Here are some things I've written before. A small book with aphorisms etc. that I printed myself a long time ago, "Not in a day", can be found here. A couple of other collections of texts, which are dated with certain years, but not published, also.
The world opens to those who have love, and is closed where love is not. And that applies not only in human relationships, where we know it is so, but also in everything else. The world reveals its secrets to those who have love. That which is secret, not because it is secret, but because so few, so rarely, see it.
“Everyone has a story to tell.” You are always whole. Everyone's life, and way of seeing and experiencing, is a work of art. In this regard, no one is "more" or "less". By developing, you don't become bigger, you really just become different, and from the side of life, it certainly equals who you are.
When the subway train had stopped at a station, I saw an elderly man with a blind cane trying to adjust himself on a chair. It was quite slow and soon the train would pull away. Then it is another gentleman, not entirely mobile or trouble-free himself, who stretches his hand across the aisle and holds it ready right next to it as long as needed. Seeing such things strengthens and inspires deeply. You don't live by bread alone.
It is so important to be able to wonder. You get out of bed in the morning and stand, leaning on your two sticks for legs. This is an object of meditation that could last a lifetime.
5
It's almost time for Walburg fair fires. I passed one like that the other day, and there was a lot of rubble. Old furniture, boards, a couple of worn rag rugs. Apart from a lot of rice and twigs of course. When I came by the next day, a couple of little guys were making a nest in all this. They had spread out the carpets, piled up the rubbish so that it formed like a room, set up two discarded chairs. They had made a flag out of a blue plastic bag. Martinus mentions this as one of the characteristics of the advanced person: she causes everything she touches to develop. And others before him have pointed out that in some cases the children should serve as our role models.
To write is to make yourself clear.
Breathing is also something symbolic: you support the formation of an inner space, detached from the bustle and stress of everyday life - but cooperating, rhythmically, with everything.
It has started to rain outside and drops are hanging on the window pane. It is a drama in the small; the drop's will to remain a drop, separate and whole, against the weight of the water. To be a lens for someone to collect and refract the world. The yellow of the field and the grey-white of the sky, the dull green of the forest edge. While the water is pushing hard and just wants to crawl back into the earth.
Something that can really put one's mental balance to the test is graffiti. The sense of style - and the desire to make it beautiful - of those who perform it is also so varied. Everything from beautiful works of art on defined surfaces, to an almost manic "splatting" on everything that the paint sticks to. How should one behave? Are there mitigating circumstances, is it even possible to see something positive in this?
Just as a person can suppress signals from his body for a long time, and does not change his lifestyle, this can surely also be the case for larger structures. In part, you can see the doodle as a kind of "redness" or "rash" on the social body. Society tries to keep up "a nice facade", but is fundamentally deeply unjust (in a limited perspective; the same perspective from which the doodle can anger).
Or as a natural phenomenon. Nature never lets anything lie naked. Herbs and weeds grow on the earth, lichens and mosses grow on rocks. In the same way, graffiti spreads where it is bare and clean.
10
Things that I buy are often defective. They are cracked and mis-stitched, expired and old, in all combinations. That such problems befell me unusually often during, let's say, the last twelve months, could probably be proven statistically! How can this be explained? Someone who makes high demands on their gadgets, and on getting the greatest possible return for their money, will find more faults than someone who is not so meticulous about such things. Of course. Actually, maybe you'll never be really satisfied? Maybe you will also be tested in this? Having overly high expectations is not good, you must learn to see the positive in everyone and everything. A rucksack is a wonderful thing, even if it's a bit mis-stitched. A hundred years ago, people had their knot on a stick.
How important is it to live simply in the physical? One can imagine a scale from, let's say, "Peace Pilgrim" - the woman who wandered across America, with only a few possessions and a message of love - to Martinus. Now I don't mean that he would be an extreme in this regard, but he seems to have found a joy in surrounding himself with beautiful things. To have it cozy and beautiful in one's home. With paintings on the walls, souvenirs, beautiful colors. But in his case it was certainly not in conflict with an inner purity and simplicity. (A clearer representative of those who do not renounce worldly good would perhaps be the Guru Bahgwan Sri Rajnesh. But his spiritual greatness may not be convinced by all.)
That's probably something else to look for. Yes, love, of course! The ability to do this is superior to everything else. As they tend to point out, who have self-perceived experiences in the field: The development does not mean that we become less different. But the ability to love grows (and many abilities with it), it is the common thing. Here one can imagine that the personal background also plays a role, yes, even for personalities at this high level: Those who lived with scarce circumstances during their upbringing have their relationship to the material, and those who lived a well-to-do life have theirs.
Body cleansing treatments can make it easier for higher energies to penetrate. They create concentration in consciousness, simplicity. They can make the foundation more solid and level, strengthen the mental resistance to occasional fluctuations etc. But perhaps the value of such cures is sometimes overestimated? Development is primarily an ascent of the soul, and the ability to develop is love. Life often feels simpler, when the body is light and more trouble-free. Perhaps analogous to the fact that you usually feel lighter when the weather is beautiful? These are also "higher energies" that come to a part.
Perhaps the visions one experiences in connection with bodily purification procedures are mostly a kind of celestial phenomenon, similar to those one can observe in cities with a lot of air pollution, when the toxins are illuminated by the sun?
You shouldn't be too hard on yourself. Life still provides trials and challenges so that's enough. "Every day has enough of its own pain", you can say that even if you look at life positively. Perhaps you also feel that when you have treated yourself mercilessly, you have also acquired a kind of license to be harsh with others? But that's not how life works. One should not only think about treating others the way one wants to be treated, but also about treating oneself the way one wants to treat others.
15
The dust is a reminder of the impermanence of life - something very important. It finds its way everywhere. A thin white film settles on everything. If the dust wasn't there (degraded textiles, worn-out skin cells, hair, etc.) then you could clean "once and for all". One would not need to be reminded that life demands our presence, our commitment and responsibility, all the time. However, life is always in motion, under construction or decay. It's not just sometimes. It is constantly reminded.
It's like being on a soapy log: any careless, jerky movement risks throwing you off balance. It also takes skill to just sit still. But also to move forward on it! Curious, discovering, seeking what laws work; trying, childishly daring, to stake his conquests, that is something even more difficult. It is the balance between feeling and intelligence – not too much or too little of anything – and between weight and feeling. Not too energetic, fierce, but at the same time not too restrained, timid, cautious us v. "When you start thinking about showing your best, supposedly prettiest side, to the audience, then you have lost" as some artist said in an interview.
Although it is certainly far more important, in the vast majority of situations, and in relation to most moods (intolerance, racism, etc.) to remind ourselves that we humans are after all so similar, it can sometimes be important to pay attention on how different we actually are. I think about this with outlook on life and what dreams you have for life. Even if you yourself have a so-called "spiritual" view of life, and share it with many in your social circle, the vast majority of people have a more practical, materialistic view of life. You don't have to take a position on what is most in line with reality, but simply state that we humans necessarily make very different priorities in life. For those with a one-life perspective, certain priorities and reasoning, life goals and ideals come as something completely natural. A highly unscientific examination of the music in P3 on an ordinary day, gives the result that 95% of all songs are about love, the kind that broke or the kind you long for. “Show me love, what it's all about…”
I have learned something about note taking. That you should scratch your wordings, preferably also type them cleanly, before you put them away. Today I read through a stack of old handwritten notes, and the overall impression of them is thin, to say the least. It is page up and page down with a kind of "seismographic" movements, which - I hope - however, when they were written, were an expression of an inner experience with some kind of substance. Yes, there were inspired moments. But the lyrics in their current stage are hardly compelling to anyone else. They hardly even move with me. It is certainly also good to think of a reader when you write. Then you concentrate, place higher demands on yourself. You have to make the texts independent, yes, so that they can stand on their own until you - if you - pick them up one day much later.
Actually, one should always live as if "every day was the last". Psychologically, the one-life perspective is refreshing, if you think about it seriously. Much then becomes unimportant, other things become so much more important. It should be easier to mobilize care for loved ones, e.g. Yes, and even if others. Prestige, the need to assert oneself, feels like futile efforts, when one has so little time here on earth. Then it is easier to be accommodating, not to collect in barns. But even the perspective that we would live several lives, even forever, also gives a depth to one's actions and possibilities, when you think about it. Neither then does it feel justified to fight your way to a position, or boast that you have achieved it. Everything is in motion, high and low alternate in an eternal sequence.
But there are quite obviously "half-forms" of both life perspectives. The materialist often lives as if, after all, he will be around longer than his single moment here on earth. The one with a multi-life perspective also does not always draw the consequences of his, at least theoretical, conviction. Yes, both perspectives underlie teachings that motivate love between people. Krishnamurti, the great thinker, never dwelled on questions of reincarnation or karma etc. He only spoke of "everyday psychology": Why are we so busy with our silly theories and creeds, and our own "I"? Whereas with Martinus, for example, this whole huge theoretical worldview also motivates love and understanding between people.
20
Often a person's characteristics are best described with opposite pairs. In someone enthusiasm-melancholy is a clear personality trait, in another it is humility-demandingness, or discretion-outspokenness. He acquires special, over time profound, experiences from this. Therefore, it is rarely justified to dismiss someone as less knowledgeable in a field, just because he often "falls" or exhibits weaknesses in this regard. Here, this person can often have deep thought-out knowledge. The project maker probably knows the whole spectrum, and can also talk about equanimity and melancholy. The sometimes proud person may know a great deal about humility; the often self-centered may know a great deal about love and community.
It is part of the fact that we as humans go to exaggeration, and likewise that we get to experience this. Partly, our actions result in us meeting others with similar weaknesses, and then we often experience it even more deeply than someone who does not struggle with this particular problem. The outspoken person may be hurt by someone else's directness, while the overly discreet person experiences the community with others as unreal and lonely. For one thing, you get fed up with your exaggerations, of whatever kind they may be, and try something else, possibly the opposite. (These are two themes: on the one hand, you often have the whole spectrum relevant – enthusiasm-melancholy, for example – and on the other hand, that even those who often fall in some respect, become haughty, for example, can know a lot about the psychology of haughtiness and the opposite, humility.) There is also the saying, that "you teach others about what you yourself most need to learn". With, for example, the proud, a longing for and a curiosity about the opposite develops over time. It is natural.
“Change your toothbrush often!” That's what it says on the packaging. If this call came from one's dentist, that would be one thing, but when it's the toothbrush company saying so! Why do they want me to change my toothbrush often? Out of care for my teeth? Possibly. Because they want to sell more toothbrushes? Probably.
A large part of our attention and the working capacity of our senses is claimed by advertising. Therefore, it can be of importance that you pay attention to this, what its foundations are, etc. Not to devalue those who work with advertising, but more to strengthen your mental resilience - and your awareness of how to do this " advertising” is basically a general human trait. The world is a world of special interests and party contributions. That others express their views on things, which may deviate from what you believe in yourself - politically or religiously, or about food, music, art etc - it can be challenging enough. But when it comes to advertising, for example, the situation is different.
Advertising is rarely an expression of someone's beliefs. Advertising is a message. A message in the world of advertising does not have to be something you believe in yourself, the most important thing is that it is formulated so that the potential buyers believe in it. Such a message one is prepared to defend and die for only as long as it generates money. Advertising agencies work for anyone. The advertising man is a mercenary. (His work is reminiscent of that of the lawyer, who also puts his talent entirely at the service of someone else, with the exception that while the lawyer fights an equal opponent – the prosecutor – the publicist battles civilians. A real battle, however, is fought against other publicists, for shares of the common market – i.e. our time and our assets – and he is therefore more like, can therefore also be likened to a coloniser.)
