Your problem isn´t that you should believe this or that, but how to disentangle from the desire for safety

If you as a Life Artist realizes - that is to say: if you are enough aware - that the process of the will to power forms you on the background of a belief - as an expression of the desire for inner safety - then your problem isn´t that you should believe this or that, but that you should disentangle yourself from the desire for safety.

Can the mind then disentangle from the wish for safety?

This is the problem, and not what you should believe, or how much you should believe. That would only be an expression of the urge for philosophical safety; that is: being convinced about something, when you don´t have any philosophical life-teaching and practice, and everything else in world is uncertain.

The will is opposing, requiring, wanting. Altogether a kind of resistance, and resistance is violence

The will has to do with the mind that says: ”I want to do this!” – ”I don´t want that!” – ”I will do this!”

The will has to do with that you are opposing, requiring, wanting. Altogether a kind of resistance, and resistance is violence.

The mind must be altogether aware, that it can´t escape this violence.

In that way there in art of life can´t be any unfolding of the will that says: ”I want to defeat violence!” because the will is essentially violence.

When there is used control there is always a will; that is: a compelling desire to control, form and lead. But this is destructive, and has nothing to do with creation.

To empty out the mind is to give life back to the present

In Taoism and Zen Buddhism you time after time hear the statement about emptying out the mind.

To empty out the mind means, that you are emptying it for its content.

The content of the mind is the known, your perspective of life, your historical limitation, the past which projects ifself into the future, the past and the future which sucks life out of the present and transforms memories and plans into reality, and reality into emptiness.

In this way the mind, or the Ego, makes ifself independent in relation to your reality, and the reason is lost.

To empty out the mind is the opposite movement. You give life back to the present, you are emptying the mind and are filling reality with vitality and urge to live.

In this way the mind becomes one with your reality, and the reason is won.

What we as Life Artists ask ourselves, is whether we can be free from the word with it´s illusions?

Hope is born from despair. They are two sides of the same coin. Where there not is hope, there is hell, and because we are afraid of hell, we seek the meaning, which is in the hope. Then the illusion begins.

The word has in that way led to an illusion, and not at all to God. God is the illusion, which we worship, and the non-believer creates the illusion about another God, which he worships – science, the state, utopia, or a book, which he thinks contains the whole of the truth.

So, what we as Life Artists ask ourselves, is whether we can be free from the word with it´s illusions?

Would that lead to despair?

The Ego is formed by an interaction between the activities of the mind (evaluations) – and the challenges of life

In the unreal existence the actions of Man come to rest on ignorance; that is to say: prejudices, inclinations and demands.

And it results in absence, and therefore suffering.

In this way the human existence becomes a friction, a conflict, and herein there is no reason.

The being of Man includes both the state of the mind and the conduct of life, logos and bios. But the Ego is formed by an interaction between the activities of the mind (demands, prejudices, inclinations) – and the hindrances, which the challenges of life create, and therewith you have the unreality.

In meditation you discover how the Now´s facts, seen from the thinking´s past and future, can become a problem

When you are sitting silent, but then suddenly are becoming absent in mind, you discover how the thinking sucks life and energy out of the present.

Past and future become reality, while reality becomes emptiness.

You discover how the thinking analyzes, separates and divides in order to evaluate, understand.

You discover how the thinking removes the mind from the Now, and creates the inner calculator, the experiencer or the thinker, who compares with earlier, or who hopes and desires something else; the thinker, who slides off from the Now´s facts.

And you discover how the Now´s facts, seen from the thinking´s past and future, can become a problem.

You have pure and simple discovered the cause of your problems.

That something is learned in philosophical sense presupposes a mind, which each time learns anew

The word philosophy means love of wisdom, or love of learning.

To learn in philosophical sense is a continual movement, a continual renewal. It is not ”to have learned”, and see on the bases of that.

Usually we see on the bases of a memory about what we have learned, and have experienced; memory is the starting point. This is therefore not to see, not to learn in philosophical sense.

That something is learned in philosophical sense presupposes a mind, which each time learns anew. There must be a creative emptiness. The mind must therefore always be new and ready to learn, just like a child.

For that reason it doesn´t interest the Life Artist to worship memory, but rather to observe, see and experience what really happens.

As a Life Artist you must try to be extremely aware, awake, so that the seen and learned don´t become a memory from which you see, and which in itself is a distortion.

You must see each time as if it was the first time!

When giving something a name it becomes permanent, and then we have the whole of the thoughtprocess

The feeling of the permanent consists in the condensed reactions; that is: the body, the feeling, the perception, the desires, and the consciousness.

