NorwegianDJ's journal of personal growth

[NorwegianDJ]

Snow and I have been reconnecting and reminiscing about our journals. The good old high-school days. Starting 10 years ago now. My last post is towards the end of college, 4 years ago.

So here we go again. I think I'll use this as a thought-platform going forward. My own place, filled with history, to gather my writings.
This is all an exercise in connecting and time-spending.
It's humbling to look back at how caught up I was with myself and the world. We have our archetypes and I was all up in mine. I'll expand on this sporadically going forward.

It was interesting to read how I caught on to these golden-nuggets here and there, yet threw most of them away. It was also interesting how I had a significant shift starting my sophomore year of college.

But I'll be starting in the present.
I've had some experiences with love.
In the process I've come to terms with a few realizations.

The whole game I've been playing is backwards.
That game is the game of 'more'.
And the "game of more" has its roots in over-indexing into capitalism and survival of the fittest. Bear with me.
My whole life, I've thought that what were ideas of my own inspiration, were actually expressions of the culture I grew up in.
I'm 10 years deep into a self-improvement track, only to realize that it's flawed at its very roots.
What do I mean? This will be a process of expressing truth, so be patient with me.

My whole life is defined by love.
A whole personality formed in response to love and lack of love. Reaffirming behaviors that get me closer to love.
The whole sphiel of self-improvement has been in search of love. Don't get me wrong, there is a self-discipline component coming here. That doesn't go away. But, self-improvement, in search for what? The 'more'!
The logic has always been akin to this:
- This is how I feel and what I have
- I want to feel this and have that
- To get there, I need to do and be so and so.

But that's only half-true at best.
Truth is that you can skip to the end-step.

I always wondered how these people that were "less" than myself could be so full of happiness and self-esteem. You know it when you're able to see it.
It didn't make sense with my model of reality.
But it makes sense when you consider a few things. Starting with, my inner voice.
They don't walk around with the constant yearning to be better. All the time. Be better, so that I can feel the way I want to feel.
Irony is that that inner voice is the problem in and of itself.
There are of course many problems to latch onto here, but we'll stay focused.

That inner voice is in search of the 'more'. Why am I in search of this? For love. Love fills the void. Issue is, given the world we're raised in, we come to believe that love is external to us. That we must have it every day, in every interaction. We're a bottomless well.
We've come to believe that once we find 'The One', loving will come easy. It's thus a journey of finding that person.
From there we use our capitalistic instincts and search to make a fair trade or perhaps even trade upwards!
This desire drives our hunger for the 'more'. If we can be more, have more, attain an attractive personality, lifestyle, and behaviors. Then surely, we can score better on the attractiveness and personality market!

The game isn't worth the candle.

Love is an art.
Love is intrinsic and can be developed within yourself and your life. Being able to love is not a given.


This marks the 2nd beginning of another journey.
This also marks the start of unstructured writing, because I'll be diving into multiple topics.

When the "rush" of the "next thing" fall away, the world opens up.
When you, in this moment, can do anything you'd like, because there is nothing you should do, the game is now worth the candle.
And paradoxically, you skip to the end step.
There is nothing to do, except be.
And when you spend time in that state, you unlock yourself.
There is no improving to do. There is no one to do the improvement.

The realization is that the only improvement you have to do, is to tune into, and thus respond in-kind with the moment and your environment.

And don't get me wrong, this is a process. One that never ends. But from here, you can live. Truly live.
This is a process of re-connecting and shedding skin. And it takes place in, what I in Norwegian would call "Stillheten". In the silence. For its own sake.

This is my experience. We all have our paths.

The reframe of love was necessary for me to take part in this process of the silence. Because everything I did had a purpose. A desire to get somewhere in order to attain something. Spending my evening seeking peace and inner silence is possible now.

A lot happens here.
What you may find is that
Being = Love
Understanding = Love
Awareness = Love
God = Love

I might be taking this a little far and fast. The point I want to make is that the process of discovering love is the process of attending to the moment. Thus tuning into the moment is / is facilitated by love. Thus the path of love is the path.

So, my experience is that I am still myself after coming to these realizations.
I find it's a spiral. Of linear time and cyclic time. Just imagine time moving forward, but the process is cycling around it, thus it's a spiral.
Most evenings I find peace, silence, and perhaps, love. And each morning I've forgotten. And it starts over again.
Writing helps. I've filled out a notebook over the past 45 days. It helps keep track of yourself. It's easier to keep in faith when you can see how far away your writing from just 2 weeks ago feels.

We're about to go deeper and more abstact here. It'll consolidate as I write more entries.
I am writing this for myself. It feels right, because understanding is the root of all change. It also helps when you can feel secure in the platform you're standing on when the going gets tough.

The end-goal and The Way are one and the same.
Presence / bevissthet (consciousness) and love are the keys to unlock your soul.

This is because when you enter the silence, or in your everyday patterns, you come face to face with your feelings and automatic thoughts and behaviors.
And change comes from understanding.
To understand, you must first identify. Thus you must be present. You must find the silence.
After identifying, you must dive into the sensation and explore it.
This is not a given. This is difficult work.

I thought I was kind. Real kind.
I'm finding that you must develop a deep compassion for yourself. This is not easy.
I've found that in the small moments that are barely noticeable, there is often a lack of compassion that stops the process.
I've also found that this merges nicely with how I started this post. Skipping to the end goal.

Having compassion and finding silence is a lot easier if you feel good.

There are a few prescriptions that help (this is all a prescription in and of itself. But I think it's fine if it starts out that way. Everything we do becomes our own in the end).
- Don't negotiate with anger. Don't ask yourself if you're justified. Just give up anger.
- The same goes for worry, fear, and self-preoccupation. Don't negotiate with them, just throw them away.
- So goes 99% of your thoughts about yesterday, tomorrow, and what you'll do after eating this lunch. This one is especially for me. My theme has always been to control. But the world is on your side, don't try to impose your petty will onto it.
- One that is helping me immensely is the concept of not carrying your own sins. Hang them on the cross. Let God sort them out. Give up on your shortcomings and your mistakes. Don't solve them in your head. Like demons, they perpetuate in your mind.

From there, see if you can rest in the awareness that everything is good.
Beyond that, of course, there is self-discipline. We are all familiar with this game.
Some things feel good, but don't do us good.
Some things don't feel good, but we do them out of habit.

Find out what it means for you to do what you want, while being present enough to exercise self-discipline to guide yourself.
Find peace and happiness this way, and return to compassionate inquiry.

 

[NorwegianDJ]

Welcome back to SS @NorwegianDJ.

I appreciate your sharing as you did. It speaks to much. I appreciate that you offered it to all, and here on SS. I felt moved to offer up a bit of modified wording, in case it is helpful to anyone and their experience. It is above. It is similar and yet speaks of a different experience.

From all you have shared, I imagine this shift I shared is quite possibly already quite clear in your own experience, and is just a rewording for semantics here.

For anyone who might possibly find this distinction helpful...

Any ‘lock’ perceived is a product of imagination. The illusion of a lock is what creates the illusion of separation. That illusion of separation can perpetuate an experience of struggle. An illusion of struggle that feels real.

Presence/consciousness/loving...is....

You are that...

One

Thank you!
Also a refreshing reply to receive here on SS.

This may be the last of my qualifiers, but my writing style has always been one of ranting until I get in the flow. There's a lot of fluff and some gold along the way. I don't know what I'll write about, but I feel like writing.

I find this whole process to be quite confusing at times. It can be difficult to discern what I am searching for. It's not ecstacy. I guess, like God, it can be defined by all the things that it is not. Confusing.

What I do have, are a lot of signposts.

What I also have, are some major shifts in perception. I think that although transformation can only happen instantaneously and in the present, I am right in the middle of it.

What I am struggling with right now is that what I think is the way, is to throw away what I've been using to guide me all these years. It could be as simple as not taking the wrong approach.

To clarify, let me write a little about a few prescriptions that I find to be true or that I am processing. Think of what follows as propaganda. It's a way for me to get my thoughts in order to start writing. Most of what follows is from Total Freedom by J. Krishnamurti.

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Understanding comes when we meet on the same level at the same time. That happens only when there is real affection between people. It is instantaneous.

There is an art of listening. To enter a receptive state of mind. Most of us listen through a screen of resistance. To overcome this, put aside prejudices, preformulations, daily activities, daily worries, desires, and fears.
We end up listening to our own noise.
It is extremely difficult to put aside our training, inclinations, resistance, and, reaching beyond verbal expression to listen to what we understand instantaneously.

Truth cannot be given, it must be discovered.
Discovery happens through direct perception.
There is no direct perception when there is reseistance.

Understanding comes through being aware of what is. To know exactly what is is the beginning of wisdom.
It is only when we begin to interpret, to translate according to our conditioning, accouring to our prejudice, that we miss the truth. After all, it's like research.

Giving more and more significance to the values of the senses brings about confusion.
Confusion is a product of psychological time, which is the amalgamation in the mind of the present with the past into the future.
Being aware of what one is, when we recognize it without condemnation, without justification, without identification, is a process of liberation, releasing one from psychological time.

It takes an extraordinary astude mind and pliable heart to be aware of and to follow what is, because what is is constantly moving. If the mind is tethered to belief, to knowedge, it ceases to follow the swift movement of what is.

Discovering what is means to move from spectating to participating. From an outsider to an insider.
To pursure as far as you can, as profoundly as you can, the intimations, the responses of your feelings.
When you are interested in something, you do it immediately. There is immediate understanding.
Transformation can only take place immediately.

When that happens, you are completely without a problem, for then the self is not worried about itself; then you are abeyond the wave of destruction.

We try to escape confusion, by means such as ambition or the search for reality. At least this is my case. This I have to give up and it leaves a void.

