Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Words are not just words. Words are magic spells. They can turn you into a right-winger or a left-winger, they can turn you into a catholic or a protestant, they can turn you into an atheist or an New Age spiritual seeker. They can make you feel miserable and unhappy, they can make you sick or furious. They can make you kill. But they can also make you feel better.
They can give you reasons for living. They can provide excuses and explanations
they can change the world and build empires, they can make people go to war and they can make people end the war.

Monday, December 22, 2008

This diagram shows the population growth the past 9000 years.

Saturday, December 20, 2008

There is a mental judge in your head
who judges everything around you.
This judge is particularly active on commuter trains
and if you recently have given up smoking.
“Oh, what a big red nose she has. That’s not pretty.”
“And look at him. He looks like a complete idiot.”
“And what about them? What boors!
They have probably sold their souls long ago.”
Then another voice might pop in:
“Don’t judge other people.
You know damn well that you have to wake up from such nonsense.
Remember that this unjust judge is also judging yourself.”

OK, now you have two inner voices.
Who will win this trial?
What do you think?
Isn’t it about time now to stop listening to both of them?
Or is it better to let them go on with their debate as they like
but not get caught up in it?
Is this a third part of you watching the other two?
It's getting crowded.
This is ridiculous.
Haven’t you more important things to deal with?
Can't you find a better strategy?
You can pick up a book or a newspaper and read something.
You can listen to some good music in your iPod?
You can go online on your laptop.
Maybe you can get some work done.

Sometimes the inner voice start to sing idiotic little songs
like a drunkard on a park bench?
"Jingle bells, Jingle bells..."
Jesus Christ. That’s too much.
Now you really have to tell him to shut up.
It actually works sometimes.

But don’t worry.
All this is completely normal.
Most people are sick and tired of their inner voices
They are sick and tired of their inner debates.
Remember that you could always have been much worse off.
I mean, some people have to take heavy drugs
or drink a lot of alcohol to escape them
and some people go completely crazy
To some people the inner voices are so bad
that they can't take it
and they have to kill themselves.

Friday, December 19, 2008

The 650 commandments.

You shall love yourself.
You shall not be judgmental.
You shall be positive.
You shall not be miserable.
You shall not complain.
You shall not beat yourself up.
You shall have a optimistic outlook on life.
You shall be focused and goal orientated.
You shall exercise.
You shall have self-esteem.
You shall radiate health.
You shall look good.
You shall be orderly.
You shall be consistent with your meditation practice.
You shall be decisive.
You shall be self-confident.
You shall be relaxed.
You shall not broad on the past.
You shall plan for the future but live in the now.
You shall be realistic.
You shall improve yourself.
You shall not be jealous.
You shall not be envious.
You shall not panic.
You shall not feel sorry for yourself.
You shall have stamina.
You shall not think to much.
You shall brush your teeth at least twice a day.
You shall love your enemy because he is your best teacher.
You shall have trust in our economic system.
You shall find an approved meaning to your life.
You shall find an approved direction to your life.
You shall get yourself approved values.
You shall be street-smart.
You shall look gorgeous.
You shall always try your best.
You shall be grateful.
You shall pay attention to your body posture.
You shall not be sloppy.
You shall not drink to much alcohol.
You shall not smoke.
You shall eat vitamin supplies.
You shall not be sarcastic.
You shall be attentive in school, and later in life, at work.
You shall be wide awake, always.
You shall not watch to much nonsense on television.
You shall not read too much.
You shall not drink too much coffee.
You shall get enough sleep.
You shall be creative.
You shall not be a jerk.
You shall believe in yourself.
You shall wear a hat when it's cold outside.
You shall breathe deep slow breaths.
You shall have a good sex life.
You shall not mistrust.
You shall not...

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Some people are convinced that they are inferior
and some people are convinced that they are superior.
Some people you meet look down on you and some look up to you.
You can’t change that.
How can you expect from others to change their beliefs
when you can’t even change your own?

Some people see themselves as miserable losers
when they actually are the winners in the game of life.
What a joke!
People with good jobs and family have to eat Prozac pills
because they are so unhappy with themselves and their life situation.
They expect more from life.

Extroverted people believe
that introverted people try to escape reality
and introverted people believe
that extroverted people are superficial and try to run away from themselves.

Some people live with terrifying beliefs.
They have to stay drunk or drugged until they die.

It is wrong to criticize people who deceive themselves.
Maybe they would have to kill themselves if they had not had their delusions.
Maybe they have nothing else to live for.
What do you know?

Most people don’t know that their thoughts are not theirs.
They don't know that they have got them from their parents, teachers and friends.

This means that the decisions you make are not really your decisions.
Your goals are not your goals
and your dreams about the future are not your dreams.
Isn't this weird?

Some people try to guide you because they think that you have fooled yourself
and you feel sorry for them because you think that they have fooled themselves.

Saturday, December 13, 2008

We lived as apes and hunters and gatherers for millions of years. Then we suddenly settled down and became farmers. At some point we began to build cities, civilizations and empires. 500 BC or so, something happened. In China, India, in the Middle East and in Greece fundamental changes in our ways of looking at ourselves and the world took place. Logos replaced Mythos. Moral replaced sacrifice and rituals. Karen Armstrong speaks about this period in her book “The Great Transformation”.

Then the scientific revolution took us to another level. The age of enlightenment begun in the middle of the seventeenth century. Beliefs lost its meaning. Reason became important. We stopped listening to the Church when it insisted that the sun revolved around the earth. We had proof now that the earth is revolving around the sun and the church had to back down and admit that they were wrong. The church was no longer infallible and that was a very important realization. If they were wrong about this they could be wrong about other things.

Anyway, now we find ourselves again living in the beginning of a new era. We have left science, religion, superstition and ideology behind. We begin to wake up to the Now, as Eckhart Tolle puts it. It is not that science is wrong or bad, we still depend heavily on it, it is simply too limited because it is only dealing with what can be measured, the world of form. (The totality is so much bigger. We can only measure small, small fractions of the totality.) And what is also important, all scientists live their life according to an ideology. They are not unbiased. They are right-wingers or liberals or sometimes even socialists. They live comfortable upper middle class lives in comfortable upper middle class areas of the world. And they gladly sell their soul to anyone with power, like dogs. They don't care who the master is as long as he feed them. They don't mind working for the arms industry, for a Hitler or a Stalin, or for the Devil himself.
But their time is up now.

So. This is the dawn of the age of awakening. Though science, religion, superstition and ideology seem to be stronger than ever, wherever you go you will meet people who have had enough. I have met Arabs, Jews, Indians. Africans, Europeans and Americans who say: "I don't care about religion or politics anymore. I don't care about a career in any field. I simply want to live my life in peace."
Such people belong to a new kind of human being.

Friday, December 5, 2008

Rubin's vase



You can look at life and say to yourself: “Life sucks and then you die.”
And you can look at life and say: "It's amazing! A human being consists of forty thousand billion cells. How can all these cells be synchronized? Every second is a miracle."
These two ways of looking at life is like looking at "Rubin’s vase"- both ways makes sense.

One part of you comes up with one kind of explanation, another part comes up with something else. One part of you can easily deceive the other part. Whom is cheating whom? Isn't all this strange? A human being have so many different voices in his head and what is even more strange, they change over the years. Nothing is permanent. There is no permanent you.

It is therefore important to remind yourself, over and over again, that none of these explanations is the truth. They are explanations, mental speculations, concepts, theories, ideas, stories, maps, castles in the air, call them what you want, but don’t mix them up with yourself or the reality. Don't believe everything you hear from yourself. Don't trust yourself completely.

Sunday, November 30, 2008

We left Africa 100 000 years ago and are now at the end of our journey. The Neanderthals died out 50 000 years ago and so did the Java man. A species is not forever.
We have had a long life. We are like an old man and old men don't change. So don't expect mankind to change. Old men are displeased and complain about high taxes. Old men certainly don't want to wake up from illusions. They don't love. They are proud of their war decorations but they don't want to talk about what happened there, in the in the villages.

Sunday, November 16, 2008

A charter for compassion without religion


Cave paintings of Shamans


We lived as hunters and gatherers for more than 150 000 years. 70 000 years ago there was some kind of change in our ways. We began to decorate our axes. 40 000 years ago there was another big change in our way of living. Art, cave paintings and religious rituals began. The Shamans became our guides. This is the dawn of the human culture.
The agricultural revolution ten thousand years ago was another dramatic change in our way of living. (And it was not due to a genetic change, a mutation.) We suddenly became farmers and settled down for some reason. Maybe because the time was ripe. Who knows? Anyway, our religions changed. War, property and social class became important. Slavery was introduced. Narrow mindedness and egoism began to thrive. The masculine principle replaced a feminine or equal lifestyle. When we lived as hunters and gatherers private property did not exist. We spent less than two hours a day working. The rest of the day we simply chilled out, sang songs, danced and told stories. When we became farmers we did nothing but worked and complained, if we were not at war.