The feeling arises as a result of a challenge, and then you give it a name, which will say that you identify yourself with it.

This, that we give it a name, restores the feeling in our images of life, the past pattern, which repeats itself again and again, which maintains the reactions and condenses them. Consequently an aspect of Man as a natural being.

If you don´t give the feeling a name - which will say, that you don't identify yourself with it and maintain it through evaluations - then the feeling is new, and it will disappear by itself.

If it gets a name, it will gain strength, it will become permanent, and then we have the whole of the thoughtprocess.

If you have the full understanding of one human problem, then you understand all human problems

The Life Artist seeks to enter a problem without waiting for a result, a definition of what is the right to do.

The right action will emerge, naturally and completely, as the problem becomes unveiled.

The discovery of the problems´ importance and consequences is the central, and not the final result.

Any answer will only be a new conclusion, a new opinion, another good advice, which not at all will solve the problem.

It is the problem itself, which must be understood, and not how you shall react to the problem, or what you shall do in order to solve it.

The right understanding of the problem is of importance, because the right action is lying in the problem itself.

If you see one movement completely - that is to say: where you are one with the movement, and there is no displacement or distortions between the realizer and the realized – then all other movements are included in this wholeness.

If you have the full understanding of one human problem, then you understand all human problems, because they are all mutual related.

Only when the many layers of consciousness are silent, in absolute peace, life can flow back to presence

There is first freedom when the whole of the human nature, the obvious as well as the hidden, becomes refined from the past.

The will is desire; and as long as there is an act of the will, any striving after becoming free, or after laying bare the Ego, there can never be freedom; then this complete refinement and emptying of the whole of the person can never take place.

Only when the many layers of consciousness are silent, in absolute peace, life can flow back to presence and self-forgetfulness, and then the immense is there, the happiness that not is of time, the renewal of creation.

A human being, who is searching truth, is not dependent on authority, neither in books, or in any person

The Life Artist doesn´t engage in faith. Faith has no meaning at all for a human being, who is searching truth. Faith is only a kind of secureness, an anchorage, a harbor.

A human being, who is searching truth, must navigate on unmapped oceans, like Odysseus. As a life Artist you have no harbors, no place of refuge, you must go out on the open sea in order to investigate.

A human being, who is searching truth, is not dependent on authority, neither in books, or in any person.

As a Life Artist you are searching for truth, not the authority of a person or of a thought-system.

Can you act without anxiety when thought-activity is required, and when it is not, be silent?

The thought must be active when you are doing something. The thought is a necessity so that we can do no matter what technological work.

In order to, that our actions can be clear, we must think clearly, objectively, without letting us be carried away by moods; without prejudices and preconceived opinions. It was this, the enligthenment philosophers understood by the reason.

But we also know, that the thought produces human problems, fear and anxiety, and that this anxiety will hinder us in acting effectively. The question is then, whether you as a Life Artist can act without anxiety when thought-activity is required, and when it is not, be silent? Can you act with afterthought when it is necessary, and when it is not, let the thought rest?

In fact it is rather simple. Can Man in that degree be so present in passive listening, that he in the awake condition will think and act when it is necessary, and remain awake whilst he acts, so that he neither falls asleep, or works pure mechanical?

We are satisfied with explanations, and to explain away everything we call knowledge

If we want to know, why there is wealth and poverty in the world, we can find an explanation. There is an explanation for everything, and explanations seem to satisfy most of us. The same is the case as regards religion. We are satisfied with explanations, and to explain away everything we call knowledge.

Is that what we understand about education? Do we learn to discover, or are we only coming to look for explanations, definitions, conclusions, in order to be able to dull the mind, and stop questioning?

In spiritual practice you must push aside the desire after identifying yourself with something

As a Life Artist you must push the desire aside, the desire after identifying yourself with a person or an idea or a thing. This doesn´t lead to harmony, unity or love.

The question then becomes: can you break out of this frame?

How this shall take place in philosophy as an art of life, can´t be answered with a method, the answer rather consists in a voyage of discovery, which perhaps can open the door; just like Faust, who unwraps himself from Mefistoteles´ word-web, by making a journey through it, without knowing where it brings him.

Authority leads to thoughtlessness, but because most of us find it painful to think we surrender to its control

The philosophical counselor doesn´t try to influence the guest to act, to think something particular, to do one thing or the other – that would be propaganda.

The only thing the counselor does, is, like Kierkegaard said, to encourage to awareness.

But awareness, or passive listening presence, is a troublesome task, and because most of us prefer the easy path, the illusion, we produce the authority, which gives our existence an image of life, a form and a pattern to follow.

