On an intellectual level, it is possible to know that there is no point in yelling, singing or searching for something, but I find myself constantly doing these things anyway. Before I know it, my mind is back in searching mode, trying to find something new to bring happiness or peace. Trying to find something to stop that, is just more searching, so I guess all I can do is watch it happen and let it have it’s course.
Maybe some day it will just drop away on it’s own, otherwise the search will continue. The frustration comes when I see the searching going on, and then think I should/could stop the search, which is just another search and sometimes it takes a while before I SEE what I’m doing and just relax around it, truly trying to lift myself in my own bootstraps and catching my own tail at the same time.
To an outsider I guess it can look quite funny…
Tag Archives: spirituality
What are you going to do?
Old habits
For some it takes time to make the transition from the old to the new. Leaving old habits, reasons and beliefs behind and embracing the present moment with open arms whatever it is.
It is impossible to force these things to happen, rather they will eventually just drop away. Fading into precious memories of things of the past. Things that has served their purpose, yet did it well.
I notice at times how my mind like to kick in and present these old ideas and habits like new ones. Afterwards I notice that it was just a flashback from times that has long been over. But meeting the future holding on to the past is no way to live in the present.
I see no reasons for what is happening at the moment. No cause and effect as far as I can see, just change. Even though my mind likes to fill in the blanks and come up with a cause and a reason after the event has occured, I see that life has no cause, it is just a continueous movement right now.
Walking
Two years ago I went to India.
When I came back, I found my world to be too small to hold me.
Since then, I have quit my relationships, switched jobs, travelled the world, moved to the capital and dropped beliefs and opinions behind me. I have ripped off my roots and I am dragging them with me wherever I go. I tell you that it is sometimes painful as hell and almost every day I long and wish to take the easy road and go back to the safe and comfortable life I once had.
But I do not regret this one second, I will rather suffer and be alive than to be comfortable and dead. I am sick and tired of trying to be like everyone else and there is a fire burning inside me that wants to come out. Two years later this is still only the beginning of a road that leads to the unknown. I have no clue what it really means to feel at home yet I will Know when I have found it.
Desire to change what is
There always tend to be a lot of suffering connected with this crazy resistance to what is. Trying always to get more out of situations or interaction with people than what is right now. I can see it so clearly when it happens (most of the time), how my desire to get more, connect more, feel more satisfaction instead makes the situation worse and akward at times. I see my desire to connect on a deeper level and how the next desire coming up is how to stop that desire, creating more desire to cut desire off. It is a race that can never be won, the dog chasing its own tail. I “know” intellectually that this has no use. That thought can never get me there, that there is no there to get to, that trying to stop is just another trying…
Conformity
To conform to a group seem to be an instinctive and natural trait for all humans, yet it has a tendency go create a lot of suffering.
People go with the group wether they agree or not, and often feel bad when they really don’t want to. But instead of questioning the group norm, they rationalize their behaviour so that the mental conflict is solved. Instead of saying, I don’t want this, they say to themselves, this is what I really wanted, conforming to the group. Humans have an incredible ability to fool themselves into thinking they really want something they don’t. I am no exception. There are countless situations when I have conformed to the group and probably countless more that I’m not even aware of.
For some reason, a minority of people have problems conforming. I am one of them. Even though I might look like everyone else outwardly, I often feel limited by the conformity around me and when I feel that way, I have a childish tendency to revolt against it. When I became a vegetarian about twelve years ago, it was an act of rebelling against the society I am living in, and in the beginning especially I identified with it just to be able to tell to myself and to others that I wasn’t going to accept the norms around me. I was different.
Conforming to a group or rebelling against it, can if you look close enough be seen for what it is. It is a dynamic pair of opposites that consitute life. Wether you conform or rebel, you are still very much part of the game, and even though the rebel thinks he is standing outside not taking part in the game, he is still a slave to it. If no one was standing outside, how could there be an inside? If there were no rebels, there would be no definition of that which the rebel was fighting.
To be truly free from conformity might sound utopian, but perhaps only because it is so rare. My rebellious acts has always been a strategy to reach a state of existance where no conformity exist. I have had little success, at least with that strategy.
To be free from conformity is not to look, think and be different from everyone else. A free man might look and talk just like you and me. Freedom is not a quality on the outside, but a release on the inside. To stop identifying with that which is always stuck in this world, that which will always conform in a way, our sense of personality and our body and start to see what we Are. That which never conforms, that which is always free, open and alive.
Why some people walk their own way, or why they feel so limited in the face of expectations and conformity I don’t know. All I know is that I have always been that way (that I know of), always questioning the obvious.
What would the world be like without non-conformers? Isn’t it in the dynamic ”conflict” between the conformers and non-conformers where all kind of change happen? And just like the rebel and the group rebelled against, there would be no concept of conformity if non-conformity didn’t exist. So, in the end, we all play our roles in this universal game called life, and perhaps suffering only happen when we try to go against these roles. Trying to conform when we know we can’t or trying to act differnt when all we are is normal.
Living in the future
In the comments on my post about Obama, there was some talk about how the election seemed to be a lot about hope.
Hope is a peculiar thing. Hope is the idea that we need to endure to find out that in the future, everything is going to get better, but if you look at the life you have lived, you will probably find that things has gone up and down, and we usually think things are still not good enough and need to be improved.
