The present is never seized, though the understanding exclusively is lying herein

The future is always a becoming.

The present is therefore never seized, though the understanding exclusively is lying herein.

You can´t be present in the Now through the thinking´s past and future. This you only can meditative-existential; that is: when you are yourself, and the surroundings, present in passive listening.

As long as there is a becoming something, there is conflict and anxiety, and becoming is always the past, which uses the present to become something, to control and form: an expression of the will to power.

In this process of becoming Man becomes caught in the net of time.

And time will not be able to solve human problems, because such precisely originate from time.

We are used to be told what we shall think, but we don´t know what thinking is

In philosophy as an art of life it is not so important what you ought to think about each problem, or how your attitude ought to be facing the problem, but what means something is how you think about it.

We are used to be told what we shall think, in which way we shall solve a problem, but we don´t know what thinking is.

In art of life it is therefore very important to find out, what rational thinking is, because the various problems, which appear, the problems we constantly meet, require rational thinking.

In art of life such a rational thinking is a self-forgetful way of thinking.

If you can penetrate your idea-complex, the timeless experience can take place

First when you can penetrate the massive idea-complex, which is standing in the way for you – and that will say the Ego, which in order to experience itself as partly or completely continual, has split ifself in the observer and the observed – first when you reach beyond this, when the thought is completely in peace, the timeless experience can take place.

And then you will know what truth is: the ultimate expression of reason.

The brain has evolved from the primitive state, and carries in itself the instinct of the animal

It is obvious that we still have a behaviour, which arises from the instinct of the animal.

This appears especially in situations of crises, such as for instance war, where all civilization and moral suddenly momentarily disappear.

The brain has evolved from the primitive state, and carries in itself the instinct of the animal. Consequently there is something innate.

In addition to this you can say, that regardless how sophisticated, intelligent, technical, the brain is, it can only function within the frames of time and space.

The brain has also got accustomed to the evolution´s idea about becoming something (the will to power).

But you could ask the question: What happens if it suddenly realizes the nature of the will to power?

Choosing is a part of the movement from the past, to divide, to say yes and no, to accept and deny

To be the movement of time present in passive listening - the thinking, which projects itself in philosophical sense - is not an option.

Choosing is a part of the movement from the past, to divide, to say yes and no, to accept and deny, accentuate and exclude, to remember and throw out projects, to produce self-images and world-images - the whole of the historical being of Man, the thinking´s philosophical activity.

To Man himself there isn´t a special Western or Eastern way of thinking, but the individual creates these divisions

The division of human beings, in for instance Westerners and Orientals, is only geographical determined and entirely random.

It has no essential importance. Whether we live east or west for a certain border, whether we are brown, dark, white or yellow, then we all still are human beings who are suffering and hoping, fearing and believing: there is unhappiness and happiness here as well as there.

There is not a special Western or Eastern way of thinking when it comes to Man, but the individual person creates these divisions on the basis of his background, which is limited by the images of time.

An openness-variant of meditation implies, that you omit judging yourself or others as good or bad

A so-called openness-variant of meditation implies, that you omit judging yourself or others as good or bad.

You don’t judge.

You wait forming yourself a certain opinion and instead you direct the awareness towards the consequences of what is happening.

You have for example made a mistake, but instead of branding yourself because of what you have made, you examine the consequences of the mistake, and what can be done to reduce the adverse effects.

Don´t think about, what you ”ought” or ”not ought” to do, what is ”right” or ”wrong”, ”just” or ”unjust”.

You rather ought, as well as you can, to concentrate about doing what the situation actual requires, use the existent possibilities and act in a way, which feels natural.

Suicide is an irrational action

Suicide is an irrational action; it is an action which clearly shows that you have reached a point where you are so isolated, where your identity is so fragmented and without wholeness, that you no longer feel that you belong here, where you are shut away from, or shut inside, without belongings, place and living space, and where there seems to be no way out.

But does there actually occur anything in life, in any human relationship, which you can´t find a way out of?

Meditation as an Art of Life is a downward movement, a foundation of ground connection

In Meditation as an Art of Life you first release yourself from the personal images in time, secondly from the collective images in time.

Herewith you give energy and life back to reality and presence.

You can also say that it is a downward movement, a foundation of ground connection, a being with weightiness and grounding.

When you have lost the Now´s unmoveable being, you are absent in time and opposites

The images of time (both universal, collective and personal) are form-formations of energy, a kind of matter, and they occur both in your body and around you in the movement of nature.

