The fantasy of "conscious relating" and "awakened man/woman".

Pretext:

So, we meet again. I haven't written in quite some time and I think it's mostly because I find it harder and harder to express myself for I see more wide and into more subtle layers of reality and that makes it difficult to decide what individual subjects to break into pieces. I have to feel into what is truly worth saying and what purpose does it serve.  The movement in my writings is pretty much the same every time: I lure people's attention by addressing and issue and then move beyond it to give a chance for anyone who was attached to that particular issue to also let go of that for a while and let go of that identity. It's basically the same every time, just the subjects vary.

Usually I just grab something that I see is gathering a lot of attention in the world of self-development, some myth about how to become better spiritual person or whatever nonsense and then I just make an inquiry to show that actually there is no separation, no issues, no problems in the bigger picture. I strip down everything that isn't yours and then I leave you there with yourself.

Today I would like to address the ideas of "Conscious Relationship"and "Awakened man/woman". I have noticed a lot of posts in my FB-feed where there is all sorts of descriptions of how an awakened relationship should look like and what awakened man and women will be like and what they want from each other and blablabla.. You get the drift.

I don't even know where to start. I've seen so much of that stuff and I find most of it just bs. There are multitude of articles, courses and workshops on conscious relating, tantra and all of that stuff which is great for those who feel the need to do that and find help in it and those people who are truly into that probably won't get discouraged by what I say and it is not for them and it's not judgement but for some rare being it is time to move beyond that.

I just googled "conscious man" and sure enough I saw an article on "how to attract a conscious man" listing thousand and one attributes on how this perfect spiritual man would look, act, walk and relate and I find it a bit amusing because first of all if someone is conscious they move beyond the definitions of being either gender (even though they might play the role) and secondly he/she probably won't give a fuck about trying to have a "conscious relationship" he/she will just have interest in their being and will act according to that and whatever relating comes up after minding one's own inner being is just like ripples caused by the stone thrown in the pond. You won't see the stone but without it there would be no waves.

There seems to be a kind of spiritual fantasy going on about how that perfect partner would look like and it is not really any different from any old rotten concepts of the night in shiny armour coming to save you like the women have dreamt of for centuries. It creates just another layer of distortion when you bring the same mind in and sugar coat those daydreams with another set of expectations, however beautiful they sound. That distortion is hiding a fact that most people are not ready to take responsibility of their own selves and they need that other half to make it all better. Most of humanity lives like that so it's understandable that these dreams and delusions live on but this is the critical place where the separation is created and the tool for making the separation is expectations. It is a position of power when you make great standards around yourself where the potential partner must reach in order for your acceptance. You place yourself as the judge and attract the kind of people in your life who are willing to play the delirious game to win you over and prove how they are worthy. You see how that doesn't really work out because the truly conscious being is not interested in any of that, only the delusional ones are who are looking outside of themselves as much as you are.

The truth is that conscious man/woman don't really want or need anything from another because they understand that everything they need is already inside of themselves. They might be in a relationship, they might be intimate but it's all just secondary, it is just a side effect, they did not work to better their relationship, they didn't study how to become more conscious lover, no lessons or self-help books led to it. It just happens spontaneously because they are aware and they know that everything they feel right for themselves cannot be wrong for someone else because they understand that consciousness cannot function like that.

So if you need a list to show you what a perfect partner looks like and you read books on soulmates and twin flames then you are simply projecting and you have not known yourself in your inner depth. If you are striving towards developing the perfect relationship there is a chance you are not accepting your partner as they are, nor yourself for that matter, thus the little project of decorating your relationship to look more like your projections doesn't make much of a difference.

There are so many celebrity tips on how to keep the juice and polarity going in the relationship and how to keep the spark in bed but all of them are based on non acceptance. What is wrong with having periods in your relationship where you are not that interested in sex or even don't care much of the company of your partner? I mean, what a relief when you have the time for yourself! I think it's perfectly natural and how are you going to maintain anything consistently in this world of changefulness? It is impossible standards, identity, expectations and looking outside of yourself for fulfilment that causes all the trouble. Otherwise everything is going just fine on it's own accord. I think just more patience and trust is needed in life in general and then life has enough time and space to show how easy it can be.

The bottom line here is that don't go looking on the outside first. You are the number one priority. If you go looking before you have befriended yourself then you will go to absolutely the wrong places at the wrong time and end up with more drama and disappointments than the last time. Just stay here with yourself and forget about the other. I cannot promise that someone comes but you will realise that it doesn't matter and then you are not bound by any dreams anymore. You will not send the kind of energy that invites trouble and then there is a chance of true meeting of two conscious being who paradoxically don't care about the other but end up sharing in a very relaxed and free way.

The need for control in spirituality

I have had a kind of homework lately. I've been more curious about all sorts of spiritual groups and practices. I haven't even needed to really do much but it's more that I've been observing it with more interest lately how people go on with their spiritual paths. It's a big bundle to include all of those different ways. You could go into all sorts directions from very ascetic and puritanical old school disciplines to more intellectual metaphysical studies but the most prevalent theme I find in most of it is control.

I can understand control as a mean because we have all been deeply conditioned into believing our identity as a person and in that deep state of hypnosis one starts to feel the call of freedom for the first time. It's the being whispering from the inside, saying "haven't you been sleeping long enough now, it's time for change". At first of course one doesn't really see it that way. It just starts as a kind of boredom and need for something different. There might be a frustration to the way things have been or maybe a bid dramatic accident that swipes the comfortable old life away. It's the start of the journey. Then at this early stage of feeling the call of freedom one starts to act according to what they know from before, they start to force things to change. Control is basically the main driving factor of humanity and has been so throughout the history and we have all learned this as the basic life skill to have because that's what keeps societies together as they are now. So naturally one has to start from that place. We start with practices where we learn to control our breathing, our body, our thoughts just so that we give the mind something repetitive to do so it's not absolutely all over the place, so that it can be more in the present moment. We learn to discern and not allow our minds to wonder from a mantra or a practice. And up to a point this works wonders. It gives a discipline and trains the mind to behave a certain way in a certain situation so that there is some space to just be. It's a kind of contract with the noisy mind that it can still have it's noise but now there are some boundaries where it has some time off. It gets slowed down so that one can catch up with themselves.

This kind of control serves a purpose up to a point but this control has become more or less the basis and end to itself. Very strict disciplines are practiced in temples, ashrams and monasteries and control has been on the main seat of all the religions because that's still what we respond best as unconscious mass. We take comfort in the safety and familiarity of the disciplines and practices and it is not only in the major religions but also in the world of yoga, meditation, new age and all of the more modern streams of spirituality too. I just saw a post on fb saying how the breath needs to be controlled in order to control the mind and I just felt the question coming "Then who is the one who needs to control the mind by controlling the breath?" and the answer was obvious, it's the personal identity.

