Breaking free from the PRISON of COMFORT

We were never meant to live like this. What has happened to us? Life should not consist of relaxation, comfort, pleasure, consumption and safety. Maybe when God said to Adam: “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground” (Genesis 3:19) it was not just meant just as a burden laid upon our shoulders. Maybe in a fallen world it’s not desirable to live any other way. Maybe life loses its meaning when we don’t have to work hard for anything anymore.

Let me ask you this: Do people that make safety and comfort their primary goals seem happy? I don’t have any statistics to back this up, but I’m pretty sure that there is a correlation between the use of anti-depressants and people’s level of comfort. I’m pretty sure that there is a correlation between depression and how many hours are spent on the sofa eating junk food. 

The world makes it easier than ever to be lazy, comfortable and engage in instant gratification. Today we have access to every item of convenience imaginable. We have endless access to entertainment and other distractions, fast food so we don’t have to cook, anti-depressants and sedatives so we don’t have to deal with our emotional problems, cars so we don’t have to walk, medications so we don’t have to take care of our bodies and wellfare so we don’t have to work. And since it becomes harder and harder to find work, while inflation eats up more and more of our salaries, there is less and less incentive to work. 

To top it all off, we can gratify every low desire imaginable like never before. At the store, in front of the computer, on our streaming services and on our smartphones. Shameful consumption that twenty years ago required an effort and to actually look another person in the eyes when we paid for it, can today be done entirely in secret. 

Until a few years ago I didn’t see these things as clearly as I do now. So I have my own demons to fight when it comes to the sad state that we’ve slowly been conditioned into. But I have let go of much since I started to see the troubled state of the world with clear eyes. And when I saw it, I knew that I had no choice. I can hide most things from other people. I can even fool myself that this is enough. But deep inside I know that it isn’t. My choices and actions will mercilessly shape who I am. I can never truly hide my behavior from myself. And I can certainly not hide it from God, who sees everything, knows every single thought that passes through my head and knows me infinitely better than I know myself. 

I’m not free from sloth and gluttony. But I refuse to give in to them and let them rule my life. I engage in overeating from time to time. Now and then I skip going to the gym. And I know that I cannot always trust myself to do the things that I’ve set out to do. Life often feels like an uphill battle. But whatever comes out of my struggles in the end, even if it’s nothing at all, it’s still better than resignation. 

Luckily we’re not alone in this. Just as God has a will for us and cares about our actions, he also understands us. Understands what we’re going through. Understands the world that we are living in. Walks with us in our struggles. Forgives our missteps and failures. 

This does not imply taking the position of infants, where we just assume that God will do everything for us, with no effort on our part. God does expect that we try our best. That we don’t just let go and give in. That we don’t start making excuses. And it’s so easy to start making excuses. I know. Because I’ve struggled with many sins throughout my life. And these struggles have entailed loads of excuses for letting go and giving in. Loads of justifications for why sin isn’t really sin, even though I know in my heart that it is. Justifications for instant gratification so that I don’t have to deal with the suffering and frustration that resisting desire often causes. Justifications that often sound insane when I look back at them. 

It’s easier than ever to just let ourselves go. At the same time, it’s harder and harder to make a different choice. If we want to feel powerful, free and alive the world will work against us. We will often have a baggage from having lived an unconscious life. Bad habits and debts to pay off are examples from my and my wife’s life. And if we want to build a business to stand on our own, regulations and tax burdens make things harder than ever. Regulations and tax burdens that big corporations easily can pay their way out of.

And temptations are everywhere. Which in itself is another challenge. Because it takes time and energy to resist them. It would be so easy to just let go, stop caring and let the government take care of us. Unhealthy food is the cheapest food, so we could easily stick to that, let our bodies decay, get comfortable and numb. Entertainment and distractions are cheap and often free. We only need a trip to the doctor and the pharmacy to escape our emotions. 

I know that I want to get out of this invisible prison that I unknowingly have allowed myself to get trapped in. To me it’s not even a choice. I’d rather live a life of struggle, frustration and disappointment every single day and die disappointed and struggling, than giving in to a meaningless life of comfort, pleasure and instant gratification. Because to me, this type of life isn’t living at all. This type of life is the equivalent of being a walking dead. You don’t live. You just exist.

