i. Background and relationships
- Interviews 2009-2010
- i. Background and relationships
- ii. Ideological residence and practice
- iii. Fate and laws of life
- iv. God or a larger, ordering entity
- v. Health, ill-health and care
- we. Faith and knowledge
- vii. Future visions and goals
- Summary i-vii
"I must have thought at some point, what is the meaning of life, I know, but I gave it up, because I didn't find anything."
What the interviewees tell about their background and upbringing. What the interviewees tell us about the path to the spiritual commitment they have today. What the interviewees tell us about their relationships then and now.
Childhood
In the group there are two people who grew up in Christian homes. One of the respondents participated in church activities, it was natural when she was a child and teenager. Eventually, she applied further. The second respondent grew up in a family where one parent was strictly religious:
I was not allowed to take home books from school that were borrowed books. But it was simply the Bible that applied. And to read... Then when you reached the age of 10-12... it was Bildjournalen that was interesting, and I wasn't allowed to read that. It totally tore my father apart, so I couldn't read it... So when I was fourteen years old, I decided to change everything, because I felt that I was cramped, my views were mediocre.
For others, the spiritual perspective has been completely absent during their upbringing: "I didn't grow up in a home that had anything to do with anything... God or Buddha or something, there hasn't been any spirituality at all". Someone describes their parents as very open, also to supernatural phenomena and odd ways of thinking:
So it became very easy for me huh. They never forced anything on me. I remember they asked when I was twelve, or eleven or something, well what do you think happens after death? Well, nothing, I said. Black. Yes, they just said. And then I heard them sitting in there talking about their stuff... And my mother had a UFO friend where she worked. And it was actually a whole bunch that saw a mothership then over the town hall, and that I heard about later when she got home and like that... nothing more about that.
Several of the informants talk about difficult growing up experiences: "You can't escape childhood, and my childhood was very unhappy. For some sort of banal reason. My parents were very immature, unhappy people”. For one respondent, growing up was marked by one parent's addiction.
Time of search
One of the respondents began to ponder early. He believes that this was influenced by the unrest in the world, the Cold War with atomic bomb threats and the like:
So I started to ponder a lot, in this very inarticulate way when I was in my teens, I started to wonder simply above all about the big questions of life like death and yes what really happens to humans... Death above all. I didn't think at all in spiritual or religious terms or anything like that, at that time, I didn't have those frames of reference at all. But you still want some sort of answer to what it's all about, is there any meaning, you know. We also had quite… this was in the early eighties then, or mid-eighties, then there was quite a lot of this Cold War scenario, with atomic bombs and things like that. This affected me a lot. It is a very horrible discovery when you are so young to discover, partly that humanity is not really healthy, and partly that life is actually finite.
Several describe that they felt lost and frustrated in life and felt bad: "So I think I was very... completely confused in this life, at the beginning... At the beginning of THIS life, that is... My head was so full of other shit, like. I was so triggered by everything all the time".
"For me, it's always been this... Earth, so, boring, I'm frustrated, I'm depressed... damn life". "Yes, before my outlook on life was very black, quite simply. I was probably chronically depressed, I think, for all those years, and very, well... Worried and worried and so on". One respondent says that she thought about the question of the meaning of life earlier in life but then gave up: "I had thought at some point, what is the meaning of life, I know, but I gave it up, because I didn't find anything.
Several interviewees have been interested in other types of spirituality or religions before they got the interest they have today. One of the respondents became interested in Buddhism for a period. When a Buddhist lama visited Sweden, she allowed herself to be initiated by him. This lama was quite angry and complained a lot about his co-workers, which the respondent found strange. However, the initiation itself made a deep impression on her. She really felt seen by this lama and was also given a new name that felt well-found and suited her well. Today, however, she is not committed to Buddhism. One of the respondents talks about a time in his life that he describes as an intense crisis-finding phase:
The materialistic life had entered the end of the world. The materialistic world view... had gone straight into a dead end. I had to reconsider and get in touch with something deeper in existence. I think I was pretty bad out there.
