Life is short. We are castles in the sand. Tomorrow they are gone.

I'm not sure if I agree with Eckhart to 100%. This is my idea of ego:

A man without an ego is like a car without a driver. The driver can be drunk or crazy or full of hatred, but he can also be reasonably relaxed. The ego is nothing you can get rid of, but it is possible to calm down. It is possible to realize that most thoughts, opinions, beliefs, likes and dislikes are nothing but misapprehensions.

Yes, the ego might be a bunch of conditioned responses and in a sense an optical illusion but still, what would you be without it? Where would you go? Would you like to stay in bed for the rest of your life? Someone has to drive the car. Someone has to pick up the kids from school and buy groceries or whatever.

The delusions are like a manuscript to a tragedy. We have always been driven by delusions. When we wake up and realize that the delusions was nothing but delusions, that the play was just a play, we get disillusioned. What will now take us anywhere? Who will now come up with new ideas and make up new plans? I think we need to realize that we need the ego, it may be an illusory ego, it may have been conditioned in a dysfunctional family in a dysfunctional culture, but without it we have nothing. We need the delusions, the matter is what delusions and what manuscripts.

The play is over. We are leaving the theater and stream out to the streets. Tomorrow we are back to work again, caught up in traffic jams and worries about bills we need to pay and lazy workmates. This is life as it is. Welcome to the reality.

*

What if we blow this little planet to pieces in a nuclear war.

What would the reality be like if no one was there to perceive it? There wouldn’t be any colors and not any sounds. It wouldn’t be hot or cold, good or bad. Just an endless empty space without any quality at all. Isn’t that an interesting thought? We are creating this world with our senses.

*

The voice in my head can sometimes be immensely nagging, going on and on about something; sometimes like a nagging mother, sometimes like a wino in a commuter train. Shut up for Christ’s sake, I want to get lost in my book! Yap,yap,yap…
What the hell to do? How do you deal with a nagging inner voice? How do you deal with talkative winos in commuter trains when you want to read your book in peace?

Many people go to Thailand for a two week holiday trip, also many families. It is a wonderful country. The Thai people are nice and friendly, the climate is pleasant and the beeches are excellent.
But the family tourists are rarely aware of the Thai prostitution industry. They don’t know that children are sold to western weirdo’s and they don't know about the extent of that business. Their level of awareness is often very low. They don’t see anything; they don’t hear anything, so they don’t have anything to say about it. They are happy. They are charging their batteries.

Most people are not aware of the fact that the chocolate they enjoy so much is produced by slaves in West Africa. Kids are kidnapped and forced to work in the cocoa plantations. Slavery never came to an end. I read recently that about 27 million people are kept as slaves in the world today.

Many people are not aware of that the clothes they wear and the toys their kids play with are made by children that work under horrible conditions in Asian sweat shops.Also adults are forced to work under horrible slavery like conditions.

Well, we're happy to get good bargains and in order to stay happy we have to make ourselves unaware. We have to numb ourselves. Alcohol, drugs, endless TV nights, anything goes; exercise, dieting, hobbies. Why not try gardening? And if nothing else works we have to construct rationalizations. "It is good for them to find employment, isn't it? Otherwise they would starve. They should be thankful to us."

Why do I bring this up? Doesn’t all the horrors belong to the old world? Why not simply leave the old world behind and wake up to a new world? Yes, why not! It is a brand new day today.

Human beings are created with a free will. If the free will is not used it will atrophy, like muscles. Muscles that are not used begin to atrophy within a few weeks, for example when a leg is in a cast.
This applies also to attention and awareness. If you are habitually inattentive and unaware you will lose those abilities. And you might lose them for good. It is terrible. You might end up in mire for the rest of your life.


Christians are deeply convinced that Hindus say their prayers to illusory Gods. Muslims believe that the Gods animists pray to are but fantasies. Most people believe that people of other faiths are misled. Introverted people think that extroverted people try to escape reality and extroverted people think the same about the introverted. Right wingers think that left wingers are jerks. Everybody seems to know everything. Isn’t it amazing? Not many people say that they really don’t have a clue about anything.

