The meaning of life is to express the human essence

Only meditative-existential you can be in the Now.

The passive listening presence is meditation.

Meditation is to see completely with the heart and the mind; that is to say: with the whole of your essence.

The human essence is therefore meditation.

Meditation is the self-forgetfull openness for, and absorption in life itself.

The meaning of life is therefore to express the human essence.

Human essence is therefore an appearance-form of the Now.

Why? Because the essence in the human life is meditation.

Total existential presence in the Now is meditation.

The essence is therefore one and the same with existence; and this realized oneness is precisely meditation, or the wholeness of the observer and the observed.

The cause of the inner emptiness is the desire after becoming something

The more emphasis which is being put on the outer greatness, the greater is the inner guilt over unlived life.

But freedom from this guilt is not asceticism.

The cause of this inner emptiness is the desire after becoming something; and no matter what you do, then this emptiness can never be filled out.

You can escape from it, whether it happens in a clumsy way, or in a more cunning way; but you can´t move further away from it than from your own shadow.

You perhaps don´t want to look into this emptiness, but it is there nevertheless.

Neither those ornaments things can give you, nor the suit of penance, which the soul can dress in, can conceal this inner poverty.

Meditation is a downward movement, not an upward movement

Meditation is, as I understand it with reference to Art of Life, a downward movement.

And by the way I believe, that this is a fact concerning all spiritual practice, when practised correct.

At first you release yourself from the personal images, here next from the collective images.

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

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

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You must quite simply see that desire is a contradiction

There is always a contradiction in the desire.

You desire contradictionary things - which doesn´t mean, that you must destroy the desire, oppress, tame or sublimate it - you must quite simply see that the desire itself is a contradiction.

It is not the things you desire, but the nature of the desire itself, which is a contradiction.

And you must understand the nature of the desire before you can understand the conflict.

With ourselves we are in a condition of contradiction, and this condition is created by the desire - this, that we strive after lust, and try to avoid pain.

Will to Power is not psychological will, but perspectivism and nihilism

The Will to Power is a concept which comes from the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.

It is entirely an expression of the philosophical desire in the thinking, not an expression of reality or life itself.

It is an expression of the thinking´s desire after controlling truth, happiness and reality. It is therefore I call it a philosophical desire.

It it not enough to designate it as a psychological desire, but a perspectivism which ends in nihilism.

Meaning is an utterance of freedom

As despair has a relationship with loss, then meaning has a relationship with fullness.

The meaning in what you do is filling, lifting up and expanding.

Meaning owns a freedom which does that it can´t be emptied out; it is so to speak inexhaustible.

Meaning is therefore also an utterance of freedom.

Meaning opens your existence, or it is an opening of your existence towards the present, the now.

Is life not all the time something new?

What is, after all, life?

Is it not all the time something new?

It is something, which constantly is changed and is creating a new feeling.

Today is never the same as yesterday, and that is the beauty of life.

This new is the unique in life, a unique presence, which the Jewish philosopher and mystic Martin Buber called The Eternal Thou.

The old leaves more and more dregs; that will say memory

The challenge is always new.

It is only the reaction to the challenge, which is a recurrence of the past.

The old leaves more and more dregs; that will say memory, and it is in this accumulation that the spectator, the theorist, the doubter, divides himself from himself and the surroundings, from the challenge, from the experienced.

The prompting gets discovery to function

If your real interest not yet has become awakened, and if the prompting to find out is present, then you will find out, not by constantly seeking after an answer, but to be inquring, clear and warm in your prompting.

Then you will see, that when you are awake, there is a sharpened attention in which you receive any hints from the hidden interest, and that dreams also play a part.

In other words: the prompting gets the mechanism of discovery to function.

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 - 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.

Unreality is absence of something for the individual hidden

The thinker is himself absent.

The experience of absence is the experience of, that what happens around you, and with you, doesn´t concern you, that you are  not in it, not are involved.

You are  not here, nor other places, but outside in the meaning absent.

You are shortly said not present.

That will say that your actual being is hidden for you, you are ignorant about what you are.