Eventually it got easier and everyday life returned, for better or for worse. Everyday life can be described as a "fog":
Then, unfortunately, this intensity wanes, I was in a life crisis there, and then... Certainly, you may get a slightly distorted view of the world, but you see other things crystal clear, when the fog lifts for a while. Then when you enter the everyday life, the fog falls back into place, and you fall asleep in front of the TV... And so on. The everyday warmth comes on again, and then it gets foggy again, the intensity decreases.
Crises and turning points
A respondent who had trained and worked for a long time in healthcare got tired at one point and retrained for something completely different: “I got tired of it. Tired of taking care of others. So, yes, I wanted to do something else”. An interviewee came to a point during his studies when he needed to make a choice: "I felt that I had reached a limit... I felt that I had to make a choice between these two sides that I had in myself... partly the social, rather superficial person, and a profound figure who did not quite come into his own in any way". One of the respondents tells how she struggled with her "demons" when she was in her twenties. She also began to think about how she could take her own life. Finally came a turning point:
And when you start having thoughts like that, that you don't want to live anymore, because you feel so bad about yourself... And I understood that it was serious, because I had more and more thoughts like this... Yes, wonder how to able to find ways to dispose of himself, you know. And that's not good. And that much I understood. This is not good. So I... I know there was one night that I... I couldn't sleep the whole night, because I got like that, you know... you know how you get, when your thoughts are just buzzing. That was probably the crisis. And then I had a vision in the morning there, which was very beautiful, and I wrote a poem. And then it just turned, huh. Not like a bang, but that it turned so that it went... so it kind of started to go slowly downhill again, instead of it just being up, up, up. So there came the turning point.
This became a significant turning point in the respondent's life. Shortly thereafter, her spiritual interest began. She believes that Kristen had opened up to this: "And then when I... yes exactly that, it was after I found Set then. And then it was just like then I was kind of open to it, huh".
Current interest
For some, the interest in the new spirituality has awakened at a mature age, when they were between thirty and forty, while others have had the interest with them since early in life. Several of the respondents find it difficult to indicate a specific starting point for their commitment. Some believe that this interest, in one form or another, was already present in childhood. A creative middle school teacher planted a seed in one of the interviewees with his philosophical riddles. For one of the respondents, the interest came via an older relative who shared his neo-spiritual thoughts when the respondent was in his late teens, which took on a decisive significance. One respondent talks about how in his teens he had a deeper connection with his brother and that they then began to explore the spiritual realm together.
A priest had opened the church premises for such things as "liberating breathing", which became very important for one of the interviewees during a difficult period. This priest was indeed perceived as "fluffy" by the interviewee, but he instilled confidence. The interviewee found it exciting and because of this meeting she considered for a time to train herself to become a priest. A newspaper interview with the artist Tomas DiLeva made a strong impression on one of the interviewees and became the starting point for her new spiritual search. One of the respondents, who grew up in a Christian family, points out that the interest started with a striking insight, rather than with a rational conviction:
What has led ME forward, it's not just understanding, but it's like... It's been like a striking realization, you could say.. Yes, really that it was a penny that fell and suddenly, so... Or that is not as dramatic at all as it sounds now that I tell it, but suddenly you know something, which you have not known before, and I don't know how I know it, but I KNOW it. And it's like a realization that comes, and I've had that many times, but never in the CHURCH.
One of the respondents had found the language of a writer he had come across to be so persuasive:
There was something in the language. So unspeakable... It was non-assertive, but it was just like it was a mathematical equation somehow. Because it was quite up and down, but still quite warm and so... It was just like opening the door... finding the key... Come in here huh.
A séance with a spiritual medium specifies one of the interviewees as its starting point. She had previously been in contact with such notions through a close relative, but then mostly thought it seemed strange. During this seance, however, the information given became so convincing that it could not be argued against any longer. She describes it as giving her a radically different view of life from that moment on:
It started with a séance... I had been to a séance before, and there was no one... they hadn't appealed to me, and it wasn't like I felt it was right or anything. In addition, I have an aunt who is super-medial. She talks about talking to the dead, and there are dead people walking around the house, and slamming doors, and I thought she was completely coco... Well, I sat and said to myself, but I hear everything right... So that's where it started. And when I left there... Then it was like... Yes, but it was... Well, it was like... It was a completely new life. A WHOLE new life.