Yes, advertising is not primarily aimed at helping the consumer get the most for their money, but to - sell stuff. Good detergent advertising is advertising that gets people to buy a lot of detergent of a certain brand (and thereby less of any other brand). The strategy and essence of advertising is to speak to the feeling (or to be more blunt: to the sex). Here it becomes clearest, what Martinus says about war etc.: that everything has its basis in the desire to find a partner.
One possible strategy for tricky situations of all kinds should be: to pray. But that option does not always present itself in consciousness. Despite the fact that you are actually positive about such things. Why doesn't it? It should at least be at hand when all other possibilities are exhausted? Maybe it's due to an unfamiliarity? Yes, that's probably part of the explanation. But it also has to do with things like self-image and pride. Unconsciously, one feels that it would be like a capitulation, and that this would probably cause new problems.
We live in a make-believe world. You shouldn't let yourself be discouraged or angry about that. Just be aware of it and don't base yourself too much on it. Or in it alone. After all, it is part of the larger, in which our foundation should be.
"YOU WANT TO KILL ME" is written in large black letters on a stone slab next to where I live. Who writes something like that? Either it's an artistic manifestation, to provoke thought, I think, or it's an expression of mental or black sickness. In any case, it is hard words that strike one.
Martinus writes about pure love, that it is synonymous with a desire to touch. Where this will does not exist and you hold back - so even in your feelings and thoughts, even with them you can touch! - there is what you yourself may experience as sympathy mixed with something else.
And Tomas DiLeva said in a recent interview that it is important to try to understand and love also those whom you almost experience as your enemies. It is profound! Because if you visualize a scale that goes from "friend" to "enemy", what should you call the intermediate forms? Half-friends? No, if they are not friends to one, then they are rather variants of enemies.
25
Together with a child, but perhaps even more so with someone who is soon to be an adult, it is clear how you can act as a channel for new thought material. It feels like a big responsibility, sure, but it mostly feels like something that just happens. There is one's treatment and one's efforts, but in some way it is the very presence that colors it. Of course, this also happens between adults; in rare cases (at least on a mental level) also from younger to older.
Often the metaphor "fertilize" is used (unless this is so much what happens, that it actually deserves to be seen as not just a metaphorical, but an actual description). But you could also say: "feed". You put someone into the world, and constantly new worlds after that.
To see how much one's expectations, both negative and positive (and too positive) create one's life, well, or how one experiences it anyway. It's like every mean comment formulated within one finds a way to be realized in reality. I think of the Buddha and his exhortation that one should extinguish all one's desires. Is it possible to see life as it is then? Perhaps one feels that Martinus is speaking against him, when he actually gives desire such a central place in his teaching? He is talking about the "primordial desire", the very will to experience, and what moves us forward. But he also philosophizes about how it is precisely our likes and dislikes – our biases – that make it difficult for us. Desire-led vs reason-led will and such.
That is the least you can ask of yourself: that you are aware that you walk, when you walk, and that you eat when you eat.
Compassion is a force that works into this world. And when it manifests itself through someone, it is really irrational. Why should the strong consider the weak, the smart the stupid? When you hear someone claim that aid to the sick, the unemployed and the old, people in developing countries, etc., should be reduced, you may need to remind yourself how logical this attitude really is. You can't actually argue against it. Not even a spiritual worldview, such as cosmology, can give reasons why one should help another. (More than on a mechanical level: That everything you do comes back to yourself, etc.) Compassion is a bleeding heart.
The Law of Moses was a humanization of what applied at the time. People would be forced to stop taking revenge "to the seventh degree", and instead limit revenge to the person who was the direct trigger for the wrongdoing. "Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth." Then came the real message of love with Christ. That one should "turn the other cheek", "sheath one's sword" and so on. And we have struggled with that for two thousand years now and it is not so easy. But when you fall back on the instinctive, and react automatically, then after all, it is the law of the moss that you act on. You don't slide all the way back to total paganism. That you would go home to his family and wreak havoc, if you have been treated badly by someone, it feels unjustified. But what if in Moses' day they actually had similar problems? One tried steadfastly to punish only the one who had been unkind to one, but more often than not one could not control oneself, but instead attacked one's wife and children, cows and pigs, and instructed one's descendants to continue the torment.
30
There is a French expression, "jamais vu", which is the opposite of the better known "deja vu". According to the latter, one experiences something as familiar, which one has not really encountered before. With the former, it is exactly the opposite: the most everyday, familiar, routines and phenomena are faced with alienation and wonder. Donald Duck, who is this figure really, and what does it look like in the town where he lives?
Remember the old artist, who saw in our faces both green and orange, colors no living person would want there. It is the artistic – and the scientific – gaze. To see, really see, what is there.
So hard to be human among humans, one among equals.
What does it mean to mature and get older? To oneself, on the inside, one is the same person. And without age.
Idyll. What you can experience as the permanent resident's insensitivity to idyll. In the middle of the beautiful landscape, there are old car wrecks, rusty oil drums, and glaring plastic roofs on the houses. Are you perhaps always insensitive in your own environment? As a colleague reflected, when he returned from abroad with hundreds of cards from distant streets and houses: That he has never gone out in Stockholm with his camera. Isn't that strange?
35
It is taken for granted that there is only reason to look darkly at the future. But you sort.
Questions and answers. There are questions that are so universal, so big and deep, that you hardly see them. And you don't dare stand up to them, because it seems so pathetic. But a way of life must be based on facing these questions as well. Not that you have to find the answers to them. Yes, it may not even be advisable to "seek answers". Answers are so insensitive. And they rarely refer to anything basic only. They stand for concepts or phenomena at a higher level than being amazed. Our view of "searching", of "answers" and of "questions" is probably to a large extent marked by the materialistic view of life, which has given us so many problems and delusions in general (besides all the good things: refrigerators, computers, etc.)
In order to be able to experience nature, and not only dramatic, extraordinary phenomena, such as colorful sunsets, high mountains and deep valleys, it is required that one has in some sense silenced one's inner self. This is so that nature can work on you. That's actually an apt description. Through our senses we experience and take in, for example, nature, and if it is not calm in there, then what we are about to experience must "overpower" us, so to speak.
The same applies to socializing with others. In order to be able to be happy in the company of others, and to be able to be happy also with less than admiration, sex, gossip, etc., it must also have become quiet in there. When you're young, you generally have less of that silence, but gradually you grind it away. It is also a matter of speed, and distance. To get closer, to slow down, so that the individual can stand out from the crowd.
Behind everything created is care, concentration, seriousness and will, which in some sense is synonymous with love.
I think of the actor, who narrated his tyrannical figure with such tenderness. After all, he could feel understanding, could see mitigating circumstances etc. It is the artistic approach at its finest, an intimacy that is close to love.
40
Sometimes you hear it said, about someone who committed a terrible crime: It's no excuse that he had a bad upbringing. It fits many. You can't behave any way you like for that. But that's exactly what it is: an explanation and a kind of apology?
It often strikes me that where there is stress, love is missing. Stress shuts out love. But that is probably not the whole truth. Some stress is fear, while other stress is simply an unpolished, immature desire to assert oneself, i.e. the desire to get ahead.
Abundance. The tree in the city that releases thousands of seeds, every year, and maybe just a single one finds a soil where it can take root and grow.
Why does nature become unnature? Like the kids when they move away from home, and live on white beans straight out of the can and Coca Cola, having previously been cooked at home.
From nature one can only learn about perfection and aspects of it. Even the lion that hunts and brings down a prey is the highest harmony. In order to study imperfection, you have to go to man and man-made things. Eventually, a force that is somehow irrational breaks into the man-made world. Through it, a form of nature arises, yes, which is even more nature than nature itself. There is an atmosphere that is shared.
45
Conscience: It feels far-fetched to try to explain it based on group dynamic, and fundamentally selfish, motives.
The works of fiction that I have read since adolescence number at most twenty, and probably no more than fifteen. My schooling is interrupted and my general education has big gaps. Can you then write your own book? Yes, you write based on what you have! And if you don't feel like doing research, you don't do it either. You write a book that you can write, that you might want to write.
Each person is a whole, well-functioning, who gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night, and in between is awake and goes about his life. Who is faced with special challenges, and who reflects people and events with what she has. Every point of view is valuable. Each view completes our whole picture. Each book is an expression of a whole person.
Thought taboo. We have been given fewer shades and do not see what we see. It is something that came with materialistic science. There, such an approach – to stifle one's senses – is a kind of guarantee, so that one does not believe or claim too much. It is a tool and a filter. But when this then, in the form of the findings of science, spread out to the public and there reshaped consciousness, it has become a real handicap. This taboo puts cotton around the brain. You don't see what you see, it doesn't become conscious (which, of course, doesn't prevent you from acting on it anyway).
Clothes should be worn as if they were not worn.
There is only one way to permanent happiness: to wish that what happens happens.
50
The most possible for the least possible, this attitude that seems completely obvious in business life etc. And then you wonder why there is war?
One of the real delusions is that you think you can hide from your surroundings. In addition to body language, voice mode, etc., there are also other levels where contact and transmission take place. These layers that we usually don't want to be aware of, but which have previously been given greater importance and will perhaps be treated with greater respect in the future. Now it all happens under the surface, on an unconscious or almost unconscious level.
It is not immoral or irresponsible not to want to pursue a career. But wanting to make a career can at least be that. It's also pretty humorless. Then you take life too seriously. Or you take it too seriously.
I'm looking at a photograph from a city in a faraway land. It's a street scene, an intersection in a fairly small town. A few people and across the intersection a yellow residential building with shops on the street level. Suddenly it's as if I wake up inside the picture. This place exists! People live here. There is a reality, of which the image is really just a faded, fleeting – albeit fascinating and infinitely more than nothing – expression. That window is usually opened by someone. On the inside of that window are hooks of some kind. Someone lives there, just as I live here, just as fully and truly. There is the photographer. And behind him more of this place, with smells, everyday life, friendships, hopes.
It often strikes me, when I've been indoors for a long time and then go outside, that it's like coming to a completely different world. Even if you have windows to look out through - and you usually do - there is something that you cannot imagine, a quality that you can hardly create yourself, that is out there. And it makes no difference whether it is a city or a rural area.
55
You feel that the world is so big, that there are so many countries to memorize and what happens there. Yes, maybe they are many, but it is only these, after all. There are no more. There are so many rivers. No more. Same thing with our body. It is extremely complicated, and is covered in books as thick as telephone directories. And yet it is only this, nothing more and nothing else. The ear looks and works exactly as it does! Five fingers sit on a hand, which sits at the end of a long arm. It's a rare feeling.
No quality seems to me to be more desirable than that of being able to marvel. A life experience, however sophisticated, must rest on a foundation of wonder. Otherwise, what is there is conceit, all too fixed structures. Everything can fill one with such a sense of wonder. Yes, really everything! This has a lot in common with a mediative experience. And with what is called "love" as well.
Well, all such things are really attempts to ring this in: to love, nirvana, to become one with the viewed, emptiness. However, the word love can give the impression of something too striving, achieving, while emptiness can seem apathetic, etc. What does it mean? An arm, a fern's little closed hand, slowly opening? What is it? And further, further and further away from the empty, cold habitual consciousness. What is this "seeing", that something has weight, walking on the ground? To be amazed, this fleeting, elusive balance point, between insanity and insanity...