Unreality is something for the individual hidden. It is something for the individual hidden. It is a specific state, a suffering emptiness, a being outside. You are not your activity. You are something else than your activity, or rather: your activity is something else than yourself.

Unreality is weightlessness, that existence is without weight, which Milan Kundera was seeking to depict in his novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being: the lacking presence, and the weightlessness.

The relationship is a mirror in which you can discover yourself

The relationship is a mirror in which you can see yourself.

This mirror can either distort or expose the truth about yourself.

Most of us use in the relationship, in the mirror, what we preferably want to see, but we don´t see what is real.

We like to condemn, justify, compare, or escape, and rather live in the past or the future, than to to see the relations in which we are in the moment.

In this way the present is, as the philosopher Blaise Pascal said, only becomes used by the past as a passage to the future, and therefore the relationship - which is something that is in the moment, and not in the past or the future - becomes meaningless, wherefore there arises unreality and absence.

Self-realization is not the desire after self-realization

Why shall we necessarily have what we want?

Is it not because we think we have the right for it?

In political philosophy they have made much out of claiming that the right of ownership is a "natural" right, whereby you can justify waste and exploitation.

There are pieces of Rold Forest which are "private" where other people not are allowed entrance.

Other "rich" people can buy a star or a planet if rich enough (I wonder -  if there are people living there - they would agree with that).

I just wait to see that the air I breath, that a bird´s song in the morning, and my mommy´s love, now have become the right of ownership by some "rich" guy, which I therefore not are allowed entrance to anymore.

A bit in the same way they have claimed, that conclict is something "natural", whereby you can justify violence and war.

And the ideology of needs is claiming the same: the desire after satisfying your needs, not only your basic needs, but also esteem-needs and self-actualizing needs, is something entirely "natural" and a human right.

The problem is that there is a difference between actually being a self-realized person and the desire after being such a person.

To reduce the whole thing to needs is a distortion of what self-realization is all about.

Beauty is reason and feeling as a wholeness

In order to be able to see truth you must use reason, but you must also be able to feel.

You must be endowed by passion after discovering, and having a great energy.

When you observe a cloud, or the beauty in the light on a tree, there must be passion, there must be intensity.

In this intensity - this passion - there is no sympathy or antipathy at all, and therefore not the feelings that follow these.

The intensity is not personal, not yours or mine.

Existential movement is connected with Man, with identity and personality

We know movement and change from the outside world.

Existential movement is connected with Man, with identity and personality.

It arises in the individual person´s relationships with the surrounding world.

Movement has to do with human growth and development; it is to be integrated in something which happens, not in whatever, but in something which folds the essence of Man out, contrary to stagnation and paralysation.

It is to have your identity with you in a movement which fills you, enriches you, favours you, promotes you.
Movement is to be involved.

It is an ontological phenomenon, a characteristic of being, not a phenomenon of the mind.

The will is violence

The will is violence.

The will is a result of the wish, the desire after becoming something; and the desire is of nature aggressive, dominating.

The will to achieve something, and the will to fight - is the cause of the conflict in our inner, to the dualism, that causes the struggle in our inner.

In Man there exists an unnatural fight to change what you are into something else

In Man there is the natural fight in order to keep alive - that is to say: the fight for food, clothes and shelter.

But there is also an unnatural fight in order to change what you are to something else: the fight of the will to power; all the time with the consequence, that you don´t understand what you are, that the reality about yourself is being completely hidden.

You must see your images of life as relative, and thereby disentangle from them

In order to find out whether it is possible for the mind completely to disentangle itself from its historical limitation, you must have the freedom to inquire and discover.

That will say that you must see your images of life as relative, and thereby disentangle from them.

And this also means freedom from romantic possibility-images, which are just as relative as the necessity-images. 

Philosophical counseling offers an alternative way to freedom

Philosophical counseling offers an option to a path to freedom: the art of life, the existential training of the mind the heart, where Man as a Life Artist begins to experiment, to investigate, to discover his existence as a whole.

If you from the start claim that it is impossible, you have of course no chance of breaking through.