What if the God you pray to doesn't exist!
What if also you have got it all wrong.
What if also you have been deceived and misguided.

You don’t tell all the details to a child about how grandmother died. You don’t tell about what happened when you had to kill the cat. You just say: “Grandmother and the cat have gone to heaven now.”
It makes things easier.

Is there something that you simply refuse to see?
Well, take a close look at that.

Historians know of about 22 000 different kinds of Christian faiths. Isn’t it amazing? 22 000 different interpretations of the same book! But how many different kinds of Hinduism and how many different kinds of Buddhism is it possible to find. And how many different psychological and philosophical schools do we have? And how many different political viewpoints? Where do we get it all from? Where is the source? Is it possible to find anything that we all can agree about?

Have you noticed that whatever book you read the author seem to know it all. He or she has found it. How can it be that so many people out there have found all the answers? And how do you explain that so many of them arrive at completely different conclusions and point in different directions?


2+2=3 2+2=9 2+2=63 2+2=15 2+2=78 2+2=12 2+2=3 2+2=22

If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.

I hereby solemnly declare that I now have stopped my digging.
I have dug in the same clay hole for opals for at least forty years, but I have never had much success with it. OK, I have found a few opals, but only small ones and not very good ones. So, now it is over. I have now given up that trade. I have finally realized that I will never find, down in that hole, the opal that can change my life.
I will now take a bath to clean off the mud and put some clean clothes on and go in to town, as a new man.

Blessed are the rich and famous for theirs is the kingdom of God.
Blessed are those who are positive and optimistic.
Blessed are the strong, for they shall inherit the earth.
You are the light of the world.
Rejoice and be glad.
Woe to you that complain.
Be a little realistic, for Christ’s sake.
Do not lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, but lay up for yourselves treasures here where you have use for them.
Take the log out of your brothers eye. Teach him too see sound and clear.

Some people live theoretical lives in a theoretical world. What they know about and what they talk about is what they have read in books, spiritual books, self improvement books, books on general psychology. They have piles of books. They are like cooks that never cook anything but read a lot of cook books.

Some people are pretenders. To talk to them it is like talking to actors in a play. He or she can be so nice and friendly, a wonderful person with wonderful ideas. After some years the original person has faded away and the “actor” has becomes his role figure. Such people can be very helpful. They can advise you how to live your life, what you ought to do and so on. They know it all. They are next to perfect. But they are not real. They are but imagined role figures in a play.

Some people have sold their soul to the devil, many, many years ago, but that is of course something you can’t prove. In fact, they are not even aware of it. Maybe they have forgotten about it. If you bring up the subject they will laugh at you and ask what the hell you are talking about.

Very important persons, like politicians and big business executives, are like poker players. They don’t want to give the game away. They have poker faces. And the higher the stakes are the more important is the tiny little details. Everything has to be in perfect order, the hands, the hair cut, the warm smile, the tone in their voice.

Some regular folks are like politicians. They can drive me crazy. Of course I shouldn’t feel like that, but I do.

Human beings are pack animals, like wolves or chimpanzees. Everyone is following the head ape. A mean and evil head ape can easily lead his pack all the way to hell if he wants to. The pack is just happy that someone takes the lead.

If you happen to read something that irritates you or, let’s say, make you laugh a little, would you agree to that the immaterial world has affected the material world?
Isn’t it interesting that letters has the power to change the levels of certain hormones and other chemicals in your blood circulation? Isn't this a kind of magic?

Many people have to pretend that they are someone that they are not in order to get a job or to find some buddies or maybe a girlfriend. Maybe nothing is wrong with pretending. Where would you be now if you never had put on a show?

Is there really a true self and a false ego? What if there is nobody behind the masks? Maybe there is no actor that is acting the roll figure.

Sometimes I lie and I know very well that I am lying. I pretend, for example, that I did not steal that book. I look completely innocent. I can also act a little bit upset about that someone dares to suspect me. It looks good, don’t you think?