Lilac trees, large, strong as oaks. With its peaked bunches, so lavishly wasteful, like no other tree. For the first time in my life I have seen them. Otherwise, they have been in the periphery of the eye, or in its usually quite pale center.
Maybe I'm too young. I rarely think about "the impermanence of everything", which is the only thing we know with certainty about our future. The inevitable death. But rather than take death for granted, as a "constant", I choose life! Maybe there is no evidence that life goes on? At least no evidence that could convince everyone. At least I haven't found any. Not even enough for myself. But I don't waste any energy or time on finding any such either. But I note that many are talking about this, and have experienced signs, and I let that be enough to be open to the possibility.
The power of love. The one that can be felt even in the middle of civilization, in the imperfect, where does it come from? There are not many people who are satisfied with the life they live, with their jobs. Not many people have a feeling of trust in what is happening. And yet the power of love is there around everything and everyone! No, it's something else. In the same way that we can be filled with a heartfelt warmth for how children engage in their games and experiences, so we can be filled with such warmth for the aspirations of all people.
Our seriousness, our hopes, our attempts to obtain guarantees for life that continues. Even in our godlessness, in our envy and martyrdom, we are touching and lovable. In our vanity, our selfishness, yes, in a way even in our cruelty, in our anger. All such things are in some sense childish and can fill us with tenderness and understanding. Where such things as tenderness, care, creative activity, devotion in self-forgetful activity exist, there it is not so difficult to understand how this power of love can be experienced. But even where the opposite is manifested, a great seriousness, a must attitude, there is something that is touching and can awaken our tenderness.
60
There is something "passive" about love. Passive in the sense that it does not want anything in particular, which is the good or the supposed good. The one who loves is not there willingly or unwillingly. But in most cases you want or you don't want something. And in its consequences, there is often not much difference. There is too much power in the "execution", one could say, whether you like it or not. Love is what is not this.
Love is something that largely "happens", it's a lot about making room for it to happen, in conversation and togetherness, for example. That the other person should be allowed to express themselves and grow, in one's own heart, where so much would otherwise have room: desires, wanting this or that, sympathies and antipathies. Love is not heroic in any way. You are like an egg. When you knock yourself against the environment enough times, you crack open, and then the soft interior is exposed.
The fact that one has no real experience of one's inner world - does not really recognize its sovereignty - has many consequences, for example an inability to separate one's mood from external events. To separate psyche and matter. To experience and act with them apart. It should be possible to develop a consciousness, where one can operate with these more (two) independently of each other. Or is it the case that these should be connected. That when you need to take action, a mental weight must also be mobilized, so that you don't injure yourself? But in that case it can perhaps be mobilized in a more or less balanced form?
You walk to the bus and feel at ease. The weather is beautiful and the people you meet are also beautiful. Suddenly you realize that time is short, and you hurry your steps - and you black out. Now even the people don't look so nice anymore, the shoes rub, cars are stupidly parked etc. Here you suddenly become a prisoner in your own materialistic world view, you could say. Because, of course, there is no obvious connection between increased stride length, faster heart rate and – a worsening mood. These are also deep-seated habits. When you start running, you are even back on the savannah, like a hunted or a hunting animal. Or if you have to take the lid off a jar, and it's stuck, then you get easily angry. The anger accompanies the greater effort now required. I hurry my steps when I walk, and I get stressed; I tug at the dog's leash, as a mark, but it makes me angry.
Even Martinus can be a trial for one's mental balance. He writes here and there about various abuses, portraying them colorfully and captivatingly. The big businessman and the materialist, for example, are dealt with in such a way that it oozes about it. “Yes, there it was, just on them!” But sometimes I have thought that he almost goes too hard. It can feel like an attack. Is it because you read these descriptions based on yourself? It is difficult to experience a power that is free from brutality. When Martinus says about the big businessman, that he "swells in admiration of himself and what a kind-hearted person he is, when he gives insignificant gifts" etc., one can think that this is a clear attack and a rejection of these individuals. You can really see in front of you how the person who utters something like that is bright red in the face, tenses their jaws and almost hisses out every single word. But at the same time, word for word, it could also be only a description of the state of things, something presented with a balanced gravity energy.
Run over frog
party atmosphere
a thousand happy ants
Is God a personal or impersonal force? Is it perhaps the case that "the personal" in the experience of God is only in the approach of the person praying? But in any case there is something good in relating to God or life as if it were a person, because it helps one to have the right attitude. It's a bit like the difference between being served by a teller and by an ATM. In the latter case, you just order something to happen, you are not there with the thoughts, perhaps you are also less tolerant of variations and the problems that may arise.
65
All have the same center. How to look at this? The idea that the self in all of us would be the same—really the same! - isn't that a bit eerie feeling? You grow old but remain in your own experience where you were as a child (when you experienced yourself as an adult!). You don't get older inside, but you don't get younger either. With the same seriousness I did childish things when I was a child, as I do more grown-up things today. In my own experience of myself, nothing has happened. There is something absolutely constant. This inner "me", which never seems to change or age - and which perhaps precisely because of that feels so extra personal - is it really the same me that everyone else has? I am still faced with this question. Further reading, by Martinus or anyone else, will probably not be able to add anything. It's not an answer I lack, or even an understanding. It feels as if it does you good just to be close to this wonder. It can be sensed that this is one of life's truly profound secrets.
There are so many guiding stars: "The verdict is not" is perhaps still the most important, the one that covers the most without losing its substance. Which says something relatively precise to quite a few. "Love" is possibly a concept that embraces more, but it also says less.
You may come to a point where you long for religiosity. The spiritual search can, yes, it is not strange, come to be drawn with the same limitations as the scientific one. That everything should be understandable, that everything should be able to be formulated, also for others. But perhaps you have to let the world be what it is, and not push it into something it is not. Perhaps it is possible to understand life. But you should probably let it - and yourself - be a little enigmatic anyway. Maybe it's life that's hard to force, maybe it's just our instruments that are blunt. You don't know that.
The fact that science has so many more answers than religion is partly due to the fact that science does not know of any other way to relate. It must structure, organize, formulate, even where the explanations become far-fetched and hit by the side. One should not be impressed by science just because it speaks with such an authoritative voice and seems to have answers to everything. Science is a chatterbox that loves to hear its own voice.
What does one do when one's conscience, or sense of what is intellectually decent, forbids one to push further, but one still feels the urge to be close to life? Then perhaps only a kind of religiosity remains. What I am advocating is not anti-intellectualism. It is easy to see that a scientific approach, in its financial form, is somewhat higher than an ordinary religiosity. But when all one's sense of propriety forbids one to push any further? What remains (unless the questions of life are just a kind of pastime) is then a kind of religiosity. Not wanted, per se, but forced by necessity.
One's own life is not entirely one's own. The other's life is not entirely the other's. There is a way of experiencing that is different from the usual, and the "gap" between them is so great that the transition must be described as an "awakening" or an "enlightenment". You can understand that it is different, but it is still easy to interpret a lot of what is considered important in our current experience of life. That this experience - of enlightenment - should also be able to satisfy these old desires. But this new experience is not this. It is what this is not!
In the third world, people are starving to death, while our part of the world works quite well on the whole, with competent people in leading positions. But a country - yes, our whole part of the world community - is primitive to let all this go on!
70
The weapons factory is looking for new engineers for its robotics program. One image in the ad shows a smiling man in a suit holding a missile proudly and tenderly in his arms. Can the Western world's collective insensitivity be better expressed at all? And it's not even meant to be a caricature!
Being politically correct is a state where you not only say what is expected of you, but also experience it that way and think that way.
Nations are something other than the sum of their inhabitants. If the law and society internally are the sum of the highest in people, what can be said about foreign policy?
You seek out an experienced, wise person to get help with your questions and problems. And afterwards you discover that nothing or very little of what you had set out to talk about came through. Why? If it is the case that one enters a force field, what characterizes this?
Actually, all emotions are beautiful. Jealousy is also beautiful, anger and envy too, yes, almost such feelings in particular. Because isn't it strange to have them? What do these feelings consist of? They live like little monkeys in one's chest, and probably have it pretty boring. Sometimes they jump around, but mostly they sit and peer through the grate, at the world outside.
75
You buy a record, maybe just for a single song that you know is on it, and experience the rest as boring and bland. But if you then try to live into the music, if you try to feel how you stand there in the audience, how you have those who play and sing in front of you, then the music simply gets better. It swings. The songs are then small functioning wholes. That's exactly how I think it is also with people you meet.
How is it that when you want to photograph something, for example yourself, in a mirror, then you have to set the focus to twice the distance to the mirror? If, for example, you are going to photograph a shadow on the wall, or for that matter: a light reflex, then the focus is on the wall? So it is not the mirror image that you photograph, but what the mirror reflects. And of course the same goes for the eyes. Is this why you feel that you can sink into a mirror image - and the feeling of unreality that accompanies this - because the gaze is set at twice the distance to the mirror and its surroundings?
With the desire for the perfect, you generate an energy that seems to eventually backfire.
Not to rely too much on the expressive power of the individual words.
How come you want to wave to each other when you meet out at the lake? But that there is no corresponding need on the mountain? Perhaps it has to do with the fact that water is such a changeable element and that you feel that you are completely at its mercy. Everything flows, rises and falls. Greeting each other then becomes an expression of seeking confirmation and security in the only thing that can be fixed, when the material is now so palpably in motion: that is, the spiritual. That's probably how we'll come to function in life as a whole as well.
80
"Give a man never-ending inspiration, and to that a wavering health, and he will probably learn to pray" writes Kierkegaard. The prayer will develop, not only because you want to "do good in the world" etc., but because you need to be saved from yourself and your own inner self. This maelstrom of dark thoughts and feelings that throws you off balance every day. It is the death cry of the animal in the man-made world. It is a prayer that is far from heroic or contemplative.
To have respect for Martinus, but not necessarily for the cosmological culture.
Is the idea of karma necessary at all? Acting on the basis of such would not be very nice. That what one did or did not do would be based on certain calculations. There are probably at least three variants: firstly the Indian model, where it is believed that those who suffer should fully experience the consequences of their actions; partly the more intellectual model, where one realizes that even one's own actions, for example heartlessness, create dark karma for oneself. But then there is also the direct model, according to which you reason that it is not really easy to live, that you will fall there time and time again, everyone does...
This also has some relevance to the concept of intercession, which today can cause problems. "Is it right to use intercession, if you know that someone is having a hard time, when it is his karma to experience these difficulties?" These troubles probably only arise because of our relative insensitivity. Love wants all things, love hopes all things, love believes all things, as it says in the Bible.
There are two types of spiritual teachers: provocateurs and informers. The first spur us on to bring out the best within, to create change, to deal with our lower sides. They often speak from their own deep experience of these conditions. Not infrequently they also claim that it is possible for each of us to quickly reach their level. The informants (and this includes Martinus) explain why this does not work for us.
Love is not just "letting go of fear". Rather, it is the struggle we should let go of.
85
When you say that someone is for (a lot) this or that, then you apparently have an experience that this person should be able to be different. Someone is too intellectual, too eager, too thrifty, etc. It is an expression of a kind of judgment. But you can also judge someone as strikingly intellectual, very eager, distinctly thrifty, etc., without this being to disapprove of him! People have characteristics, both positive and negative, there is nothing strange about that. And how could it be compatible with love not to experience this, to settle for fewer nuances in life?