Most people is constantly thinking about the past and the future. We feel guilty and regret things we have done in the past, because we are anxious that it will mean bad consequences for our life, and then we worry about what will happen in the future, because we don’t know, and things might turn out ugly. To cope with this we invent concepts such as hope. Hope, that despite our past (which is not usually as bad as we think), things might turn out pretty good or even better. What we tend to forget is that when we focus on the past and the future, the life we live now just goes by without us even noticing it.
The old saying ”the grass is always greener on the other side” fits very well with this. We always think things might be better somewhere else but here. We might be reasonably happy, but always keep a foot in the door just in case something better turns up. This can clearly be seen around you in this consumer society we live in (in myself too), in that as soon as you have bought something new, a cell phone, a computer or a new car, we start planning for the next thing that will replace it. (I want an iPhone by the way because the cell phone I have now is more than six months old, so if anyone got one, send it to me ?).
A zen-buddhist monk told the story of how a man was out walking and decided that when he got home, he would eat a peach. He started to imagine how this peach would taste, the sweetness, the juice and how it would feel to put his teeth in it. He so vividly imagined the peach, that he totally missed the beautiful landscape around him. When he reached his house, he wanted the peach so badly, that he went straight to the table, took the peach and ate it.
Since he had already experienced the peach so vividly in his mind, he was already done with it, and while he was eating it, he started thinking about what he would do next, and before he knew, he had finished the peach and was going about the next thing.
This is basically how most people live their lives. Thinking about what to do next even before finishing what we are doing now or thinking about all the good or bad times we’ve had in our lives, so we completely forget what is happening around us. And therefore misses to actually live life as it is.
Peter Englund, a Swedish historian who is also a member of the board of the Swedish Academy. The same Academy that is responsible for nominating scientists for the Nobel Prize, was interviewed in a magazine I read a couple of years ago. He is one of the foremost academics in Sweden, yet he thought that living in the Now was a bit overrated, after all, you hve to plan sometimes too.
To live in the Now moment is not about not planning and thinking about the past, but rather to Be here right now. Present.
Lets look at Now for a moment. Can you at anytime in your life not be here now? You could say that yesterday you are not here now, but yesterday you were in the Now of yesterday, and the only reason you now that there was ever an yesterday, is because you have a memory of it. Now.
In the same way, living in the future is also impossible. The only way you experience the future, is by imagining it Now.
You are always stuck in the Now moment. Whether you want to or not. The problem is probably that you don’t want to be stuck in the Now moment, because it can be quite unpleasant if you’re not used to it, and therefore you get caught up in Thinking about the past or the future. You think about it. Now. Instead of Being, Now.
We do miss this obvious often. Even clever people like Peter Englund misses it, because he thinks that planning takes place somewhere outside of Now.
You can only Be Here Now.
Paradox
I am stuck in an endless paradox. The paradox of life.
Using my mind trying to get out of this paradox only reveals the limit of the mind.
Bringing frustration. Pain. Suffering.
Any strategy to get out is a strategy of the mind.
I am sick of living in this paradox. Sick of trying. Sick of searching.
Sick of trying to stop searching. Trying to stop. Sick of being sick.
Trying to find is futile. Trying to stop finding is futile.
Stuck. Frustrated. Sick of it all.
Please. Just end this now.
End
End
Now
Detachment
It is easy to think that detachment is the same as indifference. I have been there, stuck in it, thinking that it will give me something. Thinking that it will make things easier to deal with. What I noticed though, was that indifference made everything a little bit more easier to deal with, but everything became dull. I was numbed out.
Detachment is nothing like indifference. It is being fully in the moment, but at the same time not being bound by it. Having a taste of it, it is nothing dull at all. It is not being numbed out. It is sitting on a chair watching the bustling activity of the world going on around you, just being ok with it. Enjoying it despite it’s ups and downs, despite being both good and bad at the same time.
I am not to blame. The only way to change things I have known was to force it to fit into my image of how it should be. That is true for most of us, I guess. But when that change of attitude shows up within you, the change in this world comes automatically. And it is not always a real change. Sometimes things stay the same, but they look changed to you, because your attitude has changed.
Spontaneousness
Spontainety, I guess, is rather natural and forthcoming, but for some reason, it is extremely hard. I so easily slip into old patterns of behaviour and thought. Living life with autopilot turned on. And so it seems, my life is so focused on making things easy, simple and effective, so that I can glide along life with no bumps.
I don’t say that those things aren’t any good. They are, at times. I make a living trying to even out the bumps in the experience of my customers. However, life is not about avoiding speedbumps, but rather drop the concept of bumps alltogether.
Life has no bumps. Life is. The bumps is invented by us.
What we consider bumps is only variations of the road we call future that continuesly run through this present moment that we live in. That are us. This unavoidable presence that we so hard try to avoid by hanging on to the past or projecting ourselves into some kind of imaginary future.
Life is, it seems, a constant up and down, and trust me. I hate it at times. But no matter if I hate it or not, the fact remains. It is what it is. And my constant battle to change it, to make it into something else has given me nothing but trouble. Yet, I do it over and over again, perhaps only now, I do it less fiercely.