This authority is perhaps the collective, the state or a group; it can also be the personal, the guru.

But authority of any kind makes blind, it leads to thoughtlessness, and because most of us find it painful to think, then we surrender to the control of the authority.

If you study a problem philosophical, explore it, you will see, that the answer is lying in the problem

When people ask questions, they are generally more engaged in finding the answer than understanding the problem.

But if you study the problem philosophical, explore it, investigate it very closely, understand it, you will see, that the answer is lying in the problem.

The Life Artist will therefore seek to understand what the problem is, and not seek an answer, neither in the books, or from one or the other professor or lecturer.

If you really can understand the problem, the answer will come by itself; because the answer is in the problem, it it is not divided from it.

Can the mind of Man - which in high degree is limited by its personal or collective images – change?

When all this is seen – the wars, the unreasonable dividings, which the religions have created, the division which exists between the individual person and the society, the family, which is opposed to the rest of the world, each individual person, who clings to some personal or collective images, and divide himself in ”me” and ”you”, ”us” and ”them” – when all this is seen, both in objectively and in philosophical sense, then only one question is remaining, one essential problem, and that is whether the mind of Man, which in high degree is limited by its historical background, its personal or collective images, can change.

Not in a future incarnation, not through political development, not when life ends, but radically change now, so that Man enters into a creative emptiness, where the mind become new, fresh, young, innocent, released from its images, so that it knows what love is, and what it is to live in peace.

It requires a philosophical revolution.

Meditation is to enter into the unknown

In accordance with the Taoists, the actual thing to be present in passive listening (wu-wei), is the same as to act spontaneous (tzu-jen).

Any spontaneous action is an expression of, that there is a passive listening presence, a space between the thoughts.

When for instance the Taoist is seeing, that there is fear, he observes it neutral as in a mirror, without saying yes and no, and feels it deeply and incisively, without seeking to achieve anything with it.

The actual experience in this passive listening presence, makes the experience free from fear; and that is to act spontaneous.

In all this the unknown is at stake; reality or truth.

Meditation is in other words to enter into the unknown.

If there was no reaction the challenge would be new - a state of creation, middle and fulfilment

The observer is a perspective, and the observed is his own perspective, otherwise he would not recognize the experience, and would not call it a certain type of experience.

The experience is already in him before he recognizes it.

The past, which is based on the self-image and the world-image, is in this way incessantly active, and it recognizes itself; the new is swallowed by the old.

Likewise it is the reaction, which determines the challenge. The challenge is the reaction, just like the observed is the perspective. The perspective is created by the reactions.

If there was no reaction the challenge would be new, or rather: there would not at all be any challenge and reaction, but only a state of creation, middle and fulfilment.

The philosophical diary is not to keep a retrospective diary. It´s a spiritual practice

You know how to keep an ordinary diary; in the evening you write down all the incidents of the day, at the same time as you make considerations over them, evaluates them.

But to keep philosophical diary is not to keep such a retrospective diary, it is to write all thoughts - both positive and negative - down at the very moment as they arise.

Nor does it consist in trying to write profound and philosophical thoughts down.

The philosophical is lying in bringing a passive listening presence into the thoughtprocess.

The great philosophical thoughts will then begin to come by themselves.

Thoughts suck life out of the present and transform knowledge and belief into reality, and reality into emptiness

The structure of consciousness is time and its images, not only the personal images, but also the collective and universal images; altogether the foundation of the whole of mankind´s knowledge and belief.

Belief and knowledge are the recognition-processes, the processes out of which the thinking creates the perspective on oneself and the world, the known.

This process isolates itself and produces the Ego, a process, which both is conscious and unconscious.

The question for the Life Artist is whether the mind can disengage itself from its own structure.

Can the mind empty itself for its own structure? That is the problem.

The mind, as we know it, has belief and knowledge as historical background, is feeded by desires, wants, the desire after safety.

In this way the thinking sucks life out of the present and transforms knowledge and belief into reality, and reality into emptiness.

And in this way the Ego is made independent in relation to the individual´s reality.

We tackle problems, which always are new, from an old pattern. This causes absence

We don´t know how we unprejudiced can observe a problem.

We want to deduce a result of the problem, we want an answer, we have set us a goal when we seek to solve it; and we try to interpret the problem from our joy or pain; or we already have an answer to how the problem can be treated.

In this way we begin to tackle with the problem, which always is new, and treat it from an old pattern, our images of life.

And in that way we are the problem absent, we are outside it as theorists, and then you have the opposition between the observer and the observed.

And this is to have your identity in an absence.

