Being okay with confusion

I'm a little scared of posting this text. Because I'm going to be personal about my spiritual life in a way that differs from previous blog posts. What do I want with this post? To give you a better idea of where I'm coming from and where the things that I talk about come from.

Something very strange is happening in the world. I’ve talked about this many times before. Is it the Ascension process? Or the End Times? A little bit of both? Something completely different?

Have you noticed that strange things are starting to happen in your life on a personal level as well? I know that I have. And I know that this is true for many other people. But contrary to most people, I’m not at all sure exactly what this is or what it means. I thought that I was. But I’m not at all anymore. And I’m not sure if this is a strength or weakness. Maybe a bit of both. I think that my biggest strength lies in God and Jesus. Because most people that are going through a spiritual awakening seem to have missed the personal relationship with God. Something that I know for a fact is at the very centre of everything that is happening right now. In all of the doubt and confusion that I’m going through, this is one thing that I don’t doubt for a second. The confirmations that I’ve received about this are overwhelming. 

Even though on a personal level, it has been proven to me, over and over again, that something is happening, on the planet, with me, my wife and many other people, I can still not help asking myself if it’s all just in my head. Of course we can take this one step further. Because if you think about it, it’s obvious that ultimately I can’t be sure that anything I’m experiencing is real. I only have access to what my senses tell me. At least when it comes to my interaction with the world. As a matter of fact, I cannot be sure that the world is anything like what I experience inside my head. I have to live as if this is true though, because life would be impossible to live otherwise. But I cannot know for sure. 

As things become stranger and stranger, both in the world and on a personal level, faith and doubt seem more and more inseparable. More and more indispensable. Because I need to hold on to the faith that this is real and that it’s leading somewhere. But I have to try and stay as clear and grounded as possible, as I’m facing a reality that by its very nature is overwhelming, frightening and confusing. 

Whatever else may be true, if I feel that God is communicating with me and my wife, I think that the best response to it is to treat it as real. If it was just a voice inside my head I should probably go seek medical assistance. But it’s nothing like that at all. I’m not going to get into any details about it. But it’s more like seeing the hand of God in the everyday events of my life. Life doesn’t just seem chaotic, random and devoid of meaning, as it used to. Life seems to speak to me, and to my wife, in different ways. So much so that it’s next to impossible to dismiss it as figments of our imagination. Especially since we’ve experienced many things together. 

I don’t know exactly what God wants with me. And from hereon out I’m going to talk about my experiences. If my wife wishes to talk about hers, she can do so in her own words. 

What I know for sure is that it has nothing to do with my character, accomplishments, goodness or good looks. Whatever God wants with me, he must have his reasons. But it surely has nothing to do with anything that I can take credit for. Even though a part of me definitely wants to. And I honestly don’t know if I could potentially mess up one time too many. In other words, if whatever I’m supposed to do could be passed on to someone else. Because I’ve messed up so many times since this whole thing started. Sometimes I feel that my past is just one big, messy fog of mistakes, bad behavior and self-deception.

At this point, I’ve lost a couple of friends. And there are probably quite a few people that think that I’ve lost my mind. Or that I’m balancing on the edge of insanity. Quite frankly, I’m asking myself whether I’m going crazy sometimes. Because I know that there is something that I’m supposed to communicate. Discussions that I’m supposed to have. Questions that I’m supposed to ask. People that I’m supposed to meet. But honestly, I feel rather confused. And nothing that I do ever seems to lead anywhere. And yet, when I’m close to completely losing hope, God calls on me in one way or another, telling me to hang on. 

If I could show you what I’ve experienced, you would understand why I, in one sense, am so sure about that I need to keep doing what I’m doing. Even if I don’t know what I’m doing myself sometimes. While I’m in another sense filled with so much doubt, in spite of all of what I’ve experienced. As I said, it doesn’t seem to lead anywhere. And I’m so confused about all of this and what it means. 

Everything unwanted stays till we learn

In many ways we can forget about the world that can be analyzed through the five senses and laws of physics. When we start to observe our lives and the patterns in them, we notice that there are so many things happening beneath the surface. A saying in spiritual circles is “whatever you resist persists”. While I believe that this is true in one sense, I also believe that it’s a simplification. Because what does it mean to resist something? Or what does the opposite mean: to let go and/or accept? Can we truly let go and accept something while ignoring the lesson it’s trying to teach us?