That reminded me of another post where there was a whole long list of activities, habits and attributes that were called (and I'm not even making this up) ENEMIES of meditation and that really made me stop and take a closer look in wonder. In one way it is true that some things can be hindrances and distractions to the process of controlling the mind (which apparently is what meditation refers to in this case) but then again we need to take a closer inspection into this issue. When I talk about meditation and what it really is I mean the ultimate awareness in which everything else is perceived so then naturally it raises the question of how small meditation must be if there is something outside of it that can obstruct it. Second question: who is the person who needs to control certain behaviours and urges and sees them as problems and obstacles on the path to meditation.. and how far is meditation from this one. Then when we contemplate this kind of questions there is an immediate seeing that there is something more because something observes all of the previous; the meditator, enemies/obstacles of meditation and meditation (control) itself. We see that all of these things are indeed phenomenons happening inside the space that is actually the self. Our essential awareness.. or meditation. Therefore it leaves the issue of needing to remove anything from the path of meditation redundant and irrelevant because for the true awareness it is of no interest. It is only of interest as much as attention is given to it. It also needs energy to stay alive so it's just a mere concept to be used as a stepping stone.

Spirituality has been known mostly as it's practices and they have been given so much attention because of our deep habit of identifying with our body and personality and need to overcome things. To move step by step closer to perfection but it has been just the human minds own idea of perfection. It has been chasing it's limited version of freedom and because it doesn't know anything else than doing and striving. Some have come to the most simple discovery that it has always been there, they have never been separate from enlightenment, it is their very nature. They have found it difficult to convey this simplicity to the seekers because the seeker is always seeking something, trying to get somewhere and it is not something that can be attained. That's why they have been given disciplines and practices to keep busy with so that they can purify their minds and while they are busy they forget to resist the moment and they allow what is already there.

Now I feel there is starting to be sufficient amount of people who are open to that kind of directness that for them the thousands of years of controlling and forcing is not needed, who are just ripe to let all of that go. Maybe you are one of them since you are reading this.

Why do we follow the news and gossip? The consensus reality explained..

I have been staying with my parents after my rental contract ended. I’m waiting for my travels to begin after the summer of working. I have a lot of time observing what is going on in here. I find it hard to believe my eyes and ears sometimes when I’m around my parents because they remind of a certain way of being that I tend to forget to exist when I’m on my own. It’s the desperate need to make sure to belong in every possible way and it’s something that is so automatic and conforming that there is absolutely no awareness of it’s existence and that’s why it’s even a bit hard to detect yet it’s ever present in every little detail of everyday life.

I walked in to the living room today to hear the new Finnish PM giving a talk and I saw my parents just nailed to their seats and every sense laser-focused on the message, the appearance, the tone, the gestures. It was the most serious moment to hear what he had to say as if there was going to be any surprises. I just find it hard to grasp how important a talk can be that’s content everyone already knew. I see people absolutely addicted to the news. So much so that the same news are being checked many times per day in hopes that nothing important would be missed. I wouldn’t want to spoil the fun and say that nothing new really happens, just the actors and sets change within the same plot. In the bigger picture it all plays just as it does by the laws of nature. I find this kind of need to see “what is going on in the world” interesting because it actually gives out many delusions that are needed to be maintained just to keep one's interest alive for the show.

First of all news are a kind of reality filters chosen by the collective mind, the mass hypnosis that makes us all see in consensus in order to make our experience feel more real. We crave for agreement for what is real because it simply feels too scary and vulnerable to realise that all of this is merely interpretations and best guesses. We seem to think highly of this kind of knowledge. Not knowing about the world affairs or having no opinions on immigration or other current issues is considered ignorance even if adding opinions to the vast sea of opinions just doesn’t make any difference and the current issues are themselves are just based on the principle of what brings out the most emotional reactions which in itself is completely relative to what we hold important at any given moment and what we can relate with. News agencies decide what is new in order to sell their product and causing cheap emotional rollercoaster rides is what people respond to. We think that gathering as much input from the surroundings as possible is the highest kind of wisdom and will ultimately lead to more perfect understanding. Actually the need to collect all this knowledge is just a hollow attempt of the tiny human mind in trying to control and make sense out of this vastness surrounding us. We feel the need to deploy our attention in gathering all the information from the outside mostly so that we can place ourselves correctly in the picture, so that we have meaning, purpose.. that life makes sense and we can keep on doing what we do. There is just one issue with that.. life doesn’t really make sense, we cannot really control or understand it and in trying we are seriously limiting ourselves which naturally causes pain.

News and scientific interest is mostly the male way of keeping one connected to the mass mass consensus but more feminine way of doing it is more in the everyday life.. what the neighbours are up to? who has lost weight and which celebrity wore which dress and did it make her look fat? In this case the news is replaced with gossips. There is a need to know every single detail of how other people are living their everyday life even if the actual use for knowing what someone's cousin is doing for a living remains a mystery. Maybe it just gives a sense of social coordination and where to belong in the more pragmatic way so that the network of people and their hierarchies keeps safe and predictable. Whether it's the more masculine big lines or feminine small details doesn't matter. The tendency is exactly the same.

Actually this holding on to the common world view is a great imprisonment because one has to define oneself into a a tight compartment in order to maintain this point of view. If there is something that doesn’t fit into the picture it causes great turmoil because it shakes the very ground that the self-image is built on. So because there is such deep and intimate identification with the picture of who we are related into how we perceive our surroundings and what beliefs we hold it is so devastating to stop having the kind of input that we are accustomed to. That’s why it would be an absolute shock for example to drop someone from a very closed community into a culture with completely different set of principles and beliefs. Imagine getting someone from West Borough Baptist movement and suddenly planting them in a place like Christiania in Denmark. They just couldn’t handle it because they are used to a certain kind of constant input of information and values. They would simply have a breakdown. 

It’s easy to laugh at the whole idea but the truth is that the same situation is with the whole world with varying degrees and we all have our own cultural operating systems that need constant update in order to work. That’s the main reason to all the wars when you strip it down to the core. It's the reason for us having opposing sides on politics and simply not being able to agree on anything. It’s all about different operating systems causing shocks to each others which are handled usually with such and sophisticated tool as dualism and blaming. It’s all about who’s right and who is wrong. Who is justified in having their operating systems and why they should not be questioned. We love to keep in our little wombs of culture, our familiar little sufferings. We don’t like the growing pains that are necessary in order for maturity to happen.