However, she suspects that this must have been there as a contingency ever since childhood, in one way or another, she just can't remember it. One interviewee had practiced meditation for a long time, but was not particularly interested in reincarnation and the like. However, what she perceived as sudden flashbacks of her past lives caught her by surprise one day and made her start thinking in new ways:
I'm quite a, what can you say then... doubting person, or. I meditated and was very much into emptiness and stuff like that, but reincarnation and stuff like that, I was kind of passively positive about that. I thought, well there sure is but whatever. But then things started to happen... And it's quite new for me, maybe it will be, but it's more of a personal journey right now.
One of the respondents went for a period to an alternative therapist to get help with his physical health. The therapist had hinted that he too had mediumship abilities, and at the last visit the interviewee plucked up the courage to ask if she could say something about the respondent's past life. This opened up new perspectives and was of great importance to the respondent. A deep depression as a young adult turned with a vision, which became the beginning of a new spiritual search for one of the respondents. For one of the interviewees, the interest developed more gradually, through his joining a Christian congregation during a life crisis. He describes it as having no spiritual ambitions behind his joining that congregation. Eventually, however, this world felt too cramped. The answers given satisfied him no longer. He then tried to apply himself further to new age/new spirituality:
I knew what Christianity was, they kind of took care of me, I felt safe there. Then there was that... I can't fit in there, that's where it sort of led... That I have to have a wider frame of mind, but I was still very afraid to kind of venture into this new-age quagmire.
Loneliness and community
Although several express that they feel odd and are afraid of being regarded as "kufas" if those around them found out how they view life, many also seem satisfied with this relative seclusion:
Yes, I am very, like today, I am very addicted to my solitude. To build up. But then I'm a social person anyway. So that I myself choose to be alone, and I choose to be with people then. But my need /of/ to be alone is HUGE, so I don't live with any human being. Because I'm aware that that relationship would never work… I have such a different view on things, which is very… and I'm aware of it… is odd. And those people are not next door, you have to look for them elsewhere. So that I have chosen this to be alone, but then choose friends and acquaintances.
The desire to commit to a typical group, congregation or sect appears to be generally weak. It is possible to experience community by occasionally visiting, for example, a church. Someone emphasizes that she is addicted to her loneliness. Belonging to a group, or "worshipping" a certain leader, is not necessary for her. You meet like-minded people at, for example, lectures and courses. It is weak individuals who are attracted by being part of a group. If the individual does not have this need, the community in a spiritual group can rather be experienced as isolation. Being able to visit different groups gives a different kind of freedom: "But at the same time I say this, it's good to get insight into different ones because then you become a bit freer anyway. You don't have to agree to belong to or worship someone... no, it doesn't suit me, no".
Several interviewees express that they can feel alone with their neo-spiritual interest, for example in their work: "They only work with computers, and they are very fixated on data. But there can certainly be some that are a bit deep there as well, but you have to sort of sneak around a little... I don't really know what's going to happen that it turns out like this, but that…”. There may be a few people with whom the respondents feel on the same wavelength: "There aren't that many people you can talk about this sort of thing with. I have a sister who is on the same track, so we can share this, and I have a couple of friends, but many you can't talk to about this kind of thing".
Many people feel empty today for lack of such a larger context that, for example, the new spirituality offers, says one interviewee. Speaking of something that was recently read about in the newspaper, that many people with roots in other countries want to be buried in their homeland when they die, one of the interviewees says: "Yes, they want to belong to something, because they feel empty inside." . New perspectives can also cause the individual's old circle of acquaintances to be replaced. It is sometimes difficult to share the new interests and insights you have gained:
My friends have changed a lot. I don't have much contact with... I have basically no contact with those who don't... So it will be impossible for me to sit and be questioned. It doesn't work for me, I feel very limited. Then I'd rather be with those friends who have an understanding, and also have that interest. Because that's where I develop in those relationships, I don't do that in the other relationships anymore, then it's done.