Matter is energy and energy is the movement in nature, an outgoing movement and a back-movement.

This double movement implies some universal laws of energy, which primary purpose fundamentally are to create balance in the Wholeness.

When you have lost the Now´s unmoveable being, and are absent in time and opposites, your energy will build ifself up in wavecrests, which therefore must break in troughs of the waves.

It will swing out in extremes, which will be balanced through contra-balances.

It will invest the life-challenges in past reaction-patterns, and leave behind situations unfinished.

It will build ifself up in inappropriate pulse beats, move outwards, circulate and return to its starting point.

In the consciousness´ identification with thinking and time, the Ego is created

In the consciousness´ identification with thinking and time, the Ego is created.

And the Ego uses the negationpower of time to make resistance.

The resistance consists in problematizing life itself by comparing with earlier and hoping, desiring or fearing something else.

And in this evaluation-process the Ego splits up the universal images.

It identifies ifself with one pole in a pair of opposites, for which reason the polar partner is expelled.

In this dividing process the collective and personal images arise, and herewith all the disagreements.

Our language is reflections of the universal images in the great vision of the creation

Our language, all our fictional productions, is reflections of the universal images in the great vision of the creation.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, then a library therefore is a magical room with a lot of bewitched spirits.

They wake up when we call them.

When we open a book an esthetic occurrence is happening.

Because we are parts of the movement of time - which with it´s images both flows through us, and around us in nature - then the same book changes, as we changes.

The text itself is after all also the River of Time, or Heraklit´s River.

Language is in that way an esthetical creation.

When you have negative feelings for other people, then try to think about people, who really have shown you love

When you have negative feelings for other people (or life itself), then try to think about people, who really have shown you love, your mother and father, your grandmother or grandfather.

Then let the heartfeeling arise in your heart, so that you are being filled with gratitude.

Open your heart and let the love flow out and expand towards people whom you have negative feelings for, or towards life itself.

The simple life is a life, which our consumer-society will sneer of

Every exertion of the will (ambition, project, concentration) is in the meditative art of life inappropriate.

It´s therefore the wisdomtraditions always have recommended the simple life.

It is in connection with this, that you probably will meet the first big obstacle in your meditative quest.

The simple life is namely a life, which our consumer-society will sneer of.

In a consumer-society the ideal life is a constant growing consume-capacity, and therefore a life where you all the time have to be future-oriented and in progress with new projects.

So if you seriously want to go in depth with the meditative art of life, but don´t feel you have the time for it, that your life don´t allow you to relax your will and your projects, yes, then it is necessary that you take your life up to consideration.

Either you begin to simplify your life – which can imply big changes – or else you continue as always.

What we mean about consciousness, is, on a superficial level of the mind, the thinking´s process

All motives, intensions, desires, pleasures, misgivings, inspirations, longings, expectations, sorrows, joys, are within the area of consciousness, but all this is a movement in the thinking.

What we mean about consciousness, is in this way, on a superficial level of the mind, clearly enough the thinking´s process.

Problems continue exactly as long as we from an idea from the past, are hoping to solve it in the future

Problems only exist in time; that will say: when we meet a challenge in an incomplete way.

This incomplete meeting with the challenge creates the problem.

When we meet a challenge partly, fragmented, or try to escape it – that will say: when we meet it without being present – then we create a problem.

And the problem continues exactly as long as we are the problem absent in past or future, as long as we, on the background of an idea from the past, are hoping to solve it in the future.

Whatever the philosophical counselor says, is not a doctrine, a creed, a therapy, or an attempt of persuasion

Whatever the philosophical counselor says, is not a doctrine, a creed, a therapy, or an attempt of persuasion.

Either the guest and the philosopher meet in an understanding of this, or they don´t meet at all.

And if the guest doesn´t wish to put questions to his images of life, to his preconceived conclusions, yes, then the person neither is suitable for philosophical counseling.

Don´t just give answers to your images of life – investigate them!

To leave out your images of life doesn´ t mean, that you throw them totally away, but that you see the relative in them.

This also means, that you not just shall give answers to them, but that you go into an investigation of these images themselves.

Without the emptiness in the nature of the mind, there can´t be content

The mind, in which is the brain, the thoughts, the feelings, and any subtle emotion or fantasy, is, according to the Buddhists, an extraordinary thing.

All its content doesn´t create the mind, and yet without them the mind is not.

The mind is more than what it contains.