I’ve several times talked about how life is a constant interaction with God. I’ve also asked the question: How could it be otherwise, if God is omnipotent, omnipresent and deeply personal? 

I know that a clarification is needed, in a discussion such as this one. I’m talking about my experience and probably the experiences of many other people. But I also know that there are many people in the world whose circumstances are completely out of their control and that seem to bring them nothing but suffering. Therefore this first and foremost applies to those that are born in relatively affluent countries. Though I believe that the world is ruled in an unjust way, by throughly ruthless people, those of us that are born where no one has to starve, are for the most part responsible for our circumstances, even if this should not be equated with blame. Because most of us also have been brought up in an education system that does not teach us true self-reliance. But we do have the ability to listen to what God is trying to teach us and make the decision to take charge or our lives and learn what we need to learn to function in this world. I believe that almost all people in relatively affluent countries have the ability to do so. Everyone in the world isn’t able to. But for most of us, it is our own choices that have gotten us where we are, even though we probably weren’t aware that we were making a choice, when we chose things that led to unwanted results.

So, if the less desirable situations in our lives, are really God trying to teach us something, maybe the best things to do is to listen and make the necessary changes?

One example from my own life is my job. It’s not my dream job. And I felt tons of resistance towards getting it. But now that I’ve been there for over a year, I’ve learned to make the best of a less than ideal situation. For example, now that I can do most of the tasks on auto-pilot, I can listen to audiobooks more or less during the whole workdays. I’ve learned to trust myself and become much more confident. And having a steady income has given me some breathing space, allowing me to more freely explore those things that I really want to do, in spite of having less time on my hands.

I’ve learned to be much more present in what I do and to think about the things that I’m engaged in. I’ve most definitely learned that I’m not the only person in the world that screws up sometimes. That it’s okay to do so as long as I take responsibility for it. I’ve learned to appreciate people that have chosen to live very different lives from my own. And lastly, I’ve learned to have a good work ethic that goes far beyond what is expected of me. To consciously choose to work hard and focused not just because I want to keep my job, but because of a sense of duty and because I believe that it ultimately will make me a better person.

It’s not where I want to work forever, but I know that I have a few lessons left to learn. Lessons relating to trusting myself, fully accepting where I am, living in the now and not rely on external circumstances for my happiness. And I know that when I can quit and go do what I really want to do, there are lots of things that I’m going to miss about my job. 

What I’m talking about here seems to be a fundamental part of the structure of reality. I know that you could argue back and forth about what seems to be and what actually is. When I look a little deeper at the unwanted in my life, there always seems to be lessons in it. But maybe it’s just because we always can find something to learn from our experiences. If so, that's fine. It shows how important perspective is. 

Then again, people and circumstances don’t seem to have come into my life at random. Even if I wanted to, I could not write off everything that happens in my life as mere coincidences. Me and my wife have had experiences that definitely fall under the category “supernatural”. And as the years have passed, I've become thoroughly convinced us of the existence of God. With these things in mind, I think that there is a pretty good case to be made for the idea that the meaning that I’m talking about, isn’t just in my head. If you wish to delve a little deeper into this, you could check out what is known as “synchronicities”, which was something that for example Carl Jung observed. 

If I’m going to try to explain how I think that this actually work, I believe that everything is divinely orchestrated somehow. I believe that God’s hand is present in everything, so that what we need in order to grow is brought into our lives somehow. As I said in the second paragraph, it’s probably not the same for everyone. I believe that in a sense, I’m the main character in my show, but that you also are the main character in yours. In someone else’s show, I might be anything from a second lead, to just one of thousands of small extras that flash by briefly. And God is the grand director of everything.

The stage is of course a metaphor for something that words cannot fully describe. But hopefully it can give you some idea of how I see it and how our learning experiences fit into all of this. Because, as you may know, in basically every good work of fiction, the main character transforms as the story progresses.

What happens with the lessons after we die I don’t know. But I believe that they are among the few things that we take with us to the afterlife, in one form or another, whether it’s one afterlife or the next in a series of afterlives. 