These are thoughts that other people may even find unpleasant:
But other people think it's really scary and horrible, kind of like they don't like riding roller coasters. But I don't know... Well, but I... Well, I've probably been doing that for a lot of my life, I don't know.
Outside cabinet
Several of the respondents also talk about a fear of being seen as strange:
Then I think that almost all people that you talk to... you don't say that, but everyone that I've known almost, that I've come close to in life, has had a lot of these kinds of experiences that you call occult... Everything from true dreams to telepathy, or that inexplicable things just happen... A lot of things when someone has died and... I've been through quite a lot, but also others, I know a lot of people, although you don't seem to talk about it... Neither do I when I meet someone, because you're afraid of being seen as such a slob.
The fact that the participants were promised anonymity has sometimes been decisive in wanting to appear for an interview:
And it is also relevant that you promise anonymity. It might also be important, because this might not be something I want to go public with. Maybe I don't want to come to a workplace and apply for a job in my professional category... And be recognized as that person who has those strange ideas. Because I know these ARE strange notions. And I don't want to… I know there's a lot of prejudice and… because of ignorance… because you're not familiar with this… because there's very little information about this, it's something very strange.
One respondent says that her family and relatives think she is "weird", but that they mean it in an appreciative way:
Yes, but that they think I'm... They say, you're a bit crazy [Me: Who says that] That's what my siblings say, and my children and... No, but F, my daughter then, she said that ... You're a bit crazy. But you shouldn't say that. Yes, but I thought it was good. But people, I also shake them a little when I talk like this. But you can't talk any way you like, but you have to weigh the words a little who you talk to.
One respondent believes that many people have experiences of the occult, telepathy, UFOs and the like, but that they do not like to talk about this for fear of being considered strange:
There is a lot of interest, but it's not something people show off. When they come to work, they absolutely do not talk about it. Rarely anyway, for others. Because, for example, UFOs are huge... it's like this, you know there's this... uh, are you some fucking UFO or... it's become a swear word too.
One of the respondents says that her adult son usually speaks out, that he does not want to hear about the respondent's interest: "My youngest son always says like this, well, I don't have time to be in your world, I'll have to take it another time in my life /laugh/".
Love relationships and separations
One of the respondents lives with a partner who shares his outlook on life, which he values. He believes that it would have been difficult to have a relationship with someone with whom he could not share this interest:
I'm lucky to live together... Or lucky, I've chosen to say... or... I live together with a woman who shares my interests... Yes, and it's very hard for me to imagine how it would be otherwise, if we didn't shared it. It probably wouldn't have... not worked out.
Another of the interviewees is in the process of separating from his wife and is doubtful whether he will enter into a new relationship. He says that every individual has both male and female within him and that there are certain possibilities to "polarize with his inner self" even if this cannot yet satisfy all needs:
Considering what I'm also talking about... that the ultimate thing would be if you were secure in yourself and satisfied with yourself, and could polarize with your inner self, so that you were also a whole who perhaps didn't have such a great need for to find... someone external, or what to say... It might still be an ideal, in its own way. But I have a hard time seeing that I could fulfill it. You also want to share things with another, you want to do things together.
Another man states that he has been married several times:
We live in the zone of unhappy marriages... And I try to live up to that /laughs/. Since man's horizon is widening now, there are more things today that manage to interest us than just that concern for the offspring and yes the bread for the day and so on, which were the glue of previous generations, so to speak.
Several of the respondents talk about how, when they reached a point where they felt they needed to be free to realize themselves or have space for their interests in spirituality and/or personal development, they took the initiative to break up from their marriages or love relationships. For one respondent, this happened shortly after she started meditating:
Yes, then I divorced my husband, because he... Yes, it wasn't such a great relationship. And after that, I've been given the freedom to develop... [Me: How long ago was that?] Yes, it's been twelve years, something like that. [Me: It was almost in the same vein as you…?] Yes exactly, well in a way it is connected, because when I started meditating in a, what shall I say, regular way, it was… And a few months later then I realized that I had to separate /laughs/. So it had a very strong connection in a way. To see the truth in life somehow. [Me: Was it like it helped you… see more clearly, didn't it?] Yes, exactly. It helped me to see more clearly, and it helped me to somehow gain courage and take the plunge. So, yes... And then I have continued all these years to meditate. So it has actually meant a lot.
