Words are not just words and thoughts are not just thoughts. It is very important what you say to yourself. Many spiritually bent people seem to believe that words and thinking are obstacles and something to get rid of. (When you stop the inner chatterbox, you can see the reality as it really is.) I think this is a mistake. I think that we must listen carefully to what the inner voice has to say. Very often, it is completely wrong about things. It can come up with the most fantastic excuses, explanations and accusations; it can make you miserable and ruin your life. You cannot silence this voice. There is a better way to deal with it. You can dispute it. You have to show clearly to your inner voice that it is wrong when it is wrong. The inner voice is conditioned habitual thinking, the voice that disputes the conditioning is not conditioned. It tries to see how things really are, here and now.

"Listen! I am not useless. It is true that I made a mistake but that doesn't make me a complete idiot. You are not fair. Some people still like me. And people in general are not assholes. And life is not meaningless. It depends on how you look at things..."

Remember also that it is important to be sincere when you are talking to yourself. Double talk and bullshit may be useful in the outside world but in the inside world it is creates a lot of problems.

I read about this way of looking at things in Martin Seligman's book "Authentic Happiness".

 

 

 

Maps are very useful. However, if they are inaccurate, too old, or if they are bogus-maps, they are of no use at all.

Through the millenniums, religions and philosophies have performed the functions of maps. Priests, preachers, philosophers, psychologists, politicians, scientists, gurus and imams have pointed out the way to us.

It is not different today. But now we have also thousands and thousands of self-appointed spiritual teachers and coaches who show us the way to the Promised Land. They know it all. They know the way. They have been there. The problem is that they all point in different directions.

This doesn't mean that they are all wrong. With all the different directions they point at some got to be right.

I sound too cynical. I can hear it. It is of course also possible that some people know what they talk about.

Well, almost all people seem to know it all. They know what is right and what is wrong, they know what is common sense and what is mumbo jumbo, they know what kind of politics is the best, which religion is the best, witch kind of meditation technique is the best, they know everything. It is rare to meet people who say that they don’t have a clue about anything. I relax when I meet such people.

Some people wake up and realize that they have been fooling themselves. “Everything is wonderful, really. I'm healthy, I have a wonderful family, a wonderful home and a big bank account, why have I been so miserable? What tremendous power there is in self-deceptions.”

Other people wake up and realize that they have been mean and selfish for decades. Maybe drugs and alcohol have possessed them, maybe the idea of making a career or status-striving. Some of those people might say to themselves, “Oh my God. I completely forgot about my children. How can I make up for all this?”

Some people wake up from political delusions. Ingmar Bergman, for example, sympathized with the Nazis in Germany for many years as a young man.

Another kind of awakening is the small awakening that happens when we wake up from a daydream, when the attention shifts away from the thoughts for a moment.

When Eckhart Tolle talks about awakening, he is talking about enlightenment, a huge awakening, a sudden, radical shift in ones perception of the world, a complete loss of ego, an end to all interpretations. I have not experienced this kind of awakening. I don't really understand what he is talking about. I still have an ego after years and years of meditation practice and philosophical studies. However, "my" ego has lost much of its power. When it is going on an on about something and wants to direct my actions I simply tell him to stop all that stupid nonsense. It actually works, sometimes.

To me it doesn’t really matter if the world is 15 billion years old or if it is 150 billions years old, if it has always been there or if there are many more worlds out there. Matter consists of empty space to more than 99,99%, empty space between the electrons and the nucleus of the atom. So what? To me it doesn't really matter if I will reincarnate or if I will end up in heaven or hell when I die. All such thoughts are, as I see it, nothing but speculations. I live here in this world, in this time period, in this world of form, in this moment. This matters to me. In a few minutes I'll have to rush to catch my train to get to work in time. In the great scheme of things, human beings are as insignificant as ants. So what? To us it matters if we will be wiped out in a nuclear war or if we are ruining our planet because of insatiable greed, carelessness and stupidity. This carelessness and greed is not due to cosmic perfection. It is carelessness and greed, which is similar to alcoholism.