Martinus highlights the Our Father as a perfect prayer. It contains everything a person could ask for and still be in touch with life. But at the same time, prayer must also develop into the most intimate relationship. If you heard someone use language like in the Lord's Prayer, when talking to a friend, how would you interpret this? Would one really believe that this was a close, intimate relationship? It is certainly possible to also recite prayers as a kind of mantra, or as mathematical formulas.
Love is letting go of the fight. Love opens doors. It opens doors to the hearts of others, and it opens doors to one's own deeper knowledge, long kept out of one's reach.
How does prayer relate to, for example, affirmations and visualizations? You can probably achieve a lot with these last-mentioned techniques - the idea is creative after all - more honest relationships, a better job, etc., if you gather your consciousness around these issues. Addressing such a wish to God, or concentrating mentally in the form of a visualization, "on your own", may not have much meaning.
Where prayer can become of great importance, is in the work of finding an equilibrium within oneself, to, for example, process a dark conscience. Yes, this probably also applies to the pressures you face "from the outside", but even more so to your own darkness, that which rises from the inside. Here we enter the area that is special to prayer, namely being able to seek companionship or comfort (as opposed to affirmations or the like, which are more similar to creation, building activities, yes, or a kind of "mail order procedure").
Probably, as we become fed up with our own inner restlessness, selfishness and impatience, we will seek comfort - unconditional comfort. And you probably cannot find this in yourself (since this very experience of standing alone in life is a common denominator not only in the different forms of mental unhappiness, such as depression and feelings of martyrdom, but also in a certain kind of pleasure or happiness, t eg self-aggrandizement, feelings of superiority, etc.). Here it is that the Son of God returns to the Father, and is prepared to take on the simplest task. It is a child-parent relationship that is more and more established. In difficult moments we, like the child, will seek our Father's hand.
It is mentioned in the book "Martinus som vi husker him", that Martinus is said to have said: "I don't understand how people dare to avoid prayer". Dare? Here it is probably not mainly concrete, physical dangers that are intended, which one would risk ending up in if one does not pray, but possibly more mental ones. The prayer "Your will be done" absolutely does not become something you just put there at the end, a kind of "prayer suffix", something you use to, so to speak, "tie the bag". It is joined with the greatest joy and sense of relief.
I think at some point you will be very tired. Tired of his vain attempts to shape his own life (even if it was successful). There is a lot you can achieve with affirmations etc. All creation and re-creation can actually be sorted under this concept. But when you no longer know what to do? He who is poor normally yearns to be rich. But the rich man who "has everything" and yet feels unsatisfied and unhappy, what should he long for?
People yearn for money for the freedom and mobility they feel it brings. But when you have money, you may come to experience that there is another kind of mobility that is actually more desirable: mental mobility. I believe that it is also with this weariness that one seriously begins to sense what this means: that we are all parts of the Godhead. It is necessary that one has become sufficiently tired of the many (and eventually more and more sophisticated and "mixed up") variants of the isolated life, so that one can stop and just be happy for what is. Every effort to achieve a "own color" repels this experience, which in the deepest sense is a mystical experience.
Fixed thought structures must be dissolved. Perhaps you sometimes imagine that as you become more and more familiar with Martinu's thoughts, your security in these areas also increases? I think that is mostly a misconception. The security you can feel derives much of its power from the old.
90
If you have been longing for something for a long time and strongly, and then it happens to you as you have been longing for, then you can interpret it in at least three ways: Firstly, that it is an "answer to prayer". One has sent out one's conscious or unconscious prayers and God has now fulfilled them. You can also imagine that the strong images you had in your mind have been a kind of premonition of something that was going to happen. A third option is that these strong goal images have become fixed thought structures that have actually created one's reality. A fourth option, finally, would be chance then. Even if there is no arbitrariness in life, it can be the case that the connections that led to an event are completely different from the ones you think you see.
A real life story: When I was in first grade, I thought a lot about how I could capture the girls' interest. I fantasized about climbing a tree that stood on the edge of the school yard, then I would fall down and be found by these girls, who would carry me back to the school building in a little procession! One fine winter's day I went out for a walk with one of these girls, and her dog, in the woods. We walked high up on a ridge next to a precipice. There was such a wall over the cliff. I guess I wanted to impress her a bit, so I went very close to the edge, and suddenly I slipped and slid away. It was loud and when I hit the ground I lost consciousness. When I regain my composure, someone is carrying me through the woods, and the girl walks by, worried. My dream had come true!
Such fixed thought structures and desires of which the consciousness is so full, even where the goals seem "bright", will be experienced as more and more troublesome. Prayer will become more and more our refuge from these mental shackles, from ourselves.
Today, there are probably quite a few who have gone through the crudest forms of suffering. What is left for these people to deal with – shades of what Martinus refers to as “the longest living idol” – may seem from the outside to be trifles. But with an increasingly sensitive mind, these ailments are palpable and run deep. And we will seek relief, without there being anything coquettish about it. The much tinkering with one's own person, one's own limited destiny, one's own prosperity... These are strong, ancient structures, which will be what torment us to the end, and from which no other relief is given than prayer (and eventually penance and recovery). Being able to mentally set one's consciousness to, for example, "Your will be done" will be experienced as a favor, a precious invitation. It's like taking the boiling pot off the stove for a while. Life is empty without God.
So far, the prayer is largely "affirmative", one might say. The prayer as a form. But one can certainly achieve both one and the other, of material and other benefits, via prayer. But in the cases where one's prayers here are "answered", it is probably more to blame for the creative power of the thought than the prayer. Asking for a car and then getting one is hardly a testimony to what can be accomplished with the help of prayer. If we could see our lives from above, we would probably see how this is constantly what happens: that our dreams and "prayers" gradually come true. And in the spiritual world such things happen simultaneously, if Martinus is to be believed. There you can wish for a whole parking lot with cars, if you want!
The great merits of prayer lie in the realm of the psyche, rather than in the material. Prayer is the "death cry", when we seek and need God. Everything else can be attributed to either love-making or thought-making. The prayer is - both in its most primitive and in its most perfect form - a death cry. Why do we have such a hard time praying? An important reason is that we still manage quite well on our own (which of course we don't, but it doesn't bother us yet) if we have to judge the situation ourselves. God is not yet important to us. He only becomes that when we have given up our "right to make decisions". Until then, we obscure God with our own body. "My thumb is as big as the sun", as someone said.
When it comes to praying for others, I don't think you should exaggerate the importance of the prayer format. The active "substance" is love, real concern. It's like with medicines: they are often available both as a tablet and in liquid form, depending on what suits the person and the situation best. But it is not the format that may be useful, but what the format conveys. Doing it in the form of a prayer can help us focus. But one can imagine the possibility that intercession is also distracting, and also that it covers up a lack of love in oneself, so that one cannot discover it oneself. Touching someone, whether by hand, by word or thought, or in the form of prayer, is all the same. The power and strength of prayer lies primarily in the fact that it can be a help to oneself.
95
You can be thankful that you get to wake up to a new morning, even though, for example, through Martinus's cosmology, you have made it likely that you have an infinite number of "mornings" to look forward to. After all, being allowed to exist is more than anyone can ask for. It is a mystery.
We say we want to learn to pray, but that is not true. What hovers over us is not the pure prayer, but a mix of pleasant things in our dreams. Same thing with love. The great teachers in the field of the art of living (of whom I also hold Krishnamurti in high esteem) would probably describe our situation as such, that we are actually quite comfortable with our lack of love and our godlessness. And they're probably right.
Prayer is as little as love an ability that depends on our will (in contrast to, for example, the ability to sail or play bridge). That we find it difficult to pray is not only because we have not practiced enough. What we lack are also experiences of a deeper kind. We learn about love by experiencing the consequences of an unloving action. The prayer, and the love of God, we learn by experiencing, well, what? Perhaps it is the consequences of separation, of the coarseness of egoism, the lack of community, the castle that egoism builds for us, that teaches us this? (And then it is not only about the discomfort, but also about the discomfort of pleasure: the satiety.) Putting love and prayer together like this can teach us something about prayer, and it can teach us something more about love. There is the old saying, attributed to Socrates, that "I am so wise because I know that I know nothing". This is an important ingredient of both love and prayer: not knowing "too strongly".
It is no less loving to question something than to think you know. What will our path towards a self-experience of cosmology look like? Will we be able to assert these lines of thought with greater and greater pathos, until one day our baptism of fire takes place as the final confirmation?
The fact that our memory capacity would decrease is often explained by the fact that intuition grows and makes memory redundant (apart from the fact that it is automatic). But there is also a moral dimension to this: The impaired ability to remember goes hand in hand with an increased will not to remember, a will not to hold on.
100
Everyone longs for the light. Light and darkness alternate in the cycle, of course, but light is, after all, the basic theme. The order, yes, the love behind it all. It is only for a relatively short period that the individual experiences unconsciousness, and even shorter is the period of mental difficulties.
Love is a universal language and a language that works over all times and in all stages. Even in the relatively short period when we use our dawning consciousness in the service of selfishness and murder, love is something that we are illuminated by and that we recoil from.
You have to see to the light in everyone. If there is a consciousness, then there is a dawning light. If there is not yet a consciousness, as in animals, then the original light is there, irresistible. See how everyone is lit up by the presence of a loving being! (And those who have the hardest time with it may be those who are actually really close to it.) Everyone loves the one who loves.
"If God didn't exist, we would have to invent him" says a saying. And that's probably right. The need to be able to seek support from and belong to something that is bigger than oneself is fundamental. Just as the psychologist has his supervisor, and the priest his bishop who has his archbishop, so man needs his god. The message of love is usually emphasized as a common denominator in the major world religions, but even the concept of God itself is such a uniting feature. That there is something bigger than yourself. Materialism is a small parenthesis in the evolution of the soul.
It is quite possible to have a fair amount of insight into these laws, and to be fascinated by them, to argue based on them, and even be able to inspire others with them, but to be fundamentally lacking in compassion.
It is said that love is letting go of fear. But at the bottom there is no fear. At the bottom is the struggle, the one that has a thousand faces. The fear is superimposed on the struggle and the struggle is what lingers the longest. When one claims that fear is the deepest, is it not unproblematic to explain why it seems so difficult to bring about lasting change in oneself? The answer to why it is so difficult to achieve change is, if Martinus is to be believed, that the struggle after all gives us a lot of things, which we still experience as pleasant and therefore do not want to be without.
There is in every situation, in every encounter and every moment of an encounter, an energy combination that is more in harmony with the laws of life than any other. To manifest it is to do "God's will," or it is to take the consequences of the question, "What would Christ have done?"
105
"Giving one's life for others" doesn't sound so happy.
What can be said about love without diminishing it? Love is the only real eternal machine. It takes no time, no space, no effort, it becomes a plus in every way.
Love is a force that goes both ways. When you feel a motivation to live more peacefully, to let go of the struggle, to be closer to people and life, and you focus on this, then love comes to meet you.
You will perhaps also experience a special sense of security, when you start to pay attention to charging each gesture with a content. You coordinate your strengths, he said. You know that you are doing what is possible. Often one can experience a displeasure, or a feeling of alienation in front of life and oneself, due to a lack of correspondence between the external nature of the gesture and the content with which it is charged. It is something similar to reading and talking on the phone at the same time. This also creates a will to fight. You feel that it is something you do not have full control over, that it is something that runs freely. You feel bad, like when you have done a bad job.
The question is whether you can feel two emotions at the same time: Can you love someone and be angry at them at the same time?
110
The desire for an ability, eg understanding or love, is very similar to the ability itself. Not only the act, but also the regret you feel when you have acted wrongly (or not acted at all), tells a lot about you as a person.