The industrial revolution in the nineteenth century was another change in our material evolution. The farm hands became workers in the factories. They began to look down on the country bumpkins, as the farmers looked down on the nomads 10 000 years ago.

Now, however, we are forced to change our ways again. Either we find a way to live in harmony with each other and the planet earth or we will be replaced by some other species.

I believe that this fundamental change implies that love and friendliness, which is also in our biology, must become our guiding lights, not competition, power and intelligence. I believe that many people today are aware that this change has already begun.

It is definitely possible, or maybe very probable, that we will ruin the planet before we wake up to a more conscious and harmonious way of living, but there is a small chance, I believe, that we will realize what is at stake before it is too late.

If there are other civilizations out there in space somewhere who are more advanced than our, they must definitely have found ways to overcome animosity, hatred and war. Otherwise, they would have killed each other long ago and disappeared.
Imagine that you have a job in the engine room at a big cruise liner when a fire starts. You rush off to wake up the engineer but he is drunk and tells you to fuck off. So you hurry to the captain but he refuses to let you in. Nobody is listening to you, not your fellow sailors and none of the passengers. Everybody seems to be drugged or drunk and caught up in silly fistfights. They tell you that you are ruining the trip with your endless goddamn complaining. They tell to be more positive and optimistic. So you find yourself standing there at the gunwale looking at the horizon. The sun has just set and amazing colors paint the sky and the sea. You feel lonely and because you're not exactly sober yourself you can't really complain about the other drunkards. You know that there are other people on the ship who know about the fire, it's just that you, for strange reasons, cannot get in contact with them and there is nothing you can do about it.

Saturday, November 15, 2008

The true nature of a human being is to a very large extent silly. Take a close look at yourself. Listen to your inner voice. Are you impressed with what you hear? Are you impressed with your thoughts? Is it not amazing how much nonsense and stupidities a human brain can come up with, this masterpiece of the evolution? This is your true nature. The clever stuff is of course also in your true nature, but that is just a small portion of the totality.

When this information eventually sinks in you don’t have to be upset anymore when people around you seem silly, stupid, vulgar or blind. Of course they are. We are silly, stupid, vulgar and blind.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

No alcohol. No drugs. No nicotine. No religion. No superstition. No ideology. No football team. No consolation by eating or escaping by working to much.
No self-righteousness and no self self-contempt. No admiration and no depreciation of other people.

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Human beings are pack animals. We follow the leader no matter what. He can take us to hell if he wants, and we are so happy to follow. We love to be led, like sheep or cows.

A dog is a domesticated wolf and a human being is a domesticated ape. We managed to domesticate not only a bunch of animals but ourselves as well.

To domesticate a pack animal it is necessary to replace the leader. By systematic killing of all refractory and obstinate individuals manageable clumps were formed

Tuesday, November 4, 2008



"A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all."
Rumi

Thursday, October 30, 2008


The first step in the awakening process is to question yourself. If you can't question yourself and your world view you're lost. What if you have fooled yourself? Maybe your Liberal agenda is just a mental construction, a castle in the air, like Fascism, Communism or Catholicism? Could it be that you have mixed up the map with territory? Could it be that you see the world through colored and distorting lenses? Could it be that you're not an enlightened and superior westerner? Could it be that you're just a human being, like all the rest here on this planet? Could it be that you're not broadminded? What if you are, really, a narrow minded philistine bourgeois? Maybe you're not waking up. Maybe your meditations and affirmations are just mind games.

The mind is constantly producing words, ideas and fantasies about the world. Nothing is wrong with that. It is something it has evolved to do and it has proved to be very useful. Planning for different future outcomes is a normal process and so is brooding on the past. "What went wrong? Can I learn something from my mistakes?" It is not a problem if you leave the now, the reality, also for lengthy periods of time, the problems appear if you don't come back, if you settle down in your castle in the air. The problems appear when you pick out one idea and stick to it like a religious fundamentalist. Then you are in trouble. You might say to yourself: “Hitler was a great man and he did what he could to clean up Europe from filth.” or “Ronald Reagan did a good job in Central America to stop Communism.” or "Life has no meaning until you invent one." Whatever you believe, know that it is a mental construct, a map, not the truth. Good maps and useless maps are both maps, not the territory.

However, you will probably not begin to question your self and your misperceptions until some disaster happens to you, a divorce, the death of someone near, a bankruptcy, whatever. Why would you question yourself if everything is fine? In that way afflictions can really be blessings. But core beliefs and misunderstandings are so extremely strong and tenacious that afflictions are usually not sufficient. Many people experience horrible things but are not waking up anyway. Something else is necessary. Here the synchronicities can be very helpful. When everything is fine the synchronicities usually don’t mean much to you, if you notice them at all. When you are vulnerable and more open, however, they can sometimes show you a glimpse of a greater scheme of things. Life is so much bigger than you, and far more mysterious than your narrow minded misperceptions of it. However, afflictions and synchronicities aren't necessarily sufficient either. Something more is needed. Grace, maybe. I don't know.

Anyway, alcohol, drugs, positive thinking or weird religions makes,of course, also the awakening impossible. It is lost in a fog, the same old fog where you have already spent so many years of your life.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008



Suffering is not only for the unfortunate. The four noble truths are considered the essence of Buddhism and the first noble truth is: “Life means suffering“. We have to endure physical suffering such as sickness, injury, tiredness, old age and eventually death; and we have to endure psychological suffering like fear, frustration, depression and disappointment. What Buddhism is about is the path to the end of suffering, but that path is only for monks. We common people can only hope for a more fortunate future reincarnation.

Well, medical science and all the religions and psychological schools are trying to reduce the suffering or inventing explanations to it to give it a meaning? Which method is the best? Alcohol, marijuana and tobacco can also be very helpful; frantic work, the fanatic support of a football team, running and self hypnotism are also useful, as well as TV sets and iPod’s. There are many different ways to escape psychological suffering - delusions, denial, rationalizations, you name it.

I have tried out many alleys in my life but for the time being I’m into acceptance. (This is because I have read Russ Harris, Jon Kabat-Zinn and Steven Hayes.) This seems to me as a new approach. Acceptance is not pleasant, not enjoyable and it is not leading anywhere, not even to enlightenment. It is about being here and now with whatever there is here and now, pain, the endless nagging mind, an ugly ego, all of it. There is no way out. This is it. Whatever thoughts or feelings that I have in my head and in my body, I now try to let them be there, simply because, as Jon Kabat-Zinn says, they are there already. (Physical suffering shall of course be treated. If you have a splinter in your finger, you shall not try to accept it, you shall take it out and if you have a bad head ache you can take an aspirin, but it is different with psychological pain. If you, for example, feel bad because you have been too egoistic this feeling should not be medicated or escaped. Medication is of course important if you are deeply depressed, but as soon as you are reasonably back on your feet again you have to start working with your delusions again.)

However, life is not just suffering. Sometimes life can be so kind to us. How could we possible survive if there were no love at all to be found, only acceptance of all the suffering. Love stories, sunsets, big oak trees, crazy little children, chirping little birds, jokes, friendship, such tings balances the suffering and that is why they are so important. “Chirping little birds and crazy little children are very important.” This is my first noble truth.

What is awakening? When we talk about a green apple or a red house everybody knows what we are talking about, but when we talk abut the ego, the false ego, the true self, the mind, the I, spirituality or awakening, everybody seem to have different ideas about what we are discussing. Here are my present ideas about awakening:

Nothing is permanent. Everything will pass. You fall asleep at night and you wake up in the morning. It is the same thing with spiritual awakening. It comes and goes. Awakening is not a once and for all event, but the waking up from a daydream, again and again. Suddenly we are lost in our thoughts again and suddenly we wake up to the here and now. To be completely lost in thoughts and beliefs without this intermittent awakenings to the the fact this was just thoughts or beliefs, is to live in an unawakened state of mind. It is to be mesmerized or bewitched.

Thursday, October 16, 2008


15 % of the population of developed countries suffers severe depression. (WHO)

Everyone will at some time in their life be affected by depression, their own or someone else’s. (Australian government statistics)

15 % of depressed people will commit suicide. (National Quality Health Care Report)

One in three American children suffers from depression. (National Mental Health Organization)

26 % of Americans ages 18 and older suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder. (National Institute of Mental Health)

Depression and anxiety disorders are common all over the world. And aren’t diagnosable mental disorders just the tip off the iceberg? How many people out there are just feeling low, miserable, unhappy or anxious without being actually sick? And how many people hide their sadness or worries behind a mask of optimism and happiness? And how many people suppress their misery with alcohol, cigarettes, pills, excessive work, excessive exercise, TV, computer games or weird hobbies and weird religion? If you feel miserable you are for sure not alone.