The holding on to the one world view and defending it also means a submission and fear of authorities. It's the kind of thinking that because someone holds a position means that they are more wise and understand things better and their voice and reasoning becomes the only truth. They are given the role of the parent who automatically knows better and the best thing to do it to conform in every possible way because they must have valid reasons behind everything they do and certainly are not looking world through any distortions, right? They wouldn't have been chosen by ALL those people for no reason other than that their appearance and way of talking just makes people feel a certain soothing way. They just seem the kind of people that fill the characteristics of how a person who knows what they are doing should look and act like so they must, right? We just love to have that safe feeling of everything being wrong and scary in the outside world and having that reassuring parental figure leading us through the darkness because we simply could not rely on our inner wisdom. 

We also need to police each other and make sure that everyone around us is contributing to this nation and community and doesn't cause trouble. We feel bitter if someone is not confined within the beliefs that everyone must suffer for the greater good. It feels bad if others are not suffering alongside us not only because they make us doubt our own choices but they are destroying the foundation of our common wellbeing that is only accomplished if people don't feel well... that makes sense, right? Man, I wish I had a chance to meet someone from another part of the universe and explain this to them. I could become the new big intergalactic comedian making tons of space coins.

What was I talking about?... Oh, right... the sum up..

We live in a misunderstanding that life happens from outside to inside. We think we need to create ourselves, that we are not already there and for the creation of that self-image we need all possible material from the outside to keep the house of cards rising up. Thus we feel the need to accumulate more solid evidence of the reality we believe to be true and convince ourselves by saying "yeah, well everyone else seems to think so too" and then we try to convince all the others that it is so.. you know.. just in case someone forgets to remember. This is how fragile it all is. It's just a matter of constant repeating and reminding that keeps us chasing the outside input in order to paint the picture on the inside. The real wisdom is understanding that it works exactly the opposite. Everything is already there inside and the construction of identity is not needed in life. Everything that needs to happen is already happening perfectly without the need to try to predict and control it. If something needs to happen there will be a sufficient feeling, energy and circumstances for it to happen. When this understanding settles in then the need to gossip, follow news or try to keep up with the latest trends, have more money and stuff becomes uninteresting in itself because the warmth that is emitted from inside and the restful joy of letting the inner guidance do it's work becomes too big to be overshadowed by the constant need for that outside fix. It's a kind of snowball effect that when you trust yourself it just feels better and you become more calm about the outside world and it's movements. It's rewarding unto itself to follow it and it creates and authentic self-respect when you trust your inner being and see how perfectly is functions. Then the interest in how others are leading their lives loses it's significance because the flow of energy has morphed from an endless black hole sucking all the light and energy from it's surroundings into a natural spring that cannot help but overflow and nourish it's surroundings. 

Losing friends? Nothing to worry about. It's just freedom.

While I was recently thinking about contacting one friend I hadn’t seen in a while due to my travels I discovered that we weren’t friends anymore on fb. I felt a bit sad, disappointed and even angry because I knew the reason that breakup had happened. For that we need to go back few months when I posted an article that provoked something in that person and led to an attack on me. Instantly I saw that she was having a fight about something completely different than what my point was. She was having her own fight amongst herself and by noticing that I therefore didn’t want to take any part on this play because I simply had no interest in it. Well, the total sum of it was that I got hours worth of messages trying to basically blame me for whatever she wasn’t able to handle in herself and externalised it on me, the perpetrator. I didn’t even read all the messages and I removed the conversation out of my post because it had no significance or relevance to the subject. I guess that must have made her even more angry.

Then I let it all rest and told that we can try another time when it’s all a bit more calm. I had never had any problem with her before and I had no hard feelings, just a bit reservation due to this yucky situation. Then when I realised that she had removed me from her friends I knew the reason. Our friendship had been based on a very shallow basis. She had a certain image of me and because something I posted on social media made her change her idea of me that was not applicable with her belief systems, wounds and personality and she could not let that karmic game go and take the responsibility that it would have taken for her to remain near me.

These kind of "friends" are there typically for only one thing and that is to play those old karmic games brought about by their old wounds and identifications. They lose interest if you don't want to play along and their last attempt to suck you in is usually the most theatrical and if that doesn't work they are off to get their fix somewhere else.

When I saw all this it was a kind of relieving thing because I realised that when people are connected to you only through certain ideologies and identity then the relationship is always more depleting than fulfilling. True friendship and love really doesn’t care about the outer appearance because someone who can truly love and have authentic friendships doesn’t need anything from the other. It’s not a conditional state. Therefore I saw it as a good thing because untrue friendships are not really worth anything and trying to maintain them makes one twist and turn to keep that certain image to manage the superficial relationship. It is very burdensome business to maintain friendships that are based on ideas instead of relaxed feeling and connection.

I do feel like I have shaken off so many friendships that were not authentic and I hope that it continues even more strongly because the only thing I’ll lose is that which is not authentic in the first place and then there is more space for those to come who are more in tune with me in my authenticity and who do not care about the outer things such as agreeing or disagreeing or heavens forbid, political correctness.

As always everything is well in the end. Let things shake and don’t be afraid to stir things once in a while for that might just be the best way to separate the grains from the chaff. When you move on and pedal your own bike the scenery automatically changes and there is nothing to worry about. You have done nothing wrong and nothing is really lost. Life is taking care that the best and most appropriate people will be there for you and letting go just makes it that much more quick and easy and then you give the other a gift of  the opportunity to choose freedom and also move along or get out because they are not ready for that kind of relating yet.

The madness of power

I dare to say from my experience and observation that we as a species have a very interesting mental disease. When I say as a species I mean that almost everyone has caught it and are acting their whole lives out in a way that greatly resembles a parasite taking over a host and the host starts adjusting it’s behaviour according to the parasite’s needs.

Of course in this case we don’t talk about any actual physical parasite but more of an infection of the mind. The basic infection is identity with this face, this voice, these personal traits, the identity as a separate entity who has it’s own life which then goes on gathering beliefs, notions and myths about itself to perpetuate it's existence. It gives a certain hollow feeling, a feeling of separation from the surroundings. From that basic idea and feeling it drives us into an obvious need for belonging and having a sense of purpose. That need is then fed by building the identity more likeable, more feared, more respectable.. basically whatever is needed according to the standards and influences given by the surrounding people, culture and conditioning. We gather the feedback we get from other people in order to mould our sense of self into that direction to fit in better. The problem then is that we will never actually fully satisfy our need for belonging because the root of that drive is the feeling of disconnection, of alienation. So what we do is turn to power games.

