Morten Tolboll - Blog
In the same way as I was surprised over how suddenly we saw the potential violent aspects of New Age coming into expression with the storm of Capitol Hill (see my article: How the Corona Crisis Has Exposed New Age as a Potential Violent Movement), we also now see how the aspects of, what I in past texts has called "Putin´s Destabilization Programs", suddenly now have exploded in concrete war and progaganda.
In the end of my satirical ebook, The Godgame, I wrote that I made a pact with Lucifer that if I played the Tarot game with his guidelines, I would be rewarded with the ability of vagabonding the world. The game was about self-transformation.
The below images are from the beautiful book on “The Deviant Moon Tarot”, by artist Patrick Valenza.
From: The DruidCraft Tarot
The Fool in the Tarot game is a return to childhood. My concept of The Peter Pan Project builds on this. And this is again connected to philosophy. Poetry, storytelling and philosophy melt together. If we take Wordsworth´s poem, "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood", we can see how deeply imbued it is with a kind of natural Platonism. The poem begins with the famous lines:
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In his novel, "A Mapmakers Dream - The Meditations of Fra Mauro, Cartographer to the Court of Venice", James Cowan writes the story that in sixteenth-century Venice, in an island monastery, a cloistered monk experiences the adventure of a lifetime - all within the confines of his cell, the book tells the story of fra Mauro and his struggle to realise his life´s work: to make a perfect map - one that represents the full breadth of creation. News of his project attracts explorers, pilgrims, travellers, and merchants, all eager to contribute their accounts of faraway people and places; and as Mauro listens to their strange tales, his map begins to grow and take shape. In the process, the boundaries of his world are pushed to the extreme, raising questions about the relationship between representation, imagination and the nature of reality itself.
This post is based on a French documentary, I´ve just seen. It is called “The New American Gurus”. View trailer:
TONY ROBBINS: I AM NOT YOUR GURU, a feature documentary film about internationally renowned life and business strategist Tony Robbins, is a revelatory cinéma vérité film that goes behind the scenes of his mammoth seminar "Date With Destiny," attended by over 2,500 people in Boca Raton, Florida, each year, to give an insider look at how one man can affect millions. Granted never before seen access to the behind the scenes modus operandi of this enormous event, this film captures both the immense effort of producing this live seminar, as well as the life-changing transformations of the participants in real time. Embedding with Tony Robbins and his team over the course of six days, Academy Award nominated filmmaker Joe Berlinger turns an unflinching eye on Tony Robbins' powerful and uncompromising approach to achieving success, ensuring the attendees leave "Date With Destiny" with new perspective on the forces, thoughts, and feelings that motivate their behavior and help them take control of their lives. Pulling back the curtain on Tony Robbins, a man that traverses the globe and counsels over 200,000 people annually, including world leaders, pundits, entrepreneurs, CEOs, athletes and celebrities, through interviews and unprecedented access, TONY ROBBINS: I AM NOT YOUR GURU is an emotional tour de force that unveils the inner-workings of this mega event, the zealous participants and the man himself.
Piers Morgan has said Meghan Markle told ‘17 lies’ in her
Oprah interview.
Since I already have written a critical article on the New Age promoter, Oprah Winfrey (A Critique of Oprah Winfrey), it caught my attention when I heard about an interview called “Oprah with Meghan and Harry”. I thought: “Why is it Oprah Winfrey, who are doing this interview?”
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from The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady by Edith Holden (1871-1920)
Meditation as an Art of Life is not a momentary process but a continual living, a continual sharpening of the mind.
HEDGESPOKEN is a travelling off-grid storytelling theatre run from a 1966 Bedford RL lorry, converted to be a home and a go-anywhere stage. Storyteller, mask-maker and writer Tom Hirons and internationally-respected artist, puppeteer and musician Rima Staines tell tales and spark imaginations from the Hedgespoken truck wherever they can, from busy festivals and family camps to quiet laybys and secluded forests.
The Argonauts, by Edmund Dulac
The general goal of life for man is some kind of hope, some kind of safety, some kind of permanency.