Contrary to religion and politics, philosophy doesn't give answers, but asks questions

It is immensely important to ask questions; not only because you thereby expose your inner, but by questioning philosophical, by training the mind and the heart existential, you find the answer yourself. 

If you ask the right question, the right answer is lying in the question. 

Contrary to religion and politics, philosophy in this way doesn't give answers, but asks questions.

The Life Artist must be critical towards everything in life, your short or long hair, your dress, the way whereon you walk, the way whereon you eat, what you think, what you feel, what other people say– everything must be looked at in the critical light, where you neither justifies or condemns.

Then the mind becomes extraordinary sensitive, alive and reasonable. And such a mind allows life to flow back to the present, where the heart opens itself in love.

Only such a mind knows what a happy and real life is.

Dreams are a continuation in the sleep of the awake state´s thought-activity

As a Life Artist, you need to have another approach to dreams. Here dreams are seen as a continuation in the sleep of the awake state´s thought-activity.

In the dreams you notice that there always happens something, there happens something in the dreams just like in the awaken state´s thought-activity, a continuation, which still is part of one whole movement.

The content of the dreams has for the lifeartist not the value, which Freud ascribed it.

But the nature of the dream-activity itself requires understanding, exactly like the nature of the thought-activity requires understanding.

We pretend something, and there is in this way an unbelievable hypocrisy

What is the actual core in disorder?

Our existence is disorderly, split, we are absent, place ourselves outside, and are classifying life in different rooms, using specific perspectives; we are not a complete nature.

The core in disorder is the inner contradiction, and where there is such a contradiction in ourselves, there must be the will to power, and therefore disorder.

You can easy see, how disorderly your own life is, how the multifold desires, purposes, conclusions, intensions, are in contradiction and tear up each other: your actions are violent, and you want to live peacefully; you are self-assertive, desirous, you compete with others, and you say that you are compassionated; you are self-centred, egoistic, historical limited, and talk about an all-embracing brotherhood.

We pretend something, and there is in this way an unbelievable hypocrisy.

Meditation has nothing to do with concentration. Meditation is itself the art of life.

Meditation has nothing to do with concentration, all that which sort under the supporting exercises.

Meditation is itself the art of life. Art of life means that you are present, that you are listening and observing passive with the whole of your being, with your body, your nerves, your eyes, your ears, your mind, with the heart, completely.

It is this, which is meant with, that art of life is a philosophical way of life, something, which concerns your complete existence, the whole of your way of being in all the relationships of life.

In this complete presence – in which there is no division between the observer and life itself – you can do anything; and in such a presence there is no resistance.

Can the human being react free, and at once: This is what happens in meditation.

When a person is aware of a danger, there happens an instant action; the instinctive, immediate reaction of the body and the memory.

From childhood Man has been used to meet a danger in this way, so that his being at once reacts in order to avoid physical destruction.

The Life Artist must ask, whether it in the same way is possible to act immediate, spontaneous, when something is seen - without that it happens on the bases of your historical limited background.

Can the human being react free, and at once, to any kind of distortion of the experience, and therefore act spontaneous? 

That will say an action where sensation, action and expression, are a wholeness, where they are total, and not divided in fragments?

As a Life Artist you must find out what the mind is doing in relation to your problems.

What is the function of the mind? Is the function of the mind reason? And in that case: does it then function reasonable and clearly?

In order to find out you must, as a Life Artist, know what the mind in fact is doing. What is it that engages your mind? As we have seen it is usually the thoughtprocess. If the thoughtprocess is quiet, the mind is no longer present as we know it. When the mind is not engaged by thinking, conscious or unconscious, the mind shortly said is something else than what we usually understand by it.

As a Life Artist you must therefore find out what the mind – the mind, which you daily make use of, and also the mind about which existence most of us know nothing – is doing in relation to your problems. You must observe the mind as it is, and not as you think it ought to be.

As a Life Artist you must find out what the mind is doing in relation to your problems.

When the Ego is not present, then Man, and the Otherness, can fill each other out.

The reactions on the challenges of the world are an expression of Man as a natural being.

On the other hand they are also an expression of the historical limitation of Man, and therefore the instance, which under various forms makes it possible for the Ego to continue. The historical limitation is time and its images, the perspective you have on yourself and the world. The Ego is this historical limitation. The Ego is therefore a philosophical ego.

In such a process there can´t be any openness, devotion and love. Love can only arise when the Ego is not present.

When the Ego is not present, then Man, and the Otherness, can fill each other out. This happens in the devotion. True love is devotion, where you in self-forgetful openness give yourself away with the whole of your being.

That is the reason why the Life Artist must understand the whole of the process of mind, which is the thinking´s process.