If you are willing to break up, it is your own task to go out on the other side

It is extremely necessary to be aware of the words, the symbols, the images, which paralyse our thoughts.

To be aware of them and find out, whether you can reach beyond them, is of great importance, if you shall live in a creative way, without stagnating.

Therefore the philosophical counselor must gently bring the guest forward to realize, that language, and therewith the guest´s images of life, one´s concepts, opinions, ideas and images, are relative and not absolute. 

One must be brought forward to the realization, that any description not is the described; you can't talk about the truth or the things in themselves.

But what you can do is to point at the door, the voyage of discovery, the philosophical life-practice.

And if the guest is willing to break up, to move towards that door, then it becomes his own task to go out on the other side.

Therefore Plato also chose to let his dialogues stop here.

Anxiety is the whole thing, and it is this wholeness you must be aware of

What is anxiety?

You have the anxiety, and you have the mind, which says: ”There must not be anxiety!”

In this way a doubleness arises.

There is the observer who places himself outside the anxiety, and makes resistance against it, sucks energy and life away from the present and into condemnation, justification, comparison; the observer who analyses, theorizes, or goes to a psychotherapist.

And there is the observed. The observed is the anxiety, and the observer places himself outside this anxiety.

In this way there immediately arises a conflict between the anxiety and the observer who is in progress with defeating this anxiety, in getting rid of this anxiety.

In other words there is resistance, which has been produced by an inner spectator, doubter or calculator, who creates a discrepancy between the observer and the observed.

Anxiety is the whole thing, and it is this wholeness you must be aware of.

The thought is a result of the past which uses the present as a passage to the future

The mind is a result of the past, which is based on time and its images.

Without the past there is no thought. 

But the thought, which is a result of the past, can't understand the present, since it only uses the present as a passage to the future.

The future is in this way always a becoming.

As Pascal claims, then the present is therefore never seized, though the understanding exclusively is lying herein.

The mind, which is passively aware, allows life and energy to flow into presence and reality

In order to be able to see truth you must be able to feel, you must be endowed by passion after discovering, and having a great energy.

When you observe a cloud and the light in this cloud, then there is beauty. Beauty is passion. In order to, that you can see the beauty in 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, which follow these.

The intensity is not personal, not yours or mine.

When there is lust there is yours or mine.

But the mind, which is passively aware, allows life and energy to flow back from the past and the future, into presence and reality.

The energy and the life, which are invested in sorrows and bindings, plans and problems, are flowing in, filling the Now, increasing the intensity and the consciousness in the Now.

We must understand ourselves as we are momentarily, without collecting experiences

In order to create a fundamental philosophical revolution in yourself, you must understand the processes of the thoughts, and of the feelings, as they reflect themselves in the relationship with others.

This is the only solution to all our problems – not to subject us more kinds of discipline, more kinds of beliefs or ideologies, or to find more spiritual teachers.

If we understand ourselves as we are momentarily, without collecting experiences - that is to say: meditative-existential - then you can experience a peace, which is not a thought-product, a peace that neither is fantasy or a condition we grow; and only in the condition of peace there can be creation.

When the thought-activity falls to calmness, the inexhaustible begins

The trained Life Artist can in himself observe how the mind´s designation happens almost at the same time as his reaction to a challenge.

The interspace - which exists between the reaction and the designation - is the observing state.

The observing state, in which you are one with the observed - where there no displacement or distortions are between the observer and the observed, but where you are in the middle of the actual - in this state there is no conflict.

The conflict is a concentration of the Ego, which places itself outside in analyses and evaluations.

But when the conflict ends, the thought-activity falls to calmness, and the inexhaustible begins.

Reality is a being, which is middle, is fullness, is lying in light

In a condition of completely peace of mind you are in a condition of timeless being, where there can be created; that is to say: where the Ego is not present – or rather, where the ego has been made transparent in the objective source that created it, like a Lotus flower on quiet water mirroring the sun.

Then your being has become real.

Reality is a being, which is middle, is fullness, is lying in light.

The middle is the quality, which is lying in, that you not are decentralized, not are beside yourself, not away from the actual.

On the contrary you are in the middle of the actual, in the middle of the stream of life, where creation takes place.

[I wrote this post in the morning. When I at noon as usual took my hiking trip in Rold Forest, I discovered the first water lillies in lake Bregnesøen. Before choosing the above photo I had a look on Monet´s water lillies, and wondered if I should choose one of them. That´s what called the coincidence of progressive karma. You might say that it could be an experience followed by speculation. But progressive karma is experience followed by realization. It´s objective, not subjective.