This is from the New Earth book, page 55. Jean Paul Sartre is commenting Descartes and Eckhart is commenting Sartre.
“He looked at Descartes statement `I think, therefore I am´ very deeply and suddenly realized in his own words, `The consciousness that says I am is not the consciousness that thinks´. What did he mean by that? When you are aware that you are thinking that awareness is not part of thinking. It is a different dimension of consciousness. And it is that awareness that says I am. If there were nothing but thought in you, you wouldn’t even know you are thinking…”

I can’t see why the awareness that says “I am” can’t be just another thought? I think that the mind can look at itself. One part of the brain is watching another part. When you fall asleep at night both the I am thought and all the other thoughts disappears, like crows.

I believe that when I die no feelings of any I will live on. The sense of I needs a living brain. I believe that this is it. There is nothing more to it.

It is suddenly winter here. Last night we had minus 10 degrees C. (13,5 F). We have had the warmest winter in history. Now we haven’t have this cold in the end of march since 1902.

I am sitting here at the computer. It is snowing outside. A middle aged man without a clue. In thirty years from now he will definitely be dead and gone.

But there are things that is important to know, though. First of all, thoughts are never anything but thoughts. What I write here is thoughts. Thoughts are never the reality. The map is never the land it is depicting. Some people collects bugs and beetles, others jot down thoughts in notebooks. But the beetles are real. Deep green or metallic blue with wonderful antennas. But how do you draw a map over a mental landscape?

We have always fooled ourselves. We have always been deeply convinced about things that later proved to be totally idiotic. We have been witch hunters, slave traders, and Nazis. We have sacrificed both animals and humans on altars too to please imagined gods. We have drilled holes in the skulls of crazy people to let the evil spirits out...

So, if we always have fooled ourselves, isn’t it quite possible that we, in this very moment, are completely fooled, that what we truly believe now will later be considered as idiocies?

Sometimes it is not enough to pretend that you are stupid to avoid annoying people, sometimes it is necessary to turn yourself into a complete idiot.

I wonder what it was like to live in Germany in the end of the nineteen thirties when almost everyone around you was a fanatic Nazi, when everyone in your neighborhood simply loved to howl at mass rallies.

But we are enlightened today, aren’t we? We are not Nazis or Communists or witch hunters. We are modern minded democrats.
I think that in the future people will think of us living here today as completely crazy. They will say about us that we almost managed to ruin the whole planet with our endless greed after more and more money and power?

Our thoughts are not ours. They just appear from out of nowhere. One never asks to have them.
It’s the same thing with emotions, they are just there and there is no way to stop them. One doesn’t choose to be angry or sad. One doesn’t choose to feel desperate.

One doesn’t choose to believe what one believes. One doesn’t choose to be a Catholic , a Protestant or a Sunni Muslim. One simply finds oneself as one. One doesn't choose ones family.Our free will is hugely exaggerated.

I have strong beliefs that I certainly don’t like. For example, when Eckhart writes “…that humanity is now faced with a stark choice: Evolve or die” my first thought is, “yes of course, we will die because we will not evolve." Not a chance. The same thing happens with my second thought. We have always been like this, nasty, competitive and violent, like chimpanzees. If one or two people here and there are able to transcend their own conditioning that’s fine with me, but the vast majority will never ever evolve. We’re stuck here in the mud. This belief is as strong as my belief that the earth is revolving around the sun.

I don’t want this thought. I don’t like it. So how do I get rid of it? Should I simply tell myself to believe that everything will be all right? Should I try to stop thinking? OK! I need to raise my level of awareness, but how do I do it? Where should I begin? Is it like pulling oneself up by the bootstraps?

This is what I have found: For the first, one must be able to question one's own thoughts, one's own beliefs, and one's own opinions. One must always question oneself. Without this questioning no awakening at all is possible.

It is very painful to question oneself. Sometimes it is extremely painful. And nothing is really gained from it. No one will be impressed by it and no one will pay for it. So what is the point with it? There is no point, I guess, but it is the first step in the awakening process.

The second step is to realize that thoughts are nothing but thoughts. Beliefs are nothing but beliefs. To be afraid of one's own thoughts is like being afraid of ghosts.

Thoughts are made of the stuff as dreams are made on.