Therefore I believe that one of the main reasons for us to be here, is so that we can learn and grow. We’re probably here for a lot of other things as well, but this is definitely one of them. And we can kick and scream and become angry at life for not giving us a smooth ride. I’ve done my fair share of this and I still do sometimes. But life and the world has never even once changed because I’ve become angry at them. Not once. And yet, it’s hard to not feel offended when we have to face one thing after another that we don’t want to deal with. But I believe that the sooner we can adopt a perspective where we see our hardships as part of the learning experience and as part of the adventure, the sooner we can learn the lessons and move on to more of that which we do want in our lives.

Photo by Joe Zlomek on Unsplash

The value of mystical experiences

Are mystical experiences just spiritual “kicks” that ultimately lead us nowhere? Or are they maybe an encouragement to keep going on our spiritual paths? Do they bring us closer to God in some sense? Do they have other functions?

Before moving on, I want to clarify that I don’t believe that mystical experiences are necessary for living a rich spiritual and/or religious life. We can live and grow with God through prayer, through consciously allowing God to be with us in our everyday lives or through meditation, for example, without anything extraordinary happening. 

There is a discussion to be had about what constitutes a mystical experience. It could basically be anything from an ecstatic union with God to the simple feeling that an everyday event holds some meaning beyond the actual experience.

In this context though, I wish to talk about experiences that constitute a significant shift, away from our ordinary way of perceiving life and the world. 

An interesting thought in this context, is that dr. Joe Dispenza writes in his book Becoming Superhuman, that mystical experiences alter our way of functioning, because they expand our realm of possibilities. Once we see that there are ways of seeing and experiencing that go beyond our normal state, they become in a sense part of our overall experience. They expand our idea of the possible.

Another writer, James Defranco, says that through these experiences we move ourselves out of our normal frames that we experience the world from, and by doing so we dissolve rigid thought patterns. What does this mean? When we start noticing that we do not just have habits in our outer lives, but also with regards to our inner lives, it’s easier to understand what this means. Our minds have habitual ways of functioning. And when something happens that brings us out of our normal ways of operating, it becomes easier to start thinking in novel ways and thus see things from new and more expanded perspectives.

I would also add that these experiences, while not necessary, adds encouragement and reassurance that God is with us. As such they should be treasured as the gifts they are. And I would see it as more or less a duty to use these experiences to help others in their spiritual lives. 

Could God be both personal and impersonal?

And could this be so without one aspect being higher than the other?

Among many Eastern mystics, it seems as for many of them, the personal relationship with God is used as a stepping stone on our way towards an impersonal union, where everything is just love. But what if both are equally important? As far as I can tell, the Christian mystics seem to agree on this. If you look at for example John of the Cross, it is pretty clear that he talks about ecstatic experiences of love that transcend words. But it is equally clear that he sees his relationship with God as an intimately personal one. 

This is also what my own experiences tell me. I’ve had one experience which only lasted for a couple of seconds, of absolute, wordless love. But in prayer, I’ve also had a few, in some sense equally significant experiences, when I have had a knowing that far surpassed an intellectual one, that God listened to- and cared for what I said. These experiences have been equally filled with love, awe and tears. Sadly it was a while since I felt this in prayer and I miss it. But I keep on praying anyway.

And then I have the feeling that God is with me and communicates with me through my experiences throughout the day. These are by far my most common experiences. I might see and hear something that seems to not be just a coincidence. Maybe a thought pops up in my head and then I see or hear something that relates to that thought a moment later. Sometimes this is accompanied by the feeling that something shifts. Now that I think of it, the feeling reminds me a bit of when someone turns towards me, speaks to me with all his attention focused on me. 

As said in the beginning, when you read many Eastern mystics, it seems as if this personal relationship is less than this impersonal one. That it, in some sense, isn’t really real. But what if these are two sides of the same coin. One intimate, particular and personal and one limitless and universal. There seems to be an infinite aspect to both these types of relationship. In both, God is in a sense infinitely close to us, but in oposite ways. Maybe this can actually be seen in relation to the microcosmos and the macrocosmos. The universe is, at least according to many scientist, bot infinitely big and infinitely dividable. 

One common interpretation of the phrase: “as above, so below”, supposedly coined by the mystic Hermes Trismegistus, is that everything is connected with everything else, in the sense that you can learn the nature of all by studying the nature of one thing. And that two opposite poles share an intimate connection with each other. 

