Let go and trust God

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But mindfulness is not what this post is about.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Letting go of what's unimportant

There are really only three truly important things in life. Our relationship with God and all that it entails, our relationship with others and our relationship with ourselves. If you believe that these two sentences hold some truth, it becomes obvious that it’s our relationships that are important. I would even stretch it so far as to say that there is something divine about our relationships. So why are we having such a hard time taking proper care of our relationships? Here are some some factors in my life: stress, fears, worries, disappointments, financial issues, trust-issues. Just to name a few. 

Many of us carry around lots of baggage that affects how we act towards those around us. Act in ways that we neither see nor understand. As with so many difficulties in life, the first step to healing is awareness. We need to be present with ourselves. Observe ourselves. Try to see and understand what is happening when it happens.

Some spiritual teachings tell us that we have to let go of everything in this world, including the attachments that we have to the ones that we love. I believe that this is wrong. Plain and simple. We’re supposed to care for those around us. And when something happens to them we’re supposed to care. When someone that we love dies, we’re supposed to grieve. And since I know God exists, that we go on living after we die and that the Bible is right about those things that I can confirm through my own experience, I take comfort in the idea that I will see those that I love that have passed away again. You may find this a bit childish, but I even hope that this includes pets. Because why not?

You see, I’m beginning to see that the Christian faith has room for not just one type of faith and relationship with God. It does have room for the child-like faith that I just described, where God embraces us after we die, wipes our tears and tells us that absolutely everything is okay. And it also has room for a relationship with a God that is the infinite, all-powerful ruler of heaven and earth, whose love and glory is so magnificent, that we cannot even begin to comprehend it. The God that calls us to grow out of our petty egos and into ruthless self-examinations, so that we can die from all that is immature, selfish and wicked. 

How far most of us have strayed from this type of relationship with God. How far I have strayed from it. Comfort has silently taken over us. Made many of us weak and numb. And when the conveniences that we’ve gotten used to get taken away or don’t work properly it causes frustration. At least it does for me. How easy it is for our attention to get drawn away from what’s important to that which is unimportant. 

There are in general so many irrelevant things in my life that take up energy and attention. When all I really want to do is live the kind of godly life that I just spoke about. A life where God is always at the centre. A life where my thoughts are always occupied with God and where God colors all of my actions, words and even thoughts. This might sound like the goal of a fanatic. But if we truly believe in God and that he is who the Bible says he is, how could things be any other way? And to be clear, I have no wish to ever force anything on anyone. I don’t believe that anything good ever can come from coercion and I’m firmly against any expression of religion that relies on it. Only falseness can come from it. I only wish for others to see for themselves what I today know to be true. Not because I need to be right or need others to agree with me, but because I know that God exists and that true meaningfulness can only come from having him in our lives. How could I not want this for others?

In my day to day life and my spiritual practices, I’ve in different ways caught glimpses of a world beyond this one. Of what a life where I fully walk with God would be like. Felt the love that our creator has for us. I don’t expect anyone to take my word for it. I don’t believe that anyone should take anyone’s word for anything. This is not about mere belief. I cannot say how long it will take, but I believe that whoever knocks on the proverbial door will see it open eventually.

Since I’ve felt some of what I believe to be the eternity that the Bible promises, I know that whatever this world offers pales in comparison. And yet, I’m often sucked into the worries and feelings of lack that for most of us is a necessary component of this life: “I want this. I don’t have that. This doesn’t work the way it should. How am I going to get through this? Why can’t things be different from what they are? Are things ever going to be different?” Etcetera. 

I’ve noticed that my memory works pretty strange when it comes to this. Because it seems as if I can’t be caught up in this world and remember all of the signs that point to a better world at the same time. When I’m caught up in the worries of this life, it seems as if this life is all there is. When this happens, all of the little temporal, passing things of this life and this world, suddenly seem terribly important. Even though I, on some level, know that most of them will have passed away in a month or a year. This while God’s kingdom is forever.