Without the mind the contents would not be; without the emptiness in the nature of the mind, there can´t be content, just like that it is the emptiness in a pot, which makes possible, that it can contain water.

The contents exist because of the emptiness.

The intellect - the thoughts, the feelings, all consciousness - have their existence in the total emptiness of the mind.

A tree is not the word, nor a leaf, branches or roots; the wholeness of them is the tree and yet the tree is none of these things.

Love is not geographical determined, it is not hold in honour on one continent, while it is denied on the other

Love is not geographical determined, it is not hold in honour on one continent, while it is denied on the other.

When individual persons in this way divide mankind, it is often because of economical reasons or ideological beliefs, and it happens with the purpose of exploitation.

We have solved almost all technical problems, but at the same time human problems still flourish

We today have a peculiar situation.

We have solved almost all technical problems, a number of countries have democracy with large political freedom, but at the same time the human problems still flourish, and the attempt to solve them technically, seems to have brought about a condition of total confusion, of fragmentation, decay of values, consumerism.

A condition, which is spreading globally.

The Life Artist as a communicative being seeks to understand the wholeness, and not only a part of it

In philosophy as an art of life Man is seen as a complete process.

The Life Artist as a communicative being seeks to understand the wholeness, and not only a part of it, regardless how important this sometimes can be.

At the same time it is the Life Artist himself, who discovers his own behaviour.

The Life Artist is not an object of study for others, in the way as it always must be in behaviorism.

The Life Artist is a unity of experience and being.

All stimulations look like each other: they are expressions of the desire after escaping from what you are

Through outer stimulation Man is reduced to a sense impression.

There are several different forms of stimulation, and the importance they get corresponds closely to the person´s conditions, to his images of life.

But in one respect all stimulations look like each other: they are expressions of the desire after escaping from what you are, from the daily routine, from a human relationship which no longer is alive, and from knowledge, which always looses its freshness.

No more than we can place ourselves outside life, no more can the thinker place himself outside the thought

The thinking is seeing itself as something passing, in constant change, and therefore it produces the thinker as a constant entity, as separate from the thought, different from it.

Then the thinker works in on the thought, divides, accepts and denies, accentuates and excludes.

But all the time there is only the thinking.

No more than we can place ourselves outside life, no more can the thinker place himself outside the thought.

It is an illusion, a self-deceit.

Stagnation is a lack of ability to, or possibility for, being fully alive

Stagnation is in its actual form blocking, fixation, paralysing.

Stagnation is a lack of ability to, or possibility for, being fully alive. Life ends, is stopping up, of irrelevant reasons.

Stagnation leads to obduracy, drying, lifelessness. There comes something grey, sad, colourless, monotonous, over the individual person´s life.

The same is applying for the individual person´s world. Stagnation is connected with, that also the world, or parts of it, becomes grey, sad or monotonous.

Lifelessness in the individual person corresponds with a life-lessness in his world. Habits and tedious repetitions take over life. The life rhythm decays to stereotypy.

The individual person is fixated in specific patterns. 

Constantly Man seeks to build bridge between what you are and what you ought to be

The person, who only has some images of life, but no philosophical life-practice, seeks to build bridge between the Ego and something else; the Ego, with all its ambitions, initiatives and contradictions, and the other, which either is the ideal, the formula, the concept, or the society.

Constantly Man seeks to build bridge between what you are and what you ought to be.

And precisely herein there is contradiction and conflict, and therefore are all energy, vitality, and urge to live, wasted.

When you clearly are seeing everything violence means, then you are free from it

If you see a thing very clear, without distortions, is there then any use of choosing?

There are no alternatives; alternatives only exist when you shall choose between two physical roads – you can walk the one road or the other.

But alternatives exist as well in the mind, which is confused and irrational; therefore it is in discord with itself, and its actions are violent.

Shakespeare´s play Hamlet is an illustration of such a mind. It is the mind, which practises violence, which says that it wants to live peacefully, but when it, as nature, reacts to challenges, then it practises violence (physical or psychological).

But when you quite clearly are seeing everything violence means, from the most raw, to the most refined, forms of violence, then you are free from violence. And that is the culmination of reason.

We give answers but we rarely investigate the ideas behind

We are used to give answers, to analyze, to argue, to express our opinions, but we rarely investigate the images of life, from which we give these answers.

However it is precisely this the philosophical counselor introductory will do, by putting them into question, to show the relative in them, the historical limitation, the problem with time, its consequences for our existential unhappiness and happiness, the discrepancy between idea and conduct of life.