Because the real is near, you don't have to seek it; and a man who seeks the truth will never find it. Truth is in what is - and that's the beauty of it.
But the moment you conceive it, the moment you seek it, you begin to struggle; and a man who struggles cannot understand.
That is why you have to be still. Oberservant. Passively aware.

Our problem is if we can step out of our misery instantaneously. Become free, immediately. Because perception can only take place in the present.

The individual exists only in relationship, and it is the lack of understanding of this relationship that breeds conflict and confusion.
Until I, in my relationship to you, understand myself, I am the cause of chaos, mistery, destruction, and fear.

The Ideal.
The ideal is our own projection, it is the product of the mind, and our mind experiences according to our conditioning. For these self-projections we work, we slave away and die.

For most of us, some kind of activity is the drug.
Is not ambition an urge to avoid what is?
Any activity away from what is is bound to bring sorrow and antagonism.

Conflict is the denial of what is. There is no conflict other than that. There is no complexity in what is, but only in the many escapes we seek.

Though environment conditions the individual, he can always free himself, break away from his background. The individual is the maker of the very environment to which he becomes a slave; but he also has the power to break away from it and create an environment that will not dull his mind or spirit.

Patterns always condition. And a conditioned entity is always in conflict with himself and so with society.

The ideal is ficticious. The ideal, the what should be, helps us to cover up and avoid what is.
The pursuit of the ideal is the search for reward.
The very pursuit is conflict, but it is also a pleasureable postponement of the actual.
The ideal prevents understanding of what is.

The understanding of the actual is only possible when the ideal, the what should be, is erased from the mind.
As long as the mind approaches the actual with either positive or negative compensation, there can be no understanding of the actual.
To understand that actual, you must be in direct communion with it; your relationship with it cannot be through the screen of the ideal, past, tradition, or experience.

To be free of the wrong approach is the only problem.

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I'll try to put words to where I feel stuck.
I have an ideal that guides me.

1/2

 

[NorwegianDJ]

2/2

An idea that when I am in touch with myself and the world to a certain degree, I would be full of love and express it and myself in a way that removes suffering. An ideal version of myself, where I respond in tune with and flow with the movements of the world. An ideal that is able to understand what sort of state I am in and create a life where I am positively stimulated and can share the fruits of that labor with others.

Let's say I drop it.
Now, what does it mean for me to work on myself, in the absence of the ideal?
It would mean to recognize what is, without the screen of what should be.
And in that process of following what is, comes understanding, thus regeneration and transformation.
Whatever this transformation is, is what will be.
There's a lot of ground to cover there, so I'll leave that part for another time.

But I walk around with an ideal. I observe myself perceiving through a screen. Or I observe myself going into automatic thought.
And I use the ideal to guide me back to what "I should be doing", which is to not perceive through a screen, or to not automatically exist in my mind.
I wonder if this is not right. If transformation is instantaneous and cannot happen over time, then that would point to that this approach is wrong.
I am trying to figure out what it means for me to "take the curriculum" of life and to work on myself in my relations with others. And with myself, when I observe myself and discover a happening that is contrary to the ideal.

Perhaps if I let to go of the ideal.
If I just observe. See what is. Then there is understanding. And understanding in itself is good enough. I don't need to understand in relation to some ideal. Change will happen either way. In actuality, which is what I believe is my experience, change only happens in the absence of "what ought to be".

That gives faith a new dimension.
This stuff is so complex, yet so simple. It starts out simple, gets real complex, then it's simple again.

It really is freeing though, these two realizations.
- Either you get it your way, or you grow. Not getting what you want is as interesting as getting it
- Suffering is grace.

If you show up, you will experience life and life will in turn experience you.
And the only way to understand, is to experience.

It is the truth that liberates, not your effort to be free.

I have some signposts that tell me something about what is.
If I am experiencing worry, .. etc, without immediate reason, I am not present.
"To pull your awareness back from the time-binding nature of the mind allows you to be fully here." - This is an ideal that guides me. If I am in automatic thought, I try to center myself. The success of this process depends on what state I am in. I may have to go deeper. Keeping in mind that I am only to observe and understand.

Another thing that I find myself struggling a little with is that I feel less in touch with what is than I did a few weeks back, when my emotions were stronger. It is only natural. My path is my path is my path. I wonder what this will develop into. I have no idea and it excites me.

But I also can't help but feel that I'd love to get there faster, so that I can get the things I want.
Thankfully this feeling is not strong like it used to be back in the day.
It is what it is. Patience and compassion is required.

I think I am just to use methods to return to "the stillness" whenever I discover myself having slid out of it. Prioritizing it above all else.

One has to be the teacher of oneself and disciple of oneself; there is no authority, only understanding.

Every time we slow our minds, we find more kindness, more efficiency, more invaluable certainty
Every time we breathe our mind quiet, we become more free.
Every moment we touch that place of stillness within us, we become peace.
Welcome home to the knowing with which you were born.

 

[NorwegianDJ]

You wrote it above. I simply bolded it. The path/door is that ^^^

Your replies have been so helpful. Thank you so much.

Here's another entry of gathered, disjointed knowledge.
I like to know that I know. I like to think that it helps me think less when I have an intellectual understanding that I can refer to.
I should be mindful that I don't impose it on myself without noticing.

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Why are you frightened of being alone? Because you are faced with yourself as you are and you find that you are empty, dull, stpid, ugly, guilty, and anxious - a petty, shoddy, second-hand entity. Face the fact; look at it, do not run away from it. The moment you run away fear begins.

I must be aware of the total field of my own self, which is the consciousness o f the individual and of society. It is only then, when the mind goes beyond this individual and social consciousness, that I can become a light to myself that never goes out.

It is no use sitting in a corner meditating about myself. In studying my relationship to outward things and people, as well as to inward things, I begin to understand myself. Every other form of understanding is merely an abstraction and I cannot study myself in abstraction. I am not an abstract entity; therefore, I have to study myself in actuality - as I am, not as I wish to be.

Learning about yourself is always in the present. Learning implies a great sensitivity. There is no sensitivity if there is an idea, which is of the past, dominating the present. Then the mind is no longer quick, pliable, alert. ... the quality of attention in the organism itself is made dull. ... to be completely sensitive to all of the implications of life demands that there be no separation between the organism and the psyche. It is a total movement.

To understand anything you must live with it, you must observe it, you must know all its content, its nature, its structure, its movement. Have you ever tried living with yourself? If so, you will begin to see that your self is not a static state, it is a fresh living thing. And to live with a living thing your mind must also be alive. And it cannot be alive if it is caught in opinion, judgments, and values. If so, we look only at the projections we have made of ourselves.

Each of us has an image of what we think we are or what we should be, and that image, that picture, entirely prevents us from seeing ourselves as we actually are.

It is one of the most difficult things in the world to look at anything simply. Without any distortion.

In order to understand ourselves we need a great deal of humility. The moment you have achieved anything you crease to have that quality of innocence and humility. Whereas if you have no foothold, if there is no certainty, there is freedom. And when you look with freedom it is always new. A confident man is a dead human being.

Conditioning​

Are you aware that you are conditioned? How do you know? Isn't it by your reaction to a problem, a challenge? When you become aware of it, does this conditioning bring a sense of imprisonment? You will be able to see for yourself how you are conditioned only when there is a conflict in the continuity of pleasure or the avoidance of pain. ... And most of us are disturbed most of the time, either superficially or deeply, that very disturbance indicates that we are conditioned.

You can face a fact only in the present and if you never allow it to be present because you are always escaping from it, you can never face it, and because we have cultivated a whole network of escapes we are caught in the habit of escape.

Only when there is emotional content do you become vital. Seeing is acting.

The moment you give your total attention to your conditioning you will see that you are free from the past completely, that it falls away from you naturally.

Pleasure​

Pleasure is the structure of society. If you want to be free of sorrow you must understand the whole structure of pleasure.
I can see a lovely cloud. I can look at it with joy and the next moment forget it, or else the mind steps in, and the the problem begins.
There is nothing wrong with desire. But then thought steps in and chrews over the delight and turns it into pleasure. Thought wants to repeat the experience, and the more you repeat, the more mechanical it becomes.
Any beautiful thing is perverted by thought.

A mind which is not crippled by memory has real freedom.
Have you ever noticed that when you respond to something totally, with all your heart, there is very little memory? It is only when you do not respond to a challenge with your whole being that there is a conflict.

From the old you derive pleasure, never from the new.
If you can look at all things without wanting the experience to be repeated, then there will be no pain, no fear and, therefore, tremendous joy.

Have you observed what happens to you when you are denied pleasure? You become anxious, envious, hateful. Have you noticed the battles you go through? And all that is a form of fear, isn't it? You are afraid of not getting what you want or of losing what you have.
If you want to end pleasure, though, which is to end pain, you must be totally attentive to the whole structure of pleasure.

Violence​

I can see you only when I look at you with a certain care.
Violence is any act of separation between yourself and the world.
To be free from violence means everything to me.
First you have to learn how to look at anger, how to look at your wife, your children. You have to learn that you are not objective. You condemn or justify because it is part of the social structure you live in.
To learn, you must have the capacity to go deeply. So what we are doing is sharpening the instrument, which is the mind. You have to want it as you want your next meal, and to have it you must see that what makes your mind dull and stupid is this sense of invulnerability which has built walls round itself and which is part of this condemnation and justification. If the mind can be rid of that, then you can look, and perhaps come to a state that is totally aware of the whole problem.

I must know how to analyze, which means that in the process of analysis my mind becomes extraordinarily sharp, and it is that quality of sharpness, of attention, of seriousness, which will give total perception.
If you want to understand the actual you must give your whole attention, all your energy, to it. That attention and energy are distracted when you create a fictitious, ideal world.

Freedom​

None of the agonies of suppression, nor the brutal discipline of conforming to a pattern, has led to truth.
Freedom comes only when you see and act. The seeing is the acting.
Freedom is a state of mind.

