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. 

Thinking never belongs in the Now

To think is to remove the mind from the Now, the present.

The thinking is therefore the absent.

Only meditative-existential you can be in the Now.

You can say, that meditation is a quality of the Now.

In meditation - the passive listening presence - there therefore doesn´t exist any problems, only facts.

You only understand in the Now – not tomorrow and not yesterday – always in the Now.

In this way understanding is timeless.

You can't understand the next life and next year.

To think is to remove the mind from the Now.

To have your identity in an absence is to have your identity in your country

To have your identity in an absence is to have your identity in your country, your furniture, your images, your ambitions, your respectability, your race, your peculiarities and prejudices, your obsessions.

Through all this Man wants to discover truth, God, reality.

And because Man doesn´t know how he shall disentangle from all this, he invents something, an outside power, or he gives life a special meaning.

But this is precisely unreality and falsehood.

As a Life Artist can you ask the next question: whether Man ever can change radically?

As Life Artist can you ask the next question: whether Man ever can change radically, essentially, existential, so that he can observe the world anew, with other eyes, with another heart, a completely other mind, no longer filled with hatred, resistance, racism, but a mind, which is extraordinary clear and which possesses a mighty energy, that gives life back to the present, opens the heart and fills the existence with vitality, urge to live and joy of life?

It is not self-assertion when you do something, because you love to do it

It is not self-assertion when you do something, because you love to do it.

When you write and paint – not because you want prestige, but because you love to write and paint – it is assuredly not self-assertion.

Self-assertion occurs when you compare yourself with other writers or artists, when you want to distance them.

This would be the will to power, and the will to power is self-assertion.

But it is not self-assertion, when you do something, because you really love to do it.

This is passion. And passion is love.

The essence in being outside time is eternal present and is not able to be thought

If you choose to be in the thoughts you either are ahead in the future or behind in the past.

You either think about the past in memories, sorrows, traumatic bindings, bad conscience, associations etc., or you think about the future in plans, hopes, longings, wishes, conjectures, worries.

Totally seen then the thinking´s past and future produces the images in time, a perspective on yourself and the world, the source of unreality and absence.

The essence in being outside time is eternal present and is not able to be thought.

It is memory - which always grows and increases - you must give up

What you as a Life Artist must study, understand and neutralize, is the Ego´s time-binding characteristic, which identify itself with the memories.

Strong demands, especially the lustful, is about achieving something for the Ego, and it is the memories, which gives ”me and my” an identified continuation.

The thinking, which always is in motion, always streaming, becomes, when it identifies itself with me and my, time-binding, and gives identified continuation to memory, to the Ego.

It is this memory - which always grows and increases - you must give up.

Why do humans assume so many things?

Why do humans assume so many things?

In philosophical counseling you seek to make a voyage of discovery, and investigate without knowing anything; a voyage of discovery into yourself without knowing what is good or evil, right or wrong, what there ought to be, or what there should be, only making this journey without any pack.

If you see the self-contradictory in an ideal, then the actual thing that you see it, is a rational action

If you see the self-contradictory in an ideal, then the actual thing that you see it, is a rational action.

To be the contradiction present is therefore to clean the mind for the contradiction, and this is to act.

Meditation, or art of life, is to empty out the mind completely

The content of the mind is a product of time, of that which usually is called development and cultivation; it is a product of thousand experiences, a gigantic accumulation of knowledge, of memories; therefore an aspect of Man as a historical being.

The mind is in that degree loaded with the past.

The past is based on the images in time, both the personal, collective and universal images; the reservoir, from where we get all our belief and knowledge.

All knowledge originates from the past, all experience is the past, and all memory is the accumulated result of thousand experiences – this is the known, your perspective.

When it is seen, that the mind must be silent, then the mind actually becomes silent

When it is seen, that the mind must be silent, then the mind actually becomes silent

When you realize the truth that it is only the silent mind, which can see clearly, yes, then your mind strangely enough becomes silent.

