Ego-lifting part 2

So I’ve put on too heavy weights. And learned the hard way, that you can lift a lot more if you do it wrong. So I’ve suffered a couple of injuries. But that’s not the big loss. That would be the fact that I’ve worked out for many years without learning a really valuable thing about weight training. That if you lift the right weight properly, and instead of lifting as heavy as possible, you try to be as present as possible, do the lift the correct way, feel the body and have real contact with the muscles that are doing the exercise, the workout will be both more effective, more pleasurable and less painful. I’ve also discovered that I feel less worn-out after a workout if I do it this way.

In other words, I needed to learn to see the ego in my training and make it a priority to drop it.

Ego-lifting part 1

So, I go to the gym regularly. That makes me a little better than those that don’t…

But seriously though, I’ve approached my workouts with a fair bit of ego and force. I’ve wanted people to see how strong I am. I’ve wanted me to see how strong I am. 

My choices

I’m almost forty now. Throughout my life, I’ve mostly lived under the illusion that I’ve made choices, while I’ve really let life happen to me. Looking back at major decisions in my life, my motivations have almost never been what they have seemed. I’ve made decisions based on wishful thinking, an urge to make reality something that it’s not, wrongful labelings of people, events etcetera, fueled by a bunch of confused ides. 

Often, I’ve acted against my better judgment because I’ve been scared of doing what I somewhere have known to be right. 

I’ve often seen this in others, but been unable to see it in myself. Now, I still see it in others. I even see more of it. But I don’t judge anymore. At least not when I’m conscious of my thought processes. Because I know that I do the same things. 

The most common thing that I see in others, probably because I am not able to see their thought processes, is decisions following something like “I want this, so I’m going to have it without thinking of the consequences or what I’m committing to.”

The thing is, that in some strange way, my life has not turned into a total disaster. I’m not content with everything in it. But I’ve learned quite a lot and I can probably use my knowledge to make better decisions in the future.

Refusing cynicism

It’s very easy to become cynical in the world. It’s easy to think that everyone is just out to serve themselves and that authenticity drowns in the hunt for profit. It’s especially easy to think this of public figures. But what do we really know? Sure, sometimes we do know. But when we, if we're being truly honest with ourselves about what we can know for sure, conclude that we truly don't know, isn’t it better to assume good, honest, authentic intentions, when we really have nothing to base our judgment on? Isn’t this ultimately a question about whether we believe the world and other people to be fundamentally good or bad? And isn’t this ultimately a question about what we truly believe about ourselves? Maybe it is even a question of what we believe about God.

Those things that don't matter

We care about a lot of things that don’t matter. And we don’t give enough care to the things that do. This is at least true for me. 

Among these things that don’t matter, other people’s opinions stand out. If I understand it correctly, the most prevalent theory as to why we care so much what others think, is that in the distant past, when we were living in tribes, being disliked could very well mean death. 

But today, what other people think of us doesn’t matter. As a matter of fact, the world is full of countless examples, of when other people’s opinions prevent people from living the lives that they truly want.

Only who we actually are matters. Yet, we (at least I do) spend a lot of time and energy worrying about other people’s perceptions of us. Even total strangers’ perceptions of us. 

But we would be better off if we could free ourselves even from the opinions of those closest to us. Because if we, instead of worrying about other people’s opinions, focus on being good people, finding out what truly makes us happy and creating the lives that we want, we will in all likelihood be people that other people like. And if someone doesn’t like us even when we are being authentic, there are seven billion other people on the planet that we can hang out with.

Undeserved grace

What did I do to deserve the grace that I’ve received? Of course it’s not about actions. But all is not well on the inside either. My character isn’t what it ought to be. I can often be unloving and judgmental. I try not to be. But I am. I’m selfish and greedy. Not all of the time. I don’t consider myself a particularly good person. And yet, I catch myself bragging about virtues and accomplishments, even though they in truth are pretty meagre. 

The only things that I’ve really got going for me, is an honest willingness to change into the person God intended me to be. That, and a longing for being with God, that sometimes can move me to tears, but that often is drowned out by my ingratitude for what I have and resentment stemming from all the things that I perceive as being things that I lack, or from the things in my life that I don’t want. 

And yet, God has chosen to step into my life and make his presence known. Perhaps this is so not is spite of all my shortcomings, but because of them. Because, even though I’m still pretending to others that I’m someone that I’m not, I’ve stopped pretending to myself. I’m weak and sinful. I don’t want to be. But I am. And I can only keep striving for a perfection that I know that I will never reach. At least not in this life. 

The strange paradox in all of this, is that I'm okay just the way I am. And at the same time, I'm all but okay.

I did something bad a few days ago part 2

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

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

I did something bad a few days ago part 1

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

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

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

Writing things down to create more inner order

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

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

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

Right and wrong?

Is there such a thing as “right and wrong” in an ultimate sense? I don’t know. It seems as if there might be. And if there is, I’d rather try to be right than wrong, rather than to ignore the questions altogether. In an as humble and openminded way as possible, of course.

A flat tire

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

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

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

When what we say and do don't match

I’m a little bit angry today. I can’t get into detail about what sparked this anger. But as with much of the anger that we experience, only a tiny bit comes from the experience or situation that triggered it. And, again as with much of our anger, at the core, I’m mostly angry with myself. 

I’m angry with myself for pretending that I don’t care about things that I do care about. I’m angry with myself for talking about my intentions, but doing something completely different from what I say. I’m angry with myself for saying that I want one thing, but acting as if I want another thing.

In other words, I’m angry for lying to myself and others. I’m angry because I distort reality and create confusion for myself. I’m angry with others for doing the same. And a part of me wishes that I could neither see this in myself, nor in others. Mainly, I wish that I couldn’t see it in others. Because it only causes frustration. The obvious response is to ignore it in others and just work on fixing it in my own life. But it’s hard. God, please help me!

Pride part 1

It’s really so simple. Pride is the greatest sin. Because it makes us and not God responsible for our fortunes. And when we try to make it on our own, we suffer in one way or another. This is what’s important here: we are the ones that suffer from our pride. It’s easy to see this, when we see that we cannot do for ourselves, what God can do for us. We can only accomplish cheap imitations and trick ourselves into believing that it’s something magnificent. We were created to be beloved servants and not rulers or creators, except for when God truly rules and creates through us. And when he does, our ruling and creating is in itself nothing but servitude. As soon as we give ourselves credit, seek power for our own sake or seek the praise of others, we suffer. We suffer because we defy the will of God. But God is not the one that causes us to suffer. We suffer because we act against our own interest, which is something that we would see if we saw things from God’s perspective. We suffer because our attitude and actions are disharmonious.