You might perceive power as something mechanistic, tangible, a force of nature but what I’m talking about is something much more subtle (so subtle that it doesn’t really even exist) but our delusion of separation and the beliefs based on that feeling of alienation make it seem very real. Power is something that only exist because there’s a common belief in it. We build hierarchies amongst each others and we climb that ladder of respectability, glory, money, recognition, acceptance and we reach to the highest steps in order to feel good and okay but the ironic thing is that while we make our way up the ladder we are basically putting ourself in a position where we are insignificant and powerless and the “others” have the power to change that. They have something that we need so we must find means to get it whatever the price. So basically what we are doing is handing over our own self worth because we don’t feel worthy of accepting whatever we are naturally without any effort and by doing that we actually create the situation where we feel that we need to climb up the ladder and gather whatever symbols that our society uses to symbolise power. 

When I talk about power I’m not only talking about political power where you can order somebody to be imprisoned but I’m talking about any kind of manipulation of other peoples feelings, thought processes and perceptions in order to feel better and more fulfilled about ourselves. We all do that and it really perpetuates the feeling of separation from each other even further because everybody is trying to trick and manipulate each other in some way.. and we can feel it. We know instinctively when we are being fooled by someone but we get so confused usually because we also want something from those who are fooling us.. so we keep on doing the same to them.

It’s a very upside-down world because of this game of power. We imagine that some others posses something that we need and we keep dancing like somebody was shooting at our feet. We are also very intelligent species so we are very very well equipped to learn how to get what we want and we easily adapt to whatever things we take as the symbols of power. For example for the super rich elite money is the symbol of power. It’s the symbol of power and they do anything to hoard it to themselves to no limit. They don’t even know how to invest and use all the money that they are getting but that’s not the point to them. They could easily live a remarkably abundant and care free life with just fraction of what they have but it’s not really about the money in the end. It’s the feeling of being someone remarkable and being someone who matters, who has influence and power. The funny or sad part of it is that they are very needy and feel powerless and are not living abundantly and joyously at all. The same situation is typically with politicians but their symbol is different although they drive towards the same underlying goals. They need to feel important and respectable, they need to matter so mostly their measurement for it is public approval and getting re-elected. That’s really mostly their bottom line. That’s why when there is some really important decision to be made and the next election is pushing closer the usual protocol is to leave that decision after the election because it simply weighs more to remain as a politician because they have perfected their identity and power game as a politician and they wouldn’t know what to do with themselves otherwise. Then they run in their elections and promise all sorts of empty things that they trade in a heartbeat for a powerful position. They even hire advertising agencies to manipulate their voters by reinventing their image instead of actual political agendas. Basically they just become faces in suits who are taught how to act, walk and talk appropriately to preserve and polish their public image. Also the political system easily moulds anyone into it because the whole game is based on those power dynamics and generally those kind of power hungry people are more likely to be attracted to them.

Power essentially is a poor imitation of belonging, love, being at peace with one's self which is really what is being missed. It’s an attempt to breach the gap that is self created by false identity and the feeling of separation and it’s not really doing the job very well. If power actually worked you would see people reaching to a certain point of power and then being so contented that they would just not know what to do anymore… they simply wouldn’t want anything more. They would live happily ever after. It’s just that there is no amount of power that has ever satisfied anyone for more than a brief moment because it’s an illusion in itself and it cannot create anything real and lasting. The only way to get rid of the constant hunger is to realise it’s core and see it in it’s full falsehood. It doesn’t really exist and you were never separate and you never needed any justification to exist. You don’t need to manipulate others and twist yourself in all possible directions to live this life. There is an easier way to exist and it doesn’t know anything about power. It’s the natural way. Just a bit of inspection is needed to see where do you really stand. Are you your identity or are you indeed something that is beyond that?

The road to nowhere. A journey from mass consciousness, past new age to my own domain.

I remember the times when I was swimming almost absolutely in the pre-determined stream of consciousness where I was whoever I was told to be and my desires and ambitions were all borrowed, my identity a collection of subliminal and direct messages, those that were projected on me by my surroundings . "This is who you are, these are good values to live by, this is what it means to live in this kind of body and this is what we think about other kind of bodies and cultural conditionings" etc. It was an easy life in a way and because my identity was so strongly suited on me and I never had any dilemma about whether my reactions were right for the moment because everything came from this coding put into me. Back then I somehow belonged, I survived.. I wasn't happy, I wasn't fulfilled but I had such clear and easy answer to everything and therefore I had confidence in who I thought I was.

Something just didn't quite fit. It just started feeling more uncomfortable when the game of identities really began to take lift. I was in high school and around maybe 14 years old when I really felt like my childhood identity didn't give me enough confidence and I didn't know how to interact with other kids coming outside of my little local elementary school. Everything seemed much more cruel, competitive and tough. I tried my best in constructing a new, more popular, more wanted, more cool identity up to the point where it just all collapsed. I was just too sensitive and childlike for the confusing world of an early teenager and the constructed identity dropped away and I fell into a depression that lasted for months.

So I never really managed to construct a very functional indentity at the age when it's usually constructed for blending into the consensus and therefore it was easy for me to abandon it and start looking for something else. I pursued spirituality in relatively young age. I was around 19-20 and I started meditating and collecting knowledge of more esoteric views, doing some drugs and experimenting with my consciousness. I started deconstructing my old intentity and building a new, more new agey one. I went through some meditation and therapy groups and had some interest in becoming a teacher of those things and I did try it for a while. Especially in the beginning my spiritual identity became something that was like a negative picture of my old identity, in essence focused on the same things but instead just being against what I was enforcing and living out earlier. I was a rebel an I fought against everything old because there was an underlying fear that if I don't fight and also inflict a chance in others for the purpose of fulfilling my list of divine attributes I would turn right back to my old bondage. I felt very much at home in these spiritual groups, workshops and festivals and it really fed my new identity to live for some days in a care free pink cloud of love and high vibes. It was a kind of high that I got that would charge me against the ugly outside world and it's fucked up shit. It felt so opposite to what my old identity was about when I was in those groups. Of course there was that real joy in the experience that was the the essence of true being and freedom from identity that brought real happiness and joy but it was owned by the identity later and put into a mold by my mind so that the joy had more to do with the circumstances and it made me dependent of those circumstances. It was playful and very liberating for a while to be able to express myself in a way that my old conditioning wouldn't have let me... but it had an identity to it non the less. I was floating in this other world of spirituality a bit more free but still quite contained. Still quite lacking that last "A-Ha!" -moment when it all paid off and came together. It still felt like it was something that should be maintained and kept, it felt something outside of me to be pursued.

I even tried to eat more spiritual, more pure. I tried to tweak my consciousness and fulfilment with raw foods and what ever supplements I could get my hands on. I pushed my new found pure lifestyle to others who just didn't want to have anything to do with it. When I look back at myself and who I was back then I probably wouldn't spend much time with me.

