Where do all crazy ideas come from? Fundamentalist Christianity, Islamism, Neo-liberalism, all the weird religious and political crazyisms, neo-Nazism, libertarianism, biologism … What is wrong with us? Why do we feel that we absolutely have to invent a belief system to make life worth living? Why is it so difficult to live without a fantasy about how life ought to be lived? Why is it so difficult to be here and now without an explanation to it? Should I get myself a pair of Buddhist glasses or a pair of psychological middle class self-improvement glasses? Maybe I should try the tantric Hindu glasses? How am I supposed to look at the world?

In our western liberal culture, it is of utter importance to be someone. You cannot be just anybody. You have to be a lawyer, a doctor or a teacher; you have to be a movie star, a rock star, a poet or an artist. You have to be something. You cannot just be what you are, even if you have enough money. To simply be a human being is to be a loser. We are like ducks: Above the surface we look cool and calm, beneath the surface we paddle like hell.

Most people will eventually wake up from this hypnosis and realize that they have been completely crazy and that they have been driven by completely crazy ideas. Though it is probably not until we have to face death, our own or someone near to us, that we realize the futility with beliefs and ideas.

Marijuana is not harmless

Pot smokers hang out with other pot smokers and vinos hang out with other vinos. Left- wingers hang out with other left-wingers and neo-Nazis hang out with other neo-Nazis. A society consists of many different communities, religious, political and social.

Marijuana is not habit forming like nicotine or cocaine but an confirmed pot smoker will still find it almost impossible to give up his pot. Why would he like to give up his pot? I mean, most doctors consider it to be fairly harmless. Well, one reason could be because pot makes it impossible to experience the now clearly. Pot smokers live their life in a haze. It is meaningless to practice meditation if you are stoned or if you have smoked marijuana the past days. Anyway, it is difficult to give up marijuana for someone who has been smoking for many years, whatever reason he may have. Why is that? What makes it so difficult?

I think one reason is that marijuana has a numbing effect on unpleasant emotions, another more important reason is that the pot smoker is loosing his pot smoker identity when he give up his beloved drug. He do not belong to a group anymore. He is expelled, or rather,he has expelled himself. He feels like a wolf without a pack or a bird without a cage. He feels lonely and miss his friends.

It is ,for the same reason, difficult for a neo-liberal to give up his neo-liberalism and for a Catholic to give up his Catholicism. It is difficult to give up cigarettes and it is difficult to give up racism or judgementalism. It is a matter of identity. It is a matter of giving up a mental construction or illusion. The question is: What do you have to give up?
What do you have to realize?

If you are a smoker and give up smoking you will suffer from withdrawal symptoms. These symptoms can be terrible.You are able to endure this suffering only because you know that it will pass.You know that in three weeks you will feel fine again.
So, during the first weeks without nicotine there is not much point in bothering about the now. Eckhart Tolle says that only the now is real. OK. But when you give up your cigarettes it is good to now that things will be better in the future.

If you have a hard and lousy job to complete you can endure it only because you know that this job will not last forever, and at the dentist most people prefer the future to the present moment. Hope is very important to human beings. Hope is the wish for a better future. We are lost without hope. We are lost without the future.

However, if you never live in the now, if you always live in the future or in the past, it will become a habitual way of looking at the world. You will forget about the present now. You will loose it. You will forget about who you are. You will live your life in a fantasy world. You will end up as a zombie, as a living dead.

A human life consists of a lot of habits. We can get so used to hurrying that we hurry even if we don’t have to. We can get so used to being tired that we eventually don't know of any other state of mind. We can get used to living in a fog.

The autopilot mode is very useful. To learn how to drive a car takes time and energy. But after a few years you don’t have to think at all about your driving. It has become automatic. You can easily have a fiery conversation with someone while the autopilot is doing the driving for you. Isn’t this amazing?