So, what can we do, we who can't afford another therapist or a new life coach? Should we get ourselves one more self help book on positive thinking and the importance of loving ourselves? Should we simply pull ourselves together, pick ourselves up, get a better outlook on life and let the sunshine in?

Spontaneous, sudden, deep and lasting spiritual awakening is possible, for some people, (Eckhart Tolle and Byron Katie for example). However, many people, like me, have experienced partial and quite deep spiritual awakenings but we have slipped back down in the ditch again, and again. For us, and for all the depressed and lonely people who have never experienced any spiritual breakthroughs, spiritual books and teachings about the blessings with enlightenment and cosmic love are not very helpful. Tell a depressed person to be more positive, more loving, or that he need to live in the now instead of brooding on the past and worry about the future and see what is happening. A depressed person can’t think positive and he can’t live in the now. This is the very problem. How do we get out of the misery? What can we do? This is the question.

I have found Russ Harris book `The Happiness Trap´ very helpful. And also, of course, Jon Kabat-Zinns books. Eckhart Tolles books are wonderful but not when you’re stuck in the mud. And you have to have had some previous spiritual experiences to understand him, I think. If you’re feeling low the spiritual teachers can make you feel even lower because you feel that spirituality is only for the chosen few. This is the problem with the spiritual teachings. They are not helpful for us down and outs. And this is difficult to understand for those who have never experienced depression.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

I don’t believe in a mankind living in harmony with nature and the planet. We will keep on polluting and destroying. Nothing can wake up the Wall Street boys and their likes around the world from their hypnotic trance. They are like religious fundamentalists. They even dress like religious fundamentalists. No wake up call is loud enough, not even a stock market crash. Now the Siberian tundra is melting away which has the effect that the methane that was bound in the permanently frozen ground is released to the atmosphere. Methane increases the greenhouse effect dramatically. Within ten or twenty years we are all gone.

There is no hope for mankind. There is no future for us and this is hard to accept. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross describes five steps in the processing of a tragic fact. She calls them “The five stages of grief” and here are my interpretations of them.

1. Denial.
“Don’t be so negative. Science will for sure come up with something. Or, what if there is no greenhouse effect. Some scientists believe that the greenhouse effect is nothing but a myth and some believe that it will be balanced by global dimming. And what if it is simply variations in the radiation from the sun that is affecting our climate. Everything depends on who you listen to. Don’t worry. Worry will only make you more worried.”

2. Anger.
“How can people be so damned blind? How come they don’t see what is going on? What idiots they are! They fill their heads with nonsense, alcohol and endless idiocies from the television. They are afraid to open their eyes.”

3. Bargaining. “Give us hope, God, please and I promise to buy a hybrid car and change to low energy light bulbs. I mean, I have a lot of money in my pension funds. Think of me. Please.”

4. Depression.
“Why bother with anything? Life is utterly meaningless.”

5. Acceptance.
“This is how it is and I can’t do anything about it. We are, after all, nothing but a pack of crazy monkeys who has taken over the planet. And don't forget that all kinds of monkeys like to cuddle up together at night when it's scary in the jungle. We are not completely mad. Let´s enjoy these last rare moments. Let´s have some fun. Let's go and get some bananas. Let me pick your fleas. Baby, baby!”

When you fully realize and accept the fact that there is no hope for humanity, that we have no future, your life and your actions will change. You will, for example, find it idiotic to save money in pension funds. The life you live here and now will be far more important. Every day will be a blessing. Your awareness will be heightened and your appreciation of little things and insignificant details. Your love, but also your sadness, will increase.

Thursday, September 18, 2008

A man can be in love with two different women. He can love his wife, and his mistress. (This goes of course for women also. A woman can love her husband, and her lover.) Nothing is strange with this. Many men and women have had this experience.

A man can be deeply disgusted by the modern meat industry and how animals are treated, but nevertheless truly enjoy a steak and a beer.

A man can be very aware of how idiotic it is to smoke, but keep on smoking anyway.

It is not necessary to walk the talk. It is not necessary to choose. You can serve booth God and money. Isn't this obvious? We are all borne into this world of double standards and we have to live here, in this world, in the real world. Inner conflicts is something we have to learn to live with.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

In elite schools, colleges and universities, all over the world, bright young men and women study hard, sometimes very, very hard to get their degrees. Their parents are proud of them. Then they will pick a career in the arms industry, banking, a multinational corporation, the media industry or a government, and they will never ever question what they are doing. They are like robots. They will dress well, behave well and they will not worry about if their work is ethically defendable or not. They will construct the nuclear arms, the land mines, the cluster bombs and the splinter bombs. They will do the scientific research to figure out which weapons have the best effect. They will sign the contracts with the sweatshops in Asia and figure out the strategies to make sure that their particular company will not be hold responsible if criticism about child labor happen to pop up. They will plan the wars, the destabilization schemes and create the economic pressures on the poor to make them work harder. Often they hide what they are doing behind a mask of Christianity. They are the successful ones and they will not change.

A radical change is much needed here on this planet, a new way of living, an awakening. It is not warmth, joy and love that direct the actions of the elite. But they will not change and they will not wake up from their hypnotic trance. I can't wake them up. I can't change the way they look at life, nobody can change them. I can't even change myself. Tell me, how shall I deal with thoughts like this?

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Science of today tells us that all matter was formed out of nothing some 15 billion years ago. And then life emerged out of the whirling dust and sand and gravel 12 billion years later.

As I walk across the golf course on my way to work in the crisp early morning, I feel I ought to be amazed. The sky, the heavy rain clouds at the horizon, the trees, my feet that keep on walking by themselves, my brain, my thoughts, my eyes and ears, isn’t everything unreal? No, everything is just as always. The swallows have left now. They must have been gone for some time now. I’m on my way to work and I’m in a hurry.

Life is nothing to be excited about. My heart is nothing but an ordinary little pump, my eyes are just little cameras and my ears are simply microphones. The brain is just a brain. Our planet is just an ordinary little planet. The universe is just an universe. What's so fantastic about a pair of feet?

Friday, September 5, 2008

There are many conspiracy theories in circulation on who was plotting the 9.11 disaster. Some people think that CIA knew all about the attack, but intentionally let the terrorists pull it through. It was not incompetence and negligence that made the attac possible. This was because they wanted to create an excuse to invade Iraq and to launch the war on terror to strengthen the American global dominance and the plan for a new world order.
Others think that Mossad in Israel planed it because they wanted a war to get rid of Saddam; or maybe the Skulls and bones or the Freemasons or PNAC or the Devil himself had a finger in the pie.

The conspiracy theories flourish because the official story doesn't hold water. Of course we create theories when we don’t know what's going on. This is one of the most important functions of the mind. We mass produce theories and then we form groups in favor of the different beliefs. And then we fight each other.

This is why we have so many different religions. We don’t know what is going on. We don’t know what life is about, really. We don’t know where we are coming from, who we are and where we are going. There is so little we know for sure. The scientists produce stark proofs and evidences that ten years later are proved to be wrong. We are all blind trying to lead the blind.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

I have found a new extremely interesting book again: "The happiness trap", by Russ Harris. I feel that I'm not completely off track while I read it. This is what he says, filtered through my colored glasses:

Don’t try to get rid of your thoughts and beliefs, and don't try to change them. It won't work.

A belief is made of thoughts, so we can’t get rid of our beliefs because we can’t find a way to stop thinking. Not even the Zen-monks can free themselves from thinking.

Some beliefs are quite useful, though, and some are completely useless.

But how do we know if a belief is useful or not? Well, If you believe, for example, that you will wake up also tomorrow and that you will have your salary in the end of this month, it is useful thoughts. But you can sometimes clearly see that a belief or a thought is totally useless, how do you get rid of such thoughts or how do you change them? This is the point, you can’t; You will never get rid of your thoughts and you will never be able to change them, no matter how hard you try, they are involuntary. The only thing you can do is to see them for what they are, just thoughts. This is what I understand now, again. Thoughts are just thoughts, imaginations, totally out of my control, like dreams.

No one can make you change your mind. If you truly believe, deep in your heart, that the earth is flat and the moon is made of cheese, or if you believe that all the poor people in the world are poor just because they haven’t read enough self-help books on how to get rich with self affirmations, or if you believe that you are an ugly old fool, whatever crazy idea that get stuck in your head, it is not the truth, it is your thoughts. No one can change you, not even you. None of the many mind changing methods has proved to be effective in the long run. And there is no way to be completely sure if a belief is useful or not. But it is possible to understand, for those who are not too dense, that all these beliefs are just thoughts, not different from all the other thoughts in our heads.

What can I do, if you truly believe that war is good and the law of the jungle still applies, or if you believe that you are Napoleon? I can’t change your beliefs because I can’t even change my own. But a growing number of people begin to understand now, that thoughts are just thoughts and that beliefs are just beliefs. If a crazy thought fly through my head, so what? It’s just a crazy thought. All sorts of crazy thoughts fly through my head, day and night. When I wake up after a weird dream I think: “ Oh, that was a weird dream” But I don’t believe that I actually met those talking cats, or whatever. It was just a dream.