It all started slipping away eventually. I just couldn't find the energy to go to next thing to pursue the next spiritual high and the feeling of belonging to another stream of consciousness that made my decisions as easy as the old conditioning but this time maybe in even more cunning way. I thought at some point that I found my "real" family in these other likeminded seekers and we could live in this bubble together and build a better world but now whenever I even hear these people talk about love and vibration and their practices and diets I feel utterly uninterested and I don't feel that sense of belonging to that group anymore either. I don't find it a fascinating idea to go to some spiritual festivals and workshops on how to unleash my this and that.. I would rather go camping on my own, just watch tv, open a beer or go for a walk.

So this leaves me in a funny situation where there is the mass hypnosis of automated values and conformity and it's counter movements that try to perfect the spiritual human, heal all the traumas and make everything beautiful and save the world and spread light and "awareness" everywhere, to basically do the same thing I was doing in my little world before. I cannot really find myself in either of them. It's not that I went back to the mass consciousness, they are just both there but I don't find myself strongly preferring either one, yet I can still interact and enjoy both phenomenas in their own way. I really like people who are seekers and It feels more light to be around them than someone heavily conditioned personality who just kind of fills the air with their mental noise of what they want you to agree with and think about them but sometimes it's so much more fun to be with someone who just doesn't question every single thing and isn't so analytical and self-aware all the time.

This is uncharted territory for me. It's kind of freakish to have friends and family in both but still knowing quite well that I do not belong to either of them. I stand alone in my own domain and I don't have any ready answers in me gathered from anywhere. I feel sometimes like I'm just flailing around without any direction because I'm not even spiritual anymore and I don't think I've ever been really "normal" either. It feels natural that these two streams seem so different from each other but the further away you look from the more they seem like the same river taking a little different path for a while before they reach to the ocean.

Now I am so much more uncertain about everything because I have lost the guidelines that I referred to in the past. I lost them twice because the spiritual ones were there although much more abstract and hard to grasp. It is actually quite spacious to be out of them but something freaks out when I see people being so sure and confident about their own tiny perspective that it feels almost rock solid.. And here I am. Not knowing jack shit. Except that I exist and this personality and whatever energies move in the body and the mind take place and still I ultimately have nothing to do with them. I learn that there are sometimes some uncomfortable feelings and actions acted out but the trust that all of it is fine as it is prevails even amongst the doubts that something has gone wrong. They are indeed just something old burping up into awareness. They are not so important ultimately. It's just the nature of consciousness to bring all of it back together.. It's automatic.

First the worldly goals became spiritual ambitions where the whole New Age plays out but then the goals and ambitions change into allowing and

experience. Nothing more to find out or prove and nothing to know. Then everything is seen appropriate and meaningful.


All is well.

The illusion of spiritual journey and self development

As someone who came quite freshly and suddenly to the world of spirituality just few years ago I have encountered so many myths amongst the seekers of truth and liberation. Especially the ones who have been on the journey for decades and have gathered so much experience as someone on their way to the ultimate seeing. There seems to be much beliefs coming from this experience that those people want to pass on.

There seems to be in place a subtle “divine hierarchy” amongst the old seekers who have been with the great masters of the past and they are the new priesthood, the keepers of those secrets, holders of the lineage. I have encountered a well hidden undercurrent of aggression and power games in many forms on my way that have made me go "Ugh.. is this really how it is here in the world of awakening?"

One of the most stuck things seems to be the idea that the journey to truth is long and arduous. The belief seems valid to those professing it because when the previous generations were breaking out of their bondage they had such rigid and stuck conditioning and basically the world around was so much more sleepy that this breaking free seemed as something very hard and painful process.. and so it has been for many, no doubt, but this has lead to a kind of rigid conditioning of it’s own, repeating the mantra “The road to freedom is long and arduous”. One must enter into a lot of self-development work before..

AND

I have done my fair share of this work also and it has had it’s right place on my journey as well. It has been tremendously beneficial to go through therapies and self-development and meditation to make the mind more subtle and open, to make more space inside for a seeing to take place. But on the way I also encountered some abuse and delusions from those who facilitate and lead these things in the form of them putting me in my place for going beyond what the therapist had in mind for me, for not being able to completely compress myself into the framework. That seemed to threaten them and their structure of identity and work that seemed to lead them into a slight panic that caused them to push my head down when I was most vulnerable and open, when something could have been confirmed in a deeper way. In general I got a lot from this kind of work but also I could feel the limitations of it. I was not met as what I truly am, but rather I was an object to be worked upon and I needed to believe and identify myself as the unfinished and wounded, limited human that needed more work and needed patiently to keep going with it and if I work hard enough and succeed to remove all the endless shortcomings and heal all the traumas then I could maybe just be myself.

I felt quite exhausted after so many different workshops, groups, sessions and trainings. I felt the work endless and something just didn’t feel right in continuing in this way. I saw many people I know going group after group working their way towards the goal, counting how near they are to what they imagine to be freedom, when the work is finished.. and then... THEN.. and round and round the wheel spins and I saw almost no difference in them fundamentally, the same stories continued and same patterns came back and even if the patterns changed the same person was still there to celebrate these small victories until the feeling of being incomplete comes again. It is a clever avoidance indeed.

Something in me just felt like dropping it all and allowing my life to breathe again in more natural way. The most funny thing about what happened after that has been that with no effort or interest on my part my life has arranged itself to let everything come in place in it’s right time and WITH NO WORK. Something happened that shifted in me few months after I quit doing groups. I found myself in Portugal in a silent retreat with Mooji and then finally the directness of truth hit me and some recognition took place of something that has always been there in the background like the space where everything seems to happen. It’s something that cannot leave and was not really found either because it has always been there, it has always been me. It is the only constant there has ever been. I had had many things happening to me before too but only as passing experiences, fleeting moments of revelations, energetic releases and shifts of perspective but they were always phenomenal and they were always perceived and owned by the personality as something that came and went and must be had again, deserved and earned with vigorous self-work and practice. This was different though, it’s not the immature running after experiences and personality upgrades but it’s the most simple seeing where all these phenomena’s are seen and there is such easiness in it because it’s the most natural thing. I cannot claim to be a very good spiritual person anymore and there is no need, thank good. I still exist. I am. I stopped trying.

Seeing from that place the faults of personality do not mean anything, they are just a kind of distraction to put attention into and keep playing the game of coming closer, evolving. It was just a small shift of focus and after that the lost parts of me have started to come home on their own accord and integrate because I wasn't out looking for something. The evolutionary part of me has continued as appropriate as a refining and aligning but the truth itself is easy and effortless. The mind wonders sometimes but always the focus comes back to this unmoving presence that cannot leave. This is something that they don’t show you in self-development groups because it’s not their business, they are invested in something else. They are focused on the personal story even if they claim to be about meditation. Same goes with yoga and all other practices. They go on working on the body and the mind, refining them, making them more sattvik, more receptive and pure but the real seeing is not involved or dependent on it, only the person is.. and it can become a long habit especially accompanied with the old beliefs from the world of spiritual people that it’s hard work. For who is it hard work in the first place, then? Who is the one to be worked on? 