I personally have a fair balance between joy and suffering in my life. Many people suffer more, while other suffer less. But a fact of life is that even those that don’t suffer much today, will in all likelihood suffer more some time during their lives. And suffering is still suffering no matter what. But it’s much easier to bear when we have the solid ground of faith beneath our feet. Not a faith of wishful thinking, but one whose truth is firmly planted in our hearts.

Whether I, in the situations that I face throughout my day, can remember what’s important, seems to have a lot to do with awareness. Can I be conscious enough to notice that I’m slipping before it’s too late? 

Are you beginning to see why cultivating more present moment awareness is so important? This is something that we can do always. Just get into the habit of consciously noticing what is going on as often as possible throughout the day. Being really present with our senses. Noticing both what is going on in the external world and what we’re thinking, feeling and what is going on inside the body. That is all that it takes really. We can read tons of books about mindfulness. I have. But this is all that is really needed. And here comes a little hint: Much more is going on inside the body than we usually are aware of. Just try for yourself and put more focus on what sensations pass through it and see what happens.

Conscious choices

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NON-RESISTANCE and the BEAUTY of life

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

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

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

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

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

Grief

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The psychology of the FALL FROM EDEN

The more I observe myself and other people, the more I find that something seems fundamentally broken. And at the same time, there seems to be something divine about us underneath all the dirt. For this reason, I believe that the fall, whether you interpret it literally or not (I’m leaning towards that I don’t, but nowadays I’m sure of almost nothing) has something significant to say about our condition. The Bible says that we were made in the image of God, but we are in a fallen state. And this seems to be a pretty accurate description. 

Almost all of us lie to ourselves and others. Many cheat and steal. Even more either consciously or unconsciously manipulate others. We have no idea why we do many of the things that we do and we engage in behaviors that are hurtful towards ourselves and others. We often assume that we know who we are, but after doing a little bit of thinking, we discover that we don’t even know what the question of who we are entails. We might start saying things like our job title, hobbies or even possessions. We act in ways that are inauthentic and agree with things that we don’t truly agree with just to please others. Meanwhile we ignore making the changes that really count, with regards to how we treat other people. We often prefer what is easy over that which we know to be right. We are cowardly, ashamed and vulnerable and since we know that others share our condition, we exploit this fact in our dealings with others. All of us don’t. Few do all of these things. But many do at least some of them and many would never admit this to themselves. It can take the form of anything from brutal violence for the sake of nothing but satisfying sadistic urges, to pretending that something that we are selling is a little better than we in fact know that it is, to little stings disguised as jokes that we dish out to our loved ones.

I could go on and if you sit down and honestly think about it, you can probably find plenty of examples of your own, both from your own life and from others’, both from your past and from your current situation. 

With the prior discussion in mind, I want to propose that question of whether biblical creation myth is literally true or not, takes the focus off of what is truly important about it. Namely its psychological significance when it comes to the state that we are in today. This belief also has the support of one of my favorite thinkers, Jordan Peterson.

I will go through it in the right order: In the beginning of the Old Testament Adam walked with God. Should we look at this literally, as if God was walking with Adam as a physical person? Or maybe there is some symbolism here? I would like to propose that the these walks that God does with Adam in the Garden of Eden are meant to symbolize the close connection with God that we are meant to have. Even that it is one that we can have right now if we open up to it. 

When it comes to the fall, there may or may not have been some event that triggered it, that is symbolized by the eating of the forbidden fruit. Maybe there was even an eating of an actual fruit that was off limits. Since I believe that most of the things that we think that we know about history probably to a large degree is false, I cannot completely discount this possibility. But I don't know. And since it’s so clear that the biblical stories have huge symbolical meanings, it’s therefore here that their true value lies.

There is a lot to unpack here and what’s interesting about the Bible, is that you can find so many connections between different parts in it. A perspective that I find interesting, is to look at the Hebrew Bible / Old Testament as the display of an original event and all of its consequences laid out over time. Seen from this perspective, these stories show us flawed individuals with good wills, trying to find their ways through a fallen world, encountering all that has gone wrong with humanity along the way. 