To find it requires complete solitude, which is an inward state of mind.
You are never alone because you are full of all the memories, all the conditioning, all the mutterings of yesterday; your mind is never clear of all the rubbish it has accumulated. To be alone you must die to the past. When you are alone, totally alone, not belonging to anything, there is that sense of being an outsider. The man who is completely alone in this way is innocent & young and it is this innocence that frees the mind from sorrow.

In this solitude you will begin to understand the necessity of living with yourself as you are, not as you think you should be or as you have been. See if you can look at yourself without an tremor, any false modesty, any fear, any justification, or condemnation - just live with yourself as you actually are. It is only when you live with something intimately that you begin to understand it. But the moment you get used to it - get used to your own anxiety or envy or whatever it is - you are no longer living with it.

Anxiety, envy, you must never get used to it, never accept it. You must care for it as you would care for a newly planted tree, protect it against the sun, against the storm. You must care for it, not condemn or justify it. Therefore, you begin to love it.
You care for watching.
So can you live with all that we are, neither accepting or denying it, but just observing it without becoming morbid, depressed, or elated?

Yet, you cannot become free gradually. It is not a matter of time. Freedom can only come about naturally.

 

[NorwegianDJ]

Love​

The demand to be safe in relationship inevitably breeds sorrow and fear. This seeking for security is inviting insecurity. Have you ever found security in any of your relationships? Most of us want the security of loving and being loved, but is there love when each one of us is seeking his own securtity? We are not loved because we don't know how to love.

To divide anything into what should be and what is is the most deceptive way of dealing with life.
When you feel separate from another there is no love. But if you can live with your wife without thought creating all these contradictory states, these endless quarrels in yourself, then perhaps you will know what love is.
When one loves there must be freedom, not only from the other person but from oneself.
As long as there is fear, there is no love; a mind ridden with sorrow will never know what love is.

Love is always active, present.

The structure of duty in which the human being is caught is destroying him.

Really to care is to care as you would for a tree or a plant, watering it, studying its needs, the best soil for it, looking after it with gentleness and tenderness.

Dependence is not love, jealousy is not love, possessiveness and domination are not love, responsiblity and duty are not love, self-pity is not love, the agony of not being loved is not love.
If you can eliminate all these, not by forcing them but by washing them away as the rain washes the dust of many days from a leaf, then perhaps you will come upon this strange flower.

If anyone tells you how to love, it is not love.
By practicing some method or system of loving you may become extraodinarily clever or more kindly or get into a state of nonviolence, but that has nothing whatsoever to do with love.

There is beauty only when the heart and mind know what love is.
But when there is love and beauty, whatever you do is right, whatever you do is in order. If you know how to love, then you can do what you like because it will solve all other problems.

So we reach the point: Can the mind come upon love without discipline, without thought, without enforcement, without any book, any teacher or leader - come upon it as one comes upon a lovely sunset? It seems to me that one thing is absolutely necessary and that is passion without motive - passion that is not result of some commitment or attachment, passion that is not lust. A man who does not know what passion is will never know love because love can come into being only when there is total self-abandonment.

A mind that is seeking is not a passionate mind and to come upon love without seeking it is the only way to find it - to come upon it unknowingly and not as the result of any effort or experience.
It is only possible when thought comes to understand itself and comes naturally to an end. Then love has no opposite, then love has no conflict.

To go beyond thought and time - which means going beyond sorrow - is to be aware that there is a different dimension called love.
But you don't know how to come to this extraordinary fount, so what do you do? If you don't know what to do, you do nothing, don't you? Absolutely nothing. Then inwardly you are completely silent. Do you understand what that means? It means that you are not seeking, not wanting, not prusuing; there is no center at all.
Then there is love.

 

[NorwegianDJ]

I'm writing down my confusion. This is all very simple, but I also want to understand if I am making errors.

I want to get to love.
I actually have an external motivation to get to love. The woman that opened me up with love, she'll be in my life forever. I desire to be with her. I don't see anything wrong with that desire. I understand that I must watch it, not be attached to it, because that ruins it. We were together again for the first time a week ago, with her little girl, and it was as peaceful and lovely as it used to be.
She asked me if it was the right choice, to break up. I wish I took a breath and responded properly, but what I said encapsulated the truth. If we are to be together, I must discover love within myself.

We'd be just fine if I don't reach that point any time soon. I am in a place where I nourish myself and am unlikely to forget myself again.
It is just that I desire so much to be in the moment with them. It's such joy to be able to share our presence, deeply. That drives me.

Also the realization that this is the foundation of everything I will build. This approach is all there is. I can feel it in myself, how shaky my ground of knowledge and conditioning is. I'd rather start anew with something that feels right. Something that I can feel. That I can create in myself. It's the most exciting project I can imagine.

It's just so simple and confusing!
Disclaimer: This all sounds stupid if you don't know. I've had some experiences that has turned that cynicism into faith. I've looked behind the curtains. Even a few days ago, for a brief moment. I also had the briefest moment where I became love. I think. Some days I feel like I am making progress, others, more often now, it is slower.

It begins with attention. I am awareness. I have a body and a mind, but whether I "am" them depends on if my attention is present.
I am not the thought, nor am I the thinker of the thought. I can think the thought, but it is not I. It's my vehicle.
You are also that. You are me and I am you. That, is patterns of energy. I am everything and I am nothing.

With that out of the way, understanding unfolds.
Understanding happens when you pay attention, your complete attention. All that you have.
The instrument of attention is the mind. Therefore, you must sharpen the mind. Exercise your attention.
Attention is in the present, always. This means that whatever you are in the present, there you are.
Meaning, transformation happens instantaneously. My experience is that to what degree varies, but it does not happen over time.
I believe the process of the entire transformation can happen over time, but it doesn't have to.
That's a point of confusion I have currently, but I think I've got it right.

For example, when meditating on your breath. It does not matter how long you meditate for. It matters to what degree you can hone your attention on your breath. How quiet you can get and to what degree you become your breath. The continuity of your attention.
The mind [can] disturbs from the stillness required for your full attention, because it imposes psychological time upon the present.
Therefore, to pay attention, you must sharpen the mind. Yet, you are entirely able to be here right now.

That's also where I get confused sometimes. It can be hard to tell whether I am in conditioning or if I am present. I suppose it is because my attention is split, so because it is not entirely black and white, it is hard to tell.

Such as right now. I am focused on my breath. I've been with it almost the whole day. What I tell myself is that that is good enough. While at the same time, I am told that transformation is not 'of time'. That is why I end up writing to clear it up.
While at the same time, I am also escaping from what is.
I guess what I am forgetting to mention is passively observing. I am getting to see awareness shift around below my conscious attention.

So in this process I am able to find stillness at times most days. I find that most of the time I am seeking the truth, awareness, pursuing some goal or ideal. It creates conflict. I am able to bring awareness to that conflict, but those days I find that it can take hours to resolve it. My mind chatters in circles about being on the right track, being wrong, or about shutting up because it is the problem. It is all very ironic. I just find that those days I can sit for a long time without resolution, all the while noticing and resolving the attachments and aversions of my body and conditioning.

I am increasingly noticing my conditioning. In rigidity of thought and habit. I stopped planning my days about a month back. I am doing things that are good for me, keeping in mind my attachments and aversions. I do what I feel like, but I feel like that intuition is something that I develop in this process. The right way to address all these things that "I develop", would be that it is a process of stripping away, not of building up. It is always there, I've just got to notice it.

I have built up a sensitivity to the content of my mind. If it is in fear, in worry, in the future, or the past. If I am condemning or justifying.
I notice that they are there. Quite a bit, and in small moments.
I choose to trust that from the watching, there will be understanding & care, and from there, healing.
That is the major sticking point, the same as the other two confusions. "Knowing" if I am "doing it right".
This "worry" is a result of wanting a result. Pursuing reward. I notice that when I am not making progress, I get peeved. It can be hard to resolve that conflict when it happens.

Another point is to care properly for myself. Doing what makes me happy and keeps me happy. Acting in accordance with my beliefs across all levels. This is a search for passion. I am passionate, but I forget how enthusiastic I am about life and how great the world is. Often, lately, I've found myself looking at the world with fresh eyes. It is key. Breaking out of habit and conditioning. That has always mattered to me, but now it comes so much easier. There is little resistance to all of this now, but the resistance I do feel are the ways of my mind. The rigidity of thought and action. The maze I find myself in, where my options feel limited, or there is inertia towards doing something I lack competence in. I do find myself stretching and dancing and singing. It's healing. I want to do it more. I want to create more. Play guitar, draw, paint. That's why I write. I run. I work out.
But I desire for this passion to be unbounded. To be without fear. To approach the world, anything new, with fresh eyes and without any inner expression of worry.

So, my method. If not meditating, to sit in stillness and just be. The "success" varies. I observe. Feelings and thoughts pop up. I look at them. Sometimes I try to identify them. Most of the time, in fact. Sometimes I try to dive into them. It is usually a feeling in my body, and I feel it disipate. I hope that this is understanding and that this is healing. It feels like healing. At the very least, it makes me feel secure in my baseline of being.

Sometimes I feel like I don't get anything out of sitting in silence, that I should be in interaction with other people and work on myself that way. I find that to be a lot harder. I get caught up in the exchange and in that reality, or the interaction of the two. I can get insecure. It's volatile. Being detached is difficult, but that is the process. Watching it.

So if watching is caring, then I must watch my conditioning. If I impose my mind upon the present, I must just watch that happen. If it doesn't go away, then don't condemn yourself. It is what it is and it'll wash away when it has my full awareness.

That's the tricky point, because if I am identified with the mind, with the condemning or justifying, then although it may have all my attention, there is no transformation.