That you claim this can be due to, that your experience is very small or very large, or it can just be a faith, which you are accepting.

But when you claim this, then it means you deny that you at all can seek anything, that you at all can investigate, inquire or discover anything.

You deny the actual possibility of philosophy.

What we mean by consciousness is clearly enough the thinking´s procss

All motives , intensions, sorrows, joys, are within the area of consciousness.

But all this is a movement in the thinking.

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

As a Life Artist you must study the whole structure of the thinking

As a Life Artist you must study the whole structure of the thinking, and see what place the thoughts has in your life, see where they aren´t a nesessity,

Then you might discover, that the mind can function in a reasonable way, both when the mind isn´t active, and when the thought has to be active.

The difference between loneliness and alonebeing

The unhappy loneliness, with its anxiety and pain, is isolation, the Ego´s inevitable act.

This isolationprocess develops, whether it is extensive or narrow, confusion, conflicts and sorrow.

Isolation can never give rise to alonebeing: the one condition must give way for the other.

The unhappy loneliness is isolation, whereas the happy alonebeing is complete self-forgetful openness for, and absorption in life itself.

Only this is freedom.

In the deep, deep silence of the forest

When you walk in the forest you are alone.

But the one who is alone is flexible and therefore persistent.

Only those who are alone can co-operate with that which is without cause, the immense.

In the one who is alone, life is timeless; in the one who is alone, there is no death.

The one who is alone can never cease with being, be cause alonebeing is life itself, the eternal flowing alonebeing of life itself.

The philosophy of Socrates is important in our egoistical time

In the spirit of Socrates you will in philosophical counseling claim, that the Man, who says he knows, doesn´t knows.

And that perhaps especially applies to a time, where one after the other place themselves on a pedestal, and are claiming, and are claiming they have clairvoyant abilities, can read thoughts, talk with the dead, or have other abilities and religious expericences.

All this has nothing to do with the unknown.

The wish to become something is the beginning of all complications

The wish to become something is the beginning of all complications.

Driven by a still increasing desire after becoming something, inwards or outwards, we accumulate or enounce, cultivate or deny.

As we see time steal everything, we cluster to the timeless.
This struggle after becoming something, positive or negative, through attachment or separation, can never be solved by any outside gesticulation, discipline or method.

But the understanding of this struggle will,natural and spontaneus, evoke freedom from the inner and outer accumulation, and the conflicts it is implying.

Striving after becoming something creates anxiety

Striving after becoming something is based on anxiety and and creates anxiety, the anciety of being or not being - the conflict of Hamlet.

To live and to become something are two different things.

Life perhaps  involves a striving in technical or physical sense, but what we consider here is the self-production, the philosophical becoming, the belief that you can create yourself and your values through thinking, and the illusion of this; this that you on the background of anxiety is seeking to escape from what you are, into ideals about being something else.from your values, for example.

When the mind is in constant activity it sucks the energy and life away from the present

Energy and matter have their origin in life itself.

Therefore mind also has it´s origin in the stream and movement of life.

But when the mind is in constant activity it sucks the energy and life away from the present, and transforms past and future into reality, and reality into emptiness.

The mind makes itself independent as an ego, which is standing outside the stream of life, which is in conflict with the facts.

And this affects the brain cells, which are weared out and reduced in this eternal inner talk.

In order to be able to do that you must be yourself present – not only wander absent through life

In order to be able to do that you must be yourself present – not only wander absent through life – but be present in that very moment, where there is a challenge, present with the whole of your being, as you listen passively with the heart and with the mind, so that you clearly see and feel what there is said – regardless of whether it is an abuse, or flattery, or an opinion about you.

You will then discover, that there not at all is any image.

Children´s nature is much more watchful, much more curious and eager to learn

Philosophy begins with, that human beings are wondering.

We all know, how curious children are.

Children want to know something and see much more, than the adults do, they catch sight of things, which the adults not even put notice to.

Children´s nature is much more watchful, much more curious and eager to learn.

They are lost in being.

It is therefore children have so easy learning maths, geography or whatever subject.

When we become older, our mind progressively becomes crystalized, it stiffens, becomes heavy and dull.