An alcoholic or a nicotinist can many years after he has given up his habit experience extreme cravings for his drug. Suddenly the old tapes can start to play again. Many people have asked themselves: Is this really me that is drinking and smoking again? Isn’t that someone else, from the past? Who is that? Who is playing that old music now?

Who is the deceiver and who is the deceived in a self-deception case? Who is the judge? Who is the prosecutor, who is the defense lawyer? Whom is in the jury?

Memory is a useful thing. Once you have learned how to ride a bicycle you know how to do it for life. Even if you haven’t used a bicycle for years you won’t have any problems riding it if you have to. It is the same thing with drinking and smoking. In the right setting you would immediately blend in. This is your crowd. This is your pack. How come you left them? What an idiot you are!

The same mechanisms are operating when you give up old habitual ways of thinking, when you give up an old useless ideology or a senseless philosophy of life or whatever it is. After the Second World War many Germans had to wake up to the fact that Nazism was an appalling philosophy of life. They had to find something new. They had to and they did, but it took time. Some of them had more problems than others though. It was very had to give up what they had loved so much and devoted their life to. And some kept the core-ideology and simply gave it a new name. They are now selling the same soup but with a different brand name.

If you have a dog you know that you have to be the top dog. If the dog believes that he is the boss and you are the underdog then you will have problems. It is the same thing with the mind. You have to be the boss and the mind has to be the underdog. But who is that boss? Who are you, really? What does the sense of I consist of? Is it just an imagination?


“All the world’s a stage, and the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time play many parts”

Some people dress up as artists and some people dress up as office clerks. They start to act as artists or as office clerks; the way they express themselves changes, the way they talk, the intonation, the dialect, they way they carry themselves. Their incarnation changes gradually, their opinions and beliefs, their ideals. But who is the actor? Is there an actor? Can it be more than one actor in a human being? Are there real actors and false actors?

This is basic: We see the world through filters. A catholic has a catholic filter and an atheist has an atheistic filter. There are bourgeois filters and working-class filters and racist filters. There are thousands of different kinds of filters, but what does the world look like if you don’t see it through a filter. Is it possible to perceive reality as it is without colored glasses?

So, what am I after with all this? Well, this is what I have arrived to: It is possible to give up smoking. It is possible to give up drinking. It is possible to give up a belief, an idea, a misunderstanding. It is possible to change. It is possible for mankind to change. It is not necessary to hold on to old religions and old ways. Anything is possible.

Religions and ideologies are not a problem as long as you don’t believe in them. And the stronger your faith is, the more problems you will create to yourself and to others. If you end up as an extremist or fundamentalist it is getting really dangerous.

The same thing applies for thoughts. As long as you don’t believe in them they will not cause problems. For example, if you truly believe that you are a complete idiot you will be in trouble. But if you don’t really believe that you are a complete idiot, if it is just something you say to yourself because you have misplaced your keys, then there is no big deal.

Some thoughts are extremely dangerous if you believe in them, for example:

"There is not much point with anything. Human beings are mad. There is some kind of construction flaw with us. We are always at war. We are ruining our little planet. But soon we will be dead and gone and no one will miss us."

Or:"Nothing really counts but money. I have hundreds of millions of dollars but I desperately need more. I will do anything I can to get hold of those dollars. I don’t care if small children has to work till they die for it. I want that money! Don't play no tricks with me. This is how life is set up. It is biology that runs everything."

When you wake up to the now all your problems disappear. It is simply wonderful. There is no climate change due to air pollution anymore. There is no injustice anymore. The fact that the clothes I am wearing are made by small children working under slave like conditions in Asia is no longer a problem. I am all set. I was comfortably off before but I wasn’t completely satisfied, something was missing. Now I have found it! There is nothing but the now and I am so happy.

If a baby is born in to a dysfunctional family with nothing but violence, drugs, and criminality around, no one will be surprised if he runs in to trouble later in life.
Well, aren’t we all born into a dysfunctional mankind? What can you expect from us?