To divide anything into what is and what should be is the most deceptive way of dealing with life.
This is how I've dealt with life. I find it to still be the way I deal with life.
It seems that at every single corner, the solution is to pay attention and it'll fix itself. It's the quality of the life force (attention) that matters.

So in this process, the separation between myself and the world should tear down.
Through humility and innocence. No man, by definition, is no better than the next, because no man is alone responsible for who he is (also we are all the same, just of different patterning).

So, sticking point seems to be, watch my desire. Commitment, attachment, discipline, patterning, conditioning.
By the flame of attention, they will wash away.
In their wake, there will be love.

 

[MoMoses]

Not to be rude or anything... but what is this all about? I see this thread has been going on for years. Are you okay there buddy?

 

[NorwegianDJ]

Not to be rude or anything... but what is this all about? I see this thread has been going on for years. Are you okay there buddy?

If you give it a look, you'll see that this is my journal that I started when I was 15. It's really quite interesting.
It's just me and my writings. It used to be about girls and getting wild with friends.
Honestly, it's still about girls and getting wild with friends.
But life has slowed down.
A lot has happened in my life lately. I am going through a re-adjustment period.
So things can get a little manic.
I've been taking in a lot of information and I'm facing my own ways.
So there is confusion and conflict.
But it's really great to get it down on paper and to return to it later.
Provides sanity.

It's time for me to take a step back. It's obvious to me that I am in pursuit and seeking and it is creating conflict.
Not particularly much conflict, but I am a little out of balance and harmony.

I am going to lean into the difficulty I feel surrounding my work life.
I am an IT consultant now.

I am just grateful that so much of my internal strife has been stripped away.
It's so peaceful to be me nowadays.
There is still a ton of confusion and conditioning and conflict, but the negative load is almost unnoticeable.
Just easing into myself.
Just taking it all with a little more lightness.

I had two realizations.
I realized that I've always despised plateaus.
That we are conditioned to believe that life is always climax after climax. Upward trending.
Each day better than the previous one.
That things should happen! That days should contain fairly deep emotional or intellectual experiences.
And if they don't, I feel as though I am not living up to where I should be.
Thus I create it for myself. Weed has been really good for me. Really brought me out of my standard operating mode.
Being still and shining the light on myself. Piercing through my mind's sense of invulnerability.
So abstract.
But also paying close attention to how my internal state changes as it comes on, peaks, and dissipates.
Learning what anxiety feels like. Diving into it and watching it unfold and fall away.

Most of my life will be spent on a plateau.
So it's important to find balance. To have continuity in the everyday. To remain physiologically balanced.
Life is great when various burdens of success fall away.
All the while there's still much of it left in my mind.

That reminds me of the 2nd realization I had.
Don't get stuck in duality.
It is not one or the other. Go beyond duality. I am both God and human.
Writing that last sentence on this forum feels so dirty. I feel the need to explain myself.
I'll leave that up to you.
Keeping it short, this point resonates with my last one.
By being so preoccupied with "going beyond my incarnation", I am totally occupied with it.
I am what I am what I am.
Cheers.

 

[NorwegianDJ]

I think I am just to use methods to return to "the stillness" whenever I discover myself having slid out of it. Prioritizing it above all else.

You wrote it above. I simply bolded it. The path/door is that ^^^

It really is lovely how it is this simple.
There are many layers on top of this, but if intellectualized it's all conforming to a pattern.
I am just to pay attention.
And cultivate that attention.
I am just to be and to let it be.

I am reminded of two things.
A long way back, I came upon a little DMT trip report.
The person was blasted off and into the DMT realm. He was greeted by entities. And they were all just chanting, "Pay attention!"
I've been coming back to that thought a few times recently. It rings true.

Just under two months ago, I found myself in a Christian book store. I found myself two more books on the Enneagram and two bibles for cheap.
We were investigating the different bibles and I got talking to this fella that was also perusing the section.
He was a bible collector. I asked him why he collected bibles. It was because his faith was shaky. You could see it. He was looking for new insights, to compare and contrast. He found security in sitting on this knowledge.
He got one of the bibles that I was getting and that was it.
I have been finding myself in the exact same predicament that he was in.
Collecting and synthesizing knowledge and following a pattern.
I've been aware of it for some time, but it lies in the quality of my approach towards it. I can feel myself seeking guidance and pursuing knowledge in search of truth and security.
It's been great, but it also dominates the mind and in turn it dominates me.

The ending is the beginning.
Internal conflict has always been a core theme in my life. It doesn't go away through another layer of conflict.
I was listening to a talk yesterday and there was a story about catching monkeys.
They'd put food and tar on the ground. The monkey would get one hand stuck in the tar. Then it'd put down it's other hand to try to pull the other one out. Then its feet, and finally it's head.
When it could, if nearby, have reached for a branch or something to use to pull itself out.
You cannot use the mind to detach from the mind.
Catching yourself and saying "Aha!", or thinking about how things ought to be or writing, or intellectualizing, it's all getting you more stuck.
It feels good. And there's a certain productivity to this. But this is not it.

I'll see what happens. As I said above, the pendulum now swings the other direction.
I am still everything that I am. I don't want to get in the way of myself. That's always been my core issue and it's just got a different flavour now.
It's really powerful when I get anxious.

I was anxious yesterday.
Went over to my best friend. We chilled, stretched, went for a run, and grocery shopping.
But before all that, we hit the bong once.
It gets me so damn high.
And sometimes, it gets me quite anxious. Or it just brings that social contrast to the forefront of my mind. Where I am, and what I am comes into conflict with what is. My social reactions, normal conditioned social interaction, comes into contact with the "I am watching myself part of my mind".
It's terrible! Haha.
It's real tough. How it's a reverb in my head that builds upon itself when I see myself being distracted by it and thus not being able to respond in-kind with what's happening. It's like constantly trying to find footing.
So I return to my breath. I try to feel it deeply as I keep up the social game.
I slide in and out of anxiety. I feel my body is anxious and makes anxious postures. I counter them. I let them be. There is still anxiety.
It is what it is. And the process of coming to that acceptance is chaotic. And this chaos takes over.
The best I can do is to pay attention, and nothing else.
Wishing it away and seeking comfort or solutions only breeds it.
I've always found it terribly interesting to get high and feel this feeling.
The difficulty is that it mostly comes into form in social interaction, which adds a layer to what is, and that distracts me from being able to find the stillness within me and go deep into my feeling.
And I believe that if I can work on myself in those situations, it'll cease to be.
I actually do believe that the anxiety will cease.
I am told that my neuroses will only fade to the background, but I do believe that anxiety will disappear. It makes sense and it is my experience.
I also had one of the best runs I've had. We did this crazy hip-stretch, so when we ran my calves were so tight and my legs so limber. I couldn't feel my left leg for half the run. It feels right.

 

[Serenity]

I recognize the headspace you're in. It's a transition phase, hopefully, because you will absolutely lose yourself in it if you stay too long. I have been there, but rarely ever mentioned it because most people wouldn't understand. It subsided after a couple of years when I finally found balance within myself, looking back I don't long for that psychological instability again, but at that time it was kinda right. Something I had to go through in order to reach what I am today, it's a deeply personal experience though.

If I were you though I'd stay off drugs that mess with your cognition, especially in this vulnerable state of mind you're in.

 

[NorwegianDJ]

Your voices are so appreciated. It is the last thing I expected when I started posting again.

While I am sitting with my truth, I'd like to share some passages that I've been reading from The Prophet.

A voice cannot carry the tongue and the lips that gave it wings. Alone it must seek the ether.

On Love​

When love beckons to you, follow him,
Thought his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you.
Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.

But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,
Then it is better for you to that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.

Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.

When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart," but rather, "I am in the heart of God."
And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

Love has no desire but to fulfil itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks to another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstacy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude.
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

On Marriage​

You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.
You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days.
Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone.
Even as the strings of a lute are alone thought they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.

Thank you.

 

[NorwegianDJ]

The time has come for another update.
The brunt of my writings are offline, but the change of format allows for different ideas to filter through.
I also appreciate the public nature of this journal and the responses I get.

A lot has happened and watching life unfold is so exciting. I feel as though everything of my past has carried me here.
I'll open with some passages. It's so easy to share.
My favorite books of the ones I am reading are:

• The Law of Light by Lars Muhl
• The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm
• The Prophet and other Tales by Kahlil Gibran
• Total Freedom by J. Krishnamurti
• Veien Til Vekst with the Enneagram by Karthleen V. Hurley & Theodore E. Dobson (different english title)
• Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts

Honorable mentions are:

• Til de Voksne by Linn Skåber
• Å løfte og Å Bli Løftet by Bjørg Mattheasdatter
• Lovingkindness by Sharon Salzberg

I want to include some passages from The Madman by Kahlil Gibran.

The Madman
​

You ask me how I became a madman. It happened thus: One day, long before many gods were born, I woke from a deep sleep and found all my masks were stolen - the seven masks I have fashioned and worn in seven lives - I ran maskless through the crowded streets shouting,
"Thieves, thieves, the cursed thieves."
Men and women laughed at me and some ran to their houses in fear of me.
And when I reached the marketplace, a youth standing on a housetop cried, "He is a madman." I looked up to behold him; the sun kissed my own naked face for the first time. For the first time the sun kissed my own naked face and my soul was inflamed with love for the sun, and I wanted my masks no more. And as if in a trance I cried, "Blessed, blessed are the thieves who stole my masks."
Thus I became the madman.
And I have found both freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us.
But let me not be too proud of my safety. Even a Thief in a jail is safe from another thief.

---------

The Fox​

A fox looked at his shadow at sunrise and said, "I will have a camel for lunch today." And all morning he went about looking for camels. But at noon he saw his shadow again - and he said, "A mouse will do."