The creator of the universe actually listens when we speak to him

That’s the little secret of prayer. To remember who you are talking to. And that he actually listens. 

A while back I noticed that when I consciously directed my prayer towards God something happened. Something very significant. Namely that I understood this on a level that far exceeded an intellectual understanding. I understood it at the core of my being, at the deepest emotional level possible. I could actually feel God listening to me.

My creator, the eternal, omnipotent, omnipresent creator of everything, in whose hands everything rests and who loves me infinitely and knows me infinitely more deeply than I know myself, actually listens to me when I pray. 

After this my prayers changed for a while. They became more meaningful. More real.

But since then, I’ve gotten caught up in daily life again. I’ve stressed through prayers and they have often turned into words without substance. I think that I actually in a sense forgot that God is with me. Not on an intellectual level of course. I can never fully forget what I’ve experienced. My experiences have been so strong and undeniable, that I can’t ever give in fully to doubt. 

But there is another forgetfulness here. One that I cannot really put my finger on. It has something to do with the temporal vs the eternal. Where I simply get caught up in my ego and forget what is really important. 

This blog post became something completely different from what I had planned. But I just realized that this has been coming back to me over and over again. I think that this is what is meant by “being in the world, but not of it”. We do have a physical experience. But really we are always walking with God for eternity, here and now. And life is meant to be a continual prayer and interaction with God. Adam really walked with God, but as we fell deeper and deeper into our intellects, God became more and more distant. But it’s not going to be like that forever.

Everyday life and the spiritual life are one

I’ve noticed that many mystically inclined people tend to frown upon more “regular church goers” or their equivalents in other religious traditions. And many of those church goers for their part, seem to look at mystics with some suspicion. As if mystics somehow operate outside the boundaries of acceptable religion and thereby associate themselves with dark forces. 

What I’ve come to realize is that most of us need a little bit of both. Some of us might be more inclined towards just being good people that strive to follow Jesus in our everyday lives. While others might sit in meditation, experiencing higher realities throughout most of their days. But for most of us, I think our spiritual needs are best being met by being somewhere on a scale between these two extremes. Most of us can’t have mysticism without the everyday-part. Because our everyday lives are spiritual lives. We don’t just meet God in meditation, yoga, contemplation, prayer, the reading of sacred scriptures and other spiritual practices. We also meet God in our everyday lives. We meet God in our interactions with other people. We meet God when we share meals, work or when we go to the gym. 

But most of us also need to truly feel a connection with God that goes beyond mere belief. For some it can be to simply see a deeper meaning in events in their daily lives, where others just see random accidents, while for others it can be experiences of total bliss and ecstasy as they completely let go of the world and merge with God. Or anything in between. 

I believe that there is a reason why Jesus focused so heavily on ethics and why the more mystical aspects of of his teachings were toned down or veiled in symbolism or allegory. If we don’t allow our spiritual experiences to shape us as individuals, our character and how we conduct ourselves in our everyday lives, these experiences become empty. But we also want to avoid that our lives become consumed by dry, spiritless legalism, that many of the pharisees served as a warning against. 

I believe that this is ultimately a question of the importance of letting the brain and the heart work together. 

The voice of God and the truth barometer

We always have access to the voice of God through our thoughts. The difficulty is to separate it from all of the other noise. 

What I’m about to talk about here, should not be regarded as an infallible method for getting in touch with the voice of God. There are other factors here, such as expectations and purely physical emotions.

Many people, including myself, feel pleasant shivers along their spine when something rings true to them. I have also felt the same shivers, but much stronger, when I’ve felt the presence of God. So, may I suggest that maybe we feel these shivers whenever God communicates something to us? Because really, if God communicates with us all the time, which he does, how could it be otherwise?

As I said, there are other factors to consider though. I would say that this falls under the realm of intuition. The main issues, I would say, are expectations and wishes. Do I expect the shivers to come? Do I wish for them to do so? If so, then, as always when it comes to intuition, I may have interference.

I don’t know exactly why things work this way. But something that I am beginning to notice, is that in order for things to work smoothly on the spiritual level, I have to not as much do things, as get out of the way. I have to stop interfering and let God work through me. But it’s easier said than done, when I have cultivated the habit of letting my mind struggle with everything for almost forty years.

EVERYTHING is a dialogue with God

This IS the final step on the journey. And it's a huge leap that takes time. 