It’s a circle feeding itself, a kind of divine joke; The seeking creates a journey and a sense of a seeker. The seeker gets more valid, has a nice sounding spiritual sanskrit -name and gathers more experience on how arduous the seeking is. Then another younger, innocent person feels suddenly something in their heart to move towards freedom, finds a book where someone who has realised their own true nature says something that touches them. They find the older seeker -personality in an ashram or a center who passes on the belief that the way to truth is narrow and long, there are dangers on the way and almost nobody gets to the end but fortunately they have the group/session/product/technique available.

We are now at a point where the human consciousness has become so much more ripe and so many young ones are coming and are already here. Those who are ready for the direct seeing that it simply demands more direct approaches and these new ones are ready for it. They don’t come with all the old crap that the older seekers carry around, they come with clarity and easiness. It’s time to shift gears and let go of many old concepts. At least it’s about time to let go of the need for the hard way to be the only way to truth, time to recognise that we don’t necessarily need to spend so much time simply readying the ground when the new plants come already in growing bags. The ground has been prepared for the new man but will the farmer recognise when it’s time to quit plowing and let the crop grow?

As someone quite young and fresh in this old field I feel the need to say to anyone who wanders to these areas of awakening in themselves please trust yourself and don’t listen to anyone saying you are not ready yet, that you need to get something first, you are too young. These beliefs have been a big hindrance I have come across and they have made me doubt myself because of looking up to others who have more experience than me and who have made a career out of staying there and holding the space and helping others, who are in fact dependant on your stories and problems. If it feels right in the moment those groups can be very helpful but they are simply a stepping stone. One must start from where they are and end up to where they never left. It all happens inside the grace. Could it be this easy? Why not..

What is awareness and shoes and stuff..

I have seen more than my share of videos, speeches, articles, blogs, headlines and posts on all the media, especially the social one, that promotes awareness about something particular that’s supposed to be very crucial to know or act upon if believing the people promoting their causes. Now, Don’t get me wrong. For some people with certain passion it is perfectly right to be active about those matters. My intention here is to look into the matter of awareness itself and how we seem to be oblivious to what it really means beyond the notion of it being just part of the phenomenon that it’s highlighting. It's seen as secondary.

I remember once talking to my friend about awareness when I was very fresh in my journey of awakening and had heard about awareness or consciousness and had had my first taste of meditation. My friend asked “Awareness about what?” ..He just couldn’t conceive awareness without an object to perceive and I couldn’t explain it either. To be honest at the time I didn’t know what I was really talking about other than in conceptual level. I bring it up because it touches how we see our existence as humans. Awareness in itself is kind of taken for granted but all the interest is on the WHAT awareness is pointed at, where it’s focused on. We love to have things to put our awareness to but it’s very rare amongst us to really ask and truly see what awareness is in itself. It doesn’t seem to have any value in itself but still without the perceiver, the source of awareness itself there could be nothing to be aware of either, there could be no experience without the experiencer.

Even amongst spiritual people there seems to be a prevailing idea that awareness is something that grows and evolves and then reaches the height when someone feels the suffering of the whole humanity in themselves, feels everyone’s pain, sees auras and senses presence, feels connection to nature. It’s all very good but not the whole picture. You see, this might be the in a way a height of sensitivity and a good experience to feel strongly that we are not indeed some separate island that needs to win at life on the expense of others… But still there is something that is aware even about that and if then too much attention is given to that and assumed that this is the peak of consciousness then it’s a limitation in itself and therefore creates a limited response. We act prematurely before seeing the whole picture.. or in this case eye that perceives the whole picture. This awareness of all that is felt, when given to the mind to interpret, produces the idea that there is so much wrong in the world and too much suffering and that it must be removed just because one feels so strongly into the suffering of others… Most likely even more than the actual people who are seemingly suffering because they don’t match the standards that we have of good life. If someone is very poor for example we think that according to our desires and needs it should not be so. We become the judges of what is acceptable to experience on this planet.

I would say that this is still a distraction from the awareness itself. When the mind wants that something to hold onto it starts magnifying what it perceives for it’s purposes. It looks for evidence of something unfinished and imperfect that it can put it’s passion into to fix it and feel a sense of purpose and logic which doesn’t really exist in the real world. This is fine in itself but when that is released also as the focus goes back to the awareness that perceives even these kind of feelings then we enter into the realm where everything is seen just fine, as it should be. If there is a need to make some change it will happen automatically but it’s not a doing or achievement. I’m not saying that there cannot be hard work and passion involved in it but there is no obsessive focus on how to make the world a better place or fix things. There is a very relaxed and trusting attitude for everything working out just fine on it’s own and that when an action is needed it will come and therefore be right. There is real compassion in seeing that this seeming suffering that people are going through is exactly what they need to experience at the time and they will find their way when they want it desperately enough, until something in them is finished with the identity and limitation that creates the suffering. We cannot know. We just can follow what feels right thing to do without reference to the past.

I remember and still sometimes have flashes of feeling inferior to some people who are great healers,  psychics or therapists who can be so sensitive and have some very unique talent that I think they must be somehow very special and out of my league, that these people are more aware than me and therefore I need to work more on myself to become more aware. It seems very real and authentic to pursue this extra awareness that I feel separate from. It’s a very subtle trick though; The mind creates a feeling of something missing, something not being here and projects it as an image on the outside to be chased after and worked on. It keeps track on how aware the person is and how close it is to this imagined awareness. How many percentage of enlightenment and how long until the full realisation. This play seems real enough and can make a person run around in circles for eternity. Never being complete, getting closer all the time.. just few more things to heal.. not being quite ready or worth the awareness yet.. Not until I love this person that I hate at the moment, not while I still get angry.. not while there is so much suffering in the world and I can do something to help..

Until..

We raise the question: What is there already that is aware of all of it. Then if we really examine it it becomes obvious that something is aware of the whole play.. the feeling of separation, the getting closer, finding one’s self.. It is all seeing and so it’s all just a play. This is a sudden change of perspective. It’s almost too easy to be true. You are suddenly aware of what was already here. Awareness was, is and has always been. It has never been anything separate and to be achieved. You are it. It is you. Suddenly you realise that the game of seeking was just a fun game happening inside the sought. It was so much fun but maybe something is now starting to feel too small for it. Maybe there is a feeling like trying on an old shoe that you have been wearing for years, even decades. You wondered why your feet have been bleeding sometimes, why there was a sense of unease and pain when you were walking.. and you felt like you need to go to reflexologist. Then you take the shoes off and see that they are actually quite old and dirty. They smell and have been patched up with glue, bubble gum and maybe even duct tape. Once they were so shiny and beautiful but your foot has been growing. You try to fit them on sometimes just to see if they still fit just to realised how uncomfortable it is now. Maybe you realise that you can put on any shoes whenever you wish. You see that when you are at home alone or walking on the beach that you don’t have to even wear shoes at all! You are not afraid of wearing shoes either just because you were stuck with one pair for so long. You can still wear shoes but now you can go to a shoe shop to buy dozen pairs if you wish. Heck! You can even wear wooden shoes or fins for snorkling!