This is a kind of awakening. I am right here, right now, writing down thoughts on my computer. The kids outside my window create an incredible racket. The sun is shining. It is a wonderful day here today.

This is from Russ Harris book `The happiness trap´:
The observing self is fundamentally different from the thinking self. The observing self is aware, but does not think; it is the part of you that is responsible for focus, attention, and awareness. While it can observe or pay attention to your thoughts, it can’t produce them. Whereas the thinking self thinks about your experience, the observing self registers your experience directly.
For example, if you are playing tennis and you are truly focused, then your attention is riveted on that ball coming toward you. This is your observing self at work. You are not thinking about the ball; you are observing it.
Now suppose thoughts start popping into your head like,” I hope my grip is correct”, “I’d better make a good hit,” or Wow, that ball is moving fast!” That is your thinking self at work.

Although we understand words as “awareness,” “focus,” and “attention,” most of us in the western world have little or no concept of the observing self. As a result, there is no word for it in the English language. We only have the word “mind” which is generally used to denote both the thinking self and the observing self, without distinguishing between the two.

Sunday, August 17, 2008

When we look at life we will see different sceneries depending on were we have our view point. The north side of a mountain can look completely different than the south side.

Suppose you’re well-off, with a nice husband, great kids and a nice job, but you feel very miserable and unhappy with your life anyway; maybe you say to yourself: `I have everything I want but I’m so unhappy that I almost want to kill myself´. Suppose you wake up from that depression, maybe with help from a psychologist, from a spiritual counselor or maybe it happens spontaneously, by grace. You will now probably see that you were fooling yourself before and how your mind tricked you. (It was just dark thoughts but you believed they where the truth.) And maybe you will now have the feeling that you have woken up from a bad dream.

If you are very poor, on the other hand, and work 12 hours a day, six days a week, picking grapefruits or bananas, but still have serious difficulties to feed your kids, so that some rich shareholders in a big fruit company can get richer, then all talk of waking up from illusions and the necessity of not taking thought's seriously doesn’t mean much. Other things than self deception and thoughts will be much more important. To wake up from that nightmare you probably have to win money on a lottery ticket.

To wake up doesn't mean the same thing to all people. We have philosophies for the rich and philosophies for the poor, religions for the rich and religions for the poor. Rich people will read the Bible with rich people’s glasses. “To those who have, more shall be given” will be taken literally. And poor people will find that “many of the last shall be the first". In India they have also teachings and gurus for different tastes, slow-witted gurus for slow-witted people, smarter gurus for smarter people and crazy gurus for crazy people. But none of them have the whole truth. Those who claims to know it all, belongs to the slow-witted kind.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Can you endorse this: Religions have caused and are causing endless miseries and evils in this world?
(For example, the inquisition trials and torture chambers, the witch hunts, the suppression of women and children, the religious wars, the Crusades, Catholics against Protestants Jews against Arabs, Shia Muslims against Sunni Muslims, the Islamist terrorism...)

Do you agree with, that also non-religious belief systems have caused and are causing endless miseries and evils in this world? To abandon religion was obviously not enough.
(The Gulag, the Killing fields, the Holocaust, nationalism, racism, neo-Darwinism, the horrendous exploitation of fellow men, women, children and the whole planet in the name of freedom and democracy…)

Are you aware of the fact that your ideas about yourself and the way you look at life can create endless problems to you, and not only to you, but also to people near to you?
(I am completely useless. I’m ugly. There is not much point with anything. I don’t want to do anything. The only thing I care for is alcohol. Or: The only thing that counts is money. My career comes first. One has to fight like hell for a room at the top. One must not fail. Losers can go and fuck themselves. I have to have it my way because I know that I'm right. I’m entitled to this because I‘m from a rich family…)

However, many religious and superstitious people are not causing miseries and evil, on the contrary, many of them are good people. Many communists were really fighting for a just society without poverty, bondage and exploitation. And many neurotics with a low self esteem are also good people who do the best they can with the potty horses they have to ride.

I have a work mate who voted for the extreme right. When I asked her why, she said: “Because I don’t like Arabs.” She didn’t know anything about the political program she had voted for, because she doesn’t care a bit about politics, but she is nevertheless an easy going person, always truly enthusiastic and happy. Isn’t that quite common? Many people vote without any idea of what they vote for. I have friends that have totally inconsistent ideas but who are very pleasant to hang out with. I have friends who believe in astrology but that don’t make them evil. And I know of from my, way back, two unhappy years in scientific laboratories, highly rational and well informed people who were complete assholes.

So, when do ignorance, superstition and misapprehensions become evil? I don’t know. But I know that it is possible to relinquish religion, political ideologies and ideas about oneself and life, if we want to. Religious and ideological beliefs are not necessary for anything but holding a group together and we don’t need to belong to mad groups anymore, if we don’t want to. If you desperately need a group to belong to, no matter what crazy beliefs they cherish, because you are so afraid to be alone, then that is your problem. (As long as you leave me alone.) And we don’t have to admire or resent other people, or ourselves, if we don’t want to. Human beings have since the dawn of history been superstitious, ignorant and cruel, but we can, nevertheless, step out of that madness if we want to. It is not until recently we have begun to understand that it is actually possible to break the spell. I don't have to be a racist because my family and workmates are. There is no need for a belief system to make pancakes. You don't have to become an atheist to mend a bicycle. There is no need for scientific theories or religious mythologies about how the universe was formed to live here and now with whatever is under ones nose. You don't have to become successful, slim, radiating, wonderful or positive. You don't have to become anything. You don't have to think positive thoughts all the time. You are completely free to feel whatever you feel, think whatever you think, here in this moment. Get rid of your self improvement books. Get rid of your dreams of self improvement.

Are there any benefits with waking up? Isn’t it often much more pleasant to be pleasantly deluded? Maybe it is so. Maybe it is more pleasant to be asleep or half asleep. Maybe it is more pleasant to be drunk or drugged. Maybe it is better with comforting beliefs and ignorance of ones foolishness. Some people might even have to kill them self if their illusions are taken away. What I’m saying is that it is possible to wake up and sober up and that this insight is fairly new to us. We are like recently discharged long term prisoners or mental patients. We are bewildered and don’t know exactly what to do.

If we are borne with a free will, we have certainly not had many opportunities in our history to exercise it. The majority has always been slaves in one way or the other and slaves have no use for a free will. And we have always been sent to war.

This is from Richard Dawkins book, The God delusion: “From the high command’s point of view it would be madness to allow each individual soldier discretion over whether or not to obey orders. Nations whose infantrymen act on their own initiative rather than following orders will tend to loose wars. From the nation’s point of view, this remains a good rule of thumb even if it sometimes leads to individual disaster. Soldiers are drilled to become as much like automata, or computers, as possible.”

“Natural selection builds child brains with a tendency to believe whatever their parents and tribal elders tell them. Such trusting obedience is valuable for survival. But the flip side of trusting obedience is slavish gullibility. The inevitable by-product is vulnerability to infection by mind viruses. For excellent reasons related to Darwinian survival, child brains need to trust parents, and elders whom parents tell them to trust. An automatic consequence is that the truster has no way of distinguishing good advice from bad. The child cannot know that `Don’t paddle in the crocodile-infested Limpopo’ is good advice but `You must sacrifice a goat at the time of the full moon, otherwise the rains will fail´ is at best a waste of time and goats.”


To sustain yourself or a family you almost always have to have a job, but only a lucky few have a job they love. Often you have to accept what is offered. And as employed you have to adjust to the policies and the atmosphere of the workplace. You have to follow orders. This can sometimes be a horrible experience. You are often forced to pretend that you are someone else. As a salesman you have to be positive, charming, competitive and result orientated. If you don't want to play that salesman game, if you have had enough of classes in positive thinking, team building, goal setting and neuro linguistic programming techniques to improve yourself and your performance, you have to look for another job. As a laborer of any kind you have to be strong and able to work hard without asking too many questions. If you don’t want to adjust to or feel like taking orders from sometimes complete idiots, you have to set up a business of your own, but you will still have to adjust to the rules of the market. To be free to do what you want, you have to be rich enough. For us who have to go to a job we don't love to make a living the free will is limited. It can often only be exercised at vacations and at times off duty. But something is better than nothing, isn’t it? The big risk is that when you are off duty you are not aware of it. You can become like an actor in a play that comes home at night, still in your Hamlet costume, still believing you are prince Hamlet.

We are often forced to act and play games to satisfy relatives, workmates or bosses. Many people certainly don't want to hear that their beliefs are nothing but imaginations; often, if we happen to be around touchy and quick tempered people, we have to learn how to keep things to ourselves, but we don’t have to sell our soul. It is possible to wake up. It is possible to break the spell. We are not the persons we think we are. The world is not as we think it is. It is possible to live without all these crazy ideas about everything. Often we have to put our lamp under a bushel, but we don’t have to put out the light. It is this that is new. Mankind is in the beginning of the disenchantment process.