When I look at what our culture tries to turn us into, I see disconnection from ourselves and disconnection from others. I see numbness. This is not what I want for me or anyone else. I want to feel alive and free even if it’s painful and frustrating. And I’m willing to endure anything to escape our invisible prison. I want to be fully human, the way God intended me to be. And I refuse to become the willless animal that the world wants to turn me into. 

Free will is one of God’s most precious and vital gifts. Let’s not waste it.

You are loved and your life matters!

Your life is not a brief series of random, meaningless events before absolute oblivion. Your life means something. It is not meant to be squandered on pontless distractions and pleasures. No matter where you are or who you are, you are important. You are important to God and you are important to the world. Your choices and actions matter. 

In the past, we may have had to take up real swords to fight living, physical enemies. But today the sword is proverbial. And the war is against meaningless amusements, empty pleasures, addictions and corrupt values. 

You may think that I’m exaggerating here, but I’m not. Because this is a battle for our bodies and minds. And these things kill our spirits. 

To top it all off we did not get to where we are by accident. To a place where we’re surrounded by tools for self-destruction every minute of every hour of every day. This is by design.

No one is going to praise us for taking up this fight. But praise is not the reason why we do what we do. The point is not to be recognized as such or not by others. But those of us that refuse to just mindlessly go along with whatever degeneration our culture offers are heroes. Because it takes strength to go up against all that is preying on our lower natures. It takes courage to go against the cultural norms. And it takes determination to stick to our resolutions.

Best of all is that in this story everyone can be a hero. It doesn’t matter who you are when or where your particular journey ends. All that matters is that you start the journey and keep on walking. God will take care of the rest. And he has the rest of eternity to make you perfect. 

I know that it’s so easy to give in. But whatever you put on the table God and his Holy Spirit can work with that. This is not some airy fairy “is this real or just in my imagination”. You will have real spiritual powers coming to your aid. If you’ve sunk deep in the habit of being distracted you may not notice it at first. But they are there to help you. Eventually things will start to fall into place. Eventually life will not feel so random anymore.

I’m not sitting on some high horse talking down to you from a place of perfection and enlightenment. Just like many other people I’ve made a mess of a lot of things in my life. A mess of bad habits and financial troubles. A mess that I’m still stuck cleaning up. 

The world makes it easy for us to mess up. But this does not take away my, or anyone else’s personal responsibility. No one put a gun to our heads and forced us to mess up our lives. However, as I’ve already stated, I believe that there are people (and perhaps other forces) that want us to be bound to our messes because it benefits them. When the scales fall from our eyes, we will inevitably see all of the things that are there to enslave us. And to me at least, it is obvious that we didn’t get here by accident. 

But it is still our lack of consciousness that allows it to happen. We are still the ones allowing circumstances and our reactions to them to make the choices for us. Our controllers just provide the temptations. We are the ones that are careless with our thoughts, words and actions. They just prey on our carelessness. We are the ones that don’t keep God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit firmly in our minds. Those that want to hurt us just fill up the empty space.

Our past mistakes don’t have to be a waste. It is a cliché to talk about learning from our mistakes. But as with basically all clichés, it contains a lot of wisdom. Because how often don’t we just beat ourselves up for our mistakes without learning anything from them? But when we instead take a step back and try to figure out what went wrong, growth can come pretty fast.

And remember, when you decide to take your power back and say no you have unstoppable powers on your side. God, his son Jesus Christ and his Holy Spirit are there to help you. The almighty, triune, all-loving creator of the universe is on your side. These are not just empty words. It is the truth. You just have to let them in.

Those that want to hurt us tell us that life has no meaning. That we are a problem and even a cancer on the planet. That the world is full of useless people. Such ideas are the real cancer. 

The lack of meaning is one of the major sources of the difficulties that many of us face. The lack of meaning causes many to just grasp for whatever little momentary pleasure that they can get their hands on, with no concern for the future. This is why ideas matter. Why world views matter. They shape our thoughts, words and action. These nihilistic, misanthropic ideas turn “cancer on the planet” into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because what is the point of trying if we’re just destined for oblivion in a meaningless world? A world that is just getting worse and worse, with no real real hope on the horizon. Where the best we can hope for is painful solutions that may or may not solve our problems. In such a world it would be very tempting to say: “Let’s just party till the lights go out.” 