Another respondent describes several separations where her spiritual commitment played a role:
Because I felt that I had to continue in this, because this is what my passion is after all. And my husband at the time was not on that wavelength, so I felt... We are still friends, we never became enemies, right, but it was more like that... you drift apart... I felt that I had to develop. And if you're in a relationship where there are always compromises and things like that, huh... And he was sort of disturbed by my interests here more and more, and it wasn't good and things like that, huh.
Preference
Becoming a parent is described as a great challenge. The personal difficulties the individual may have then appear in a different light. One respondent describes that it was only when she became a parent that she realized how difficult it had been for her when she was little:
Then I had my first child. I was 27 years old then. And it caused tremendous anxiety in me, that I would expose her to the same thing that I myself was exposed to. It was probably only then that I really understood how difficult it was when I was a child. So I kind of became a rather anxious mother then to her. Then I had two more children and then things got better for some reason, I don't know why.
Another woman had her first child in her forties and says that she then "called" her child: "So, yes, but if you want to come, you're welcome now, I can handle this now". A man describes the birth of his children as "a miracle" (p5). A man states that he is not very interested in becoming a parent. A woman tells us that she has an intuitive feeling of having lived many times before and that she then got to experience being a parent:
Unfortunately, I don't remember... Maybe it's good that you don't remember your past lives. But I have an intuitive feeling that I have lived many times, and so on, and I don't worry about such things as not having children, and such things that many women think are disasters. Because I feel it... I've probably gone through that many times, I might as well avoid it this time, and do other things instead, right? I see it BIGGER.
One woman says that she received a lot of support and a lot of wise advice from her children over the years:
So from what I understand, young people today... they have gone through more than I did back then. And there I've felt the support of my children, if I've had problems with a relationship, or a colleague, or something like that, I don't really know how to deal with it, then I can ask them, and then they have something like this very simple answers. And I've been able to do that ever since they were quite small.
Reunions from past lives
People with whom we have close relationships are often people we have known in one or more past lives. This can be described as the individual being part of a kind of "extended family" whose members are followed for life after life. In fact, it is relatively rare that we meet a person for the first time. A love relationship can thus have a continuation, as well as conflicts can be sorted out in the long run. Over time, the individual acquires a considerable amount of experience:
Because the law of sowing and reaping means that what I do to a person, I need to reap it again, so to speak. So it will necessarily be that you... that it fulfills a function that you incarnate at the same time and together again, in order to settle these crop balances when they arise.
"But I think that you travel, or you live, different lives... I'm pretty sure... and that you're with the same people, but in different constellations". The fact that we see each other again works much like a radio transmitter and a receiver. In this way, we are drawn back to special places, groups and specific individuals with whom we have a connection. In a previous life we may have agreed to meet again in the next life to start a family, for example: “But my husband was also... We also had several previous existences together. So we had decided then that we would live together and have these four children then". That the individuals meet again in a new life can therefore be due to unresolved conflicts or that they have something to repay the other person. Even if it is difficult relationship problems that should be solved in this way, it has most deeply to do with love that people meet again:
So you let yourself be born, it's an act of love, and you do it because, in this case, because I had something to atone for my father in another life... And that's how it's been... Yes, it's true above all my father who was important. My mother and I didn't have much together before.
Role changes between lives
The relationship people have to each other can change between lives. The interviewees talk about many different experiences of this. (The interviewee's current position to the person referred to is set in parentheses.)
Dad was a little boy then (Daughter):
It's a little drastic story, or incredible story, but we lived as some kind of nomads in some desert landscape, and there you depended on being able to navigate by the stars to find waterholes and oases and so on, and I was then, then I was a MAN, one of those who could navigate, so to speak, so I was pretty high in the ranks there, and yes I led this nomadic tribe between the waterholes. Then my father was a little boy, and at some point when you broke up from some camp site and moved on, you were lost, then this boy disappeared, or was left behind in some way. And then I was the one who would sort of try to find him then and take him with me, he would die of course, because he wouldn't be able to survive on his own in the desert. And so, I set out, on my way back to see if I could find him, and yes I found him, but he was very carried away, and he had drunk his own urine, and he was, well, in very bad shape easy, so I mercy killed him, killed him, so he wouldn't make it then. And yes and then I went back to the tribe and told this, and then I was kicked out of the tribe, and always had to go last. /…/ And so to atone for this, I let myself be born to my father then.