Thursday, August 7, 2008

Ramanand




These events took place in 1983, I think, and this is my recollection of them. I was staying in Rishikesh in India when I met Ramanand as I was walking to Muni-Ki-Reti, a small town some two kilometers outside Rishikesh.

Ramanand was an unhappy and disillusioned yogi. He had once been an engineer and his specialty had been air-conditioning and ventilation, but he had left his career to become a sanyassin, a monk. For years he wandered about looking for the truth. He came from Tamil Nadu in the south but had somehow ended up here in the north. For some years he had been a meditation teacher in Maharishi Mahesh’s ashram but had got tired of the place and left it. For some time back he had stayed in the Mangal nath ashram, which wasn’t an ashram really, but a very low class guest house. He helped the owner to bring guests to the place and had a room there for free as payment. Anyway, he asked me if I needed a place to stay and I said yes, so I moved to the Mangal nath ashram.

For months we discussed life, often at night in a night open tea shop for truck drivers in Rishikesh, smoking Panama cigarettes and drinking tea in the light of kerosene lamps. When we went home we always had a pack of growling wild dogs after us.

One late afternoon we visited some other people who stayed in another ashram on the other side of the river Ganges. This was a bigger place, near to the Maharishi Mahesh ashram but I can’t think of its name. I remember that they had a hospital for cows there, an old cows home. This place was more like a real ashram but it also served as a kind of hotel. You didn’t have to pay rent for a room there but you where expected to pay a donation. I think the donation fee was 10 rupees a day.

One of the guests was a Canadian woman but I can’t remember her name, which is very unfortunate because it would have been so interesting to get in touch with her to confirm what happened there. She was Armenian by birth, had lived in Egypt for many years, but had eventually moved to Montreal, I think, and she worked there as an art teacher in an art college. She was a big, very loud and intense kind of woman. She wore brown corduroy pants and a dark blue sweater, and she had very bad hearing. Previously this day she had lost her hearing aid and she was very upset about it. She couldn’t hear almost anything.

We were sitting there, a bunch of people, on the porch outside one of the “rented” rooms, discussing things and drinking tea. The room was a small studio really, a room with an adjoining kitchen and a bathroom. I can’t recall any of the other people but we must have been six or seven all together. They had just finished their meal when Ramanand and I came. When Ramanand learned about the missing hearing aid he said that he would see what he could do about it. So he went into his Kali meditation, as he called it. This meditation began with an hour or so of what looked like just “normal” meditation, a yogi sitting there with eyes closed in a lotus position. We soon lost interest in him and went on with our discussion about this and that. But after some time he gave up an incredible howl and fell down looking dead. What the hell was going on? The managers of the ashram came running, wondering what we where doing. When they saw Ramanand lying there on the floor they became as alarmed as we were. He was clearly dead. They couldn’t hear any heartbeats and didn’t know what to do. So they carried him to their office and tried to wake him up. They didn’t have any success with that and Ramanand was just lying there on the floor when he suddenly sat up and shouted from the top of his lungs:” GO TO THE BATHROOM! GO TO THE BATHROOM! GO TO THE BATHROOM!” And then he fell down again, but now he wasn’t “dead”. He was breathing and fast asleep.

When we went back to the studio and went in to the bathroom the hearing aid was there on the floor. The concrete floor was completely dry but the hearing aid was wet and probably ruined.

Isn’t all this very strange? We had been coming and going to the kitchen and the bathroom all evening without noticing any hearing aid there on the floor.

When Ramanand woke up in the morning he had absolutely no idea about what had happened. He didn’t remember anything, but he was very happy and a little bit proud when we informed him.

These events took place 25 years ago. As I write about it now I realize how poor my memory is. Some parts I can remember clearly, some parts I have faint memories about but much of it is completely hidden in a haze. It makes me think of the Gospels. Mark,the oldest of the Gospels, is written more than forty years after Jesus´ death. How much of these stories are real memories and how much are later constructions?

It would be very interesting to get in touch with some of the people who were there and who can help to confirm this, and maybe fill in where my memory is failing, but how can I find them? I don’t even remember their names. And where Ramanand is I have no idea. He left Rishikesh many years ago.

Ramanand was very adept at meditation but he wasn’t very happy with life. To conjure up hearing aids for tourists wasn’t enough for him. And though he loved the stories about the God Krishna he was very displeased with Hinduism, yoga, and the caste system that permeated it all. The Vedanta philosophy didn’t appeal to him. He used the expression: mental speculation. It was all mental speculations, not simply speculations. And to find happiness or bliss wasn’t enough either. Happiness could just be another self deception. Many people in Germany, for example, became incredibly happy when Hitler came to power in the early thirties. They had finally found a meaning and a direction to their previous empty hand to mouth existence.

I also learned many other expressions from him, for example: the false ego. A false ego implies a true ego, but with the true ego he didn't mean the Atman, he simply meant the true ego,the one you are when you are not lost in some crazy idea about life. Atman is the eternal soul. The body, the mind and indeed the whole world is but an illusion or a misperception, only Atman is eternal and real. This concept along with the karma theories and the caste system has caused endless miseries in India. Today India experiences an incredible economic boom. But the rich middle class hesitate to spend money on the poor. They just want to spend enough to ease their bad conscience and to take the edge off the arguments of those that criticize all the injustices. UNICEF has recently criticized India for its reluctance to build a proper health care system for the poor. India has a much higher rate of child death than both Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. And one third of the women in India are malnourished which leads to that they give birth to malnourished children, which makes them much more susceptible to all kinds of painful diseases. So what? This world is but an illusion and if someone suffers it is because of the bad deeds he or she did in a previous life time. In this way the Indian philosophies of life cause a lot of misery.

And I also learned from him this, for me, very meaningful and interesting expression: Yoga connection. With this expression he didn’t mean how to connect oneself to the greater source. He meant a special kind of synchronicity, a mysterious principle which makes it possible for people, who need to meet and who are supposed to meet, to find each other.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

I am for the time being taking care of two guinea pigs for my little friend while she is out of town. They are sitting there in their cage all day waiting for more food. Though the cage door is always open they refuse to leave it. I guess they feel safe there in their little prison. Sometimes I take them out of the cage to run around on the kitchen floor. I imagine that they need some kind of exercise. But they immediately hop back in the cage again. It is too scary for them out there, in the big world.

We are often not much different. We like our safe and cosy corners. We like things to be comprehensible, not too much drama, not too many worries and uncertainties. When we leave our homes we like the world to be as we expect it to be. Our beliefs and habits are like guinea pig cages. They make our world comprehensible.

I prefer cats. A cat certainly like a snug and warm home where they serve good food. But at night he has to go out to check things out. No one knows exactly what he’s up to out there. Sometimes he is gone for weeks and you begin to think that he might be dead. But he comes back, sometimes with scars and wounds sometimes sound as a bell, with a faint smell of perfume. Cats are mysterious. That is probably why they are associated with magic and witchcraft.

Monday, August 4, 2008

About two months ago I saw a woman walking her unleashed dog through the park. They where maybe 50 yards ahead of me and I felt a strong irritation. I was thinking: “She really ought to have her dog leashed at this time of the year. Dog owners are so careless these days. When they have passed the bridge the dog will go crazy. He will see all the stupid geese on the meadow, with all their stupid little gosling's.” I was stepping out to try to catch up with them before they got there. When I was just a few steps behind them we had just crossed the little stone bridge, but the dog didn’t even look at the geese colony. I was surprised, so I asked her while passing them, how come the dog didn’t even look at the geese, and she answered:
-Oh, I have trained him.

We have managed to domesticate and tame a lot of animals, including ourselves. We have been trained to see what we are supposed to see.

Sunday, August 3, 2008

ON MEANINGFUL COINCIDENCES

Monika



Doreen

Me


I was traveling in the US in the fall of 1979. I was 25 years old and completely lost. My girlfriend back home had just left me and I was extremely unhappy. We had been together for maybe five or six years or so and I had no idea how to make it on my own. I didn’t know how to sleep alone and I didn’t even know how to cook a supper.

In San Francisco I met some people and we rented a car to go to LA. It was a Canadian girl, Francoise, two English lads, a guy from Austria, (I can’t remember their names) and there was Monika Hauri from Switzerland. Somehow Monika and I found each other and when the group split up in LA Monika and I traveled on together. I have vague memories about staying in Santa Monica for some time but eventually we took a night flight to Mexico City. We drank lots of Tequila in the restaurants at the Plaza Garibaldi. Hundreds of Mariachi bands were playing simultaneously. It was a fantastic cacophony. I remember also from Mexico City that we always had to run to cross the streets to escape all the mad taxi drivers.