This is not my vision. It is not God’s vision either. So do your best, work with what you’ve got and never lose your hope. An infinitely better future is on the horizon. One where no one is superfluous or useless. One where everyone, regardless of who they are, matter. 

You are loved, deeply cared for and your life matters!

Frame photo by Susan Wilkinson on Unsplash

Life-choices, love, lovelessness, good, evil

God is love. Whenever we act in a loveless manner we shut God out. We move a little further away from God. Of course we don’t know that this is what we are doing. But if we pay attention to how we feel inside we notice that something just doesn’t feel right. We might discover feelings such as sadness and anxiousness.

Before I go on, I want to pause to give you a picture of what I am talking about. My wife likes to bake sweets. She makes delicious cupcakes and apple pie among other things. She loves to make these things for me, for her daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend and friends. And of course for herself as well. For us. 

I also have the option of going to the store and buy a very delicious chocolate bar, made by huge, shining machines in a huge factory. My wife’s apple pie or cupcakes may contain somewhere around five ingredients. The chocolate bar may contain thirty ingredients, all carefully selected to make it as profitable as possible. And to make my inner caveman go nuts and just mindlessly munch it down without really thinking of what I’m doing. Many of these ingredients I have to look up online to find out exactly what they are.

See the difference? My animal instincts don’t, but I sure do. 

If I’ve gorged on processed, mass-produced junk long enough, my tastebuds might even prefer it over that which is made with love and care by a person. 

As I said in the first paragraph, we often don’t notice when love is missing. We are often so out of touch with ourselves that we don’t even notice that we feel bad. That something inside of us protests. That it is signalling that something is wrong. Because the world is so filled with things that keep us occupied. That pull us away from our direct experience of life. This is by design.

But when someone points this out to us and we understand it, we can’t help but notice it. What was priorly invisible to us suddenly is everywhere (We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one [1 John 5:19]). This is similar to “good and evil” or why not the Freudian “eros and thanatos”. This is how we label in a good way. Not to become narrow minded or dismiss people that are different from us, but to more easily understand the world and our being in it. To deepen this understanding. In this case so that we can avoid what hurts us, others and our relationship with God. And why it is to be avoided. 

Before I move on, I want to add a little disclaimer. What I’m about to say is not meant to shame anyone. I know how hard it is to break habits and I still struggle with quite a few myself. I even up to quite recently bought mass-produced food and ate too much of it and I still have a problem with over-eating sometimes. 

It is when we stop trying, even though we have the strength to do so, that we let evil take a hold on us. God only gives us more than we can handle if it serves some higher purpose. Never to just make us feel bad about ourselves.

That being said… It is obvious that when we treat others with compassion, kindness and the likes we act in a loving manner. And it is also obvious that when we treat others as mere objects to be exploited for our gain, pleasure or entertainment, or when we downright hurt and condemn others, we act in a loveless manner. 

But when we pay for mass produced trash that poisons our bodies, we are also acting in a loveless manner. Because there is no love towards ourselves in the act. And there is no love for the consumer in the production. 

When we watch pornography or mindless entertainment that poison our minds and souls with destructive values or fuel our instincts with perversion, we act in a loveless manner. And the same goes for the values we take in via music.

“Aren’t we supposed to have any fun?” you might ask. 

Well, go ahead and have as much “fun” as you want. I believe that it is your absolute right to destroy yourself and I would never dream of trying to stop you from doing so. As long as you don’t directly hurt others with your actions, in my view, you should be allowed to do whatever you may please by worldly authorities. 

But maybe, just maybe, there is something infinitely better that that opens up to us when we exercise a bit of discernment. Maybe the comparison between gold and mud does not even begin to describe what we gain by removing that which is loveless from our lives. 