To process one's thoughts by writing is to add to them a measure of intellectual energy, which is not infrequently precisely what is lacking in them. You can go through what has happened, and things that belong to the future, and you do not so easily fall prey to your feelings and moods.
How can angels break into this world and communicate with us? Yes, it is true that we are attached to this physical world with only a very small part of ourselves. Perhaps you can compare it to kneeling on a jetty, bending forward and dipping the faceplate into the water. After all, you are still in the world above, after all!
There are really no difficult topics to write or lecture about. It's all about not setting the bar higher than you can get over it. "Reincarnation" e.g. Martinus could talk about this at a high level. Surely this was not difficult for him. But if you have to give a talk on that topic yourself, then it can feel quite difficult. It must feel difficult! You can't go on like Martinus. How could one imitate him?
You start from scratch, with your wonder about this concept. Seeks the foundation in what is universally human, what one shares with most others. One tries to preserve some kind of intellectual honesty, a separation between one's own and others' knowledge in the field. Everyone has experienced what it's like to not be able to live up to the abilities you claim to possess. Terrible!
How does karma actually work? You get irritated by someone's behavior, for example putting your feet up on the seat in front of you on the train. But what in that example is one's own karma? OK, let's assume it has to do with our own recklessness or thoughtlessness. After experiencing such thoughtlessness through others, we become more considerate, we sharpen, and gradually we come less and less in contact with the thoughtlessness of others. People behave better. Or is it simply that one will no longer take offense at such behavior? But is karma biased against our experience, really? Or is it just a reflection of our actions?
It is interesting, and it has consequences for what we call "intercession". Here there is a relationship that is a bit awkward: If someone has had a difficult experience, for example suffered from a serious illness, and is grieving this deeply, what can intercession do for that person? Martinus says that you can never free someone from an experience that he or she has to do - that is, that person's karma - but you can always pray that he or she will be able to preserve their courage. But what is karma in this case? Isn't the spiritual experience also karma, and if so is it right to wish that someone might be freed from such?
But perhaps it should be seen that karma is essentially the external circumstances and not how we experience them? Or it is both. Yes, it's probably both. Things always tend to be both.
115
There is someone for everyone. In my work, I see many people passing by. And the vast majority seem to have met someone to like and where the feelings were mutual. You live life in pairs. One function of falling in love is that, through the other, you actually get an opportunity to love yourself, to glorify yourself. Alongside all the fine things that belong to the future and the truly human, there is this aspect.
People often talk about love as an irrational force in our lives, which "hits" us and which is impossible to predict. But at least in part it is quite predictable. Everyone seems to have a certain value in the market, and you rarely fall in love below your own level, which alone shows that on an unconscious level you choose who to fall in love with (or at least who not to fall in love with). . That people get together as part of a social strategy, because they also work well together, that's one thing. You share values, interests and life goals. But that one actually also falls in love in accordance with such an (unconscious) strategy, that was more where I wanted to get to.
A valuable quality is being able to retreat when conditions change. Not to push too hard, not to tie up too much energy in the individual.
When you sort of take a step back, you can ask yourself: What does the key stand for? What does the gutter stand for. The dog? The hair? The umbrella? Insurance company? Knife, fork and spoon? The symbolism of various diseases and disabilities? Calendar? Backpack? You can meditate on a healthy or a withered leaf, which are objects that Rudolf Steiner recommends. Or the twelve basic facts, according to Martinus. (Or why not "God" which was the exercise that triggered Martinu's baptism of fire.) But you can also face basically anything: mailbox, light bulb, roll of tape, etc.
You kind of take a step back: What is "a potted plant"? What is "an umbrella", "a wallet", "a mirror" or "a spice jar"? This wondering has both an intellectual and a moral dimension. Both real love and real intelligence presuppose this. To be alien to things is not to "construct", or to create. It is an approach to the real.
There are abstract concepts: "freedom", "time" e.g. There are human characteristics, such as "curious", and you can try to understand people's characters. There are other things - yes, like "spice shelf", "tippex" etc. By abstracting what you encounter, you can come to distinguish basic features that connect different things, properties etc. with each other. This is probably not only poetic constructions, but it shows something real and essential in life. Martinus talks about how everything is "subjects". Each association of people has, as it were, its own charge.
Sweets in large quantities are of course not good for us in. But you can take solace in the fact that everyone seems to like it: from small children who drink their sweet breast milk, to the people of the future who, according to several sources, will subsist largely on fruit. Someone who had traveled in the swamps of Florida told me that they even fed the crocodiles with marshmallows!
The other day I came out of a tobacco shop with a piece of chocolate in my fist. Then I bumped into a woman I hadn't seen in probably ten years. We got along about, among other things, sweets. She had visited an alternative doctor some time before, for her ailments, and he had quickly related these to just too much sugar consumption: "If you continue like this, you will die", he had said quite briefly. And she passed this on to me. Sometimes such a meeting is exactly what you need.
120
Maybe in every moment there is room for a little free will? It is the sole of the foot on the smooth surface.
Just where the stone plinth of the house met the asphalt of the street, with all its weight, that day a dandelion had wedged itself up. With its tousled head, it met one of the first days of spring. How hard it had had to fight to get where it was now! How much it had longed. That day I saw many dandelions.
Did you know that of the tennis ball, the squash ball and the badminton ball, it is the latter - funny bird and chieftain's head - that flies the fastest?
This being amazed is also close to humor, which is often seeing things from new, unexpected angles. The artistic eye is also close to it, so is the scientific approach - finding solutions - and inventiveness.
Love and its quasi-forms: It's like distinguishing black socks from blue. You think you have made the right choice, until life, in the form of a trouser leg, convinces you otherwise.
125
You can get a little suspicious. That it should be as easy as taking one aspect of human life, picking out its opposite, pitting them against each other - and with this say something apt about our situation. But it works!
“Tell me what you're laughing at and I'll tell you who you are!” I imagine that in laughter a person shows himself very honestly. It is more difficult to infer something based on a person's taste in literature, clothes, etc., as such choices are to a greater extent dictated or at least influenced by what is current fashion. And who you want to give the impression of being. But similar to body language and, for example, handwriting, it is difficult to add humor. Why would one do such a thing anyway? You have your own sense of humor that makes life easier for you. Perhaps you could start from the serial page of, for example, a morning newspaper and in this have an excellent test form?
The world is largely dominated by the notion that very little can be said about a person's inner self based on their actions and their outer appearance. This is possibly a perception that we have taken over from science. If one only avoids the most superficial interpretation - according to which everything neat and harmonious is united with all good qualities, and correspondingly for what is full or disharmonious - then it is actually possible to read life like a book. "You know the tree by the fruit", it says. The rapid movement speaks of at least some aspect of – speed – of the originator! The tousled head stand acquires some aspect of disorder, spontaneity etc.
The train rushes through the tunnel. A young girl sits with her puppy on her lap. It hangs its big head over her shoulder, sometimes it growls and sometimes she comforts it, sometimes it showers her with wet kisses. It is like a picture of the Madonna and Child. What do pets bring into our lives? They are essentially like the flowers. Without them our stay here would be so much more difficult to endure. In some sense, they testify to us about perfection, about the existence that we are currently the furthest away from being able to experience. We are adults and busy with serious life. We have so much to worry about and worry about. They help us to never completely lose sight of paradise
The animal is given "a home", we say, but in fact it is probably our "homesickness" that is strongest, and that is what makes us seek the company of animals. How bland and shallow life would feel if we didn't have access to what animals convey - and evoke in us: playfulness, devotion, trust, wonder. They give us their lightness and their light. They complement us in our one-sidedness and our lack of understanding, not with any better "sense" than our own, but with so many other of the qualities that could very well be summed up as: life.
Creating a happy destiny is very much a matter of prioritizing. It is to become aware of one's needs and to try to satisfy them. To breathe, not to let ourselves be angered v. Although it is certainly misleading to think of our psyche as a machine, this psyche contains a lot of automaticity. We can make this ability serve us, through a procedure that is not so different from programming a computer. And if we do not make use of this ability in ourselves - to establish good habits via so-called affirmations, for example - then it is likely that we are nevertheless guided by a lot of such automaticity in our actions.
130
To be able to stand "new", fearless and open, it is required that you have found something that can neutralize/balance out energies both from the outside and from the inside. Is it the case that all energies that come our way are our own?
Falling in love doesn't just "hit" us. You fall in love when you want to fall in love, when you need to fall in love.
There are things that we experience as pleasant, and that we have experienced as pleasant for a long time, but gradually we become aware of how some of these pleasures are intimately connected to a lot of things that we experience as unpleasant. Then it becomes natural to avoid or try to suppress ourselves in the pursuit and enjoyment of these pleasant things. And with the perceived kinship, it also gradually becomes easier and easier to refrain from these forms of pleasure.
That our world is facing great upheavals, which will affect the lives and everyday lives of individuals in many ways, you can sense that. Not "stone upon stone" will be left, as it says in the Bible. Recently at work, when I went to get food, I passed two dark-skinned men, both wearing turbans and blue bodysuits, conversing in Finnish.
One should cast one's sorrows on God, it has been said, what about success?
135
There is always a better way. From every transgression of the laws of life there is a retreat possible. From every stage of every crime there is a possible way out
What is "a dustbin", "an envelope", "a package"?
Lines of fate: Shiny backs of fish in shoals, which can be seen right at the surface of the water.
Often I feel as if my life is controlled, that I am being held back or let go, respectively, by an intelligence greater than my own. But that there is still something going on inside myself, and that the term "The Inner Master" feels appropriate. What would this correspond to in Martinus' cosmology?
First, you are enthusiastic and determined about a project. You feel free and strong when you think about it. You are like in love. Then you get tired and somehow try to withdraw from it all. Maybe it goes, maybe it goes relatively painless. Then you are back, seemingly where you were from the beginning, but you feel as happy and free as ever before! Who Said Life Was Suffering?
140
Love presupposes silence. Love presupposes movement. It is as if each situation required a unique approach, a properly adjusted "counter-pressure", in order for the inner balance to be maintained. Sometimes less, sometimes more. And it is not the back pressure in itself that determines whether the treatment will be happy for oneself and the surroundings, but the interaction. Here it can be said that mobility makes it possible to remain in balance. The stillness presupposes mobility, because the surroundings are changeable, shifting.
In the crowd of striving souls I meet - the gaze of Christ. He sits there completely calm, radiating great trust and small claims. His eyes are dark, almost black. Golden and shiny is his fur.
Copyright Stefan Hellsten
Today I met a dog on the street. He was attached to his necklace, but he himself carried the long strap in his mouth. And he looked so proud!
A thought for angry moments: In exactly the same situation, with exactly the same conditions, I would have acted exactly the same way.
Some time ago I drew planets, celestial bodies in our solar system, a perspective with the sun in the foreground and the small planets beyond it. Suddenly I realize that I am also decorating the sun with a shadow side!
It is not easy to live, but to die is said to be impossible.
5
It's weird. Sometimes you need to be reminded that you are mortal, sometimes that you are immortal.
Is joy round? Like cool-shaped?
It seems that we feel guided by possessions, qualities and people, to the same extent that we have previously idealized them.
I am writing today, as old and physically heavy, the books I sincerely hope I will find to read when young.
The realization that one is not a slave to external circumstances often takes a lifetime to conquer.
10
My self-confidence grows by being bad, as by unbridled habit.