If God is everything that has ever been and ever will be, how could it be otherwise? God is speaking to you in every single moment. In every single NOW that you experience. We can misunderstand the communication, but this is the truth. Our destination is to know that we always walk with God, the way Adam (metaphorically) did in the Garden of Eden. The fruit of knowledge of good and evil, I believe, is a metaphor for how we allow our own distorted intellect come between us and God. We can live with God in the Garden of Eden here and now, if we recognize that we are already walking with God and adjust our inner state accordingly. Ultimately, every thought should be part of an ongoing, inner prayer, or the voice of God, that comes to us through discernment and our openness to hearing it in the midst of our minds’ constant chattering and the noise of the world, with its demands and twisted ideas about what’s important and what is going to make us happy. The more we cultivate present moment awareness and keep God in our minds, the stronger this discernment grows.

Learning to listen to ourselves part 2

The confusion between the job of our different faculties mentioned in the previous post, is one of the major reasons why we constantly seem to do things that are not in our best interests, but seem right at the time. What would happen if we started asking ourselves what we truly want and need? What would happen if we stopped caring so much whether what we eat will add a few extra millimeters to our waist or whether it will contribute to an overall caloric deficit?

I’ve noticed that when I am in contact with my body and my emotions instead of using my intellect, I will soon get a message about what I need. It all seems to come down to this over and over again. Paying attention to what is going in inside and around us. When I don’t, I hand my power over to a combination of unconscious forces within me and constant bombardment of messages from the world, about what is important and what I should pay attention to.

I touched upon this in tha last post, but I think it is part of something bigger that I’m beginning to realize. Namely that we have gotten used to function in a very limited way, by using our thoughts to determine almost everything and thereby failing to pay attention to what the rest of us is trying to tell us. I’m suspecting that the more I break free from the invisible prison created by my thoughts, the more I will know things that I’m today only making qualified guesses about, often based on the often conflicting information from various authorities. Or even worse - I might simply be doing things out of habit because I’m in too much of a rush to stop and bring awareness to the present moment.

I want to conclude this post by repeating this: Pay attention to what is going on, within and without. As yourself: What is your experience trying to tell you? Make it a habit of asking this question as often as possible. When someone else is directing your attention, you are by definition not free. 

This is about being in touch with ourselves and our own values, instead of being lost in thoughts that are often not even our own, while trying to do what those same thoughts tell us that we ought to. 

Learning to listen to ourselves part 1

I realized this when I woke up in the weekend the other day: I’ve not cultivated the habit of listening to myself properly. Of listening to what I need. To what my body needs. What my soul needs. In many instances I’ve just considered what my mind thinks about something.

What happened was that I couldn’t sleep, but I felt that I needed to stay in bed. But a part of me wanted to rush up. This time I listened to the part that wanted to stay in bed. When I laid there, tensions started to dissolve and eventually I fell asleep, waking up a little less than an hour later, feeling well rested.

Had I gotten up the first time, chances are that I would have been tired, in a bad moon and more or less spoiled my day. This is something that has happened before. My thoughts usually go something like this: I can’t lay here wasting time when it’s impossible to fall asleep again anyway.

Recently I’ve noticed that there is something magical about asking ourselves questions. It’s almost as if it’s programmed into us to know what we really want and need. We’ve just learned to only ask our thoughts. And our thoughts will come up with all kinds of rational arguments for why one thing is better than the other. Even though they are totally unreliable when it comes to so many things, since they take such a limited amount of factors into consideration. 

In this case, my mind only saw some practical factors, such as that I will get more hours out of my day, while not thinking about how my body felt about it, that I by not listening to I will be less effective and less happy during the day and that I might fall asleep in front of the movie in the evening, thereby wasting a movie experience.

Food is another good example. I might think about what will be nice to eat in the evening and thereby buying some snacks or something. Or the opposite: I might think that I should choose some healthy but boring alternative, when I really want some snacks. 

In the first case, I may end up with some empty enjoyment that wouldn’t be better than a healthy alternative. And in the second case, I might end up unsatisfied, going to the store again or buying something even “worse” the next time.

The way I see it, the problem runs deep. We have not properly learned to discern the different parts of ourselves. We often confuse the job of our thoughts, our body or our emotions. We just allow the first faculty that makes its presence known to guide us.

