UNUSUAL and IMPORTANT questions about how to make life run more smoothly

Banging my head against the wall doesn’t work. Neither does it work to just let myself go and just do whatever feels good at the moment. Both these approaches to life come from the ego. 

So, maybe, if I feel constricted somewhere, I need to make that a priority, in a way that works. I need to ask myself: why do I feel this tightness in my chest? Why do I feel blocked in certain areas of my life? Why does this or that thing not work the way I want them to? What do I need to make this or that thing run more smoothly? What is it that does work well? Can I get more of that? Why does it work well?

We often try to power through doing the same thing over and over again. Or we completely let go, give up and say that there is no point. 

Now, what I’m beginning to realize, is that everything is at the core energy in motion. And this sounds really vague and airy, but hear me out. How often do we stand back and really feel the energy of whatever we are doing? Of whatever situation that we find ourselves in? In the end, it all comes down to awareness. And bringing more awareness into our lives is everything. To experience more in the present moment. To feel more of what we actually are feeling. 

I’ve often noticed that when I remember to do this, feel the energy of what I am doing and what is going on, I can quite easily feel how energy either flows calmly, smoothly and efficiently or if it feels slow and inert. Or if it’s agitated and erratic. My body is often the first to tell me. Do I feel light, full of life and joy? Or am I heavy or tight and tense somewhere? Can I really feel my body and the energies that flow in it? Or Does it feel numb and and blocked? 

Am I in a mode of acceptance or resistance towards what is? If I resist, I block the energy flow. And I cannot be present in the moment and resist at the same time. Resistance always impies a loss of consciousness. And a loss of consciousness always blocks our energy. And so on. So we need to be present, accept what is and feel what we really feel. All of it fits together. We can’t have one without the other. And when it falls into place energy flows. Life flows.

Photo by Tobias Carlsson on Unsplash

What is resistance?

A while back I talked about the inner resistance. How we tense up inside and try to block whatever is going on in the present moment. This is part of a bigger pattern of living in a state of resistance towards what is. 

Let me give you an example from just this morning. I wanted to get up one hour earlier than my wife. But I didn’t want to disturb her sleep more than necessary. We have a very small bedroom with no given place to put our clothes. And in the darkness I couldn’t find the clothes. I knew that the more time I spent looking for my clothes, the more I would disturb her sleep. So I quickly started to feel stressed. And with the stress, frustration started building. 

I of course found my clothes, after having made sure that there was no way my wife would be able to go back to sleep. And I got dressed with negative emotions lingering in my body.

The point is that that my irritation and frustration over something very trivial did nothing to help the situation. On the contrary, it made me stop thinking about what I was doing, which most certainly prolonged the situation. 

And yet, we have trained ourselves to respond to situations that we perceive as negative in this way. This is resistance. According to Eckhart Tolle, behind all of this is the ego’s unconscious and erroneous belief that we can change our circumstances by making them “wrong”.

We cannot help that we have negative emotions. But we can help how we respond to them. Every time that we get frustrated, blame, criticize etcetera, we are resisting. These are a few examples to help explaining what this is about. But really, every time we make a situation “wrong” in our thoughts and attitudes towards it, we are resisting. And the paradoxical is that there is no point resisting the resistance. As with so many things, the only thing we can do about it is bringing awareness to it, while reminding ourselves that the resistance does nothing to help the situation.

We sometimes think that resistance is valid. The thought may be something like this: I want this, so I’m going to make someone or something bend to my will. But how often has this led to the desired result? On the other hand, when we stay calm and instead put focus on what we can do, while not expecting anything in particular from the world, we start taking our power back. 

What is INNER RESISTANCE and what can you do about it?

Most of us, including myself, carry around an inner resistance. You can feel this as a tightening of the muscles in your body and in your head. As a tightening of the facial muscles. This is because we unconsciously want to block the energy of the present moment. Above all, we resist our emotions and therefore we hold on to them instead. Often they turn into the aforementioned tensions in the body.

I know that this sounds like some vague nonsense. But it’s not. It’s a real phenomenon that I am trying to put into words as best I can. My wording may be lacking however. In fact, my wording is most certainly lacking. But believe me, this is real. You can feel this resistance in every given moment. And when you feel the resistance and bring your attention back to the present moment without holding on to it, you can feel a relief in your head and your entire body. 

You can feel this inner resistance as if something is blocked in the middle of your head and in different areas of your body. If you train yourself in being present in the body, you will feel it more and more. The less you are in contact with your body, the more likely you are to feel this resistance. Believe me. I’ve been terribly out of touch with my body for most of my life and I have literally thousands of tense nerves due to suppressed emotions. But I’ve also managed to release thousands. 

Once you start noticing this, it might seem like a daunting task at first. But every time you release a tense nerve, you will feel a little better. Your body will feel a little better. Just try and be present in the moment as often as you can. Start feeling your body and what goes on inside of it. Try and meet every emotion that comes up with acceptance. Try to feel how it feels in the body, while staying present in the moment. Observe your thoughts, as they bring you out of the present moment and out of your body. Bring your attention back to the present moment and the body when they do. You can also focus on your breath to come back to the present moment.

You can do this anywhere and any time, but you will forget it. And you will feel an unfounded resistance, even though this literally requires no effort. But with time you will train your memory and remember it more often. And you will experience a sense of relief. As if a burden that you didn’t know that you’ve been carrying around is becoming lighter and lighter. Attention and present moment awareness are key here.

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.

But thoughts that "slip by" can teach us something

When we stop believing our thoughts and instead start thinking of what they are saying about us, something happens. We can start looking for clues to what is broken inside of us, or what negative beliefs that hide inside us. This is very liberating. I, for example, have noticed quite a few judgmental thoughts inside my head. But when I chose to just observe them, while knowing that they are not me, they lose their power. As with so many other things, we take control simply by bringing awareness to them.

