Believing is seeing?

Many modern spiritual teachers tell us that if you first manage to believe that you will receive something, you will receive it.

This description is admittedly simplified and many add other things into the mix, such as that you have to imagine having what you want and get into the emotional state of it. And I don’t know. Maybe there is something to these a bit more expanded versions.

But I think that “believing is seeing” on its own is false and could even be harmful. What I believe, is that it’s actually a tainted version of something true, which I will get to in a moment.

Why do I believe that it is false or even harmful? First because it’s unfalsifiable. If you go around believing but you are not receiving, you can always say: “Well, I must have not really believed it.” While if you for some completely other reason receive it, you may take it as a confirmation that it works. But I think that there is a bigger issue here. Namely that we train ourselves to believe in a way that does not conform to how reality and our minds operate. We don’t always need evidence to believe something. But in the absence of evidence, we do need some other valid reason. 

So, what is the alternative then? Well, the alternative presupposes a belief in God. Now, I cannot prove that God exists, so as in many of my posts, I’m talking to those of you that have this faith. In this context, since what I’m criticizing is essentially belief without evidence, what I’m talking about is not such a belief. I’ve had plenty of experiences in my life that have confirmed my faith and I know that many others have as well. I know that God exists, but since I cannot prove it debating is useless. Either you have this knowing or you don’t. But know that everything that I talk about presupposes the existence of God. 

What I am proposing is that we can believe that we will receive something in the future, but that it is tied to God. If we truly put our faith in God, ask for what we truly want, which ought to be the same as God wants us to have and let our belief in God shine through our actions, we will receive what we ask for. Faith seems to be the key here. And it seems as if faith comes in a package. God wants us to trust him. And he wants us to demonstrate that trust through our attitudes and actions. 

So if I for example say that I trust God (this is an example from my own life), but blow up every time that I get an unforeseen expenditure, do I then really trust God? If I say that I believe in God, but have a hard time swallowing my pride, lie or put my own selfish interests before those of others, do I truly believe? 

I believe that this is a package deal. If you remove one piece of the puzzle all of it falls apart. I believe that this is the true meaning of “seeing is believing”. To summarize, the formula is as follows: We put our faith in God and trust him even through our hardships, which means that we believe that the bigger picture will turn out to be a good one, even if it doesn’t look that way in the moment. And we do our best to demonstrate this faith through our actions, thoughts, words and attitudes. In other words, we do our best to behave in a way where we show that we truly believe that God is watching us. And we strive to become people worthy of such a faith.

It's okay to have bad days

I have a tendency to feel that I’m back at square one when I don’t manage to keep my emotions in check. And I feel that all the work that I’ve done on myself has been for nothing. And it feels like the bad mood is going to go on forever. And because I let this feeling go unchallenged, I probably hold on to my bad mood much longer than I have to.

I think that this is something that needs to be talked about. Because I think that this is a huge stumbling block, as well as a cause of much suffering, for those of us that are committed to change. Because that is what we are, right? The spiritual awakening process necessarily entails confronting loads of baggage that we have inside ourselves. And when you look at most public figures that talk about this, you can easily get the impression that, while they certainly have som bumps in the road, they are more or less living their dreams and manifesting tons of abundance.

I’m not one of those people. I’ve accumulated so much baggage during my almost forty years, that I’m many days totally overwhelmed by it. What keeps me going is that I know what I’ve experienced and that I have my wife by my side. I mean, I’ve received actual proof that God exists and that the world is totally different from what my five senses tell me. How cool is that? And I’ve had my wife with me to confirm that I’m not just going crazy.

When I listen to many self-help gurus and and people in the Law of Attraction sphere (I’ve realized a while back that I’m not a big fan of the Law of Attraction by the way), I almost get the feeling that there is something wrong with me because I don’t manage to be happy, grateful and think happy thoughts all of the time.

But I can hardly be alone in feeling that, yes, I’m on a wonderful, magical journey. But it’s also one that entails a lot of struggles and sometimes downright misery and suffering. Problems that I cannot just see as challenges, face them head on with a smile and say “bring it on”. Problems that I would be happy to miss out on the opportunity for growth that they contain, if I just could be rid of them.

At the same time, I know that I’m the one that has created all of my problems and I know that I have no other option than to try and fix them to the best of my ability. The alternative is to throw away all of the wonderful things in my life because of my emotional and financial difficulties. And that is not really an option when it’s put in its proper perspective. Because somewhere, even in my darkest moments, I know that there is something so much bigger than the world with all its petty problems going on here.

Thoughts on Reality Transurfing and stress. Part 8.

The next question seems to be: What can I do to bring more consciousness into my sometimes stressful life? Once negative emotions have gotten hold of me I’m pretty much in their grip. So I need to make my life less stressful, so that I have some resilience when it comes to these emotions. What I’m thinking of, is to always have little things to look forward to in my day to day life, and to take time to just relax. To do guided meditations laying on my back every day and in general engage in a little self-care. I have for a long time tried to beat my ego into submission. I think that it’s time to try a different approach. 