Why do we seem to talk constantly?

Especially being here in one of the most popular holiday destinations on earth I notice a lot of families from all over the world. They all have something in common - they all talk constantly. It’s almost absolutely non-stop chatter when a family comes to any site of attraction.

We as species seem to use language as a kind of bond between individuals so that we find our appropriate place in the pack. The talk is actually much more than the words. It’s also a kind of energetic and telepathic transmission. I see it almost like people are sending their energetical tentacles to probe others around if they are still in consensus with each other and whether some action is needed to restore the the status quo to ensure the survival of the family organism and therefore the individual. This happens on completely unconscious level of course.

I would say from my empirical observations that the average person is very much afraid of silence. Silence is very dangerous indeed. You combine that with some solitude and we will see a revolution in an individual.

Most people are afraid of silence because most people are completely dependant on group-consciousness or to put it even more directly THEY ARE IT. In other words their identity and attention is entirely tied to maintaining a personality which is the interface we use for having a place in the pack. We mould ourselves to suit the needs of the family and culture around us. We use language to check our position with our surroundings and in the violent history of mankind not being part of the consensus has been a danger for the individual’s survival. It always affects the whole pond when one jumps out of the water and makes waves. People in general don’t like that because it feels so safe and comfortable to go with the pack, always check with others what to do, where to work, what to wear, who to marry and when is it appropriate to have children.

So that’s why it’s dangerous to take time for yourself because doubts will come. Eventually all of your personality and habits will come to display in front of you and you will have to discern whether you want to keep it as yours, whether it’s really yours or was it indeed just something you picked up that had nothing to do with you in the first place. You will have to look at everything you believe in and especially who you take yourself to be and that, I would say, is the single most difficult thing a human being can ever do. You have to give up everything eventually when you go into aloneness and you will not find anyone to tell you what to do. People talk about freedom all around the world with very grandeous words but until one has let everything go, including every notion of him or herself all the talk of the freedom is just romantic ideal, a noble-sounding lip-service.

It all starts with silence.

Ps. I actually just googled to find some image to add to this blog and I put "alone" as the search word and all the result were depressed people wearing hoodies in some dark place. It's funny to observe this myth of aloneness being something terrible where one should never go. One should never be left alone and it's even considered noble that somebody should stay with another just so that they don't have to be alone with themselves. It shows how terrified we seem to be even about this notion of having to be alone. It's a myth that only the bravest of us go and see for themselves. Others just keep believing in stories and try to find even bad company not to face it.

Bali Diaries part 3 - Not just peaches and cream

I don’t know where to begin. It has turned out to be a very peculiar time for me in Bali so far. I paid for the house I was supposed to live in for the whole time I was going to be here, almost 3 months together. I thought that I will have such an easy living in paradise. No worries! When I came here the locks had been changed to the house and after 30 hours of traveling I had to deal with the owner and bunch of other people trying to find out what was going on. It turned up that it was far from certain and secure and I had to pay double rent and I still haven’t received back my money from the original payment from the lady who used to live there who is in fights with the land lord. It’s a long story that I don’t want to go any deeper into in public. I decided to move away from the house anyways and I’m doing that in a week from now to a really nice villa nearby and I’m really happy about that.

I also lost my paying card couple of days ago and I’ve been pulling strings together to cancel the card and to access my money in other ways and also to get the money back from the fucked up rental situation. I’ve been sleeping very little and making calls and going around talking to people and trying to arrange things so that I can manage without the card for a while until I get my secondary card to function. Thank god for the internet and amazingly wonderful people around!

In a way I actually enjoy the whole situation because it has placed me into a situation where I have to do one thing at the time because I cannot go ahead of myself. It keeps me alert and on my toes. I almost forgot this part of traveling. It makes me use my capacity to command energies and see what is my actual level of trust.. And I find it’s very good! Underneath the apparent chaos of the situation I feel immense trust that everything will be alright, how else would it be?

I feel gratitude for what I have still at these kind of moments. I find just the right people, the money has always come at the right moment and completely appropriate things happen. I feel one of the lucky ones more than ever now. Even if there is a lot on my plate I feel that everything is just fine. I still have enough money to do whatever I need to do when I need to do it. Something always turns up and I think to myself “hmm.. I’m seeing a pattern of here, It smells a little like abundance”.

Without for example the whole mess with the rent I would have never talked to a very nice lady from neighbour about my situation who happened to own a bunch of top-end villas and turned out I could move in and got a nice deal for it. It feels just perfect for me. Also without this whole experience I never would have known how much potential and possibilities I have for dealing with these kind of issues and now I know quite a lot about different payment methods and cheaper ways to send money which will certainly help me in my future travels and dealings with people from around the world.

You see how there is many ways of feeling about these kind of things and it all starts with what kind consciousness we bring to the equation.. or rather, how much do we limit ourselves with identity. If we have a story of being a victim of the circumstances that limits the options that we can see in any given situation. We give our own significance and meaning to everything. When I told these things to my father his reaction was “Oh, so much trouble and nuisance!” but I never really felt like that. I just feel that it is what it is because I can get an experience out of it. I can see myself from yet another perspective and it’s kinda fun. I get to see how I function in this kind of circumstances that are very different from what I would ever see back home. Underneath all the hustle I’m here and I’m aware of that and even if everything is taken away that cannot be taken away.

I can recommend traveling to a distant land for everyone if for nothing else then to experience some very unexpected and challenging situations that take you out of the usual comfort zone to see that you can see how magnificent you can be when it counts the most.

Enjoy the rainy days - Return of the natural creativity

I’m again sitting on my balcony and it’s raining. Oh, I love rain and how everything becomes cool and fresh. Too long time of just sun is getting a little boring. Things need to go to a kind of stand-still from time to time for everything to regenerate and rest. Too long time of sunshine and heat is exhausting and consuming. So both are needed to create a balance in nature. Plants will need the rains every once in a while or otherwise they will not have the strength and the juice to take full use of the sunny period. They need the sun for their growth and expansion but if there are no breaks in it then the roots cannot provide for the expansion and the plant will eventually dry up. 