Pawns in a game?

This blog is to a large degree about asking questions. The question here is: Are we pawns in a game of demonic entities? I listened to a lecture yesterday together with a group of awakened people. The lecturer told me that we are pawns in a game of demonic entities that basically bet money on how we are going to react to them influencing our lives. And today I stumbled upon this movie. What are the odds?

The devil is in the details

Pay attention! We miss so much because our attention is elsewhere. Attention is the key to everything. But because we have our attention with us all of the time we take it for granted. We never consider what we can do with it. The world is full of wonders that we miss because we don’t expect them to happen. We don’t believe that they are possible and therefore our focus becomes so narrow that it’s almost non-existent, in comparison to what is possible.

God speaks in the inner silence

When you can honestly say that you receive your thoughts, rather than produce them with your ego? There is a very clear distinction here. But it’s difficult to recognize it, even efter you’ve done it once.

What I’ve found, is that the mind first has to be stilled to the point where there is a break in the thought activity for at least a few seconds. This, again, is difficult to recognize, because it is unawareness that makes us start thinking again, so we are generally not aware of having started thinking, until a few thoughts have passed through the mind. But even when thought activity seizes for just a few seconds, I notice that everything seems to fade away and I move closer to a state of just being if my eyes are closed. And if they are open, everything seems to flow effortlessly, to the same degree as I manage to be present in the here and now and still my mind. 

I believe that this state might put us in direct connection with God. Maybe OUR thoughts are what separates us from God? It would actually fit pretty neatly into the myth of the fall. Since our thoughts give us knowledge and we got separated from God and paradise through eating from the Tree of Knowledge. 

But that’s sort of a little sidenote that I thought was fitting.

Continuing: I’ve noticed that if I remain still and present for a while, my mind still starts talking again. And if I lose focus then, I’m back to the usual pointless chatter. But if I remain still and present, what comes through is completely different. It rings true and gives me insights that are either practical or will lead to more happiness and less suffering, for both me and others. As for the latter, it also often tells me things that I don’t want to hear. 

Another thing that I wonder, is whether our connection with God in the now has to be limited to words. Probably not. I wonder this because I’ve also found that when I am in a flow state, I feel closer to God in other ways as well. It’s as if God slowly takes over my life, the more I manage to be present. It’s as if it’s still me doing the thinking and moving, but yet it is not me. It’s strange, wonderful and difficult to explain.

God is God

You don’t make an effort to do, think and say the right things and avoid the wrong because you are afraid of God’s punishment or because you want a reward from God. You do it because God is God. You know who God is. But do you really consider what this means? Do you really feel deep in your heart what it means to have the omnipotent, omnipresent, eternal creator of the universe with you all the time, in all that you do, say and think?

Slipping and slipping and slipping

While publishing a series of posts about humility, I could easily conclude that … well … I’m there again. And again, I didn’t notice. I’ve started to feel pride for working hard. For understanding things. I’ve started to say “me, me, me”. And even if I say that I trust God, I don’t show that trust through my words and my actions. I want to surrender to God. I feel that it should be easy, because God only demands humility. Why is it so hard for me to be humble? Why, after all I’ve experienced, is it so hard to just relax and let go? 

My going back and forth

There is a lot of going back and forth in my head right now. On the one hand, there is the calling to Christ that I feel so strongly. On the other hand, there are all of these experiences that I have, that in spiritual circles refer to what is called “The Ascension Process”. I think that I need to talk about this with as clear words as possible. I don’t want to talk about my spiritual experiences, as I believe that they are personal and that I at most should talk about them with my family and closest friends. Maybe not even them. I’ve found that talking about them mainly serves to blow up my ego.

But basically, I’m starting to realise that I’m this whole different other person, from the one that I thought that I was. 

It seems to be my lot in life to walk in uncertainty. I know several people that claim to remember past lives (there are also arguments for reincarnation being spoken about in The Bible, so this does to necessarily contradict Christianity), but I don’t have any such memories. Some of these people I have a lot of confidence. And yet, since I can’t even trust my own experiences or my interpretations of them, I cannot just accept their testimonies as truth. 

This is where I am. I guess that I just have to accept the uncertainty and trust that things will come together in the end, even though, from where I stand right now, it does not seem possible. 

