’ve never been there. And I suspect that when I’m fully there, I will never want to go back to my sleeping state again and I will not let any judgmental thoughts enter my mind.

Sorry if this post came out a little messy. I noticed that I had to fix a few things in it and I don’t really feel very conscious today…

What do you bring out in other people? Part 1

In spiritual circles there is this idea that we bring out in other people reflects something within ourselves. Is this true? 

What I have seen, is that I basically have two selves that can come out. One of these selves has several sub-personalities, while the other is an integrated whole. The one with sub-personalities acts more or less like a robot. It has certain scripts which it functions from. If you know this self, you will be able to predict what I will do, say and how I will react to the circumstances that I’m facing. The other self will, as long as I remain in it, be able to make authentic, free choices, say genuine, heart-felt things and respond freely, to the best of its ability, to every given situation.

Now, I’m beginning to notice that others have these two modes as well. They might not be conscious of it, but they do. And I’m not sure about this, but I believe that some may be much more in tune with this higher self than I am and yet not know that they have these two sides.

What I’m also beginning to notice, is that people tend to respond to each other from the same level as you interact with them. This means that if I am acting in a mindless way, other people tend to do the same. This in turn leads to social interactions that look like they are taking place between free people, but that are little more than mechanical actions and reactions from pre-determined scripts.

What's going on on the inside Part 3

When I’ve focused on the energies inside my body, I’ve noticed that they correspond with my physical sensations, my body’s, movements and even what is going on on the outside. I’ve  started to feel the mood of other people much more strongly. 

Furthermore, I’ve realized that I’ve numbed and pushed down many emotions in different ways. And that these emotions haven’t simply vanished, but have instead been stored in my body as tensions. I’ve also noticed these emotions get activated in situations that trigger them. This means that when something happens that upset me emotionally, if I manage to be present enough to notice it, I can feel that the areas where I have tensions tense up more than usual, and that this is the areas where I can feel the emotions most strongly. Finally, I’ve noticed that when I don’t react to these emotions and don’t try to push them away either, but simply let them be there, I can let go of them. I’ve released many tensions this way and my body feels much less tense today, than it did just a couple of years ago.

What's going on on the inside Part 2

The truth is that there is a lot of the things that I’ve discovered that I don’t understand fully. Just that I’ve discovered something significant that has been hidden in plain sight for most of my life. 

Looking inside has made me wonder about the connection between thoughts and emotions. What effect thoughts and emotions have on our day to day lives. I have discovered that when I shift focus between different body parts and the sensations in them I can create very different experiences. I can for example create a totally different experience for myself, depending on if I for example focus on the sensations in my fingertips or the taste in my mouth. Depending on if I’m lost in thoughts or engaging in what is actually going on or what I’m actually doing.

What's going on on the inside Part 1

I know that a key component in what is happening right now, is to become aware of what is going on on the inside. When we start feeling our bodies, we start to experience energies flowing through them. When we observe our thoughts, we see that many of them are just repeating themselves over and over again. It’s often negative content that makes us feel bad. But we can also see that some of them contain what seems to be messages. We notice that the stream of thoughts never stops. That we can’t stop it and that when we try, we soon seem to forget what we are doing. Maybe we start to ask important questions, such as: What are thoughts really anyway? How do they function? Maybe we start wondering why we’ve never asked this before, about something that goes on throughout all of our waking lives. Maybe we start seeing that we have much more choice when it comes to our thoughts. That how we treat our thoughts right now, is not our nature, but rather habits. 

Learning to walk

I am more and more becoming aware of different layers of reality. Of how I have a whole network of energy inside myself that I can come into contact with just by focusing on it. But since I’ve had my attention firmly placed in the five-sense reality, I have the experience of a toddler just learning to walk, when it comes to these other aspects of reality. 

These aspects are just as real as the physical, five-sense reality. They actually seem to be the same as the five-sense reality. The best theory that I’ve encountered, say that at the core, everything is energy, but we can decode this energy in different ways. And one of these ways is the one that creates the five-sense reality. 

So, it’s time to learn to walk by putting more and more focus on these other aspects. The interesting thing is, that when I focus on these other aspects of reality, the effect is not that I withdraw from the five senses and become neglectful of the physical. On the contrary, focusing on, for example, the energies inside, puts me in a flow state, where everything just seems to run more effortlessly. And if I’m focused on the energies around me, I become able to detect more of the subtle nuances of other people’s behaviour, or the things that God wants to tell me through the events in my life.