Read about karma in my article What is Karma? 

Here is the photo I took in the forest:

On my Facebook profile you can follow my photos in the album called Pilgrim in Rold Forest.]

Solidarity is much more important than sheer communication

Something of the most difficult is to communicate with another person.

We must linguistically communicate to each other, that is obvious, but it is for instance Martin Buber´s intention to show, that we can communicate on a much deeper plane; that is: not only linguistically, but in solidarity, where two parts meet on the same plane with the same intensity, with the same passion; only then there is real solidarity, and that is much more important than sheer communication.

The description, the image, is not the reality

When we understand that the word not is the real, that the description not is the described, the explanation not the explained, then the mind has released you from the word.

If you have created an image of yourself, then the image is pieced together by words, by thought-activity – the thought is the word.

You think about yourself as large, small, skillful, or as a genious, or whatever – you have an image of yourself.

This image can be described, it is the result of a description.

And this image has the thought created.

But the description, the image, is not the reality.

The cause of anxiety can´t be found in the content of anxiety

The cause of anxiety can´t be found in the content of anxiety.

The cause shall be found in the separation of the analyst and the analysed.

You have the existential condition, the anxiety. This is the fact, it is not in itself a problem. Then the analyst places himself outside the anxiety, analyses it in order to discover the cause of it, compares with earlier and hopes and desires something else, namely to get rid of it.

The analyst slides therewith off from the Now´s fact.

And the Now´s facts, seen from the analysts´ past or future, become a problem, anxiety-causing.

When the analyst is seeking the cause of the anxiety by comparing with earlier, and by desiring something else, he only isolates himself further, and therewith increases the anxiety.

Reality is never old

The human being who doesn´t require anything, who doesn´t strive after goals, who doesn´t seek a result with all what this is implying, such a human being is in an ongoing condition of experience.

Since everything is in movement, everything has meaning; nothing is old, nothing is charred, nothing is recurrence, because reality is never old.

To observe another human being with the past, is to observe your own perspective, and not the human being in itself

When you give something a name, you tighten it, through the name, to the past.

Therefore you observe it with eyes, which the past has affected, and that will say: not in a new way.

The past is your images of life, your perspective, and the only thing you see is your own perspective.

To observe another human being with the eyes of the past, means, that what you see, is your own perspective of this human being, and not the human being in itself.

Peoples´ difficulties are lying in, that they identify themselves with their problems

Peoples´ difficulties are lying in, that they identify themselves with their problems, and that the identification prevents the stream of thoughts and feelings.

So with identification is here meant: assumption or denial, condemnation or comparison - which distorts the understanding.

If you as an Idler are aware, you will see, that the body has its own intelligence

Let us observe the dullness, for instance in the morning, when you get up and feel terrible indolent, without feeling like doing rather much.

Why has the body become dull? Probably you have eaten too much. The last day and night you have probably – subconscious - done all kinds of stuff in order to make the body worried and lazy. And the body says: ”For god´s sake, let me be in peace for a while!” But then you will swing the whip over it, force it to be active.

But you don´t change your way of living, you will rather take a pill in order to become active.

However, if you as an Idler are aware, you will see, that the body has its own intelligence.

It requires more than a little reason to be the body´s intelligence present. You force it, you push around with it. You are used to too much meat, you drink, smoke and all the other things you very well know, but which you do nothing for in order to change.

And therefore the body loses its own original organic intelligence.

In order to, that the body can act in an intelligent way, the mind must become rational, and it must not intervene and disturb the body.

If you are the body present in passive listening, you will see how the dullness altogether changes.

If you confuse light and oneness with symbols, then this is a forgery

Where you in LSD-psychotherapy, Kundalini Yoga and altogether in most of the therapies in New Age spirituality, will seek to draw energy and content in from the collective images, then you in philosophical counseling will question whether the mind has to travel through all these dark and hidden corridors in order to come to the light.

The philosophical counselor will ask whether the mind, when it through one of these means, really is coming out in the light, whether this light then is the unknown, truth or reality, or whether the light and oneness are symbols.

If you confuse light and oneness with symbols, then this is a forgery, an inflation-creating enlargement of the Ego.