Many people have tried to convince me to see the world, religion and spirituality their way. But so far, they have not succeeded. Because the evidence haven’t been there. And I’m too aware of my own ability to deceive myself, and therefore of other people’s ability to do the same, to take anyone’s word for anything.

I pray to God every day to lead me on the right path and I need to trust that God will show me the way. Because something that I do know, is that God is a personal God and that God cares for me.

Called to Christ? Part 1

I’m a confused person. But I embrace my confusion. I think more people should embrace their confusion. Because there are loads of things to be confused about. 

On the one hand, I feel called to follow Christ. On the other, there are so many weird things with a spiritual nature happening in my life, that don’t fall in line with a normal Christian life. Some fall in line more with what, for the lack of a better word, might be categorised as New Age.

At the same time, I do not believe in Liberal Theology. I don’t think that we basically just have to be nice to each other and everything will be okay. This partially has to do with me recognising that in order for us to be truly nice, we need to have character. And character is not built simply by being nice.

Starting with what I know

I know that God exists. I cannot say that I exactly know who God is, or the nature of God. I believe that I can be fairly certain in ascribing certain attributes to God. These would be: “intelligent”, “personal” and “having a will”. 

I can also be certain of that there is some kind of unseen spiritual reality. What this reality is exactly, I again cannot know.

These things I’ve seen enough evidence of in my own life, to be certain of. I know that I can’t prove them to anyone. Or that God exists at all. But from personal experience, I can know this for myself. I’m not asking anyone to take my word for it. But with a bit of openness, I believe that anyone can find proof that God exists. Just not the kind of proof that can be tested in a laboratory or be objectively verified in any other way. 

I can also see the truth of what Jesus taught. I have no idea when it comes to historical claims. I simply wasn’t there. It doesn’t mean that they are unimportant or that there is no way of at least determine probability. The resurrection, for example, is believed in by many scholars, because of the amount of witnesses, and certain circumstances around how it was told and who the witnesses were. 

I’ll might look more closely into this and other claims in the Bible later in my life. Probably. 

But what I want to get at, is that the more I look into what Jesus taught, the more struck I become by how hard it is to live by, not because of what it demands of our bodies or intellects, but because of the humility it demands. And also how easy life would be if we could live by it. All we have to do is to swallow our pride.

So why is this so hard? As an example: I’ve been tricked into buying crappy cars three times in my life. Once for me. Once for me and my wife and once for my wife’s son (sidenote: when writing this, I realised that all three times, I wanted something to happen fast. Don’t ever let your decisions be governed by wanting something to happen fast!). If I want to seriously follow Christ, I need to pray for these sellers and do my best to feel no grudge towards them. 

Or, me and my wife were tricked into a rental contract of five year for a machine for our company, that had a forced insurance that made the monthly payment twice as expensive. Also in this case, I will need to do my best to love my enemy and turn the other cheek. At the times when this happened I didn’t think this way though. In fact, I said loads of angry things about these people. I can even still get angry sometimes, since we’re still paying the penalty fee for breaking the contract with the company. And at the fact that there are dishonest people in the world in general. And so on. But none of this changes the facts of my life or of the world. 

I could give more examples. But what this amounts to is to a large extent acceptance. Lack thereof. And pride. “These things happen, but they shouldn’t happen to me, because I’m so great…” 

Jesus taught humility and acceptance. And looking at these examples and numerous others, it’s easy to see ho much easier life would be if we practiced these things. And that we really have nothing to lose from doing so. But we don’t. If we did, our lives would be very different. We would feel different. A huge burden would lift from our shoulders. But we prefer to be angry because circumstances aren’t the way that we think that they ought to be.

These are some of the things that I do know. Things that I think that I could work with.

A helping hand

I have started to notice something interesting. Namely that the more present I am in what I’m doing and what is going on in general, I seem to be guided somehow. For example: I know what a good walking posture should feel like. Since my body is full of blockages and tensions though, I often fall back into a less than optimal posture. But when I’m present with my body and actively try to not go in and force anything with my mind, its movements and what is going on around me, it is as if my body assumes the right posture. 

It’s the same with breathing. 

From my experience, it feels sort of as if letting go and just allow is the most natural thing in the world, but at the same time the most difficult, because we have for such a long time practiced to force things. I believe that when we relax and let go, we actually allow God to take over and do things for us instead.