---------

Defeat​

Defeat, my Defeat, my solitude and my aloofness;
You are dearer to me than a thousand triumphs,
And sweeter to my heart than all world-glory.

Defeat, my defeat, my self-knowledge and my defiance,
Through you I know that I am yet young and swift of foot
And not to be trapped by withering laurels.
And in you I have found aloneness
And the joy of being shunned and scorned.

Defeat, my Defeat, my shining sword and shield,
In your eyes I have read
That to be enthroned is to be enslaved,
And to be understood is to be leveled down,
And to be grasped is but to reach one's fullness
And like a ripe fruit to fall and be consumed.

Defeat, my Defeat, my bold companion,
You shall hear my songs and my cries and my silences,
And none but you shall speak to me of the beating of wings
And urging of seas,
And of mountains that burn in the night,
And you alone shall climb my steep and rocky soul.

Defeat, my Defeat, my deathless courage,
You and I shall laugh together with the storm,
And together we shall dig graves for all that die in us,
And we shall stand in the sun with a will,
And we shall be dangerous.

-----------

Where to begin.
I have slowed down yet again. I returned home yesterday to notice that things are clear and less manic.
I have touched my soul.

Last Friday was a beautiful day.
I was out in shorts and a sleeveless shirt. We went for a boat ride and had a time.
On my way home, I ran into my ex at the playground.
It was short.
I was left feeling our disconnection. The distance that had grown between us. My aloneness and the relative unlikelihood of our future together.
Our relationship and separation were the best things that have happened to me. I still have my attachments to her and those rose to the surface.
After sitting with it for an hour I tried to call my oldest brother. He's 53 or so, in another country and in many worlds.
He didn't pick up.
I was invited out to the shore to smoke and build a fire with the boys. I reluctantly agreed.
I had hit the pipe twice when he called me back.
I'd love to tell you all what we talked about, really, I would, but that's not for me to talk about.

What I can say is that he speaks Truth. The moment he started talking I started losing myself to him and in the same process I also came closer and closer to the surface.
Him, my ex, they contain multitudes. I'd love to put words to it without degrading both them and myself.
They have the same effect on me. Their very presence and love instantly transforms.

That conversation left an impact that can be felt and that has grown.
I think that I might be going to Spain. Time will tell. But it's a powerful call.

I returned to my friends in the light of the fire and the night sky.
I existed somewhere else inside of me. Somewhere I've been many a times, but that is increasingly surfacing.
A state that approaches effortlessness. Detachment. Words, when they come, come easily. Joyful happiness and fresh eyes.
I am so lucky to be. In these situations and with these people. To be able to right in the middle of such an initially socially apprehensive process in the midst of such a "cool" and close-knit vibe.

I spent easter on the mountain with my mom.
We spent our days skiing horizontally, eating, playing, and reading books. It was very slow.
But in essence, no different from what I've been doing the past months.
It was confirming. I didn't feel impatient or bothered once. Not once. How weird! This is entirely new.
Each night when we'd play a card game, I found peace. And I just rested in that peace. There was no purpose. Nothing to do. So just breathe and rest in the stillness.
There was a lot of reading. Processing. Many insights.

I returned home yesterday to find that I have changed.
There is more peace and I am less manic. I also have more clarity.

I made dinner and made my way over to hang out with the boys. There are 4 of us. How lucky I am.
After talking **** for a while, we hit the bong on our way to go out to eat.
It hits so incredibly hard.
We ended up staying right there in that corner of the kitchen and kept the vibes going.
And the vibes were so good. The flow was there and the jokes and the laughter that all built on each other.
And right in the middle of it, I feel myself.
Breathing.
Feeling my desire to participate and be accepted. Feeling our history and my insecurity of what can be described as to be saying the right or wrong thing.
I feel myself engaging myself. Using effort to pay attention and to give social cues. Adding to the moment.
I feel the truth of the situation. I've been here so many times. I know how it goes and I know that it doesn't yield what I want. You laugh, but not all of your laughter. You cry, but not all of your tears.
So I let go.
I feel my body, what can be described as anxiety. I feel it start to dissipate.
I shift my focus.
Everything will be alright. I have nothing to prove. I am safe and accepted. I let go of trying. To be witty. To participate.
I see them.
I see their Truth and their masks.
As this happens, I feel such great joy spring from inside of me.
I am laughing and smiling and sharing in their joy and loving them.
This is it. This is genuine.
In that outward focus and letting go, there's space for myself to exist.
In that love that I am able to give myself and others, it is like sunlight on my soul.
I kept flowing in and out of this state. I was looking down while I was walking on water. The trick is to keep looking ahead. Seeing is acting.

This state is elusive when I am sober.
It expresses itself moreso as a place inside me that I can go to for peace and joy.
It is also a space inside me that I exist in in every moment. Space between the world and my reactions.
There's no impatience here.
But there is so much more to see.

During these two or three episodes in the past week I again come to realize that so many of my thoughs and fears are mistaken.
There is no distance between us. It was my distance.
I see my attachments.
I see how the ending is the beginning.

I want to end with some lines from The Law of Light.

​

Yeshuas' form of forgiveness, contains the understanding, that everything, you're missing in your life, is everything, that lacks from your own giving.

Even small doors lead to big rooms.

The hardened heart must break, before its inherent light can shine.

Only that, which one is made aware of, can be transcended.

Let the dead bury the dead.

To sin is to miss the target. Be more present and try again.
(Translates poorly. The 2nd sentence. Replace present with "be closer and more compassionate").

Only, that which is loved, can be understood

One can only truly own what one is willing to give away.

 

[NorwegianDJ]

Washing dishes has become one of my favorite pastimes.

A lot of confusion and some mental mania has surfaced again.
It's like I am taking in too much information and I'm doing mental gymnastics with it.
It's not necessarily that I fear that what I have will fade, but rather that I want to catch the blindspots in my approach.

It's just confusion, and conflict arises.

I've discovered that I add artificial meanings to thoughts and actions and feelings.
This is major, because it happens all the time and develops into an image I have of myself.
If I can't let go of it, I can at least remove the negative elements.
I'll write examples later.

I think I'll copy over a page or three from Total Freedom to illustrate some of my insights and confusion.

------------

I think it might be worthwhile if we went into the question of how quickly the mind deteriorates and what the primary factors that make the mind dull, insensitive, quick to respond. I think it would be significant if we could go into this question of why the mind deteriorates, because perhaps in the understanding of that, we may be able to find out what is really a simple life.

We notice as we grow older that the mind - the instrument of understanding, the instrument with which we probe into any problem, to inquire, to question, to discover - if misused, deteriorates, disintegrates, and it seems to me that one of the major factors of this deterioration of the mind is the process of choice.

All our life is based on choice. We choose at different levels of our existence. We choose between white and blue, certain psychological impulses of like and dislike, between certain ideas, beliefs, accepting some and discarding others. So our mental structure is based on this process of choice, this continuous effort at choosing, distinguishing, discarding, accepting, rejecting. And in that process that is constant struggle, constant effort. There is never a direct comprehension, but always the tedious process of accumulation, of the capacity to distinguish, which is really based on memory, on the accumulation of knowledge and, therefore, there is this constant effort made through choice.

Now, is not choice ambition? Our life is ambition. ... The "becoming" is the process of ambition. ... the impulse of becoming is the process of choice.

Now, can we find a way of life which is not based on ambition, which is not of choice, which is a flowering in which the result is not sought? All we know of life is a series of struggles ending in result; and those results are being discarded for greater results.
That is all we know.

... This ambition produces certain industrial benefits, but in its wake, obviously there is the darkening of the mind, the technical conditioning, so that the mind loses its pliability, its simplicity, and therefore, is incapable of directly experiencing.

... The man who flowers is the man who is, who is not becoming.

... But there is an energy ,a force in which there is a compulsion without the process of accumulation, without the backgroud of the "me," of the ego; that is the way of creativity. Without understanding that, without actually experiencing that, our life becomes very dull; our life becomes a series of endless conflict in which there is no creativity, no happiness. And perhaps if we can understand not by discarding ambition but by understanding, by listening to the truth of ambition - perhaps we may come upon that creativity in which there is a continuous expression which is not the expression of self-fulfillment but is the expression of energy without the limitation of the "me."

...Now, what is the factor essential to the understanding of a problem? Obviously, if I wish to understand the problem, there must be no formula, there must be no conclusion, there must be no judgment. But if we observe our minds we will see that we are full of conclusions; we are steeped in formulas with which we hope to resolve the problem. And so we judge, we condemn. And so, as long as we have a formula, a conclusion ,a judgment, a condemnatory attitude, we shall not understand the problem.

... So my mind, being crippled by these formulas, judgments, quotations, can never understand the problem, can never look at it. So can the mind free itself from these accumulated judgments?

...Your mind looks at a problem. It looks at it, obviously, with a condemnatory attitude. It condemns it in distinguishing it ,in reacting to it, or it wants to change it into something which it is not.

...Can the mind eradicate these conditions, free itself from these conditions, and look at the problem? Can it be unconcerned with how to free itself from these conditions? IF it is concerned with it, then you create another problem out of it.

...The mind will always create problems. But what is essential is that when we make mistakes, when we are in pain, to meet these mistakes, these pains, without judgment, to look at them without condemnation, to live with them and to let them go by. That can only happen ... when the mind is essentially quiet.

...So it is very important, not for me alone but for all of us, to find out if we can keep our minds from being this storehouse of the past, and whether the mind can be stable on the waters of life and let the memories float by without clinging to any particular memory. ... Which means the mind constantly letting the past float by, never identifying itself with it, never being occupied with it; so that the mind is firm, not in experience, not in memory, not in knowledge, but firm, stable in the process, in the way of experiencing continuously.