The philosophical counselor will ask, whether the light perhaps could be thought to originate from the known, from your own symbolical perspective, the recognized, and caused by search, struggle and hope.

The philosophical counselor will ask, whether you must through the burdensome process in order to discover the immeasurable, whether you can´t go around all this, and meet that which could be called reality or life itself.

How to make the impossible possible

A guest asks a philosophical counselor whether it is impossible to become free from anxiety.

The philosophical counselor must suggest that they face these questions without saying whether the change is possible or impossible. They must face it with a healthy mind that is eager after discovering, and so young that it can inquire and investigate.

That, which absorbs the guest and the counselor, is therefore how ”impossible” it is to become completely free from anxiety – and in this way you suddenly have another approach to the impossible:

The impossible has been made possible.

That which is of time, can never grasp the timeless

The self-producing thinking is a thinking, which takes place in time, where the thinker places himself outside the Now and the facts, and compares them with earlier, and desires and wants something else.

This is the unreal life, the life where you only really exist in the hope of a richer future, in the dream of a lost past, or in compensatory and consoling acts: the problem-creating source itself.

If your life shall be real, the self-producing thinking must stop.

And the whole of the art of life is about bringing this thought-activity to an end.

This is very important to understand, because the thought is a product of time, of the experiences of yesterday.

The thought is caught in the net of time, and that which is of time, can never grasp the timeless, the life which happens fully and which is in the middle of itself.

In order to be able to see something as a whole there must be no inner calculator

To see the wholeness is extremely difficult, while it is fairly easy to see a fragment.

In order to be able to see something as a whole - and that will say: to see it rational, healthy and completely - there must be no inner spectator, doubter or calculator.

There must neither be any disproportion between the feeling and its object, or between the action and its occasion.

Your life must be real, so that you fully and completely exist and the important is present.

Fully and completely to exist will say that you are what you are in action with.

Where the unreal life is characterized by, that the dreamer, the spectator, the doubter within you, slides in between, creates reflections, displacement and darkness, there the real life is characterized by fulfilment, middle and light.

In order to make the inner calculator disappear, you must be present in passive listening.

The cause of anxiety can´t be found in the content of anxiety

The cause of anxiety can´t be found in the content of anxiety.

The cause shall be found in the separation of the analyst and the analysed.

You have the existential condition, the anxiety.

This is the fact, it is not in itself a problem.

Then the analyst places himself outside the anxiety, analyses it in order to discover the cause of it, compares with earlier and hopes and desires something else, namely to get rid of it.

The analyst slides therewith off from the Now´s fact.

And the Now´s facts, seen from the analysts´ past or future, become a problem, anxiety-causing.

When the analyst is seeking the cause of the anxiety by comparing with earlier, and by desiring something else, he only isolates himself further, and therewith increases the anxiety.

The past meets the new as the recurrence of the same

The consciousness, the Ego, which is standing outside because of conflict, constitutes the complete process of experience in which something is designated and registered.

You approach the challenge, on any level, with a set of experiences, some images of life, a perspective, which manifests itself as ideas, conclusions, prejudices; that will say: you give your experience a name.

This designation gives the experience a special quality, a quality, which is connected with the name.

The name origins from the memory.

The past meets the new as the recurrence of the same. The challenge is met with memory, with the past. But the past´s reaction can´t understand the living, the new, the challenge; the past´s reaction is not sufficient, and therefore there arises conflict, and that will say ego-consciousness.

The conflict ends when this process of designation doesn´t take place.

Self-forgetful thinking, this aware and understanding presence, is the richness of life

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.

This self-forgetful thinking, this aware and understanding presence, where you have your being with you in your experience, where the experience constitutes the whole of your being´s fullness – it is this deep thought´s vibrant silence, this wordless realization, this creative spontaneity, which is the richness of life.

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

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.

Real thinking is the wholeness of the thinker and 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.

The experience of this truth is of great importance for the Life Artist.

Real thinking is the wholeness of the thinker and the thought; it is the thinking, where you are one with the thought, with your possibilities and your past, yes, the thinking, where there not at all is any inner thinker, but only the thinking, which happens in a satisfactory way.

This is the self-forgetful way of thinking.

Merely to get information or knowledge is not to learn in philosophical sense

The function of the mind is to investigate and learn.

To learn in philosophical sense doesn´t only mean to cultivate the memory, or to accumulate knowledge, but to learn to think clearly and rational without illusions, to start with facts and not with beliefs and ideals.