We stagnate.

We begin to have prejudices about everything and everybody.

The mind is no longer open, to any problem we have taken position in advance.

We are lost in becoming, or in the will to power.

There is only mutual connection with the observed when there isn´t any inner observer and calculator

Truth is coming when there is a non-linguistic presence, an observance and a love, which are without conclusions, without explanations, without words.

The inner spectator, theorist or doubter, are constructed by words, which again are manifestations of a self-image.

The Ego consists of explanations, conclusions, condemnations, justifications etc.

There is only mutual connection with the observed when there isn´t any inner observer and calculator, when you in self-forgetful way are open for, and engaged in, the observed.

Only then there is understanding, freedom from the problem.

Is there at all any conflict when you are yourself present, and understand what you are?

Can your mind stop dividing - by placing ifself outside, and being absent in ideals - and instead be yourself present, remain what you are?

Is there at all any conflict when you are yourself present, and understand what you are?

Both the denial, and the confirmation of the Ego, continues the Ego-process

The question for the Life Artist is whether you can neutralize this inner calculator, which is the Ego – not the inner center for a certain desire, a certain lust or longing - but the whole structure of the desire, of longings and of hopes, which always bring along the anxiety of becoming disappointed.

The more disappointed you are, the more you strengthen the Ego.

The Ego is the one who says: ”It is no use with me!”; or: ”Wonderful me!”

Both the denial, and the confirmation of the Ego, continues the Ego-process.

In order to discover the answer to a question, you must study the problem without formulating an answer

In order to discover the right answer to a question, you must in philosophical counseling study the problem without formulating an answer.

Life is here not seen as a line of conclusions, of one or the other explanation.

Life is seen dialogical as a line of challenges and reactions, or a line of questions and answers, and it is up to yourself, how you are answering.

This requires an immensely self-knowledge, which isn´t gained through tricks or gurus, but through yourself, in your own daily actions and thoughts.

If the mind can empty itself for the known, it is something completely new

Provided that the mind can empty itself for the known, for your perspective, your images of life, then it is something entirely else; then the mind is something new, and therefore, according to Taoism, immortal.

Passion is freedom from the Ego, the centre for all lack of fulfilment

In lust (which can´t be compared with philosophical refined pleasure) there always is an ingenious form of striving – there is seeked, hunted, requested, fighted – so that you can preserve it, achieve it.

In passion there is not the slightest lack of fulfilment, and therefore there can neither be disappointment nor pain.

Passion is freedom from the Ego, the centre for all lack of fulfilment.

Passion requires nothing, because it is.

When you are the situations present it is possible to reach beyond them

In order to be able to discover something, you must observe yourself, but not on the bases of a certain image of life, or a certain thought-system, nor from some certain political or religious viewpoint.

You must completely reject all this, so that the mind is free and is able to be aware of itself in relation with the society, in relation with ourselves, with our families, with our neighbour.

When you are the situations present it is possible to reach beyond them.

In order to see clearly there must be freedom from prejudices, conclusions, concepts, and ideals

In order to, that you in philosophical counseling can investigate something, there must be freedom so that you can see; that is to say: there must be freedom from prejudices, conclusions, concepts, ideals, preconceived opinions.

Only then you can really see, wherein your question, or problem, consists.

In creative emptiness reality and truth can be discovered, or received, it is one and same

Creative emptiness is the condition where the mind is completely released from your perspective, from images of any kind, and the ideas, symbols and conceptions, which are their manifestations.

The known has stepped aside for the benefit of the unknown, the beauty of creation.

Everything is new, unnamed, unformed, non-linguistic presence.

The mind is pure, fresh, young, innocent; completely open and receiving.

The mind is awake and the heart is open, awareness and love in one.

And in this creative emptiness reality and truth can be discovered, or received, it is one and same.

All opposites contain the seed to their own opposites

When we try to be something else than what we are, we cultivate the self-contradiction.

The anxiety of what you are grows the illusion about its opposition, and by striving after the opposite we hope to avoid anxiety, but this becoming something has no being, it is therefore the anxiety of nothing.