A Beech Shaded Hollow, Cranborne Chase, By Howard Phipps
Our brain is not merely a certain brain, but the brain that has evolved through millenniums.
I have just discovered, in the Danish new age magazine Nyt Aspekt (January 2021), something called The Galileo Commission. In a report, we see a psychologist (Harald Walach) teaching philosophy of science, supported by 90 "advisor researchers".
Unity, by Marja Lee Kruÿt
Many volumes have been written about the world outside of us—the environment, the society, politics, economics, and so on, but very few have gone to the very length of discovering what we actually are. Why human beings are behaving as they are doing—killing each other, constantly in trouble, following some authority or the other, some book, some person, some ideal, and having no right relationship with their friends, with their wives, with their husbands and with their children; why human beings have become, after so many millennia, so vulgar, so brutal, so utterly lacking in care, consideration, attention to others, and denying the whole process of what is considered love.
In my article, The Conspiracy of the Third Eye, I described the New Age attempts of reinventing Jesus Christ in the image of New Age. In his book: The Third Jesus - How to Find Truth and Love in Today´s World, Chopra is contributing to these attempts. His thesis is that there are three versions of Jesus: 1) the guy of flesh and blood whom we basically know nothing about. 2) The Jesus, which is the church´s interpretation. Chopra claims that this Jesus never has existed since it is a "dogmatic" distorted interpretation (Chopra is, like other New Agers, extremely anti-Christian) 3) Then there is the third Jesus, which is the true Jesus: meaning, the Jesus, Chopra wants us to believe in. Chopra says that this Jesus not is a metaphor (interpretation).
Little Wildrose, by H.J. Ford
To be alone, which is not a philosophy of loneliness, is obviously to be in a state of revolution against the whole setup of society—not only this society, but the communist society, the fascist, every form of society as organized brutality, organized power.
“Thumbelina”, by Lisbeth Zwerger
In order to be able to see clear, you must be present in passive listening, you must listen, not only to the outer things, but also to the inner movement of life, the inner movement, which is desires, motives, worries, fear-conceptions, sorrows.
There is only a finger´s difference between a wise
man and a fool
- Diogenes
Another human being says to you: ”You are a fool!”
You are yourself absent in your emotional evaluations, you don´t like it, and it leaves a track in your mind.
Hedgehog, Deer and Salmon, by Danielle Barlow
As a Life Artist you must study the whole structure of the thinking, and see what place the thought has; see where it isn´t a necessity, and only then you will discover, that the mind functions in a reasonable way, both when the thought isn´t active, and when the thought has to be active.
The Snow Queen, by Kay Nielsen 1924
From my Forest Diary:
December 6, 2020
The Frost Queen passed through my window this night and left her breath. Look at it! Pure art.
Rhinemaidens
(under the rainbow bridge to Asgard), by Arthur Rackham
Our consciousness is not yours or mine. It is the consciousness of all human beings.
Kenneth Grahame´s, ”The Wind in the Willows”, illustrated by Inga Moore
In my philosophical counseling practice, I talk about three aspects of my teaching: Meditation as an Art of Life. The third aspect is about going beyond all ideas an images. This aspect is also called Spiritual Anarchism.
“The problem is acceptance, which is something we´re taught not to do. We´re taught to change uncomfortable situations, to change things, alleviate unpleasant feelings. But if you accept the reality you have been given – that you are not in a productive creative period – you free yourself to begin filling up again” – Anne Lamott
A central tool for the Life Artist is the philosophical diary.
Write all your thoughts down in the moment they appear in your mind.
The Nightingale, by Henry Justice Ford (1860-1940)
Out of silence look and
listen.
Silence is not the ending of noise; the incessant clamour of the mind and heart does not end in silence; it is not a product, a result of desire, nor is it put together by will.
The Wild Swans, by Anton Lomaev
To live as an outskirter, as someone who totally has dropped out, requires a love of wisdom that is unconditional. This is meditation as an art of life.