When the thought originates from the conclusion, you learn nothing.

Merely to get information or knowledge is not to learn in philosophical sense.

To learn in philosophical sense includes love of understanding, and love of doing a thing for its own sake.

Man has tied himself to a way of life, which leads to war, and yet he wants peace

In philosophy as an art of life an investigation of dualism will be an investigation of, whether there exists a way of life without any division between living and dying, conscious and subconscious, business and social life, individual life and family life.

The divisions between nations, religions, classes, etc., originate from the contradiction-filled limitations in yourself.

The question of the Philosophical Globetrotter is therefore, why human beings live in this way?

The inner conflicts grow confusion, division and war; they develop actual insecurity, inwards as well as outwards. We see this division in so many ways – in God and Devil, in good and evil, in what you are and what you ought to be.

Why has Man always created a conflict in himself, and in the relationship with others, and consequently violence, and the hope about achieving something through violence?

Man has tied himself to a way of life, which leads to war, and yet he at the same time wants peace and freedom; but it is peace and freedom exclusively as an idea, an ideology.

And at the same time Man is historical limited by everything he does.

Everything must be looked at in the critical light, where you neither justifies or condemns

The Idler 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 – 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.

Only a philosophical life-practice can pass the threshold to the whole

If you, in order to recognize a door among many other doors, draw a cross on it, then the cross functions.

But if you draw a cross on all doors (as in H.C. Andersen´s The Tinderbox) then the cross loses its symbol-function.

Therefore you can´t say anything about the whole, and therefore you can´t have any images of life, which can create harmony.

Only a philosophical life-practice can pass the threshold to the whole.

It is only the silent mind, which is seeing

When you realize the fact, that it is only the silent mind, which is seeing, yes, then the 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 prejudices intervene in order to distort – listens as you perhaps listen to a bird, which sings, without commenting and giving a name.

Where absence weaves images, presence releases the mind for images

Where absence weaves images, presence releases the mind for images.

This is very simple.

If you become thoroughly present in passive listening when you for instance are angry, then it is not absence, which allows the past to push itself in and create reflections, and disturbing the actual sensation of the immediate anger.

It is something else, which releases you.

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 physical and the non-physical are altogether a whole

Is there a difference between the brain and the mind?

The physical brain which is a result of the past, which is a product of evolution, of many thousand yesterdays, with all its memories, knowledge and experiences - this brain is a part of the total mind – the mind, which contains a conscious and an unconscious plane.

The physical and the non-physical are altogether a whole.

It is through thinking, evaluation, that you divide it in the conscious and the subconscious, the brain and the non-brain.

As a Life Artist you must observe the entire thing as a whole, instead of fragmented.

The mind denies seeing the things in their presence without the word and the symbol

The mind denies seeing the things directly, to see them in their presence without the word and the symbol.

You for instance say, that the sky is blue. The one who hears it, interprets it from the conception he has about blue and reproduces it to you in his own code. In that way we live in symbols, and dreams are a part of this symbolic process. We are not able to perceive directly and immediate without the symbols, the words, the prejudices and the conclusions.

The reason for this is clear enough: It is a part of the self-centred becoming something, the will to power with its defence, resistance, escape and anxiety, and where you shut yourself away from life, are getting absent in evaluations and analyses, and where emptiness and loss slide in between, create reflections, displacement and darkness.

In this unreal state reality can only communicate itself symbolic.

The symbol is a telescopying, a representing quintessence of the wholeness, the information-quantities, and the greater clarity, which is connected with reality and presence, but which the absence can´t contain, because it splits, shuts itself inside, or shuts itself away from.

If you just take the thinking as a presumption, the mind will never be silent

If you just take the thinking as a presumption you don´t investigate further, yes, then the mind will never be silent, so that it can listen to the noise of its own battles and pains.

But both Stoics, Epicureans, Taoists and Buddhists, instead say: ”Be simple and don´t try to become something else than what you are, or to catch up some kind of experience”.

The thinker is the creator of the one or the many problems

The creator of the problems is the thinker.

The problems don´t exist separate from the thinker.

The thinker is the creator of the one or the many problems.

When the thinker places himself outside the problems, the facts, then the problems will continue, because he creates the problems, precisely by differentiating from them and concerning himself with them, by comparing the facts with earlier and by hoping and desiring something else.

He is then the facts absent by being either in the bygone or the coming time.