It is as seeing a danger and avoiding it.

Because when it is seen, that the mind must be completely silent, then the mind actually becomes silent.

And if it then can listen without interpretations, without that your prejudices intervene in order to distort – listens as you perhaps listen to a bird, which sings, without commenting and giving a name.

There is no being if there is a struggle for becoming something

A radical transformation only takes place in the present, in that to be in the Now.

But there is no being if there is a struggle for becoming something.

The struggle for becoming something, the will to power, is the absent, and herein there is resistance and denial, desire and resignation.

It is fairly obvious, that there is conflict in the world because there is ruling discord in ourselves

It is fairly obvious, that there is conflict in the world because there is ruling discord in ourselves; a discord which shows itself outwards in society, in the Ego´s, and the other´s, activity.

Our images of life are filled with contradictions; that is to say: the Ego with its competitive lust and anxiety, and the other, which can be the ideal about living without conflict.

Herein there are a lot of mutual contradictory wishes, goals and initiatives.

If we are aware of this tension, we can in ourselves see how mutual contradictory desires, opposite assumptions, ideas and goals, move in separately directions.

When the thinking in philosophical sense projects itself as the past and the future, the mind is becoming absent

The thought is necessary on some levels, but when the thinking in philosophical sense projects itself as the past and the future, and produces anxiety as well as secureness, the mind is becoming absent, and the inevitable result hereof is unreality, emptiness, boredom and ennui.

So in philosophical sense the thought must rest, so that the anxiety in existential sense can stop.

The clarifying function in philosophical counseling is pointing towards a self-forgetful dimension

The clarifying function in philosophical counseling is pointing towards a self-forgetful dimension, the wholeness of the observer and the observed.

It goes beyond the intra-psychic, and claims that it is in the self-forgetful dimension that the real formation happens.

Rather than personal development, you here focus on human/spiritual growth as a wholeness.

The thought-activity is a process towards reaching conclusions, and therefore the thought is never free

The Ego is memory, the many conclusions; and the thought is the reaction of the memory.

The thought-activity is in this way always a line of conclusions, or the process towards reaching conclusions, and therefore the thought is never free, it isolates itself.

It might sound as a cognition-psychological exercise, but it is all based on time and its images.

That which is finished is subject for renewal, while that which continues is of time

Our common everyday thinking is a self-producing way of thinking, it is the whole of the mind´s stream of words, images, feelings, sensations, intuitions, inner monologues, comments, logical reasoning, memories, plans, etc. etc.,  - which all are about becoming something and achieving something, and which therefore is controlled by the will to power.

This way of thinking is not renewing itself, but is repeating the same themes again and again, because it is not completed, not finished.

It is the eternal recurrence of the same, where you preserve the thoughts in a linguistic form.

The experience of the meeting in the unreal life is characterized by, that emptiness and loss slide in between

Where the experience of the meeting in the unreal life is characterized by, that emptiness and loss slide in between, and create reflections, displacement and darkness, then the experience of the meeting in the real life is characterised by fulfilment, middle and light.

Shortly said: by creation itself.

There is only real thinking, when there isn´t any reaction from the memory

We are ceasing being creative, when we imitate, when we as natural beings only reacts on the bases of memories.

Answers from the memory are usually called thinking.

But such thinking is only reactions from those preconceived conceptions, which are memory.

It is only a reaction in the brain and not real thinking.

There is only real thinking, when there isn´t any reaction from the memory.

In this awake and passionate emptiness there is creation.

And when you are in this condition all stimuli and demands of life vanish.

The whole of life is contained in each moment

As Kierkegaard said, then the moment is the atom of eternity.

Every moment is a challenge, something new, a unique presence, an eternal Thou, who speaks to us, and calls for us.

There is a crisis in the human life, when it meets the challenge in an incomplete way, when it doesn't listen.

It is absent in its historical background.

But we don´t want to see this as a crisis, and we close our eyes in order to escape from it.

That way we progressively become blind, and the crisis increases.