Spending time with wayward cats gives you something to think about. They don't reveal you "the way you really are", it would be cynical to claim such a thing, but they show you how you are in your worst moments. They set even the low water mark. So instructive.
The world is upside down: People feel little confidence in what they are, but a lot in what they can achieve, although it should be the other way around: great joy would lie in existence itself, while less importance would be attached to abilities and skills.
The people we should really fear are not those who think they are.
The root of my pain is not primarily that I lack good judgment, but that I act as if I possessed one.
15
I value doubt more than faith, but of course an absolute certainty more than anything. But more and more I experience how difficult it is to really know anything. Therefore, I value doubt more highly than most, and often feel that the doubter has more to teach me than the believer, who has a richly detailed object to offer.
Important! Trying to accept his inability to accept and also his inability to accept the inability.
Being together with others is acting and party games in the finest sense of the word.
Anyone who judges everything based on one system attacks other systems, criticizes and exposes their flaws, but certainly not the approach itself: having a system.
You do what you do until you don't do it anymore, then you don't do it anymore.
20
Anyone who complains about his arrogance is also saying that there is something to be arrogant about after all.
You call yourself a seeker, but you take many things for granted: the relationship with your parents, God's attributes - yes, even the state and needs of the world, you are done with. And yet you search, you mean, to get answers!
Now if the bumblebee flies only because it does not know itself and the laws of life well enough, then who has the heart to deprive it of this joy?
I feel like an unwritten zero.
Can such a love be understood at all by those of us who are not yet capable of it?
25
The person who most eagerly believes that a person's past influences and inspirers should be accounted for, that it would be in their place, is perhaps also the one who is most misled by hearing about them.
It is not the lack of sound judgment that is the root of my misery, but that I decide and act as if I possessed one.
Love is both an end and a means. It longs for and fulfills itself. It calls out and is its own answer.
To doubt completely is to put doubt also into question; something about a chemistry of understanding, love and joy.
He who loves to be loved does not love. He who loves, but does not allow himself to be loved, does not love either. The one who truly loves, at that very moment, feels nothing more about either love or its opposite.
30
Nationalism is self-sufficiency extended over a larger number of people. Deep down, you are not united for anything, but against. Nationalism is always aggressive.
It is difficult to pray or meditate on command, both external and internal.
In the statement "to be free from something" lies a contradiction. The word "free" itself indicates which preposition best conveys this experience: "being free in".
One can doubt that there are basic energies as we imagine them. For that reason, one need not doubt that there are basic energies as Martinus experiences or imagines them. You can start with the essentials.
It is probably the case that one has experienced enough only when conscious prayer ceases to be one among other options.
35
I "see" the sound in front of me in the air, of an airplane. But the airplane flies so fast that the sound lags behind. The plane is already out of sight. It illustrates to me how life in its essence escapes our senses and all we can register is the "shadow" of life.
The earthly shackles, like so much else that we have the support of life to free ourselves from, must be overcome with love. Love is the key to all doors, the knocker of all gates.
It is not easy to be human. Being non-human is so much easier.
Love is not just and only love. The piece of music is not only "beautiful". Doing violence to one's experience so to speak.
The highest stage of esoteric study is oblivion.
40
We are to "become like children", says Christ. Now what do the children have that is so desirable? They take the smaller a little more seriously and the bigger a little less seriously.
Actually, one should not talk so much about personal development, but more about personal settlement. It better states what it is about.
These three are the foundations of joy: to be attentive, to be grateful, to be active.
I don't really write for fantasy at all. The written aim is to make the mind a little more elastic.
Then everything that happens is so great, both adversity and the other. But you're young, you don't understand anymore. And young is the one who blames.
45
Every thought that is wise does not need to be written down. Every shirt that is beautiful does not need to be owned.
Impartiality is not the same as not choosing, one option over another. You have to choose. No, impartiality is something else or something further. You can perhaps say that you choose without excluding.
Prejudice makes you stupid in both senses of the word: you become both stupid and mean.
And the Weaver weaves his eternal fabrics. Tussles of yarn swirl past our wondering eyes. We grope and gather for a wedding feast.
There are people who view with greater disgust a naked, healthy body than a mutilated, rendered innocuous one, and a fight rather than intercourse.
50
The thought often strikes me, that it is really the children who deal with essentials: they ask. It's healthy. Adults answer. Now what is it an expression of?
Poorer than he who has nothing to lose, is he who fears to lose what he thinks he owns.
To the question: "Who am I?", the answer is: "I am." If you say more than that, for example that you are "a soul in a body", or "an immortal spirit", then you have already started to exclude.
Martinus is alleged to have said, when he fell and broke his femur neck, that it was because he "was going to stop writing". It is interesting to think about. How is something like this staged?
The language mind is like a horse. Sometimes it trots along, and you have to sit up in the saddle. But most of the time you just go and drag it behind you in the wastes.
© Stefan Hellsten
Do not rest the rose
directly on earth
But well at the end
of thorny stem
Strong, stately root!
What do those words require?
To have traveled a long way
but now reached port
- - -
Understand that there is no rush, but there is no rush to understand either.
What the stone is to the water, it is the habitual thought to the still fragile thought, but what the water is to the stone, it is also the still fragile thought to the habitual thought.
The peace of mind that comes with a showdown going in one's favor is always deceptive. What in connection with that can be experienced as goodness is not. It's a cat's game with the rat.
5
It is great to possess real knowledge, but to make proper use of it is greater.
Perhaps we imagine that when someone reacts very violently and condemningly to what others do, these reactions show that it is completely foreign to that person to act like that themselves. But that is not always the case. The violent outcome is often an indication of the exact opposite.
Prayer is destined to become a part of all our doing, all our thinking. An obstacle for this to happen, for it to be so completely and fully incorporated into the being of the supplicant, is the form that is often given to it. We like to say our prayers with a tormented, anguished expression, even though this is not our actual experience. It is a disguised humility or fear. The artificiality is an effort that serves no function whatsoever. On the contrary, prayer then becomes separated from our normal thinking. We then rise from our time of prayer, smooth our features and open our soul's window to freshness again. But even the prayer is so far away, so passed.
Often it is our now grief-laden responsibility only to allow this or that to happen, and not quite as often as we feel bound to it, to be the ones to make it happen. Herein rests a great difference.
About people's values: The value that is experienced as growing with success is the illusory value, the imagined added value and when success is delayed - equally unreal - the lesser value.
10
The individual's self-perception or self-evaluation rests as "a shimmer" around her - we usually unconsciously observe and note it, a kind of mind reading - and here what is said in words is not of any significant importance.
Blaming yourself for what you have done in the past is unwise. Without it, you wouldn't be who you are today either. Choices that were once made - and which today you wish were unmade - you might not be able to make again, because you are familiar with the consequences, but others whose consequences you do not yet feel. Alternatives that are perceived to be right today – at least wrong or whose returns are calculated as well worth the effort – are perhaps tried to be avoided another time in the future.
What do all the situations we feel divided or stressed about have in common? Not mainly: "Life puts so many things in front of me at the same time" - but more: "An inability to choose from these things what is most important at the moment and give it my full attention and care."
In this world, only the foolish and the wise find something to laugh at. Yes, and the children who so strangely combine the two.
Anyone who experiences difficult, stressful relationships can also process these completely on their own, because there is no conflict at all - apart from what can be observed on the mental plane. The root is called Ignorance, the stem is called Fear, bark and branch are called Imagination.
15
Is it open that strives? Doesn't openness require collection and immobility? Well, however, you can be in motion and on the move, but on the more essential plane remain still. You are powerful!
The basis of sadness – as well as of all over-enthusiasm or fanaticism – is pettiness. It is the inability to see "the big lines", to glide freely over the Sea of Desolation, over wave valleys and wave crests - but well below the clouds - to see how all movements work together and can be followed from the horizon to the very near, from near and far.
What in the field of search, is completely wrong and pernicious? Of what can it be said: "That is wrong and you should not concern yourself with that, that does not lead you to the Goal?" Don't we see that when we condemn something - or wantonly exalt it as the only real thing - we put ourselves above Life itself and Life's preparation of our fellow travelers? And if in time someone were to abandon what we forbade her or spoke disparagingly of, what reason do we have to feel victory or triumph? God led her into it and God led her out of it, because at first she needed it but now no longer needs it—for the moment perhaps—all are God's works and plays and who is foolish enough to want to glory in them?
The person who is repeatedly asked to confirm his friendly attitude can become noticeably unfriendly as time goes on.
For the crucifixion of pride, the Most High has given us the paradoxes. He who finds reason to boast about his understanding and his knowledge cannot have tried to force these entrance gates of omniscience without reservation enough. The key is called "liberation" - from the private and limited and detached - that which is also the noblest form of love. Pride is a one-sided protection of the personal and therefore it is loveless.
20
The balancing act of self-cultivation: To dismantle sides of oneself, without distancing oneself from them for the sake of it.
Is Eternity finite - so that it has a beginning? Is Infinity bounded - so that thought catches up with it at the brink of expansion? They are then not worthy of the names.
Setting boundaries is a completely natural part of our life and actions. The length of steps on our walks is not allowed to exceed a certain limit; we naturally interrupt our waking hours for needed sleep and return when it has served its purpose. Does it also apply to our being with other people? No, so often we shy away from setting boundaries, when we actually feel a need for privacy – as well as the opposite: overcoming boundaries when togetherness is desired – and every little child serves us here as a healthy example.
To force gold out of lead is no easy matter, to be sure, but to force man out of animals is, if possible, even more difficult. And yet so simple, for the meek, who conforms to the course of life.
The price of fame is exposure - the previously so advised, achieved over time - gift price becomes the price to be paid.
25
Can you stretch further than you can stretch, can you run faster than you can? Can you understand more than you can understand?
He who believes himself to be the sole cause of the triumph, is subsequently also alone with the defeat. Is it necessarily so? Yes, you cannot be united with Life—that on which all abiding joy rests, truly, and remain so—and at the same time separate from It. Nothing could be more impossible.
Countless are those who claim to be able to convey the Truth, and for those who seek, the discovery of this becomes something that confuses or amuses, perhaps frightens. Someone talks about the origin of all religions. Someone despises them all. Someone claims that meditation is the Way. Someone adds that surely meditation is the Way - the way that leads to perdition and corruption. Someone raises man's ability to think, his analytical talent, to heavenly heights. Someone points out that therein lies its limitation: musings lead the individual, at best, "up among the clouds", but at worst she does not get much closer to the Truth with the help of her head. Someone informs that the cosmic is apparent and fundamentally chaotic, that everything has its origin in Chance. Someone talks about the lawfulness of everything, how not a hair on the head is uncounted and that every little sigh is heard. Someone willingly shares their burden, their cross, that everything is darkness - fundamentally - humanity is just going downhill and doom is near. Someone trips merrily about and smilingly bears witness to the Glory whose radiant glory is absorbed by all her senses and to a future with people who are little wonders of prudence and virtue. "But then what is Truth?" shouts the one who has searched for a long time and is still doing it. Yes, how do we answer that? What can be experienced as true by one, the other is apparently faced with complete incomprehension. Thoughts that are only tiresome to some, become life-long inspiration to others. Also: B may have what A is looking for, C can inspire and guide B, but it is not certain that A will find in C what he is looking for, at the moment.
When we think badly of someone or something, and want to defend the thoughts that bubble up inside, then it is as if we sometimes reason: "Well, all this talk about positive thinking and 'karma' - I have to find myself at some point in real life too!” But every such step, which we try to justify with these objections, is a step away from reality. Yes, of course it is. In any case, the "real" would lie in the fact that one exposes one's actual - real - degree of maturity. But that is another matter. We are not so real at the moment.