To realize the nature of the mind is the same as realizing all thing´s nature

The nature of the mind isn´t completely related to the mind.

It is not the mind, but precisely the nature of the mind.

It is in reality all thing´s nature, and that to realize the nature of the mind is the same as realizing all thing´s nature.

And to meditate is to bring the mind home to this nature, to become enlightened, and released from suffering.

You can´t see completely as long as you observe life on the bases of a certain viewpoint

To see what is possible in the highest form implies that you must find out, what it will say to see something as a whole.

You can´t see completely as long as you observe life on the bases of a certain viewpoint, or on the bases of a special experience, which you place very high, or on the bases of some acquired knowledge, which is your historical background, the Ego.

In the process of becoming, you are a living dead

The process of what you are becoming what you want to be, is a never-ending process, and therefore the conflict is never-ending.

And all this time you don´t live, see or feel.

You are a living dead.

And this is connected with a constant feeling of guilt, which you can´t place anywhere.

The thought is never completely free because it has its roots in the past

The thought is never completely free because it has its roots in the past, which again is based on both personal and collective images.

The thought is therefore never new.

Freedom of choice is therefore impossible, because it is the thinking, which is active when you are choosing.

The freedom, which exists when you make true discoveries, is not freedom to do what you want, or freedom to unfold, to become something, choosing, or freedom to think what you want, or act after your wishes.

It is a sorrow to realize what you are, but not to realize it is the greatest sorrow

It is, as a Life Artist, a big sorrow to realize what you are.

But not to realize it is the greatest sorrow.

And then death becomes terrible, as Tolstoy has depicted it in Ivan Iljitsch´ Death.

Ivan Ilyich is lying in the deathbed and can´t let go of life because of mortal dread.

He screams three days and nights through.

Not until he realizes, that the life he'd lived, hadn´t been an actual life, yes, that he in fact never has lived at all, not until then he can let go of life, and reconcile himself with death.

In desire there is both defence and surrender, and therefore conflict

Now and then you change - according to the strength of your desire - the image, the god, the object, of your sense impressions.

You are for instance fed up with one kind of lust, and therefore you seek a new influence, a new idea, a new symbol.

You reject the old sense impression and adopt a new, with new words, new meanings, new experiences.

You defend yourself against the old, and surrender to the new, which you consider as being superior, nobler and more satisfying.

In that way there is in the desire both defence and surrender, which is implying temptation; and naturally, when you evade from a certain symbol of desire, there is always an anxiety present, the anxiety of becoming disappointed when surrendering to the new symbol. 

Therefore desire contains conflict.

The thinking is always in a duality-conflict between self-image and world-image

The thinking is always in a duality-conflict between self-image and world-image, between my and mine, as opposition to what not is my and mine; what causes division.

These oppositional conflicts will always exist if you as a Life Artist not are the separation of the thinker and the thought present in passive listening.

Art of life is implying a complete understanding. It is a kind of communicative reason.

In philosophical counseling truth isn´t something, which can be communicated to another

A central theme in philosophical counseling is that truth not is something, which can be communicated linguistically to another.

A human must be able to receive it, and nobody can help him by giving answers.

He must come to the truth, openly, free and unexpected.

In order to find an answer to one or the other question, the guest must therefore be guided to understand the question itself, rather than just giving an answer to the question.

If the question for instance is about anxiety, the guest must be guided to understand anxiety; that is to say: the guest must understand the one who is anxious, the human who has created the anxiety, and that is himself.

The desire after experience produces the Ego

The desire after experience produces the Ego, the observer, the one who experiences, the one who accumulates and remembers.

The will to power leads to, that the observer distances himself from the observed, and that the thinker places himself outside the thought.

And this is unreality, falsehood.

You are absent from the surroundings, and absent from your thoughts, in the sense that you are on a distance from them, they have so to speak moved outside you, where you relate theorizing, timorous, or agonized to them.

Meditation is a perception where you are melting into a unified wholeness

To meditate is about seeing the whole thing, everything as a whole; that is to say: where you in self-forgetful openness are allowing the thing to fill you out.

Meditation is a presence of something, which is not hidden.

It is a presence of something evidently, something the individual has a clear understanding of.

It is a presence of something straightforward, a presence in naturalness.

It is a perception where you so to speak become drawn into the thing, and are melting into a unified wholeness, which contains middle, fullness and light.