So, that is the factor which brings about no deterioration, so that the mind constantly renews. ... such a mind is always fresh, it is always seeing things anew. That capacity can only come when the mind is very quiet. That quietness, that stillness, is not induced, cannot come about through any discipline, through any actions of will, but when the mind understands the whole process of accumulation of knowledge, memory, experience. Then it establishes itself on the waters of life, which are always moving, living, vibrant.

...The mind that has learned to meditate, which is to concentrate, the mind that has learned the technique of shutting out everything and narrowing down to a particular point - such a mind is incapable of meditation. ... Meditation is something entirely different, which we are going to find out.

...Why does the mind demand that it should be occupied? ... "I must be occupied with something, with worry, with memory, with a passion, or with how not to be passionate, or how to get rid of something, or to find a technique which will help me to build a bridge." So the mind, if you observe, demands constant occupation, does it not? ... because it says if it is not occupied it will do some mischief, if it is not occupied it will drift away. If the mind is not occupied, then what is the purpose of life? So you invent a purpose of life - noble, ignoble, or transcendental - and cling to that, and with that you are occupied. It is the same whether the mind is occupied with God or whether it is occupied with business, because the mind says consciously or unconsciously it must be occupied.

So, the next thing is to find out why the mind demands occupation. Please follow this. We are meditating now. This is meditation. Meditation is not a state at the end. Freedom is not to be got at the end; freedom is at the beginning. If you have no freedom in the beginning, you have no freedom at the end. ... the very inquiry into what meditation is is to meditate.

...The mind can only exist as long as it is active, as long as it is conscious of itself in action, not otherwise. ...When it has results. ...When it is in motion. The motion is occupation toward a result, toward an idea, or denial of that idea negatively.

...So the mind knows itself as in motion when it is ambitious and drags itself there, and seeing that ambition is dull, it says, "I will occupy myself with God."

...Can the mind be blank, without comparing, because the "more is the way of the mind knowing that it exists? The mind that knows it exists is never satisfied with what is; it is always acquiring comparing, condemning, demanding more and more. In the demand for, in the movement of, the "more," it knows itself as existing, which is what we call self-consciousness, the conscious on the surface and the unconscious. This is our life, this is the way of our everyday existence.

...When you say you must find out the truth, will you find truth? Or does truth come into being only when the mind is not occupied, when the mind is empty to receive, not to gather, not to accumulate. Because you can only receive once. But if what you have received you make into memory with which you are occupied, then you will never receive again. Because the receiving is from moment to moment. Therefore, it is of timelessness.

So the mind, which is of time ,cannot receive the timeless. So the mind must be completely still, empty, without any movement in any direction. And that can only take place with a mind that is not occupied - not occupied with the "more," with a problem, with worry, with escapes; not conditioned in any belief, in any image, in any experience. It is only when the mind is totally free, then only is there a possibility of immense profound stillness; and in that stillness that which is eternal comes into being. That is meditation.

------------------

 

[NorwegianDJ]

2/2

Imagine me, reading this book and several other books, and listening to two gurus, and checking in with myself, and being in the midst of becoming / having just become an adult. And more. No wonder I am manic.

It's confusing because the messages have subtle conflicts and I am trying to pick up on them and resolve them.
The punchline is that my efforts are unnecessary. I think that I am only to exist. Be calm, create space, and find joy. The rest will take care of itself.
But it is in that very concept, which is not a concept, to "just exist". It implies to untangle myself of everything I've entangled myself into in my 25 years. And the confusion is that it is possible to do that in this very moment, "given the right formula and explosiveness". And that is what I am experiencing. I am fundamentally different and I can never go back to how I used to be. Is that an awakening? I also experience moments where I am just existing, but I am not sure if "that's it". It so silly to write about. I feel as though even though in those moments I am, I am also retaining the personality and its concerns. I am chasing it. I know what it can be like. Being immersed in life, fresh, anew, joyful, full of love, and being connected to all. I have experienced that, but not in sober states. I'm experiencing that there is a peaceful space within me. That joy, peace, and to some degree, love, that spring from letting go of illusion. But I am so occupied with myself. I am witness to some of these experiences in my everyday life. The rest I am promised from the people in my life that I trust the most. I am also pointed this way by grace.
**** me, you know? I'm just gonna do my best to sit back and relax.

It's also a neverending process.
And it is probably happening because I have found a way to quiet myself.
That ability I discovered in being loved. And in that love, letting go of all my fears and worries and concepts.
And losing love strengthened me.
It started with pain, self-consciousness, and sorrow and loss. I cried for 60 days straight.
I moved out and witnessed my burdens fall away.
I watched as so much of my desire for "more" dissipated and also transformed into other desires.
I've been full of joy, caged in sadness, and all these other passing states.
And sometimes, my mind doesn't stop running. It doesn't stop, because I identify with it and latch onto it. I latch onto it, because I identify with the thought, desire, or idea that it is going on about.
It is this very identity that I am holding onto. My desires, my past, my conclusions, my formulations, my methods.
I suppose I can be thankful that they won't go away when I let go of them.

So I am obviously quite occupied by this desire to become free. It is so entangled with itself! It's a Catch-22.
Here! Here's the path! You should walk this way! But do it effortlessly and without purpose.

This is where faith comes in.
It'll resolve. Just live. Have love for yourself.
What does it mean to emulate love?
Take responsiblity for yourself. Have compassion for yourself. Be patient with yourself. Be humble.
This innocent and patient quality breeds creativity. And creativity is the method.
Catch-22.

Ironically, I'll reference back to one of my favorite books, God Calling, a Devotional Diary by Two Listeners.
That's the feeling I have now. Just take it easy. Let's rest right here on this plateau. I am good enough.
Focus on being still. Being happy. Letting go of fears, worries, all shame. Be joyful.

"Strength is a child of rest"

"Let go of the burdens of yesterday and tomorrow"

"Cultivate the silence. In it, God speaks. Quiet his kingdom comes. Listen in the silence."

"Happiness is borne of peace. Let patience work its quiet gift in you. Don't be tense."

"Say thanks for each truth bestowed on you."

"You must learn equilibrium, balance, and harmony. It is the daily toll that counts."

"Learn to disconnect in my presence, and you have the things you desire. That's your job. Keep your inner life undisturbed. Nothing else matters. Leave everything to me. Be calm in my vicinity."

"When self-obsession, fear, and worries dissappear, the gifts of the spirit immediately take their place."

 

[BPH]

Oh hey, you're still doin these huh?

 

[NorwegianDJ]

Oh hey, you're still doin these huh?

Hey, old friend! I actually just got started again.

A lot has happened since Friday.
I am quite alone.

On Friday I went to a cafe to work from somewhere else.
I was looking at these two girls sitting at the opposite end of the cafe. An expressive brunette with a cap, a hoodie, and high cheek-bones, and a young blonde girl. It looked as if it was them against the world.
A guy came over to their table, they talked a bit and exchanged a bag. Brunette waves him back for two cigarettes, then waves him off.
I packed up my stuff and went over to chat with them.
Turned out they weren't as attractive and interesting as they looked from afar. They were a little beat down.
Well, nothing interesting happens if you stop and leave, so I kept it going.
Went outside and had a smoke with them.
Long story short, I ended up getting threatened by a speed-junkie. Lots of lessons learned along the way.

Saturday I was driving a friend after having had a walk. I got this feeling that I should buy some doughnuts from this place we drove past and bring them to enjoy with my ex. Yesterday, on the phone, she told me how she didn't want to, but said yes anyway. There were no doughnuts, so I ended up bringing chinese food.
I felt like it was a really nice time. Her girl and I spent a lot of time playing and adventuring. We really connected. I thought my ex was just stressed these days. Which she is. But her experience was quite different. My presence depresses her. It irritates her and makes her feel rigid.
I should've noticed, because I know how she pulls away and how she acts under that pressure. But again, I didn't.
We got to tell each other how much we care for each other when we said goodbye.

Sunday she calls me up and asks if I can bring a drill. I show up with a drill and end up spending a fair bit of time with them. Again, mostly playing with the girl. I leave and come back to collect it again that evening. I end up staying longer than I intended. I didn't feel as though I was intruding. Over dinner we finally get to have a little bit of a proper talk. It was moreso that I was the recipient of thought and emotion. It was a little stressful, so I never got to say much. She told me that when we met that I had convinced her that I already had developed the capacity for channeling love, and that when she found the truth, she lost her motivation. She said that we all envision what kind of partnership we want to be in. The implication was that she didn't believe in us.

I could write so much more, but I also write in my notebook.
I knew what this meant. I've been holding onto this attachment so dearly.
You get a taste of heaven and all you want to do is to go back. Because it really was heavenly, back then. No one may ever understand.
And I have such affection for the both of them. For what they've given me.
And I clung to a future. I cage both her and myself by being like that.
There's a lot of details on her side that go unmentioned. Our lives are very different. I feel young & naive. She is wisdom and compassion, but she's spent.

Oh how I screamed that night and on my way home. From the bottom of my heart. The sense of injustice and misunderstandings. Feeling judged and not seen.

I spent the next day obsessively journaling on love.
On a walk, she called me up yesterday evening. In essence told me that she didn't want to be a part of my journey anymore. She'd had enough.
Now I'm alone. That arc is disappearing.

Now I'm all alone. Enjoy it.
It's interesting how, although I'm all up to my eyeballs in melodrama, I can still sense that little bit of peace and equinimity inside of me.
Now I can narrow / widen my focus.
I just got called up by my work and got a new "mission". I've been idle for a while.
Grace.

I'd like to share some of my findings from yesterday.

----------
I have re-discovered my boredom here ... where I can fight "what next" with nothing.

All our boredom becomes a laboratory for presence ... a nursery in which to grow the capacity for paying attention, a studio in which to master the vital art of noticing, out of which our contact with beauty and gladness arises - the wellspring that makes life livable.