It is an absence of something for the thinker hidden, an absence of something complicated, veiled, an absence in uncertainty.

But if the thinker is the thoughts, the problems, present in passive listening, then he can – because he himself is the creator – begin to realize himself, without concerning about the problems, or the thoughts.

You are then totally existential present in the Now.

The smaller is in the larger, but the larger is not in the smaller

If the individual person only acts in a special corner of the extensive area of life, then he acts without any connection with the wholeness.

You must therefore remember, that philosophy always talks about the wholeness, not a part of it.

The smaller is in the larger, but the larger is not in the smaller.

The individual person is the tiny image-limited, stagnated and despairing being, who is satisfied with his tiny gods and his tiny traditions, whereas the welfare and weal of all, the sum of the world´s necessity, misery and confusion, are lying Man on mind.

Some kind of will to power is always the cause of conflict

I think we must try to become clarified about our thought-process. Therewith is meant that you in your daily life must seek to be your will to power - and its miserable consequences and results - present.

When you realize the difference between the natural need and the will to power, then the right basis for your thinking is formed.

Some kind of will to power is always the cause of conflict, to unscrupulously national hate and masked brutality.

Unless you understand and get grip of your will to power, you will never be able to understand the reality, which is transcending all struggles and sorrows.

You must begin with yourself as a communicative being; that is to say: with your relationship with things and to your fellow men.

By being aware about what you are, you have a possibility for releasing yourself for conflicts

The thoughts and the feelings are limited by their own cause: the desire after becoming something, which is time-binding.

What creates a conflict in Man is the desire after becoming something: to have luck and progress here in the world and inwards: to achieve a result.

But as long as our thinking is concerned with time, with what we will achieve with our position, there will inevitably be this conflict.

The mind is after all a product of time. The thought builds on yesterday, on the past, and as long as the thought works within the area of time and is concerned with the future, with becoming something else, with winning and with achieving, there will be opposites, and then we can´t see the real, the Now, the existential conditions.

Only by realizing, by understanding, by - without wanting to choose - being aware about what you are, you have a possibility for releasing yourself for the dissolvent factor, which a conflict is.

When the conflict ends, the thought-activity falls to calmness, and the inexhaustible begins

The trained Philosophical Globetrotter can in herself observe how the designation happens almost at the same time as the reaction to a challenge.

The interspace - which exists between the reaction and the designation - is the observing state.

The observing state, in which you are one with the observed - where there no displacement or distortions are between the observer and the observed, but where you are in the middle of the actual - in this state there is no conflict.

The conflict is a concentration of the Ego, which places itself outside in analyses and evaluations.

But when the conflict ends, the thought-activity falls to calmness, and the inexhaustible begins.

The will is the most destructive of all

Nietzsche believed that the will - that is to say: the defeating, the remodeling, the striving - is something creative.

No, the will is the most destructive of all, in spite of the fact that it constructs very many self-images and world-images.

The will rests on lust, on desire, and not on that joy in freedom that has to do with passion and creative emptiness.

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 or pain.

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

Passion requires nothing, because it is.

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

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.

Sorrow is a concrete despair, despair is a universal sorrow

Despair is a relationship with loss.

Sorrow can be the despair over a particular loss, namely death, but despair can also be a sorrow over all kinds of loss.

Sorrow is a concrete despair, despair is a universal sorrow.

The primary definition of despair is, that it is the lived meaninglessness.

In the despair truth and values have broken-down.

Despair is the experience of, that meaning in your existence has broken in pieces.

There happens a breakdown in the structure of meaning, which you live in.

In the same way the despair shows an identity, which more or less is lying in ruins.

Despair is the emotion of breakdown. Despair, or meaninglessness, is existential chaos.

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 Idlers ask ourselves, is whether we can be free from the word with its illusions? Would that lead to despair?

When you understand what disorder is, how it arises, then there is order

Our lives consist of disorder, which means contradictions: you say something, do something else, and what you think is neither what you say or what you do.

Our existence is divided in fragments, and in this division we try to find an order of some kind, a self-image or a world-image.

We think that this order is caused by discipline and control.

But a mind which is controlled, which is disciplined in the meaning adapted to a pattern - whether this pattern is defined by yourself or by society, or by a certain culture - such a mind is not a free mind, it is a distorted mind.

Therefore you must, as a Life Artist, investigate this question about disorder.

And when you understand what disorder is, how it arises, then there is order – which is something living.