Usually this happens in a short glimpse, inconspicuous; what you often describe as intuitive cognition.

Suddenly you understand something. There is no causal explanation for it.

Philosophy doesn't analyse the anxiety in the individual person's life, but seeks to clarify the nature of anxiety

In order to discover the cause of anxiety philosophy doesn't analyse the anxiety in the individual person's life in the way that psychology does, but is seeking to clarify the concept of anxiety, the nature of anxiety, as it is everywhere.

In addition to this philosophy investigates the anxiety as a whole – not the numerous psychological forms of anxiety, but the anxiety.

In philosophy there is only one anxiety.

Though there in the individual person's life are different causes of anxiety, developed by multifarious challenges and reactions, then anxiety still is only one in philosophical sense.

When we are dependent of things in order to satisfy our lust, they are filling too much in our lives

We have tied our thoughts and feelings to the things, so that we can´t feel happy without them: they feed our vanity, they give us social prestige, they give us means for display of force.

We use things for other purposes, than they in themselves are implying.

That we need food, clothes, shelter, is natural and not wrong, but when we are dependent of them in order to be able to satisfy our love of lust, when the things not only become a psychological necessity, but directly an existential necessity, then they are taking an all too colossal place in our lives.

That way arise the fights and the conflicts for achieving and keeping the things, which we are dependent of.

And this fight is unnatural.

To live in a world controlled by self-assertion, without being self-assertive, is to love something for its own sake

Self-assertion is a vice.

Self-assertion is a kind of self-interest, where everything turns around the Ego, and therefore makes the mind mediocre.

To live in a world, which is controlled by self-assertion, without being self-assertive, means, truly, to love something for its own sake, without seeking a reward, a result; but this is very difficult, because the whole world, all your friends, your relatives, struggle to achieve something, to accomplish something, to become something.

There must be harmony between the living function in the thought and freedom from the thought

In the higher degree that the thought is logical, sensible, healthy, objective, unsentimental, impersonally, the more effective and capable it is.

Here the Enlightenment Philosophers were right in their view of the reason.

In the sense the thought is necessary, in that sense you must use the thought in order to be able to function in life.

And still the mind must have the ability to be completely free from all kinds of distortions, so that it can find out what is true.

There must be harmony between the living function in the thought and freedom from the thought.

As long as the mind in any way is distorted it can´t possibly listen, observe, see neutral

The Life Artist must seek to understand the nature of experience, the beauty in observing, in seeing neutral as in a mirror, and in feeling deeply and incisively without seeking to achieve anything.

As long as the mind of Man in any way is distorted – by neurotic impulses and feelings, by fear, despair, by self-assertion, snobbery and striving after power – it can´t possibly listen, observe, see neutral.

But this art of seeing, of listening, of observing, is nothing you just can choose to do, and nor is it a question of thinking, which develops towards something else.

There will be anxiety as long as there is a desire of becoming something

In order to understand what you are, the duality-conflict must cease, because the negative response – to become something - is to deny the understanding of what you are.

If you as a Life Artist want to understand for instance haughtiness, you must not try to become the opposite, you must not become yourself absent in the effort of becoming something else, because this creates anxiety.

When the anxiety is removed you can be yourself present.

But it will be anxiety, and therefore absence, as long as there is a desire of becoming something.

It is very difficult for Man to observe something directly instead of through images

The past is based on the images of time, which are of a linguistic kind.

They manifest themselves as symbols.

Language itself is a symbol, and we are used to symbols: we see the tree through the image, which is a symbol for the tree, we see our neighbour through the image we have created of him.

It is apparently about the most difficult for Man, to observe something directly instead of through images, opinions, conclusions, which altogether are symbols.

In the same way symbols play a great role in dreams, and therefore dreams are so deceptive and dangerous.

The meaning of a dream is not always clear, though we realize that it consists of symbols, which we try to decipher.

When we see something, we speak so spontaneous about it, that we don´t realize, that the words also are symbols.

Constantly Man seeks to build bridge between what you are and what you ought to be

The person, who only has some images of life, but no philosophical life-practice, seeks to build bridge between the Ego and something else; the Ego, with all its ambitions, initiatives and contradictions, and the other, which either is the ideal, the formula, the concept, or the society.

Constantly Man seeks to build bridge between what you are and what you ought to be.

And precisely herein there is contradiction and conflict, and therefore all energy, vitality, and urge to live, are wasted.

The now´s facts are only a problem when seen from the thinking´s past and future

When you are sitting silent and 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.