Interest is the crucible of intimacy
and
Intimacy the crucible of connection

Learning to meet this mystery that is Love with the full realness of our being - to show up for it with absolute clarity of intention - is the dance of life.

Understanding is love's other name. To love [another] means to fully understand his or her suffering.

When we feed and support our own happiness, we are nourishing our ability to love.

The most precious inheritance parents can give their children is their own happiness.

When we learn to love and understand ourselves and have true compassion for ourselves, then we can truly love and understand another person.

Thich Nhat Hanh argues that real, truthful love is rooted in four elements:
- loving kindness
- compassion
- Joy
- Equinimity
Fostering these lends love "the element of holiness"

Loving kindness adresses the dialogic relationship between our own suffering and our capacity to fully understand our loved ones.
The essence of loving kindness is being able to offer happiness. You can be the sunshine of another person. You can't offer happiness until you have it for yourself.

So build a home inside by accepting yourself and learning to love and heal yourself.
Learn how to practice mindfulness in such a way that you can create moments of happiness and joy for your own nourishment.

If you have enough understanding of love; then every moment can be a moment of joy.

Likevekt / Equinimity / Upeksha - Inclusiveness, nondiscrimination. [Preferences, but no attachments]

Subsidiary elements: Trust, Respect.
The essential mechanism for establishing such trust and respect is listening.

To love without knowing how to love wounds the person we love. To know how to love someone, we have to understand them. To understand, we need to listen.

When you love someone, you should have the capacity to bring relief and help them suffer less. This is an art. If you don't understand the roots of their suffering, you can't help. You need to understand the cause of your loved one's suffering in order to bring relief.

The more you understand, the more you love;
the more you love, the more you understand.
They are two sides of the same reality.
The mind of love and the mind of understanding are the same.

Spirituality is a practice that brings relief, communication, and transformation.

The intimate bravery of letting ourselves be seen, of connecting with our fellow human beings with the vulnerability necessary for openhearted living.

If you love someone, there is no possible harm in saying so.

Don't worry about losing. If it's right, it happens. - The main thing is not to hurry.
Nothing good gets away.

Mad people = people who stand alone and burn. I'm attracted to them because they give me permission to do the same.

I'm only interested in people engaged in a project of self-transformation.

Qualities that turn me on:
(Someone I love must have at least two or three)

1. Intelligence
2. Beauty
3. Douceur [Sweetness, gentleness]
4. Glamour
5. Strength
6. Vitality, sexual enthusiasm; Gaiety; charm
7. Emotional expressiveness, tenderness (verbal, physical), affectionateness

Love is an emotion, that is true. But it is also a "response" to an emotion and, therefore, an "active" expression of what is felt. Love is not learned by osmosis. It is actually acted at and acted upon.

Love, especially, is learned best in wonder, in joy, in peace, in living.

When you love someone, the best thing you can offer that person is your presence.

Fearlessness is what love seeks.
Such fearlessness exists only in the complete calm that can no longer be shaken by events expected in the future.

This notion of presence as the antidote to fear and the crucible of love is as old as the human heart, as old as the consciousness that first felt the blade of anticipatory loss pressed against the exposed underbelly of the longing for connection.

All meaningful transformation springs from purposeful, devoted intent.

Our mightiest antidote to fear is the quality of love we give through the quality of our presence.

Amor Mundi.

To love is indeed nothing more than to crave something for its own sake.

Temporal goods originate and perish independently of man, who is tied to them by desire.
Constantly bound by craving and fear to a future full of uncertainties, we strip each present moment of its calm and its intrinsic import, which we are unable to enjoy.
And so, the future destroys the present.

Happiness consists in possession, in having and holding our good and even more in being sure of not losing it.
Sorrow consists in having lost our good and enduring its loss.
The happiness of having is not contrasted by sorrow, but by fear of losing. The trouble of happiness is that it is constantly beset by fear.
It is not the lack of possessing, but the safety of possession which is at stake.

In their fear of death, those living fear life itself, a life that is doomed to die. The mode in which life knows and perceives itself is worry.
Thus the object of fear comes to fear itself.

The triumph of love is in the courage and integrity with which we inhabit the transcendent transience that binds two people for the time it binds them, before letting go with equal courage and integrity.

Happiness is achieved only when the beloved becomes a permanently inherent element in one's own being.

 

[NorwegianDJ]

I'm just looking for any sort of therapy and spiritual work right now.
I've had some explosive and turbulent days.
My problem is that I always have a problem.
My problem is also that everything in my world is about me.

Yet, I get so damn holy at times.
I get peeks at how the universe really is. And it feels True.
Being in the stillness and witnessing the moment from a new vantage point.
But then the sorrow hits me. Or the spite, the injustice, the aloneness.
I go through thousands of personalities each day, only to be surprised the next day.
I'm so done with normal life. I went to shed all of my skin in this instant. I am so hurt.
I just want to be done with all this suffering.
I am just happy that everything is as it should be. I can feel it. Every day I get signs.
Wacky stuff. Try it sometime.

Three books by Ram Dass found their way to my local bookstore this week.
And by that I mean that I ordered them a long way back.
Be Here Now is absolutely rocking my world. It was completely unexpected.
It's a complete spiritual manual, and I am just where I need to be to appreciate it for what it is.

Just like in January when we broke up, I barely slept for several days.
It just is. I get tired, but I function just fine. I lay in bed for hours and there is no sleep to find.
It is such a powerful attachment. And it's central to my being. I've always sought love and approval. It's been a core theme as long as I can remember. So it interacts with me in its own way. It almost feels out of my control. It just takes me over.

"When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago."
"When we feel inadequate, we consume the world around us rapaciously."

Then each evening I find myself again.
On one of these evenings with two or three nights of almost no sleep, I was putting covers on my bed. I had smoked a fair bit earlier and been in a good space. Perhaps my first evening with Be Here Now.
I was quite quiet. But I witnessed how I was still subtly judging my every move and thought.
How much energy it requires to oversee that everything gets done well enough.
And it disappeared.
I didn't disappear, but I changed vantage point.
I was watching it all going on. There was no one attending to the laundry, but it was still happening.
Each moment in that bleeding minute was savory and full. Then I was back and my mind was racing for the next 24 hours.

"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious.
Remaining in doubt without any irritable reaching after fact & reason."

"Truth waits for a mind unclouded by longing."

It's all about cultivating the witness. Finding the stillness within and going deeper and deeper within and into the moment.
Shedding skin.

I look back a year from now, three months from now, and a month from now, and I see how much I've grown.
It is incredible. And it is just the beginning.
That helps me keep in faith.
Faith and Fate have been so kind to me.
Still, I haven't surrendered.
My faith is not all-consuming. You'd think it would be after all I've been through.
I think back to taking DMT in Havasu. How I did not care a bit for my body. How I saw pre-determined pivotal events in my past.
I think back to all of my transcendent experiences. The all-encompassing compassion. Knowing with complete certainty that it's all One. Being THAT. And all of my grace. And the people I've met.
I just need to be reminded again.
I don't need to.
I'd just like to give myself to this with even more explosiveness.

At the same time, I think back to being safe, loved, and in love.
How easy transformation comes about in that space.
I want to nourish that space within me in any way that I can.
Mercy comes in many forms.
If someone is hungry, feed them.
Equally so, I'll be honing in on what we're all used to on here. Some of the very human qualities and activities that promote self-love and security.
But that'll be for another post.

The Heart Cave
"Execpt ye be converted
&
Become as little children
Ye shall not enter
The kingdom of heaven"

Unless you
Start again
Become that Trusting
Open Surrendered Being
The energy can't come in
That is the kingdom of heaven.
The Energy
It is the same thing:
Cosmic consciousness.


Don't be someone who is going somewhere.
Be. Here. Now.

I've got 3 pages left in my notebook out of 240 pages since January 28th. Here are a few notes to celebrate:
---------------
The start is filled with reflections and misery.

Protectors (8 subtype) in stress become more retracted, restrained, and reflective.

The mundane, the moderate, and the mild have their own virtues.

Soften into your feelings.

Before reacting, follow your breath and tune into what you are feeling and sensing inside.
Less excessive, more flexible.

Don't teach me
Love me
Love will teach me

On February 3rd I cried in front of my parents. My mum held me, which is a first.

We choose recursive and infinite paths that lead to more of the same.

I encountered the Ace of Cups at two particular & close times.

I wrote down all our memories. The holiness of falling in love. Feeling small, filled with anxiety, and the blessing of only feeling loved in return.

"It's so embarrassing to be human"

Friendliness is about being a nourishing presence.

You can look for answers
but that aint fun
Now get in the pit
and try to love someone.

The word amateur comes from the latin word 'amator', 'lover', which in turn comes from 'amare', to love.

I finally found someone like me.

13/02 Be aware of Acedia. It is killing you.
Focus your time and energy on what you want to see more of.
The Truth is looking for you.

There's a lot of pain in these pages.

Our pain is the doorway to our joy.

Consider all forms of fasting.

The soul can only be healed when it patiently practices the virtues that are in opposition to our vices.
"We become our object of fixation."

03.03
"Da du betraktet meg
Inngav dine øyne i meg din nåde
derfor elsket du meg ømt,
og mine øyne ble i stand til å
tilbe det som de så i deg."
- Johannes av korset.

You looked with love upon me
And deep within your eyes imprinted grace.
This mercy set me free,
Held in your love’s embrace,
To lift my eyes adoring
to your grace.

~ by St. John of the Cross

"Love everyone
and
Tell the truth"

"balance and equilibrium
above all: be calm, untouched.
Keep peace of mind at all costs"

"One has to be the teacher of oneself and desciple of oneself; there is no authority, only understanding."

" If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. "

You can be both happy and sad in the same moment. As long as you try to stay in the world of polarities, you cannot experience the richness of the moment. The richness of the moment is the one that lies just behind the two.