In the very selection of alternatives—what context and thought provide—is guidance.
30
Maybe we sometimes think: "Loneliness is so difficult, and so is being with others." And yet, in time, we find joy in solitude as well as in community. Has the world then become different?
As long as man regards the world as his enemy, so long will he pay tribute to the aggressive and brash protestors, those who strike, occupy houses, or otherwise lend their energies to acts of terror. They all do what she herself would like to do, when they fight against "the authorities" or "today's technocratic society", demanding their "right" with powerful actions and powerful language. Alone, they fight against all of existence and she lives into their fate, as unappreciated and neglected. As long as man sees the world as his adversary, so long will he not shy away from lying and deceiving this "opponent". She will defend her action by saying that the booty thus captured is really hers, be it money, time or something else.
With limited concepts man tries to capture the unlimited. She makes the multi-bottomed single-bottomed. Maybe she thinks it will be easier that way? But the complex is the simple. The simple—the only apparently simple—is the truly difficult, for it is only a half-truth.
The Nazis sorted out people who were unpleasant in their eyes. We sort out the Nazis, because they are unpleasant in our eyes, or those who sort out Nazis. But what really lies in the big difference? If we claim that all people have the same value and that they are all worthy of our love and understanding, then of course these great words call for correspondingly great actions.
The biggest thing in our lives is what we have in common with the smallest in existence. The mind boggles!
35
Do not apologize for your curiosity - if it has put you in a pressing situation and you come up with more appropriate thoughts - for, this expressed regret then only further shows how piquant and charged the subject in question is for you, what a prominent place in your consciousness given to it: that you find nothing more interesting to think about or converse about. Nay, go on and make your fellow traveler certain of your goodwill in other ways, in case it may be feared that you have made her doubt it.
When with clumsy words and concepts we seek to create order in our intuitive premonitions, these fleeting feelings of happiness, which are so easily dissolved by efforts, like the summer butterfly in the sudden rain, helpless. Perhaps we will then reach the point where we completely deny the importance of thinking. Yet we return to the words and our – growing – understanding. Always so.
Out of consciousness's spawn of memories and flashes of truth, the need—the real—seems to be the tool by which the fragmented, the frustrated, is made to collapse and become the whole and the completely understandable.
The right treatment provides good conditions. Therefore, look for it more often than you look for good conditions for a proper treatment.
The "judge" often has a desire to have his prejudices fulfilled by "the condemned". Such prejudgments are a function of the individual's fear of the world. Seeing one's prejudices shattered is painful – and it applies to prejudices in all areas – so he tries to avoid it. Uncertainty is here: Not daring to leave anything "floating", a compulsion to "slam it into the ground".
40
"About that we don't know anything for sure, it's just imagination and so I'll leave it at that." We often encounter statements like this when thoughts that are out of context are brought up. But such an "elevated" stance, in the face of the completely or partially unknown, would probably be impossible to maintain in all areas. If we tried to understand how we really know nothing with certainty, not in any area - no, not even in the most everyday and supposedly explored - then maybe we would experience how the ground just kind of disappeared from under our feet! But now a selection takes place in the vast majority of people, fortunately, although not in all and always. Many of those who are guests in our mental hospitals, it is probably precisely because they have dissolved these - illusory - foundations of existence. Only after having been made familiar with the Universal Stillness – the basic condition of all creation and experiencing – should we possess the qualifications required to be able to safely release the moorings. Then it also happened.
When Life seeks me and Conscience, my servant, has gone to meet It, then I lock the gate behind him. Soon the faithful can be heard banging and shouting: "It's here now, let it in!" In my house I listen. Get angry.
Only those who harbor misunderstanding themselves can bitterly experience being misunderstood. Were it not for their situation, they happily collected opinions and expressions of other points of view.
The service does not tire, but our constant nagging longing to be somewhere else, to do something else - our brokenness - makes us discouraged and powerless. The way out: Devoting yourself to your work - and understanding it correctly - brings peace. It is more to give oneself to the task, which has to do with affection, than to give up before it and mindlessly submit, which has to do with resignation.
Those who are afraid often show the tendency to want to attach themselves to the imperfect sides of those around them first and foremost. But - she should then be aware that the qualities or flaws that she thinks she sees in them may not be there at all - her gaze is not open observing, but it seeks and wishes to have its assumptions confirmed - and if they really were there there, then a thousand good reasons are given for indulging them. Yes, if nothing else, so that those around her may indulge her fault-finding zeal. The eye sees what the eye wants to see, much passes by.
45
As the parts of the Reality we are, there are things we cannot imagine and not because it is "difficult" or even "very difficult", but because it is unreal and therefore impossible.
When the football has been stopped on the A team's goal line and the referee hesitates for a moment, then all the B team supporters have seen that it was in, while all the A team supporters can testify that the ball never made it further. Regardless of who is at fault, not all of these are liars or willfully dishonest. Many are downright unreal.
How glad I am sometimes, that forgetfulness paralyzes my tongue, makes me confused, sloppy and unaccountable in the eyes of others.
Faced with the idea that adversity would have its deepest source flow in our own miserable state, we defend ourselves. But - what relief do the illusions that we so stubbornly defend offer? Why does the cross rub less with them in mind? Was it not, for an angel, a desirable opportunity to be able to lift the yoke of debt from the shoulders of everyone and anyone?
To make a fellow human being aware that something that she is in the process of creating or has already completed - and will probably do again - can be done in a more appropriate way, it is sometimes enough to go the way of Love. But the one who is very diligent in noting such imperfections, perhaps thereby reveals that the complaint-correction has become a kind of end in itself for her. It no longer pains her to have to point out flaws in the behavior of others, but these occasions are purely desired. Basically, she overestimates her own importance, while at the same time underestimating the importance of her fellow human beings.
50
We think of the finished mental state, where one finds no particular pleasure in flattery and personal success, gray and desolate it may seem to us. But the wise laugh so well! Apparently, they derive their joy from another source, which we shall come to know in time!
To especially remember sometimes: "My ways are not your ways and I know almost nothing about your dreams."
That an unwillingness to reconcile would make change impossible is a misconception. Great changes take place: poisoning and destruction of the body.
The unfinished bus traveler: He experiences a certain amount of discomfort when the vacant seat next to him is occupied: "If only I had been allowed to sit by myself. Why would she necessarily sit right here?” He experiences a certain amount of discomfort when the seat next to him becomes free again and the person goes somewhere else - as he meant to wish: "Why didn't she want to stay? Why is everyone avoiding sitting next to me?”
Forgiveness will not always be and remain only an expression of our goodwill. There is a mathematically fortified basis to be discovered - God's own vantage point - and the judgment of the individual earthling is developed there.
55
Other people's haste does not teach that time is short.
"The sight" is an intense experience of being surrounded by the world, rather than having it only in front of you. Maybe we get to experience a hint of it in our brightest moments. If we then try to make a profit on it, it is gone, like a fleeing wind. But: Doesn't the explorer want to be praised because Africa is Africa, or because the zebra is just as striped as it has always been?
When we observe ourselves, we may find that we like to bind others to us, although we ourselves do not want to be bound. When our longing for independence has grown strong enough, giving - real - freedom becomes our way to experience a greater measure of freedom in our relationships.
For the power-hungry, "greatness" is a distance - to someone or many - while "greatness" is understood by the unassuming to be a condition.
To take responsibility is to know that you can stand before the Great Evaluator with your head held high, not only on "the last day", but every day, in every moment and in every place. Striving is a mindset and not certain actions or placements.
60
We cannot imagine a Worldspace that has walls, for the reason that such a world - unlike us - has no basis in reality, but we cannot capture the Worldspace that has no walls either, for the reason that It is not contained in our thought.
The humor that most people seem to value the most is the one that strikes them as a surplus. A joke is an invitation to those around, to see the comical or paradoxical in a situation, an offer that - at best - is given with full freedom to either decline or join. But where the individual's humor does not exist as a surplus, there is also no freedom for those around them. They feel that their approval is something vital to the other. He has, as it were, taken off his – insufficient – life energy, and now anxiously and insistently waits for their response. They are given no time to think or rest, but just feel that they want to end the situation.
By grace, some words become bearers of reality.
We crave power. Look at the mannequins in the shop windows, cast and fashioned to sell, how their postures and features bear all the marks of the perfection of power! The male dolls are arrogant and powerful, they have looks that make us shy away and the female ones display other, in their fields, at least as effective weapons.
It is a mistake to think that we mature as quickly as we get used to and become blind to what is meant to inspire us to maturity. Tragically, it may seem that we are only so superficially able to take part in what is an expression of maturity stages beyond our own. We surround ourselves with many phrases and statements of the wise of the world. A few times we have read them and then think we have made them our property. We have, as it were, taken all the nourishment they offer, risen above them and no longer hear them, perhaps regard them for nothing. Use them when we speak, but then do not understand the depth of what we say. How much greater will be our joy when we return—and we always do—when we realize that our ears were closed before we had heard all that was to be communicated to us! It has been there, familiar in color and shape, but without a real deeper meaning. And how could it have been otherwise?
65
Seeking and sometimes demanding perfection from those you meet, moral impeccability and consistency, is basically an expression of one's longing for God, one's longing for life, yes, one's longing for home. Like the children who cannot possibly come to terms with the divided world, where warring parties – inside and outside the individual – try to coordinate, but fail. She - and perhaps only she - whose search is complete or close, allows those she meets to be who they wish to be and demands nothing beyond what they are capable of. To such persons, warming and radiant, many frozen and winter-pale hikers turn. They seek and are rarely, on valid grounds, disappointed.
Many of the beliefs that we never question or even consider to be mere beliefs will eventually prove to be partially or completely wrong. New propositions often find it difficult to gain ground, and not because they are fundamentally less probable than those already established, but because they are far too unfamiliar to the mind. We vigorously defend ourselves against the new, that which challenges the long-accepted. Ideas which have a future for them, we reject today, and not because they collide with reality itself, but because they collide with the ideas we have made about what is real. When we are honest with ourselves, we have to admit that there is much that we are faced with questioning. The society's authorities that we rely on are also questioned here. It touches things from the smallest to the most complex. For some of these questions, we construct strange theories, which rightly seem far-fetched, but which can nevertheless - albeit only helpfully - be reconciled with our ingrained beliefs.
Children can be so blatantly cruel to animals and to each other, but to blame it on the influence of the parents and the environment, is to simplify the context significantly - or complicate, because the limited view claims to be the complete one and therefore it goes astray.
An imbalance in the soul life entails a greater or lesser degree of "blindness", because the imbalance makes us unable to see things as they are. Their true or deepest nature remains hidden.
The fact that we should welcome grief - as the wise said - does not mean that you are wise to seek it out. No, but in situations where grief comes your way, you should embrace it like a dear friend. There is no more sorrow there.
70
To spend one's time and energy trying to convert those who do not desire conversion is doubly unloving. On the one hand, you forcefully host hiking friends who do not wish for such a visit (in time, you leave, perhaps ashamed, trying to close the gate behind you that you previously kicked in) and on the other hand, you allow those who are really hungry to remain unsatiated. This mismanagement of resources is a form of extravagance or arrogance, comparable to the callousness of the richer nations towards the poorer ones. They allow these to starve, while their own food stocks rot away or are only meant to be a guarantee against possible future years of need in their own country.