But not all children born in rough neighborhoods under horrible conditions turn into gangsters. How can that be? Not all people in this evil world are evil. Not even a majority. How can that be? In fact, most people are pretty much OK. Most people are fooled and we deceive ourselves, but we are not evil. The core problem, I think, is that we are pack animals. We follow the head ape. If the head ape is nasty and tell us to go to war and kill little children, we will go to war and kill little children. If the head ape tell us to work like hell for peanuts, we will work like hell for peanuts. If he tell us to go to hell with him, we will go to hell with him.
We don’t want to feel odd and left out, and we have a problem with authorities. This is our problem.

“ A significant portion of the earths population will soon recognize, if they haven’t already done so, that humanity is now faced with a stark choice: Evolve or die. A still relatively small but rapidly growing percentage of humanity is already experiencing within themselves the breakup of the old egoic mind patterns and the emergence of a new dimension of consciousness.” Eckhart Tolle

Dear Eckhart. Do you think that the Catholic Church will ever give up their egoic mind patterns, that is their belief system? Do you think that the Muslims will ever be ready to give up their belief system? Do you think that the economists voluntarily will give up their Nobel prize winning theories? Are you serious? Do you think that there will be a day when the executives in the big corporations are saying: “We have been completely crazy. We have been after nothing but money. We need to change that.”? Do you think that the George Bush mob will ever change their ways. How about the KKK and the neo Nazis, how do you think they feel about what you are saying? And people in general, do you really think that they are willing to give up their egoism? Are you actually saying that we are egoists?

What do you think? How big is the percentage today that are willing to give up their belief system, their egoic mind pattern? How many people of that sort have you met? A hundred? Ten? Two or tree? How I wold like to get in contact with them. Hello! Where are you? Hello! Answer me!

It is possible, I think, that a person here and a person there will be able to wake up from delusions, but the large majority will never wake up. I have spent at least 25 years on a serious quest to rid myself from delusions and nonsense, but I haven’t had much success. I am still stressed out about everything. I rarely experience any peace of mind.

In Germany, in the nineteen thirties, everybody was screaming their lungs out: “Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!” Scholars, priests, ordinary farm workers, everybody was screaming. Today everybody is working like hell to be able to shop. If we relax the shopping thing the stock market will go down. That would be the end of the world.
There is no hope. I’m sad to say it.

Thoughts like this shouldn’t be expressed, I suppose. Thoughts like this should be stored away in a dungeon somewhere. But all the accepted thoughts are welcome to the great ball, dressed up in pink and green and blue, and the most wonderful of them all shall marry the prince and they should live happily ever after.

In Mahayana Buddhism, by the way, the monk who is on the brink to enlightenment, refrains from his enlightenment and accept the unenlightened state of mind in solidarity with all the rest.

Well, I don’t refrain from enlightenment. I am not even near it. I am a stressed out and disillusioned middle aged man without much hope. I am not desperate. I will not kill myself. I will have visitors here in a little while and we will have some fun maybe. Maybe we are going to a restaurant later. I don’t know. Tomorrow I am at work again.

What I can’t understand is all the synchronicities in my life. Why do they appear? Is there any meaning with them? I plan sometimes to make a list of them, but what is the point with that? Synchronicities happen to me all the time. So what.

It is raining here today. It is raining here almost everyday, nowadays. Due to the climate change we must prepare fore more rain, the experts say. Around the Mediterranean, though, there will be less rain. The Sahara dessert will expand north to Greece, Italy and France.

I feel a weird bodily irritation today. I don’t know what's going on.

Is it not possible that some people just pretend to be awakened like many religious people just pretend to be religious? What does it mean to wake up? What does it mean to be religious? What does it mean to pretend to be religious?
George W Bush is a deeply religious man. He is impressed by Dalai Lama. He feels that Dalai Lama is a truly religious man, like himself. Silvio Berlusconi in Italy is also a deeply religious man and he models his life after Jesus Christ. How is all this possible? One of the richest men in Europe believes that he is modeling his life after Jesus Christ and the president of the United States believes that he is guided by God. If he is wrong God is wrong.

Is it not sad if someone truly believe that he has been saved , that he will live for ever and God knows what, when in reality he has been but fooled by some crazy preacher?

Don’t be judgmental about people that lie, put on shows and deceive themselves. Without their lies, shows and self-deceptions they might not have anything at all to live for.