Believe me, there is a whole world waiting for you, right here and right now, filled with love, truth and beauty, once you start removing that which is hurting you from your life. The choice is easy once you see it with clear eyes. It is a choice between love and lovelessness, eros and thanatos, good and evil, happiness and dispair. It isn’t more complicated than that. It never was. Allow the scales to fall from your eyes and you will see it too.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

On pleasure PART 2

I’ve come to feel that often when the same pleasures are repeated over and over again with no variation, they just become empty gratifications of the senses. I think food is a very good example of this. If I eat something that I enjoy, but which I know isn’t healthy for me, over and over again, it doesn’t contribute anything beyond the momentary pleasure that it gives me. 

And it gives me some pain. Because I don’t feel good emotionally if I know that I’ve indulged in something that I know is bad for me. And in the long run my body obviously suffers as well.

Strangely enough, the emotional reaction doesn’t seem to occur if I enjoy something that I only have access to occasionally, or something completely novel. Or maybe it isn’t so strange. Because here one time is more or less no time. If I enjoy an ice cream from a cozy ice cream café with some exotic flavors in the sun a couple of times a year, it won’t affect either my weight or my bank account in any significant way. But if I buy an ice cream at the super market every other day, it will affect both. 

I will also have a harder time to completely enjoy the more refined pleasures, if I have already gratified my senses too much in other ways. Because then I’m adding more to that which is already too much.

Furthermore, this also affects our self-discipline. Because it’s about delaying gratification until I can experience pleasure in a meaningful way. 

If I manage to keep this principle, it will in all likelihood both enrich my life and help me keep my health. I believe that principle should be applied with some moderation. I should not beat myself up if I don’t manage to follow it completely all the time. We set intentions, we aim to follow them to the best of our ability, but we accept that change is hard and that we will fail and fall back into old habits from time to time. This goes for how we approach pleasure, as well as everything else where we wish to see a change in how we handle things.

At least, this is the best approach I can come up with.

Photo by Jeff Siepman on Unsplash

On pleasure PART 1

Photo by Tomáš Petz on Unsplash

I think that anything that is such a significant part of life as pleasure deserves some conscious reflection. After all, God gave us our senses and our ability to feel pleasure by using them. Therefore I think that it’s clear that God wants us to enjoy ourselves. So why shouldn’t pleasure be important?

When I was in my late teens to early twenties, I was a total hedonist. After that, I’ve tried many different approaches to pleasure, without thinking truly consciously about it. As with many other things, I’ve ran into different teachings and ideas, often without thinking about the philosophy behind them, and adopted them as my own. This series of posts is my first attempt at actually reach some clarity on this. 

Basically, as with everything, I believe that just the thing that I’ve been missing for so many years with regards to pleasure: doing things consciously and with intent, is what is most important if we want to sort this out. And “sort this out” is the right way to put it. Because yes, most people, including myself, have made a mess of their relationship with pleasure.

I believe that we need to seriously start asking questions such as: How do I want to feel pleasure? In what ways? What constraints do I need to put on myself? Why? 

Doing this is not a way to make life more boring or less pleasurable. In fact, it’s the opposite. It’s about making our ways of feeling pleasure more refined, varying, exciting and better for us in the long run.

The "normal" is insane

Photo by Theo Eilertsen Photography on Unsplash

We pay huge businesses money to poison us with unhealthy foods and justify it by saying: “you have to live a little.” I’m not saying this to judge. I’ve struggled quite a lot with kicking unhealthy foods in my life and justified doing so in all kinds of ways. And until my mid twenties I was quite overweight. And besides, we do so many things out of habit without thinking about it and never question it. I’ve done this too. I probably still do, but since I do it unconsciously out of habit, I don’t know about it. But I try fo think about it, because even if I don’t dismiss everything about our culture, I don’t think that its values will bring us any kind of happiness either.

We accept a financial system where one percent ot the population has more than half the assets. We acquire debt so that we can, again pay huge corporations, to consume their products. Partially because we think that they are going to make us happy. But also partially because we constantly compare ourselves to others. We pay off these debts for years, while those at the top of the pyramid rub their hands together, living off of pushing these products to us, while we consume to chase happiness. And we spend most of our time and energy working so that we can continue being consumers.

We know that the cliché that the best things in life are free is true. Things such as spirituality, love, connection with other people, walks in nature and so on. And yet, if we look at what we prioritize, these show up pretty far down the list. Why, otherwise, would we spend a lifetime in debt so that we can own more stuff?