Just as unhappiness or sadness is there, even though our circumstances appear to be so "happy", so true happiness is there - when it is there - in spite of all the "unfortunate" circumstances.
The question is often: "How much do you earn?" and the answer should then be more accurately stated in time - or even better in quality - and not in money, since the question literally reads: "How much are you a servant?"
In moments of despair and despair, we ourselves are unhappily unaware of "it", and when we measure these moods in others, we are often aware of "it", perhaps we are irritated: That there are people for whom our fates would be proof of favor.
The contradictory is experienced as repulsive only by its equal, albeit unconsciously. All children of this world, intended - and with time also disarmed, quite naturally - for something greater.
75
That night's blind clarity the fog shrouds. Dawn comes, the light awakens, but the vision lingers.
It wouldn't occur to us to ask that the laws that ruled in the dreams of the night should also apply to the everyday life that we woke up to - even if they had been experienced as never so real or self-evident while we were still asleep - but in many ways we are yet to resemble sleepwalkers, who stagger about in the moment of transition between dream and reality and despair that reality does not want to submit to the dream.
With love we also set limits. Losing yourself in "the smaller", with the result that you lose your grip on "the bigger", not infrequently has unwanted consequences. Often we then add more discomfort and division to the environment than we add to it with pleasant experiences. These groundings can be avoided if we try to see to the good of the whole. That which may very well lie in particular concern for "the insignificant" and often does.
Crying and despair at not being more than human follows a valiant attempt.
It is not only the violent or directly intrusive that we feel the need to defend ourselves against. No, even the one who is firmly anchored can be perceived as threatening, although no aggressiveness can be traced in her expression and she does not violate or demand anything, except her own justified one.
80
To relive and now experience painful childhood memories is not to have come to an understanding of the entire course of pain or to have found the ultimate cause of the adult problem. There are analysis systems on several levels. The smaller systems become even more valuable when the individual gets to know the larger systems, where the smaller ones are included as parts and therefore of course have their limitations.
The great obstacle to man being able to be fulfilled by real understanding is that he already considers himself to possess it, large parts of it or the conditions which should most immediately reward him. The room in her being, which in time should flow through with true, divine insight, is now filled with conceit and other rubbish. Isn't that crystal clear?
Never is the Coast so dear to us, as when the ideas, our sails, wear badly in the storm!
Some people wear their clothes, so also their gestures, knowledge and peculiarities. Other people - yes, the sad one in everyone - are all of them, they live their lives through them, decay and die with them.
Not infrequently we allow one aspect of reality to swell, while other parts are then relegated to being a kind of peripheral knick-knack or completely denied. But - there is also a form of experiencing where all the sensational and allegedly all-liberating is included, but then has its proper proportions. Freshness is its companion.
85
When we attack people for their trust in life and in the perfection of everything in the moment, we imagine how they seek their foundation in something outside of reality. But that is a misconception. They are the ones who live on the inside of reality, while we are the ones who dwell in the shadows. And it is not the dark parts of reality that are experienced here, but the chilly half-day we sweep around us in the absence of reality.
Being challenged and beaten is suffering, but then also receiving the apology of the stronger person can make the burden of suffering even greater. It is a victory, after all, to have been found worthy of the challenge of the stronger.
As in the traditional family, it is the man and his activities that give the family its external identity - such expressions that a stranger first becomes familiar with: the social reputation, the built-up residence, for example - so it is also the male qualities of the Deity that first and for long periods of time they are the only ones that the Son of God can refer to. In time, the wanderer and the son of god become so close that they begin to be able to distinguish even things that stem from the woman's activities. Already from a distance they can find a more nurturing and silent force, and when they gradually become familiar with the collective manifestation of the family - and see how these distinct forces work together and complement each other - it is then quite natural for them to think of the family as the man and the woman, the woman and the man. When we find, in prayers and conversations, that we fondly title the All-encompassing One as if it were the One of the male gender, it is not only the fault of habit - well rooted in the dark ages when women were considered to lack soul and other spiritual qualifications - but also our immaturity. Accompanied by a burning longing, everyone will gradually come to the understanding that the Godhead contains all the female characteristics as well as all the male characteristics. The idea of the Deity as the great Creator, the One who rules over life and death, then turns out to have even deeper layers: the Deity as the Steward, the Carer, the caretaker of all the small everyday needs. The Deity is not only the One who steps about above our heads, gigantic and with the great happenings before His eyes, but also the One who we find in all "small" and "trivial", to the right of, to the left of, under, between and within U.S.
He who feels compelled to inform those around him of his imperfection, may experience himself in such a way that he may fear they have found reason to believe otherwise.
Thoughts are so easily expressed. It is therefore wise to first taste the truth content of the words and the love content of the action itself. Two dangers that lurk: First, that one says things, regardless of whether they are both true and correct, that no one wants to hear, let alone asked one to say; partly that what one says lacks anchoring in what is true and right, regardless of who asked one for advice. Doubly bad if both unwanted and untrue. To be blinded by one's own wisdom is highly unwise. One easily overestimates one's importance - as well as one's actual capacity - and then thinks one has both the right and the obligation to inform others, also about things one really has no idea about. The lover of the truth watches carefully for this.
90
Has the animal asked to be trained? Has the plant asked us for a pot? No, that's why we only have obligations, no rights.
The development in which the applicant is involved can be described from several points of view as a liberation. She must dissolve her ties to the world, become more free-spirited and airy in mind, creative and mobile. Certainly she will also reach and realize these states of longing. But from another point of view, she must also make herself dependent, dependent on and extremely sensitive to and faithful to the larger context of which she is a part. Yes, in a way, her experience of freedom can be described as that, that she desires and sees herself as inextricably dependent on everything and everyone around her (and perhaps on more life planes than she may be aware of at the moment). In the face of this all-encompassing and all-pervading, she must develop a trembling sensitivity.
Who seeks fame and the reverence of those around them, their admiration? Answer: Who needs it, and who doesn't? When someone achieves fame - and those who long for it always do, over time - we often see a sense of pride emerge. It may take the expression that suddenly the individual is no longer looking for those around them. Because they are looking for her. Perhaps she now openly shows them her contempt, criticizes and dictates demandingly. It follows from these haughty actions that she "falls", sooner or later, and to believe that you can fend off the approaches and praises of those around you is not the same as actually being able to do so. When the banging on the front door has finally stopped - as you said you wanted - you might still go ahead and open it, to see if there aren't at least a handful of admirers left, at least a few who could sing a song of praise.
It is animalistic to unhesitatingly take from others to satisfy one's own needs, and what is truly human is something of the reverse. But the animal takes what it desires and is content with it; inflicting suffering on others is not in itself desirable.
The truly cruel people are not those who do not desire love, but those who want but cannot, those who are hungry but not satisfied.
95
What arouses a Jew persecutor H, is not an excess of what makes the animal an animal, but the dawning human in conflict-filled union with the former. There are several examples that the dreaded torturer in other contexts, in other areas, can be deeply compassionate. It may seem strange and sick - as if it were only a mockery - but for animals she or he not infrequently harbors a tenderness that far surpasses that of ordinary humans.
We all want to be seen - well, except for the thief, maybe - and seen for our own sake. We desire from others and from each other, that which is more than two whites of eyes directed at us and a mouth that bares its teeth. We don't want the self-fulfilling look, the one that is turned towards us only to make room for its own outbursts when we are silent, but also not the anxious look, that looks at us just so that we don't get tired of being together and go somewhere else.
"Me and my soul" becomes over time, when the experience has matured, more like "me and my body".
The larger context is wordless, and in relation to that, no combination of letters is truer or better than any other. The degree of appropriateness must always be seen in relation to the limited context or conceptual system in which the word is to be included, the mutual harmony of the concepts.
Placing the Master in the middle of the room is not necessarily putting Him in the center. To reproduce the Master's words is not necessarily to reproduce His thoughts.
100
When we hear from others or say ourselves that what we experience happens to us that way, because it is something that we ourselves have caused, then there is a misunderstanding that often arises. It is not so much a question of "right" or "wrong" words, but it has more to do with the understanding itself. This, which is often compared to the farmer's sowing and harvesting, is not an "external" event, disconnected from us, but to the highest degree and in every respect an "inner" event. It is the consciousness with its habitual thoughts and action patterns, which is to be compared to the field soil from which the harvest rises. Our thought life is like a garden and in it the fruits ripen and are harvested, the bitter as well as the sweet and tasty. Everyday life can then be better compared to a square market, with cheerful and lush buzz, and people looking for each other, we offer abundance and we want to satisfy our hunger. Thought is freed here from all sterile desolation, a misunderstanding, for we travel through history and always find the insightful with smiling faces.
It is painfully touched that tempts the patience of others, but compared to not being touched at all it seems to be preferable.
Only the simple mind, finds simple people to consider. Only the narrow-minded see the world - through the dim lens of coarseness - like to despise.
The unskillfulness of playing on other people's easily irritated and weak strings, to hear the dissonance scratching at the wallpaper. What poor pleasure!
Anyone who wants to understand "a flower" will find such in the meadow. Anyone who wants to understand "a bear" looks for him in his den. but what does the person who wants to understand "a human being" do? She travels under the skin.
105
Anyone who has read a book may think they have understood its message, but have not. Those who have not yet read the book may think they do not understand, but may in fact be the one who understands.
A growing sincerity puts the unfinished sides of consciousness into the open, and it is not always so easy to look at these discoveries with accepting and sober eyes. The hitherto repressed and stubbornly overlooked meets the light and swells to unreasonable proportions. The discoverer's confessions to those around hurt or frighten, perhaps, arouse displeasure for (or admiration despite) his one-sidedness.
The disdainful statements that the individual makes about others and others' peculiarities are often an excellent guide to her own personality.
In a stressful relationship, we are often inclined to see our own actions as merely a reaction to what the other does, to what the other is. We see that our own behavior leaves much to be desired, but by placing the ultimate cause of all the unpleasantness in the other, we can legitimize our rudeness, irritation, etc.
With a greater knowledge comes a greater responsibility, but not one imposed and regulated by others, but a self-experienced and, to a greater or lesser degree, complied with such.
110
Speculation about what may or may not happen belongs to the future, of which we have not yet received any promise - and when we consider what has already happened, we are dealing with an area of existence that we do not have the slightest possibility of change: we cannot add anything to what has already happened, nor free from anything. The only thing that can be added to the past, in addition to what has already happened, is what is currently happening. If we dwell in the world of the past, we run the risk of neglecting in the meantime such choices and opportunities as are offered to us in the "present," and whose consequences will be happiest if given our full attention. Perhaps these actions of the present, which are carried out when we remain with a part of our attention in the past, will become things that we look back on in the future with sadness and regret - while in the meantime we pass a few more vigilance-demanding moments with half-closed eyes...
All that becomes joy in the long run, which you were happy about in the moment, but then forgot or lost. After all, it rests in what is, and this living space has no treacherous holes or cracks, because it completely lacks walls on which these could appear.
He is the Physician of the wounded (because He is the Healing). He is the Guide of the lost, because He is the Goal (also the Way, the Ways). He is the Master of the seeker, the first and the last, because He is the Light of all those whose minds have been enlightened. He is the Shipwrecked Sailmaker, because He is the Sea, the Storm and the Coast, as well as the Harbor and Rest of all aspirations. Even the one who seeks away from unity finds in him what is sought: oneness. He is all about which knowledge can be possessed. Wordlessness is reserved for His being, just as everything spoken and written is dedicated to Him.
- From the book "Not in a day" (1987) Copyright: Stefan Hellsten