Daughter has been the interviewee's sister (Mother):
It's probably the case that you are born in a group, and you follow each other and support each other, as this Indian said, among other things, that I had been a sister to my daughter once upon a time. And maybe it is.
Father has been son and partner (Daughter): "I never had anything like incestuous with him, you would think that at the time. Because we have been partners like this and so on. Or that he was my son and so on". A woman says that she had a lot of anxiety before and after she gave birth to her first child, whether she would be able to take care of the child. However, after realizing that this daughter had actually been her own mother in a previous life, a capable woman with special gifts, the interviewee felt more secure in her maternal role:
But maybe it's a little bit that I see her a little more as strong now. She is a small child. Small children are fragile, too. But I think this intuition that I had, that, oh, she's a strong soul, there's no danger, it's true enough. I kind of have a little more meat on my legs... She's learning like... everything. She is interested in things. Thus, the material world. [Me: But it doesn't come between you, somehow, that you think... That's my mother] Well, that... does that. Let's see now. No, the only time I've felt like this, oh oh oh, is when she gives me a little massage on my back like this. Because then I feel, God, what a healer she is. I recognize this.
That it is life where I have a mother who is a giant... I don't know if she is enlightened, but she is very free or positive. A bit strong and thinks that everything is fine and such. She has been my mother twice, this person. And in both of those lives, this phenomenon returns. So is my daughter. So that thing that happened to me during pregnancy, that I thought it will be fine, I don't need to read any books, of course I can give birth, huh. So that thing sort of comes back from when she was my mother.
Daughter was younger sister (Mother):
And N I have lived with in some fancy neighborhood in Paris, and she has been my little sister. And she liked being in my care, so she chose to come here as my daughter /laughs/.
The twin soul
A "twin soul" or "bestie" is a person whom the individual meets again and again over long periods of time, perhaps forever. These relationships are characterized by strong intensity and a sense of belonging, although it is not always frictionless. When it is pleasant, it can be described as a "coming-home-love". So-called co-dependency can be explained in this way, namely that it is an individual to whom the person is extra closely attached. John Lennon and Yoko Ono are an example of this type of relationship. "But then it's difficult with such a twin soul relationship, so to speak, it's difficult. So you are... If it's hard enough with a normal relationship. But what if you have patterns from thirty lives together, what a lot of patterns... The dark side becomes so dark with the twin soul, and the light side becomes so bright". A platonic, never-realized love relationship at a distance with someone can also have this basis. The people know each other, but the circumstances mean that they cannot be together in this life. However, there is a strong sense of belonging. When you are not incarnated at the same time as this person to whom you are particularly close, the other can act as a guardian angel or otherwise be in telepathic contact. "I have a best friend here, and he or she is here in the earthly life and so I am not always there, but every other time it is usually the case that you are there at the same time...".
This kind of relationship affects everyday life, but can be difficult to communicate about or understand. One respondent had greeted another parent at kindergarten, who asked: "How are you?" and answered: "Yes, this telepathic contact with my twin soul is a bit difficult. He doesn't feel well". The other had replied, "Yes, I know how it is" and they could have laughed about it together.
Meetings as metaphors
One of the respondents met a person who gave her important advice: "Then it was like this relationship just... So. That was why I met him, I understood. Because when he had said these words, something happened. So that I met him only for him to say that, I realized that". Another respondent had recently met a stranger who made a strong impression on her. The meeting felt decisive and fateful. Possibly this person was not a real person either but a message that took the form of a person:
And it's kind of like this thing with, well, but there can be metaphors as well. Things may come to you because you need to wake things up, to work with. So really maybe he doesn't… maybe he doesn't EXIST… maybe he just came there for me, so that I would bring something to my consciousness.