Anyway, after some time I explained to her that I was going to Isla Mujheres because I needed to be alone to think things over. A week later or so she found me there but I didn't want to continue our relationship.I was looking for adventure and adventurers don't walk hand in hand with women. So I told her to fuck off and went to Guatemala.

After a few months I was back in Stockholm, more miserable than ever. I didn’t know what to do with my life. I couldn’t fit anywhere. My friends had little home parties and I was bored to pieces with all the coziness and their boring small talk. “Could you pass me the sauce, please? It’s wonderful, isn’t it?" That kind of stuff.

In late September 1981 I had had enough. I sublet my apartment and bought a one-way ticket to Greece. I had no plans at all on where to go and I figured that Greece could be a good place to start out. The first thing that happened to me was that I caught a terrible flu. I was completely knocked out for a week or so. After another week of recuperation I realized that Crete was not for me. Crete was for couples, sitting in the taverns, silently sipping drinks with little umbrellas or sparklers for decoration. I was desperate. Where should I go and why? Wouldn’t it be the same thing wherever I went?

I checked out from my hotel and went down to the harbor without any idea of where to go. The next boat was to Santorini so I took it, glad to leave Crete behind. It was a horrible trip. The sea was very rough and people were puking in every corner.

We came to Santorini late at night, maybe 11:30 pm, or so. There were many people in the harbor and a lot of restless hustle and bustle. I put my backpack down and smoked a cigarette while I was trying to figure out how to find a place to stay at this late hour, when a young boy came up to me.
-Hotel room mister? Do you want a hotel room?
When I said yes he told me to wait a few moments and disappeared in the crowd. When he came back he had a young American woman with him.

Then we took a bus up to his parents hotel. I fell in love immediately. She was so pretty and seemed so smart. I liked the way she talked. I liked everything with her.
At the hotel they made us a dinner. Suddenly I was sitting there in the warm Mediterranean oktober night, with all its stars and creaking cicadas, and a beautiful young woman with brown eyes across the table,and a bottle of wine to the moussaka. I thought I was dreaming.

We had some wonderful days and nights there and I was madly in love. One day I asked her about what she did before coming to Santorini and she told me that she had stayed in Luzern in Switzerland for some time and worked in a hotel there as a waitress. Then I told her that I knew someone from Luzern and that her name was Monika Hauri. I can’t find words to the feelings that came over me when she told me that she knew her. She told me about what had happened to Monika and that she was now happily married to a Canadian guy.

Then the love of my life suddenly left me. Just like that. She ditched me. She had had enough of my neurotic negativity and I was all alone again.

The next day I took a night boat back to Athens and if I had been confused before it was nothing compared to my confusion that night. I spent the whole night on the upper deck looking at the stars and the moon and the dark endless sea. And the sea, the night sky and my consciousness kind of merged into an incredibly strange experience. I was all alone in the universe. I was feeling so alone. And in the same time I was feeling connected. We were all connected in some strange way, through some kind of invisible web.

Well, to make a long story short, I went to India and then I spent a number of years on the moon.

One day there in India I bumped into Monika again. She wasn’t very happy to see me but we had a short conversation in a chai shop in Pushkar. I told her that I knew a little about what had happened to her and I remember that I asked her if she didn’t find the whole thing very strange. She couldn’t see anything strange with people bumping into each other. She said: “Of course you meet some people again if you’re traveling along the same routes."

Eventually I came back home, found myself a girlfriend, an apartment and a job as a gardener and everything was all right for many years, with pasta dinners, TV nights and everything. This relationship also ended in a catastrophe and I have been a living alone since then. And I have been quite happy with that. I have finally learned how to live alone.

In July 2005 something interesting happened though. I found a letter among my bills and junk mail when I came back home from work. It said: “Greetings! Do you remember me? If yes send me an e-mail." It was from Doreen. I hadn’t heard a word from her for almost 25 years so I was, what should I say, a bit surprised.

I sent her an e-mail right away, eager to know what had happened to her after she had left me in Santorini. And I had so many memory gaps that I needed help with. I have always been interested in strange coincidences and I have periodically experienced a lot of them, but this what happened to me in Santorini was by far the most fantastic of them all. Isn’t it incredibly strange that I fell in love with someone who knew Monika Hauri? What is the probability for such a coincidence? And Doreen dumped me much in the same way as I had dumped Monika. Wasn’t it strange that I kind of got paid back with the same currency? Is there a God that sometimes interfere with the course of events and direct our steps, and if it is, what is the reason for it? Is it a God or is it a bunch of Gods or is it something in our unconscious minds that create the synchronicities? Or is all this with synchronicities just illusions?
I had thousands of questions I needed to discuss with her.

*

Well,here are some of my observations regarding synchronicities:

Many people have experienced or will experience synchronistic phenomenon’s without being aware of it because synchronicities are not on their maps.

Some people seem to believe that one will experience synchronicities when one's meditation practice is deepening, when one begins to find more harmony in life. I don’t think so. I think that synchronicities are more frequent when we are completely lost and upset, when we lose our heads, when someone or something has put us out, like a divorce or the death of someone near to us. Synchronicities can happen when we feel balanced, yes, but they will not be very strong. Well-balanced and satisfied people who are set with everything rarely experience synchronistic phenomenon’s. In fact, they don’t even know what you talk about if you happen to bring up the subject.

It is often impossible to tell anyone about a synchronistic experience. If you do, either you or someone else will look completely ridiculous. The synchronicity is often set up in such a way. Many of my “best” synchronicities can never be told without causing trouble, so I have to take my stories with me to the grave. Also Jung noticed this. Many people experience synchronicities but refuse to talk about them. Synchronistic experiences belong to a secret dimension of life, an esoteric dimension.

You can never prove that you have experienced an interesting synchronicity. It is therefore meaningless to study the phenomenon scientifically. If someone tells you a story about a synchronicity it can be true or it can be just a made up story. Or it might have some truth in it but it is changed a little here and there to make it sound better.

One shall not become too interested in synchronicities, though, I think. If you look for synchronicities and meaningful encounters everywhere you will go crazy. You will become paranoid. Why is he calling now? Is it a secret meaning behind this seemingly normal meeting? Why did I forget my keys? Everything is not synchronicities.

However,if I had not caught that terrible flu on Crete I would have left Crete much earlier and in that case I would not have met Doreen. Well, in that case I would not be sitting here writing this. If I had not been so desperate and unhappy with everything I would most probably not even have gone to Crete. Synchronicities have serious philosophical implications. Unhappiness and desperation can be a part of a plan. Is everything part of a plan? It is impossible to find answers to such questions so it is better to drop them, I guess. It is like speculating if there are many more universes out there. We will never get to know about it. We will never find out if we have a free will or not, but we have to live as if our will is free.

A strong synchronistic experience can change the way a person look at life, but really, there are many things in life that are far more important than looking for synchronicities, like taking care of children for example, or trying to be helpful to other people and to wake up to what is going on in the world and every once in a while celebrate and have some fun.

Thursday, July 31, 2008



I believe that people who know who they are and what life is about has fooled themselves. I believe that all religious leaders, all self improvement gurus and all scientists are talking through their hats. They think that they know but they don’t. They think that they know and manage to fool both themselves and others.

What we know is just tiny little fractions of all that there is to know, like the light we can see is just a fraction of all electromagnetic radiation. We are all pond frogs. When you realize this things change. You are waking up.

We are fooling ourselves and each other. We trust our leaders because we are pack animals and don’t want to think for ourselves. We are desperate to get the answers from someone, someone who can tell us what life is about. It doesn't really matter if the answer is pure madness. We are not like frogs, we are like dogs. A dog doesn't care what his master is up to as long as he get some food in the bowl. This is why we are ruining our beautiful little planet.Our leaders are crazy for money and power and we do the best we can to help them with their obsession.

So, to realize how little we know about how things really are, is to wake up from a dream. It is the first step out through the door that opens up to the garden, the mystical garden.
-What an amazing firework this world is! Isn't it?
Donald Duck has sometimes a little devil sitting on one shoulder whispering devilries into his one ear and a little angel sitting on the other shoulder telling him to be nice and kind with a soft and priestly kind of voice. These figures are of course portraits of his inner voices.

We have also inner voices, not only one as some people think, and not only two as in Walt Disney’s animated films, but many.

Listen carefully to your present inner voice as you read this over and over again. Listen to the accent and the intonation. The words are mine, but the voice is yours. Isn’t it so? I have hypnotized you for a few moments. I have taken over your mind.

Listen now to the response in your head. Listen very carefully. What do you think? Are the answers really your own or have you got also them them from somewhere. Can you hear your mother’s voice? Can you hear your gurus? Can you hear your best friend from your teenage years? Most probably you have learned how you should think and most probably you have learned a number of different ways how to think, but is there an answer there in your head that is truly your own? What do you think?