Synthesis is not, as Hegel claimed, the cultivation of an opposition; there arises no synthesis through resistance, because all opposites contain the seed to their own opposites.

Conflict arises because we cling to pleasant images and fight to avoid painful images

Always the image originates from that, which has happened in the past.

If it is a pleasant image, we cling to it.

If it is a painful image, we want to get rid of it.

In this way the desire arises, the will to power: one image we want to keep, the other we want to reject.

All this brings along conflict.

But if you are all this present in passive listening, you can observe it clearly without keeping it or pushing it away, without commenting, prioritising or sorting, only observing and feeling, and then you yourself can find out what it is all about.

Then you don't live as shown by some psychotherapist, priest or politician.

The task for the Life Artist is about discriminating between language and reality

The task for the Life Artist is about discriminating between language and reality.

The Dominican mystics call this steps discriminatio, the ability to discriminate between how the energy is used temporal or religious.

And despite what kinds of visions you may have, then it is still something temporal, or relatively.

The Orientals call it viveka, discrimination, the ability to use your will on that part of the energy, you can steer yourself, and steer it towards exercises, prayer, mantras, meditation, instead of towards career, worldliness, self-unfolding, as the self-help industry is teaching people to do.

The guest and the philosophical counselor must discover the answers together

The guest and the philosophical counselor must together try to find the answer to the guest´s question.

If the philosophical counselor gives an answer, it would not be the guest´s discovery; it would only be on the verbal plane, and therefore altogether useless.

The guest must be guided in how he himself can find it, and that will say that he must experience it; it is this, which is so important.

To discover is to experience, and the guest and the philosophical counselor must discover it together.

We know the memories about continuity, but the condition where there no continuity is, we don't know

Identity as some images of life, as experience, belief and knowledge, as a striving after becoming something, a will to power, a will to control, master, frame, no matter on what level, is hard to understand and bring up in the light.

We only know continuity, we have no knowledge about non-continuity.

We know the experiences, the memories about the continuity of the events, but the condition where there no continuity is, we don't know.

We call it death, the unknown, the secretiveness etc., and by giving it a name, we hope to be able to maintain it, which again is the desire after continuity, the permanent.

Meditative perception consists in, that you fully and totally exist; where you are what you are

Through the understanding of what it is to meditate, the Life Artist perhaps becomes able to obtain a complete perception of life, without any division and separation.

A perception which consists in, that you fully and totally exist; where you are what you are in progress with; where there are no inner spectator, theorist or doubter within you.

As a Life Artist you must push desire aside; the desire after identification with a person or an idea or a thing

As a Life Artist you must push 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.

When things are connected with existential necessity they take unnatural forms

The natural needs of our senses have their place, and when you understand them, they don't take the unnatural forms, which they get when they are connected with existential necessity; that is to say: a self-made necessity in order to be able to be alive, to exist, and to have an identity.

As long as Man lives in the corridor of opposites, he will inevitably waste his energy

If you, not as an abstraction, but actually, can push all ideals aside and only concern yourself with the facts – which is for example is violence – there happens no waste of energy.

As long as Man lives in the corridor of opposites, he will inevitably waste his energy, and in that way he can´t change.

You must therefore as a Life Artist sweep all ideals, all opposites, aside.

The mind, as we know it, has belief and knowledge as historical background. Could it change?

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.

In the one who is alone, life is timeless; in the one who is alone, there is no death

That which is alone is flexible and therefore persistent.

Only those who are alone can co-operate with that which is without cause, the immense.

In the one who is alone, life is timeless; in the one who is alone, there is no death.

The one who is alone can never cease with being, because alonebeing is life itself, the eternal flowing alonebeing of life.

The thinker´s destiny consists in being a result of his thinking

The thinker consists of his thoughts.

The self-deception is lying in believing, that there is a separate being, a thinker, which is of another kind than the thoughts he is thinking.

It is the thinking that has produced the thinker, given him continuance in the middle of the thinking´s inconstancy.

The thinker is the thinking´s refuge, and the thinker places himself on different planes of continuance.