So, the habits are OK, as I see it,and the dreams about a better future and all the fantasies. They are not our enemies. They are the sea we are swimming in. Problems appear only if we forget about the now completely. To wake up to the present now is to wake up for a moment from sleepwalking. It is to wake up from the hypnosis. Whales have to come to the surface to breathe. We have to visit the now every three to five minutes or so. And the Dolphins are making their jumps into the now
just for the fun of it.

Who is driving your car? Is it your mother or your father? Is it your husband or your wife? Is it a boyfriend with alcohol problems or is it displeased wife? What if it is a ghost?

Where are you heading? What would happen if you took over the wheel? Where would you go? Would it by like having a bunch of complaining kids in the back seat and their drunken grandfather beside you?
-Mum! Why can’t we go to the Mc Donald’s?
-MUUM!

Your goals are not your goals. Your political opinions are not your political opinions. Your beliefs are not your beliefs. You get almost everything from others. Your cup of tea is not your cup of tea. Someone else is driving your car. You are a passenger.

"I still have an ego. I still have ego reactions." Isn’t this strange statements?
Who is this I who is having an ego? Who is this I who is observing how the ego reacted? I think that they both originate from the same place. Ego is an unconscious reaction. The I is conscious.

The head is endlessly producing explanations. This is not a problem. The problems appear when you believe in the explanations. If you, for example, truly believe that you are a complete idiot or a looser, you will feel depressed. It is also a problem if you believe that you are superior or wonderful, or realistic or whatever your head is going on about. The more you are caught up in an explanation the stronger you hold on to a story the more problems you will create and the more disconnected you will be to what is going on here and now.

"I have no willpower. I am ugly. I am stupid. Life has no meaning. My noose is too big. I am such a jerk." How do I get rid of all those ideas?

"She is so selfish. They are so smart. They are so dense. I belong to a superior race. Life is unjust. There is no other meaning to life but getting rich. Poor people are poor because they are stupid. Poor people have no class. We live and we die for no reason at all."

All beliefs are wrong. A thousand years ago many people believed that the earth was flat. Three hundred fifty years ago people believed in witches. Three hundred fifty years from now people will think that we were deeply deluded.

All beliefs are wrong, all religious beliefs, scientific beliefs, philosophical explanations, conclusions, deductions and theories. Fifty years from now also the most well documented scientific evidences will be replaced by new evidences.

"Near death experiences are but hallucinations due to lack of oxygen. There are many universes out there. There is only one universe. Beliefs are so strong. They can’t be changed." Also this is beliefs and all beliefs are wrong. There is such tremendous and liberating power in this idea. Do not trust your own explanations. See them for what they are, just words. We don't have anything to hold on to, but fantasies.

This is not nihilism. Nihilists are extremely pessimistic. They are caught up in extremely pessimistic explanations. This is not relativism. Relativists are also so obsessed with their philosophy that they miss out the present moment completely.

All beliefs are wrong. Isn't also this belief wrong? Of course it is. All beliefs are wrong. Be what you are, here and now, without getting too caught up in speculations about it.

Selfish people care only about themselves. Some people don’t care at all about themselves. They care only about other people, their children, their company, their political organization or whatever.

In nature there is always a balance between polarities. Predators and their pray live in a balance. The predator die out if the pray die out. The brain is in fact two brain halves, balancing each other. Some people overuse their left brain half. Some people overuse their right brain half.

The autonomous nervous system consists of two parts also balancing each other, the sympathetic nervous system and the para sympathetic nervous system. Too much activity over a too long period of time in one or the other is not healthy. It creates all kinds of physical disorders.

So, there has to be balance. Ying and Yang has to be in balance. The formless world and the world of form need each other. Without the world of form, the formless world wouldn't exist because no one would be there to recognize it. If you focus only on the spiritual realm, like the religious people or if you focus only on material things, like the mundane people you are out of balance. You are out of balance if you care only about your inner world or if you care only about the outer world.

We live in an extremely unbalanced culture. Those who has got on their lot to balance out the extreme materialism has a tough job.