Sometimes the inner voice is complaining endlessly about this or that, stupid workmates, stupid politicians or stupid spouses. Sometimes the voice is singing idiotic little songs, sometimes it is formulating elaborate defenses or excuses.

One voice is saying: “Oh! I feel like a cigarette and an ice-cold beer. Health fanatics are such boors.”
Another voice is saying: “What an idiot you are! You have given up smoking. Smoking is not good for you. You know that very well.”
A third voice is saying: “I can hear clearly what is going on in my head. I have you two guys sitting there arguing how to live, but I will not listen to any of you. I’m putting my awareness to the present moment instead.”

What is this I made of, who can put the attention to the different parts of reality? Is it made of thoughts?

One I want to go this way and another I want to go that way. A third I want to go in a third direction. Is there really a true I?

-I just want to be myself.
-But what if your will is not your’s. Maybe it is your mother’s will you are following, maybe it is your fathers. maybe it is your friends. Your mother always wanted you to become a lawyer; your friends want you to be silly; your girlfriend want’s you to be presentable. Whatever.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008


There are different ways to be disillusioned. You can, for example, be depressed because things did not turn out the way you had hoped for; or you can feel a relief because you are finally no longer fooling yourself with a particular illusion. “How could I be so stupid? I’m so glad this is all over now.”

There are also different ways to be happy. You can be very happy because you are drunk or in some other way temporarily oblivious about all the troubles; or you can be so very happy just because you are alive and this world is so amazing with all it’s bombastic cumulus clouds and chirping little birds and crazy little children and everything is fantastic in spite of all the hypocrisies, evil, exploitations and injustices.

Thursday, July 24, 2008


Many people who call themselves Christian are not Christian at all. Their Christianity is just a cover. They lay up for themselves treasures on earth, and go to church on Sundays with pious expressions.

However, all people are liars, not only Christians. We are born into a world of liars. Some are big liars, some are sometimes truthful, some are mostly truthful, but all of us know what it feels like to tell a lie.

Just because someone says that he believes democracy is the best political system it doesn’t necessarily mean that he supports democracy. He might even work franticly against it.

Just because someone swears that he didn't steal the car it doesn't means that he didn't steal it.

It doesn't mean a damned thing if someone says that he is deeply concerned about the future of coming generations and wants to take steps to save our planet. Maybe he cares, maybe he doesn't. It can be a strategy to win votes in an election or simply a way to present oneself as a responsible person. It is impossible to tell. One cannot trust anybody to a hundred percent, not even, as I have said before, oneself.

It is perfectly normal to tell lies. It can be a means to get away with something or to keep oneself out of trouble. The survival instinct uses lies as a tool, so one shouldn’t be to judgmental about it. But if a man want to know the truth he will soon find that it is not that easy. It is difficult to get reliable information’s. Everybody seems to know but all have different stories to tell and everybody point in different directions. What is happening to us when we die? What is the right and what is wrong way to have sex? Is it OK to be a thief? Was Columbus at thief or a great explorer? Is there really a judge somewhere that judge what we do? Are we sent to hell if we have been bad in this life? Is some part of us reincarnating?

Science has developed methods to try to find out if someone is talking rubbish or not. A scientist who claims something has to show proof. If someone else can prove that he is wrong he has to change his mind or come up with some new more compelling proof.

However, to prove something that cannot be measured is impossible. If I, for example, have experienced some very strange and interesting synchronistic phenomenon’s and want to tell abut them, I can not expect to be taken seriously. I simply cannot prove that what I am saying is true. I cannot construct an experiment that proves I am right. There are billions of fantastic stories in circulation. Everybody has stories, ideas and opinions that are complete bullshit. Human beings talk an incredible lot of nonsense. Maybe all the hot air is contributing to the global warming. There is simply no way to tell the difference between true and false statements that can't be measured. That is why I am reluctant to tell about my synchronistic experiences. There is no point with it.

Among “spiritual” or religious people proof and truth is completely irrelevant. That is one reason spirituality and religion cannot evolve. It is doomed to stay on the level of fantasy. The Lord of the Rings, The Bhagavad-Gita and The Bible are made of the same stuff, imagination. Maybe you are going to heaven when you die, maybe you are going to the underworld, maybe someone takes you there on a boat across a river. Maybe Jesus will come back and the dead will rise from their tombs. Maybe you will reincarnate. Maybe the body is a costume; maybe the soul is made of wind. So what?

Again, just because there is so much gravel, dust and sand, it doesn’t mean that there are no spiritual pearls to be found. There are, but when you have found one, know that you can never show it to anyone and that you can never sell it. It is invisible.

Monday, July 14, 2008

I am,
at least, three or four, different persons. Sometimes the dark and serious one is at the driver’s seat, sometimes the bohemian. Sometimes a hard working and responsible man is driving, sometimes a nut. So, which of all these people is really me? It depends, I think. Sometimes it is the dark and serious one, sometimes it is the nut…

Most people are not aware of that they really consist of many different persons, that we all have multiple personalities. Maybe this is because only one of them have done the driving for so long. They have been lulled into the illusion that there is only one driver. However, when things changes dramatically, after a divorce for example, many people notice that someone else has taken over the wheel; or in a war situation, when ordinary family men turn into monsters.

However, not only catastrophes changes people. Alcohol, poor sleep, stress, natural mood shifts, even the full moon can turn someone into someone else. A love story or a new job can change a person completely. A depressed man with alcohol problems can turn into harmonic sheep farmer with a wonderful wife and three lovely daughters; a punk rocker can suddenly turn in to a well-dressed stockbroker. Nothing is written in stone in this world of form.

If I, in my youth, am sent to a school of economics, I can be transformed into a neo liberal fundamentalist. If I, on the other hand, happen to go to an art school, I might turn into an artsy bohemian. Or I might get saved or turn in to a Buddhist. There are many options.

No, nothing is written in stone. There is no real me, no real ego, no real driver. All of me is conditioned by circumstances, biology, family and culture.

But who is going to do the driving if there is no driver, if there is no ego? Who is going to the pub? Who is going to work? Who is deciding to not go to work? Who gives a shit?

Even though the ego is illusory, insubstantial and ghostlike it is what operates us.

Without identification there is no ego, says Eckhart, but the problem is that the identification is to such large extent unconscious, we are not aware of what is driving us. Jealousy, revenge, laziness, crazy ideas that we need a make over, that we need to become successful...

After Eckhart experienced his Awakening, he was sitting on park benches for a couple of years, living of his savings. Then he won money on a lottery ticket. He had good luck. But those who don’t have any savings to live from and who don’t win any money on their scratch tickets, what shall they do? They have to go to work, work for endless hours with stuff they don’t want to do.

But you shall do what you love to do! You shall have good luck. Luck will come to you when you are aligned to the greater source. Fantastic opportunities will line up.

To live such happy, loving and awakened life is for the rich and lucky few. They can walk barefoot along the Hawaiian beaches and pick seashells or listen to the songs of the dolphins.

However, someone has to empty the garbage bins, someone has to do the cooking in the restaurants, someone has to clean the hotel rooms. Someone has to pick the grapefruits we eat for breakfast. How shall that work be organized? Shall it be ten or twelve hour days? Shall it be extremely badly paid. There are billions of people out there who need to read more self-help books and lift themselves up by the booth straps, who need to align themselves with the greater source, who need to be more positive. What shall you do with your awakening when you are forced to work like a dog?

The world we live in is a terrible place. Men with horrible ideas have all the power.

When the American government declared war on terror they forgot that they are the greatest terrorists. In the eighties CIA armed and organized the Contras guerrilla in Nicaragua. They terrorized civilians and killed them by the thousands. The aim was to throw spanners in the works for the legally elected government. In the seventies CIA organized the coup in Chile to overthrow also a legally elected government. This happened in September 11 1973. To Chileans 9/11 has different meaning than it has to north Americans.

The list of CIA’s well-documented terrorist activities could be made very long. Now these guys are going to save us from terrorism. In the name of freedom and democracy.

Again, how come spiritually inclined people never even mention all the hypocrisy, the evil, the idiocies. Is it because they don’t care about this world? Is it because they don’t care about other people? Is it because they are filled with -`You get pie in the sky when you die´ kind of ideas or `I'm so happy and spiritual because I'm rich?´

To wake up, I think, it is important to first of all become aware of all the madness and all the mad ideas that we are surrounded by and conditioned by. If we can’t see this, if we live our life with our eyes closed, there is not much point with prayers, mindfulness meditations or positive thinking. A true spiritual path can not be a path of escapism, delusions, hypocrisy and lies.

When you can see the madness clearly and you as a consequence turn away from ideologies, religions, crazy belief systems and crazy beliefs, things begin to open up. Then you can begin to see the real beauty around you, the real mystery, the real magic.

Sunday, July 6, 2008

We are all fools. We are all fooling our self. We are all in the same boat, but some of us know about it and some of us don’t.