Freedom requires complete surrender of who you think you are and what you think you're doing into what is. Dying into yourself. Grief.

The Great Way is not difficult, for those who have no preferences. When love and hate are absent, everything becomes clear and undisguised. The slightest distinction however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.

It doesn't mean not having preferences, it means not getting attached to your preferences.

The Witness​

The ability to quitly observe the phenomena, including our own behavior, emotions, and reactions. As you cultivate the witness more deeply, it's like you're living simultaneously on two levels. The level of witness and the level of desire, fear, emotion, action, reaction.
That is a stage in the process.
A great deal of power.
There is another stage beyond that: Surrender

When the mind gazes into the mind itself, the train of discoursive and conceptual thought ends, and supreme enlightenment is gained. When the witness turns in on itself, when the witness witnesses the witness, you come into awareness where everything just is.
And you're no longer busy with one part of your mind watching another, you're not busy watching, you're just being. It becomes very simple again.

Intelligence as a trap​

We want to know we know.
The thing about freedom is that you can be wise, or you can know knowledge.
Wisdom has simplicity to it.
The intellect is a beautiful servant, but a terrible master. It is the power-tool of our separateness, and t he intuitive compassionate heart is the doorway to our unity. The dialogue between the mind and the heart has gotten out of balance in our culture.

In a way, what the spiritual path at its best offers is a chance for us to come back into the innate compassionate quality of our hearts and our intuitive wisdom. And get back into the balance where when we need our intellect, its available as a servant, but we are not ruled by it and trapped in our thinking mind.

Integrate the spirituality into our daily lives and bring into it the equinimity, and the joy, and the awe, and the ability to look suffering in the eye and embrace it into yourself without averting your glance.

Change only happens through understanding.
Understanding = Love.
Therefore love your demons.
Love your sins. Love your neuroses.
You are everchanging. You are the process. You are what is.

The more true you are about where you are, the faster the transformation happens.

Being your own authority is the only way to wisdom, to inquiry.

Practice sincere compliments

Create contexts where trust can flourish

Prioritize good friends above almost all else.

Focus your time and energy on what you want to see more of.

The greatest obstance to living is expectancy.
You are arranging what lies in Fortune's control and abandoning what lies in yours.

Make glorious, amazing mistakes.
Expect anything worthwhile to take a long time.

Bring your mind to one point and wait for grace.

Only as you give can you receive.

 

[NorwegianDJ]

Henry Miller

The art of living is based on rhythm — on give and take, ebb and flow, light and dark, life and death. By acceptance of all aspects of life, good and bad, right and wrong, yours and mine, the static, defensive life, which is what most people are cursed with, is converted into a dance, ‘the dance of life,’ metamorphosis. One can dance to sorrow or to joy; one can even dance abstractly. … But the point is that, by the mere act of dancing, the elements which compose it are transformed; the dance is an end in itself, just like life. The acceptance of the situation, any situation, brings about a flow, a rhythmic impulse towards self-expression. To relax is, of course, the first thing a dancer has to learn. It is also the first thing a patient has to learn when he confronts the analyst. It is the first thing anyone has to learn in order to live. It is extremely difficult, because it means surrender, full surrender.

[…]

Life, as we all know, is conflict, and man, being part of life, is himself an expression of conflict. If he recognizes the fact and accepts it, he is apt, despite the conflict, to know peace and to enjoy it. But to arrive at this end, which is only a beginning (for we haven’t begun to live yet!), a man has got to learn the doctrine of acceptance, that is, of unconditional surrender, which is love.

Miller zooms in on the “key words in howe’s doctrine of wholeness” — balance, discipline, illumination:

For the awakened individual, however, life begins now, at any and every moment; it begins at the moment when he realizes that he is part of a great whole, and in the realization becomes himself whole. In the knowledge of limits and relationships he discovers the eternal self, thenceforth to move with obedience and discipline in full freedom.

Returning to our relationship with the present moment, Miller summarizes Howe’s proposition:

An attempt, in short, to arrive at a total grasp of the universe, and thus keep man anchored in the moving stream of life, which embraces known and unknown. Any and every moment, from this viewpoint, is therefore good or right, the best for whoever it be, for on how one orients himself to the moment depends on the failure or fruitfulness of it.

He brings it all back to love:

Real love is never perplexed, never qualifies, never rejects, never demands. It replenishes, by grace of restoring unlimited circulation. It burns, because it knows the true meaning of sacrifice. It is life illuminated.​

I had dinner with this woman I'd never met yesterday.
She's married with kids.
We'd been set up by a mutual friend to chat about some of my experiences at the last place I worked.
It was so refreshing to meet someone with the capacity to listen.
It was magical, to be out amongst people, have food & beer, and be totally immersed in our own world that we created together.
We barely talked about my prior work experiences. Her green eyes had this brightness to them when she leaned in to listen.
It was so nice to feel myself not feeling a slightest bit hung up or unfulfilled.
Not penetrating a wall of judgement, but riding the waves of conversation.
We stayed like that for two and a half hours.
Being validated like that was something I needed.
Makes me feel normal and capable. Makes me remember who I am. Who I was before. Who I have always been.
I've made a new friend.

Notice that there are no Don'ts on The Way. Only Do's.

Here's some of Ram Dass' work that I transcribed.

The Great Way is not difficult for those not attached to preferences.
When neither love nor hate arises, all is clear and undisguised.
Separate by the smallest amount, however
And you are as far from it as heaven is from earth.

The Witness & Surrender​

One way to get free of attachment is to develop the Witness consciousness.
To become a neutral observer of your own life.
The Witness place inside you is simple awareness.
You can cultivate that awareness in the garden of your being.
Along with that self-awareness comes the subtle joy of just being here, alive.
The witness is your centering device.
It guides the work you do on yourself.
Once you understand that there is a place in you that is not attached, you can extricate yourself from attachments.

Don’t try to change the patterns. Just notice them. As you cultivate the witness, things change.
You don’t have to change them. When you’re being here now in loving awareness, things just change.

The quickest way to get through your stuff is to learn to listen to that place inside.
You have to honor your own path and be able to trust that there is a place in you that knows what is best.

The quakers call it the still small voice within.
When it speaks, listen.
If, as you listen to your heart’s intuition, it feels right to do something, do it.
Witnessing is a doorway to living in your spiritual heart. Your soul-awareness.
The more you live in your spiritual heart, the more you see yourself and others from the Soul perspective.

How you see others starts with how you see yourself.
Who you think you are is a matter of perspective.
Don’t take your melodrama so seriously.
We’re really talking about giving up being the central character of your own melodrama.
Who you think you are and how you think it is.
All this self-narration of the ego is what keeps your personal melodrama going.

The art of spiritual growth has to do with how quickly you recognize attachments and how quickly you can release them.
If you could admit that you can’t see or hear clearly because of attachment, then the full wisdom of things will begin to shine through.

From a personality point of view, you develop judgement, but from the Soul’s point of view, you develop appreciation.
This shift from judging to appreciating. To appreciating yourself and what your Karmic predicament is, and who other beings are with their own karma.
Brings everything into a simple, loving, awareness.

To be free means to open your heart and your being to the fullness of who you are.
Because only when you are resting in that place of unity, can you truly honor and appreciate others and the incredible diversity of the universe.

One way of getting to this place of compassionate action is by honoring others and being patient.

The quieter you are, the more you hear the true nature of compassion. The quiet, compassionate heart is the doorway to our Unity.

Use every situation you have with other people as a vehicle to work on yourself. See where you get stuck, where you push, where you grab, where you judge, where you do all the other stuff.

Ideally you clear yourself right in this situation, but often it’s too sticky and you can’t do it.
Step back then and do the practices you do in the morning, in the evening, or on weekends to stay clear.
Do the stuff that quiets you down inside.
Next time you go into that situation, you may lose it again.
Just go home and see how you lost it. Examine it.
You go in the next day and lose it again.
You start keeping a diary of “How did I lose it today?”
Then you go and do it again.
After a while, when you’re starting to lose it, you don’t buy in so much.
You start to watch the mechanics of what it is that makes you lose it all the time.

When you get to the point of seeing stuff as it’s actually happening, the tendrils of attachments will begin to loosen.
If you don’t appreciate me, that’s your problem.
If I need your love or your approval, then it’s my problem.
Then my needs are giving you power over me.
The power other people have to shake you out of your equanimity and love and consciousness has to do with your own attachments and the clinging of your mind.

This is where your work is on yourself, where you need to meditate more, or you need to reflect more, or you need a deeper philosophical framework.
It’s where you need to cultivate the witness more.
It’s where you need to practice opening your heart more in circumstances that aren’t optimum or easy.
This is your work.

When you’re deep in the psychological realm and you keep trying to work it out, you just keep investing in it. It’s a bottomless well of stuff.
Witnessing will allow you to acknowledge the feelings and appreciate them as part of the human condition.
That’s the quickest way through an emotion; to acknowledge it, allow it, let it be, and release it.
Just keep letting go and letting go.
“Emotions are like waves. Watch them disappear in the distance on the vast, calm ocean.”

The art as I understand it, is to cultivate these other planes of consciousness and then you no longer have to push the stuff away, because it falls into perspective.
It’s as if you just shift your focus and see it from outside of yourself.

When I studied people’s personalities and psychology, I saw that at the root of almost every problem was a feeling of inadequacy or not-enoughness.
These are the seed-components in personality structure.
Understand these issues and see that you’re subject to that pathology, just like everyone else.
That wisdom leads to compassion and love for yourself and others.

 

[NorwegianDJ]

Bro, you started this journal in November 2010.

Have you not achieved what you set out to by now?

In 2010 I was 15 years old.

And no. Growth does not end.

 

[NorwegianDJ]

Apparently.

Figure your life out already.

That's the beautiful part.

There's nothing to figure out.
Thanks.