There is nothing new about these insights. On some level we know that it is so. But we don’t want to break free from it. Because change is difficult. Staying the same is easy, even if we do so at the cost of living with a constant dull, mental pain. 

I’ve just given a few examples here. And none of these examples apply to everyone or to everyone equally. What I want to encourage you to do, is to take a look at what you take for granted. What in your life do you truly value? What do you truly want? And what do you want simply because society and other people have told you that you want it?

Comfort is spiritual DEATH

Relax. Take it easy. Get comfortable. Feel pleasure. Consume. Numb your thoughts with social media and TV-series. Numb your emotions with happy pills. Feel safe. 

Comfort is an invisible prison. Insidiously it has come creeping up on us. This need for life to be easy. To follow the path of least resistance. And the clock keeps on ticking. Life passes by seemingly unnoticeably. One day we might wake up and wonder what the hell we have prioritized.

This has happened to me. Or it was really more of a gradual awakening. But there is one word that keeps coming back when I consider how we spend our time, energy and money. How I’ve often spent my time, energy and money. The word is “madness”. We stuff our faces with processed foods full of additives, unhealthy fats and carbs with a high GI because it tastes good. We save all year so we can spend our vacations laying on a beach drinking umbrella drinks. And we spend the rest of the money on appliances that will help us avoid doing anything that exhausts us more than necessary. 

On our jobs we only work when our boss sees us. Because we see it as a bad thing to make an effort if we’re not rewarded for it or to avoid punishment. Laziness has become an ideal to strive for, even if we don’t like to name it “laziness”. 

Our wallets do not decide our level of freedom either. They only decide what kind of metal our prison bars are made of. If we have little money, we take as much as possible if it’s free or cheap. If we have a lot of money, we buy luxury items. But it’s the same numbing comforts and pleasures, even if the former most of the time kill us physically a little faster. 

I saw this quite long ago. I have seen it more clearly some times than others. But then I come up with these excuses: “Just this once”, “I deserve this”, “It’s been stressful and I need to relax”, “What’s wrong with enjoying life?”

But whatever comes with a literal or metaphorical hangover cannot be okay to indulge in. Not ever. No matter if the hangover comes in the form of feeling like crap or a day or two, or if it’s more of a slow process, where one’s whole life becomes like a drawn out hangover of consequences due to daily choices that numb the spirit and eats up one’s life force. Choices that have stopped being choices and have instead turned to habits and behavioral patterns. 

I believe that in this case anger is quite a healthy response. Not towards ourselves, but towards a culture that preys on our lower natures. You did not do this consciously towards yourself. No one would. Our lives are very much governed by assumptions. And because of the nature of assumptions, until we are made aware of them, they are hidden in plain sight. You did this because your culture told you that it was the right thing to do and no one ever gave you the idea of questioning it. 

Now the question is, do you want to feed your comfortable prison? Or do you want to use your anger to feed the flames of your passion to break free? Do you want to allow distractions and pleasures to lull you even further into sleep? Or do you want to bring conscious awareness into your life, actions and choices and wake up?

Alcohol part 2

The thing is that I’ve been feeling very connected to myself lately. I’ve been meditating and getting in touch with my body a lot and seen some remarkable results. I wonder if this is how alcohol is supposed to make you feel when you’re in touch with your body. I’m not sure whether I’ll ever drink again or not. If I do, I’ll let you know how it made me feel. But we’ll see. The way I feel about it right now, is that I don’t want to take anything that makes me feel this way into my body. I’ll probably see what happens if I just drink one glass.

Alcohol part 1

Those that know me know that I’m no moralist when it comes to intoxicants. My foundational belief is that all have an absolute right to do whatever they want with their bodies and what we choose to put into them, is a matter between ourselves, God and our loved ones. But I haven’t drunk alcohol in a few months. Then, the day before writing this, I decided to buy a small bottle of wine, just 33 centiliters, and drank it together with some bread and cheese. 

At night I woke up with this slightly “mushy” feeling in my tongue, which I recognize from being hungover in my past. And when I woke up in the morning, my body felt heavy and I felt a bit shut off. After 45 minutes, I started to feel a slight nausea. And as I’m writing this, a little more than an hour after I woke up, I still feel sluggish and sort of disconnected from myself.