However, the moment you fully realize that you have deceived yourself, you are not deceived anymore, simply because you know now that you have been deceived. It can be an extremely unpleasant experience. So you desperately grasp for another illusion, something to hold on to, almost anything will do, and the story repeats itself, over and over again.

Eventually, after a number of terrible blows, all bullshit is burned off and you will be born again, like the Phoenix. Now you will not be anybody's fool any more, not even your own, at least not in five hundred years. This can happen when you are in your twenties or in your seventies, or it may not happen at all. Maybe most people die without knowing that they have have been completely fooled all along.

Why is life set up this way? I have no idea. How can one part of me fool another part? Are there really two or more different me’s. Are there really a swindler and someone who is being swindled? Who is that fool that let himself be swindled so easily? Why are we so easily deceived by our self?

Wednesday, July 2, 2008





Should one take life seriously or not? Now I’ve got it, at last. Sometimes one has to be very serious about things, sometimes one must not be serious at all. Only crashing bores are always serious, and only complete idiots are never serious about anything. How can one laugh and have some fun if one is dead serious, and how can one discuss a serious problem that has to be solved with someone who feels that life is but a joke?

*

Yesterday I was very, very tired. I felt like lead, worn out and burned out. I’ve been working too much and I haven’t had enough sleep for weeks now. But, as I walked through the park on my way home from work, I suddenly felt very happy, for absolutely no reason at all. It was a wonderful summer afternoon. The air was fresh after a rain shower, the sky was blue with a few white clouds and the trees where luxuriant green. I took a photo of a puddle. Isn’t it silly for a man in his fifties, to take photos of puddles? A boy was playing with his German shepherd pup on the big lawn and I was thinking about how strange life is. “I have absolutely no reason for being this happy now. Isn't this unconditional love? I love everything for no reason at all.”

Today, as I write this, I’m back in a more normal state of mind. I have a day off from work and I plan to do as little as possible.

Just before I begun to write this I was watching Elisabeth Lesser being interviewed by Oprah Winfry on her soul series. I was thinking: Life is not necessarily a school. It is a good way to look at life. It makes life worth living, it makes life easier to digest, but it is not necessary how life really is. It is a world view. “Life is not a school. The deathbed is not a braking-up. Life is not a meditation practice, not a rehearsal. All this is just thoughts.” This is also just thoughts. How is life really, if one doesn’t have any thoughts at all about it? Isn’t thinking what makes us human? Is life about finding a good world view?

Saturday, June 28, 2008

Thoughts are generated in the subconscious mind. They have their source in life strategies and core beliefs.

Core beliefs are something you get from early childhood conditioning. Life strategies and are strategies we develop later in life to try to cope in this world. We act from our life strategies. The thoughts are mostly justifications,rationalizations and explanations to our actions.

For example:
Core belief: Everything is meaningless. There is no hope, not for me, not for humanity.
Life strategy: Take whatever you can get now. Tomorrow is another day.
Thought: So and so is a jerk. Is that a way to live?

Core belief: A big, jealous and vengeful God watches over me.
Life strategy: I must always do as the priests tell me to do.
Thought: How I would like him to fuck me. Oh my Goodness!

However, there are “deeper” levels. Maybe synchronicities and clairvoyance are not not even psychological or physiological phenomenons. Mayne they are not made of mind stuff at all. They are mysterious, metaphysical phenomenon’s. To try to find scientific explanations to them is futile.

But there are even more deeper levels. I'm thinking of revelations and mystic experiences. On this level, words are completely useless.

The words, the thoughts and the concepts in the left brain hemisphere are good and useful tools, if they are used for what they are made to do, socializing, jokes, gossip, politics, science and plan makings, but to describe or discuss mystical experiences they wont do. It is like trying to repair a software problem in the computer with a hammer. It is wrong kind of tool.

Friday, June 27, 2008

How can one be happy in this terrible world of war and terror? And how can one be happy when the head is filled with all kinds of urgent problems? Maybe one has serious money problems, maybe one has a lot of problems at work, maybe one doesn’t have the time to take care of one´s elderly parents, whatever. Is it really the ego that construct all these problems?

Born again Christians and people who belong to certain religious sects are often very happy. Should one become a born again Christian, or should one adopt some other ecstatic belief system? Should one start to eat Prozac pills? Should one simply skip all the problems or let someone else solve them? Should one go and get drunk and let the problems hover over the head like vultures? Witch strategy is the best?

How can one be at peace in the “Now” with a lot of problems? It is of course a different story if all people around you where awakened, but how shall one deal with it today?

Well, this is what I have arrived at: one can have a lot of problems, deal with them, and be in the “Now“. To be in the “Now” is not an escape. To be in the “Now” is not necessarily pleasant.

Wednesday, June 25, 2008


So, if all ideas and ideologies in history have proved to be disastrous, how shall the new world be organized? Should we drop the idea of governments all together? Should we let go of laws and juridical systems? If all people where awakened would there be any need for laws and governments?

For the first, I think democracy is a good idea. (Jesus Christ! What is this now? You have just explained that all ideas have proved to be disastrous.)

Well, democracy is a good idea, but what do we mean when we talk about it? The official name for East Germany was: The German Democratic Republic. Everybody knows that East Germany wasn't a democratic republic. The official name for North Korea is: People’s Democratic Republic of North Korea. And everybody knows that North Korea is not a democratic. The word democracy doesn’t mean anything here.

In the U.S. you are free to choose between two right wing parties, or as Noam Chomsky puts it, two fractions of one and the same party. And think of all the extreme fascist dictatorships that the U.S has supported through the years, and all the democratic regimes that has been overthrown or thwarted by the CIA. We are not living in a democratic world. There is not a war going on today between democratic countries and different totalitarian regimes and terrorists. It is a fight, as it has always been, between all kinds of madmen.

Augusto Pinochet was a deeply religious man, a devout Catholic, a Christian. Silvio Berlusconi is also a Christian. He is modeling his life after the Lord Jesus Christ. Al Capone was a Christian. The drug lords in Columbia think of themselves as Christian and so did the slave traders. The word Christian simply doesn’t mean anything.

It is the same thing with many words, they don’t mean anything or they can mean just anything. Freedom, Love, Honesty, Brotherhood, Spirituality, Decency, Justice, Awakening, The true Self, Eternity… We’re talking and talking but we don’t know what we are talking about. We have a problem here.

Anyway, a democratic world governed by elected and awakened people would be good.

*

I think that many people all over the world have had it with ideologies and religions today. I have met many serious people that just don’t care about politics or religion anymore. What if we could get organized? What if we could form a new church, a new party without any agenda, without any specific ideas about anything, without any dogmas, without any idiotic hatred, just life, as it is, in this moment. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

*

Think of a man who is waiting for a phone call. He is waiting and waiting for the phone to ring, but nothing happens. “What the hell is this. Why isn’t she calling.” So, he tries to call her, but she is not answering. He gets upset. He gets worried. He gets all sorts of crazy thoughts in his poor little head. He feels irritated and miserable. “Is it over now?“ Everything goes wrong. The weather is terrible. A strong wind takes he’s new baseball cap when he is on his way to the library. The whole world is against him. The world is a terrible place.
Then he suddenly remembers that she had to go to the doctor today and then she had to meet up with her sister. Everything is changing now. “How stupid I am. What an Idiot I am.” Suddenly he is happy again. The world is a fantastic place. Life is wonderful.

Not only men in love get things wrong. How much of our misery is not simply misapprehensions, misconceptions and misunderstandings. Maybe we have got it all wrong. Maybe we have just mixed things up? Maybe the world is a fantastic place.

Sunday, June 22, 2008


All the endless man made problems in the world, war, injustice, starvation, murder, hate, exploitation, pollution and so on, are products of ideas. The Nazis in Germany had the idea that they belonged to a superior race and because life is a battle between races, they had to defeat all other inferior people. They didn’t mind to kill little children if they belonged to an inferior race. Ordinary family men gladly killed little children.

Today we live by the idea that a completely free and unregulated market is the supreme goal. Human beings are egoists by nature and if we struggle like hell for our own benefit everything will end up in perfect order. The strong will survive and the weak will vanish. (Blessed are the strong for they shall inherit the earth.) That is why all the industries have been moved to China and countries with fewer regulations. No inhibiting rights for the workers, no inhibiting taxes, no inhibiting laws against pollution. Many people know by now what the result will be: an environmental world catastrophe, but we can’t change it. The Germans couldn’t change their ideas either. They where forced to change.

All political ideologies, all religions, science, misunderstandings and resentments, everything, is driven by ideas. But what are ideas really? What do they consist of? Are they material? Can we free ourselves from them? Is it possible to wake up from the hypnosis?

I’m going on and on and on and on about the same thing. Are there really no other people out there who have had enough of ideas? Life is about this, life is about that. I love myself, I don’t love myself. For heavens sake, all you idiots out there: WAKE UP!!!