What I’ve come to believe is that the fall represents the birth of the ego. And the main characteristic of the ego is pride. Pride was also why what got Satan cast out of heaven. And remember that we are talking symbolism here. I’m not talking about Satan as an actual being, even if I don’t rule out his existence completely either. But regardless of Satan’s actual existence or not, there is a symbolism here that has something fundamental to say about our being in the world. As a side note, it can be interesting to think about the fact that one of the core ideas of modern satanism, is one’s embrace and strengthening of the ego which, at least officially, Satan is seen as just a symbol of.

Adam and Even ate of the fruit because they wanted to be like God (Laveyan satanists consider themselves their own gods by the way). At this point they were still innocent though, even though a seed has been sown even before the eating of the fruit, because of the discontent that the snake has put into their minds. Discontentment with what is, is in other words the absolute starting point of everything else that is broken with our being in the world. Adam and Eve lived in absolute love and harmony with God, each other and the world. And yet, a little voice whispered that there might be something more. Something better. 

Adam and Eve didn’t know what they were doing. It is how they acted after their eyes were opened that got them cast out of Eden. How they acted when they lost their innocence and learned about good and evil. When they learned about good and evil they chose evil. 

Instead of being honest and upfront about what they had done, Adam and Eve tried to hide. And when God found them, instead of owning up to his mistake, Adam blamed Eve and God. And Eve in turn blamed the snake and God. Here we see two of the evils of the world: the impulse to try and hide our mistakes and to blame our mistakes on others. 

When they ate from the fruit they discovered that they were vulnerable. They had always been vulnerable. But now they saw their vulnerability. And not only did they see it. They wanted to hide it. Why do you hide your vulnerability, besides because you are afraid that it is going to be exploited? Because you don’t want to look vulnerable. Most of us want to look better than we actually are and so we hide that which we consider shameful about ourselves. Most of us need to be so broken that it becomes futile to hide our vulnerability, before we own up to it. We are afraid that if we show our true selves we will be rejected. And since we’re not in control of ourselves, this fear often cause us to act in ways that cause actual rejection.

In the next generation discontent and the knowledge that we are vulnerable causes Cain to murder abel. And soon this knowledge, coupled with ego, discontent and pride caused power struggles, betrayal, wars, weapons of war and so on. 

As stated earlier, the Hebrew Bible shows one people’s honest attempts to find something right and true in this broken world, which culminated in the birth of Jesus, the first person that lived a life completely untainted by the world.

Or maybe I’m just reading too much into a fictional story about a garden, two people, a talking snake and an old man on a cloud. I don’t think so. But maybe I’m wrong. But if I’m not wrong and if these stories really are saying something fundamental about our being in the world, the natural questions become: How do they relate to you? And what are you going to do about it?

I want to be dependent upon God PART 4

This series turned into something that I had not at all expected. But now I think it’s time to wrap it up. And I think that from the darkness and philosophical speculation that I’ve talked about, I will turn back to the light and to something rather simple.

When I went to the university, I talked to a rather smart girl that later went on to become a doctor. Once she told me, pretty straight forward, in those words, that she had a rather childish belief in God, where she more or less looked at God as an old man sitting on a cloud. It was obvious that she had given her faith quite a lot of thought and ended up in this place. 

For me, I think I want both. I want the ecstatic, mystical experiences. I want the philosophy and the difficult questions (even if I don’t want the pride that pops into my head from time to time as I engage in such thinking). But in the end, I want to put my life in God’s hands in the simplest manner possible. I want to just trust and feel like a little child, embraced and held by my heavenly father. Held by this being, whose love and wisdom I cannot even begin to fathom. 

I want a balance between the crazy and the simple. Between the extraordinary and the mundane. And in the end, I never want to stray too far. I’m an adult now and I want to interact with other people as an adult. But in my relationship with God, I still want to be a child. Does this make any sense? I don’t know how to explain it in any other way. There is an innocence here that somehow permeates life and existence itself, behind all of the darkness and complexity. An innocence that was never lost. Something that can be felt in such simple experiences as petting a cat. Or listening to the right song at the right time. Such as the song that got me thinking of this series. That’s fun to think about, ending this on sort of a philosophical note: A simple song and my emotional reaction to it was what started this whole stream of thoughts. It’s something to think about when we decide what to fill our lives with.

Photo by William Bout on Unsplash