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."