Thoughts on Reality Transurfing and stress. Part 7

When it comes to the explanations as to why things work the way they do, I’m not sure. Perhaps it’s more of a glimpse into the mind of God? What Zeland talks about is sometimes pretty far away from Jesus’ teachings, but for the most part it’s in line with them. He talks a lot about having faith in that everything is going to turn out well, to not worry about the future or ruminate over the past, to live in the now and to treat others, as well as ourselves, with love and respect. 

So, I guess that what I’m trying to say, is that I doubt some of the metaphysical claims of the book. But as long as the stuff that Zeland says works and doesn’t violate my conscience, I think that there is a lot to learn from it.

Thoughts on Reality Transurfing and stress. Part 6.

So basically, when it comes to Reality Transurfing, I think that the book shows some more or less undeniable patterns of how our being in the world seems to work. Patterns that we can become aware of if we start paying attention to what is going on and get out of the habit of looking at life as a series of random occurrences. It also shows ways of relating to these patterns that will make life run more smoothly. I’ve only worked with this a short time, so I can’t say for sure how well it works. I’ve mostly seen that bad stuff seem to happen, that cannot be seen as direct consequences of my actions, when I don’t follow what it says in the book, as I’m still prone to let my emotions get the best of me. But a lot of it seems intuitively right and I think that I sometimes have experienced how it is to be on what Zeland calls a wave of fortune, even though I’ve been knocked off of it pretty fast. The wave of fortune, if I understand it correctly, is an energy current that we can tune into, where everything seems to fall into place without us having to put much effort into it. 

Thoughts on Reality Transurfing and stress. Part 5.

Now, finally, we get to Reality Transurfing. But hopefully you can see what my other posts had to do with it now.

In the book, the author Vadim Zeland talks about how we switch timelines depending on what we focus on, our emotional state and whether we manage to not attach importance to those things that we wish to have in our lives. He also says that there are these energy structures that he calls pendulums, that we create and feed with our emotional energy. According to Zeland, there are pendulums for just about anything, from soccer teams and political parties, to money, corporations or even the concept of poverty or wealth. And these pendulums will do what they can to keep us attached to them, so that we keep them alive and strong.

This is a very short summary of some of the core ideas of a pretty thick, five volume book. I’m not sure what I believe when it comes to this. But what I do know, is that there seems to be this pattern of one initial negative event happening. And that if I respond with negative emotions, more negative events keep happening, until I manage to take a step back and stop reacting.

Thoughts on Reality Transurfing and stress. Part 4.

Things in general just went downhill since that initial stress episode. Now things are better again and I can see quite clearly that my thoughts about the situations and the emotions that they created kept me stuck in a negative pattern.

So, it seems as if once the ball has started rolling, there will be more and more things to be stressed about. But it seems to stop once I take a step back and don’t let myself get swept away by the misfortunes. But it’s hard to do when you’re caught up in negative emotions. When unconscious thoughts enter my head and add fuel to the emotions. The old discontentment with what is in the present moment keeps rearing its ugly head.

Thoughts on Reality Transurfing and stress. Part 3.

Since the initial stress episode, things have been piling on. Since then, in just one day, I managed to lose an earphone, discover that I hadn’t closed the freezer correctly so that I had to throw away loads of food and bump into one of mine and my wife’s two cars with the other car, which left a dent and a scratch in the paint. And I think that I’ve forgotten something. 

But these are little things. Now a few big things, of which one of them is really big, have happened. 

Thoughts on Reality Transurfing and stress. Part 2.

Now for some background story I recently came face to face with my stress. I’m going to try and find out what is causing it as I presently am only vaguely aware of it. I think that it has something to do with always having something on my schedule and therefore never being able to fully relax and let go. The closest I come to relaxing and letting go, is when I crash and just feel more or less forced to drop everything. This, naturally, becomes an unconscious relaxing and letting go. Which is not what I’m after, since I’ve found that one of the big keys to life is to do things consciously, with intention. So if I sit on the sofa, binge eat snacks and binge watch movies because I just can’t bear my stressful life anymore, I’m going into unconscious mode and I don’t relax properly.

Thoughts on Reality Transurfing and stress. Part 1.

I find Vadim Zeland’s Reality Transurfing to be quite a fascinating book. It talks about quantum physics and how there is a field of potential, out of which we can manifest many different realities for ourselves, depending on if we follow certain rules. I will get more into this in the fifth post of this series.

First, I wish to talk a little about the book and then what prompted me to write down this series though. 

I wish to start with a small critique, that touches upon much of today’s spiritual literature. Namely that while I believe Reality Transurfing is saying many important things, its view is too mechanistic. I believe spirituality by its very nature is an interaction with God. As such, we can say things about God’s will, but we must never forget that we interact with a living being with a will and an intelligence that is infinitely greater than ours.