Think only about now

Something struck me while meditating a while back. When my thoughts were focused on what was going on in the present, such as how my body was feeling, the slight movement that my body did by itself to adjust my spine etcetera, the thought didn’t seem detrimental to my meditation. But as soon as they drifted off into the past or future, my focus was disturbed and I got lost in them. 

Thinking of this afterwards gave me an interesting insight. Almost all thoughts about the past and the future are useless. Not only useless. They profoundly disturb my peace for no good reason. The only time that I can find that it’s useful to think about the past, is when I consciously wish to learn something from it, or when I consciously conjure up a positive memory to elevate my emotions and/or strengthen it. And the only time when it is a good thing to think about the future, is when setting conscious, clear intentions about it or when I think about what I’m doing in the now, in relation to my intentions for the future.

It is interesting and a little scary to notice, that I, and more or less all people that I’ve ever known or come into contact with, have given very little thought to how our thoughts operate. And that we habitually let our thoughts just go where they please. We do this even though it doesn’t take that much to just become aware of what is going on inside our heads from time to time and give the thoughts a nudge in a preferred direction.

Is everything energy on higher levels?

So, I’m starting to suspect that those that say that we are multidimensional beings are right. I’m still trying to wrap my head around this and writing this down is one way of doing so. At the core seems to be that we interact with reality in many ways simultaneously, but within our “normal” perception, we only see and experience this reality. At the same time, all realities are the same. It’s just our perception of them that has different levels. But perception is everything, since what we focus on determines where we direct our energy.

What is happening, is that I’m more and more starting to feel the energy behind what I’m saying and doing. And if I’m focused on this energy, I seem to be able to direct it, which plays out as a flow state in this reality. In other words, if I’m focused on the energy, my mind and my body will act in accordance with the energy, without my little ego me having to use any force to make it happen. But if I feel into this energy, I can let it guide my behaviors and actions. Heck, I could maybe even allow it to direct my thoughts. And consequently let my thoughts tell me what state I’m in, rather than, as we usually do, identify with them and. believe what they say about reality and other people.

This is also in line with the chakra system, which says that we have different energy blockages in the body that affects our physical reality and what we experience in it. What I’m beginning to see, is how when I run into an energy blockage, which in this way of perceiving reality manifests in the form of a tension, I’m yanked out of the present moment and so I’m back in 3D-reality, with the struggling and forcing that goes along with it. And so I go unconscious. I don’t exactly understand the mechanism behind this. But it’s as if I wake up for a while, until I unconsciously run into an energy blockage. And then I continue to be unconscious till I become aware that this has happened. 

When I become aware, I have the choice of going into this higher state again. At this point, my ego will offer up some irrational resistance, telling me stuff like “you’ve already messed up, so it’s not worth the effort to get up again”. Even though it takes no effort at all. It’s just about switching the inner state.

At the highest level, I suspect that it’s about opening up to God and allow God to take control completely, while I still maintain my volitional control. It’s a paradox that I believe to be true, but which I cannot fully understand from my current way of being.

This is hard for me to describe, so please, if anything is unclear here, ask me a question.

The inner resistance part 4

So, I’ve been re-reading Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now recently. And he talks about the same thing as I’m talking about here. Only that I didn’t know this the last time I read it, because I hadn’t gotten into contact with my inner resistance back then. It’s always cool when you get a confirmation that what you’re experiencing is real. Especially when, if the endgoal is true as well, it’s going to lead to something amazing. In this case real, true, lasting, inner peace.

The inner resistance part 3

The thing is, that when I’m not in this state of resistance towards what is, my body movements become more slowing and precise. I feel confident, energized, present and everything seems to almost work itself out. 

Being present is a key here. I can always trace the beginning of inner resistance to a loss of presence and the activation of automatic thoughts. Suddenly I’m in my head, thinking of how I wish that the situation I’m in would be different. Maybe I’m trying to think my way out of a situation that I cannot get out of. Or I think of other choices that I could have made. Or I wish that other people would act differently.

The inner resistance part 2

I’m pretty sure that this is what the Buddha talked about when he pinpointed resistance and attachment at the basis of the roots of suffering. But I didn’t know that it was something that could be felt so physically. Because it can. 

I feel tension inside my head, both around my pineal glad and in different other areas. When I feel anger for example, i feel my jaws clench and tense up. I also feel tension in my body. I mostly tense up around my chest and solar plexus, but this can happen throughout the body. It is very much an inner resistance towards being itself.

The inner resistance part 1

I feel like it’s time to put it all to rest. What do I mean by this? I mean that it’s time to let go of this inner resistance that I feel more and more clearly day by day. 

I feel how I tense up when something in my reality that I don’t like appears in my reality. Even though I know it’s fruitless, I can’t help but resisting it on the inside.

Observe and allow. Part 2

The more I am in the now and the more awareness I can direct at the present moment, the more smoothly everything flows. And as soon as I’m back in my head, thinking about the past or the future, I feel resistance and I mess things up. The funny thing is that when I lose focus, I notice how my brain tries to convince me that I’ve been present the whole time.

Observe and allow part 1

I am more and more starting to find this state within myself, where I can just be present and observe what happens. When I’m in a flow state, where I can just observe my body as it moves and breathes. This attentive state lets me respond in an appropriate manner to what is going on at the moment. I just need to allow what is going on and my body somehow knows how to act. 

Don't worry about the future

Another little reminder to myself: Everything is just as it should be. Depending on how I approach things and what I choose to focus on, I can enjoy most moments. The more I focus on enjoying and accepting what is, the better my future will become. I will always get what the whole of me needs. Not what my ego wants.