You might have guessed that I’m not just talking about plants but it’s a very good symbol with us too. Our society is very external and we seem to live in our outer layer where our senses get stimulated by external influences and we often just run after every stimulus. We are addicted to having the input from our surroundings and our attention lies there almost the entirety of our existence and hence we also present our polished outer layer to the outside. That’s why we live in the culture of selfies and the social media is full of the things we have done and what’s going on in the surface. Maybe that’s why there is such an obsession towards having celebrities, famous people who’s sole contribution to humanity is to be all appearance and show up in different events and maintain a certain lifestyle and literally to have the same face that we use to create a nice little compartment for them in our heads. These celebrities go on doing plastic surgery which often leaves them looking like their faces have been made of rubber and you almost lose the touch with the fact that they too are humans who experience things in different ways and have their ups and downs. They are not constant, none of us are.

The focus on the outside appearance and outer experiences seems to leave us in a desperate comparison. Not a big surprise there was a study suggesting that social media can cause depression. We have objectified other people and they keep on holding this image in their social media updates. They tell what they have done and who they have been with and where and what food they ate and in what party they went to. It’s all a big show and leaves us to our imagination to fill in all the blanks of what they want us to think about them. This focus on the external leads us to need to always find a fix of acceptance and admiration and our actions start to be in line with this desperate seek for proof to justify our existence. We are afraid of the rain.

What is the rain?

The rainy day is time to be inside the house, alone and having enough time for ourselves to feel into ourselves from tip to toe, from outside to inside. Let ourselves know where we are going emotionally, physically, psychologically. It’s a time of contemplation and kind of stop from outside stimulus when we can rewire ourselves. There might be a fear and strangeness to this because our habit of craving for outside validation by our actions. It might feel like discomfort and fear of being alone but it’s very needed. It’s time to let the house of cards collapse and let yourself to feel all the layers and parts of yourself that are ignored in the pursuit of things to do and experiences to get and memories to accumulate. 

It’s also a great chance to learn to express yourself in a new way. Usually the flow of energy is trying to get something from the outside and put it inside to fill the void, not to feel so empty and dissatisfied but this is the return of the natural creativity where the energy comes from the inside and expands outward. It’s sharing of what we have plenty of. In fact our nature is creator itself and it’s the joy of being that brings the expression. If you look at it from this energetic point of view the search for external stimulus to fill us up actually creates a cork for our natural creativity because you are trying to shoot the gun at the same time as you are stuffing it full with all sorts of rubbish. It’s not meant to work like that, it’s just simply not the nature of things. I have come across many interviews with musicians who go into making an album and state that they simply cannot listen to music of anyone else when they are in the process.

We need the rainy day sometimes to just be with ourselves in whatever is going on so we can integrate and accept back parts of ourselves what the very limited focus on our social mask doesn’t have space for. The mask can come back on later when it’s needed but it’s important to take the time to let it dissolve again and let your internal spring come alive once again. Stop holding the identity on the most superficial layer.  It starts it’s flow from the inside and will fill you up with joy when it does. The natural thing then is to share it because it’s not yours to keep. It’s a gift from existence itself.

Enjoy the rainy days :)

Bali Diaries: Part 2 - Roots of culture

I was going through fb:s group for this local community in here and something in there caught my attention: There was a post where they were discussing about the foreigners who come here to Bali and want to live here permanently and there was a guy who came from the west and explained that it’s very hard to start anything legal here because the systems and laws are so complicated that it’s very hard for an outsider to grasp and then some local persons answer was that if the country and it’s customs do not please then please leave. You can see why the conversation didn’t seem to go anywhere. It seemed to me that that they were talking about completely different things. Other one was talking about many people wanting to stay in Bali and work and start businesses legally but find it too hard and give up eventually after maybe years of trial and error. The local man saw this as an attack against his culture and nation and started defending aggressively saying that those who want to live here must adjust to local society or basically get the fuck out. 

I saw also in some news that there was a situation in Denmark where some extremists were demanding that the local must change their values because they are simply wrong in their point of view.

I don’t want to get involved in any way to the debate of who should change their culture and who just adjust to what because I feel myself a bit of a stranger in any culture including “my own”. Some I can understand more easily than others because of my conditioning but I do not hold so firm belief as somebody coming from any specific culture. My feeling about it is that wherever I find myself in I’m in a way a guest passing through. I find it fun to observe any collective habits that people hold so dear. I mean it’s a wonderful play of diversity and contrast that is not in the end in anyway contradicting any other habits or beliefs that people lead their lives by. 

Now we must dive a little bit under the surface. I recall Terrence McKenna calling culture an operating system, just like in a computer you have a certain operating system that needs an update every now and then to keep up with the new technological inventions and all other variables, and that is what the human operating system truly is. It is a given set of beliefs and values that at the same time help us to operate very effectively in a one-minded state but when taken (as it has been) as an identity it leads into a funny situation that we often do things just because that’s the way it has been before instead of being fresh and seeing what would work the best at these given circumstances. So therefore we will have opposing habitual and unquestioned beliefs coming together where any sort of real meeting is not possible as human beings because we as people fail to see ourselves as anything other than our automatic and very robot-like reactions that are predetermined and coded in our system from very young age. Now being in that very confined space of living like a robot it feels very uncomfortable to have somebody questioning the very foundations on which the identity is built on. It starts shaking like a house of cards and when the ideals start to lose their ground then because the identity is so strong that the person cannot see himself as anything else than that conditioning they will feel as if they personally have been shaken and attacked hence the defence mechanism and closing down instead of embracing the joy of seeing the vastness of expression at display.

All cultural conflict comes from just a simple mistake that human consciousness easily makes. It’s the mistake of “I am this body, I am these thoughts and the emotions. This is my country, these are my people and my family” Instead of just the pure presence of “I am” that is unassociated with any culture or belief system seeing if something is needed but otherwise remaining empty. There is a reason for this clinging to habits. It’s very scary to stand on your own and especially not having the answers as a cane to lean on. You will feel very naked at first and a fear will arise but that is the only way to freedom. One must reclaim their own being back from merely cultural and social pre-determined behaviour. Then there is a more solid ground to stand on when a person starts to see himself as the presence instead of these patterns passed from generation to the next. Then even the culture is not a problem anymore. In fact you can have so much more fun with it because you don’t take it so seriously. You find yourself so free that you can even play along and you’ll start to see the real essence and beauty of the culture you are coming from. It’s not forced on you so you don’t have to belief in it if you don’t want to but you can even have a real pride for coming from certain background for you see the richness that it has brought to your experience. They all have wonderful creativity and beauty that is in tune with the local nature also and could not be possible in any other part of the earth. But still you see without a doubt that this is not all of you, it merely touches the surface of you. You cannot be confined in such a small category as culture and suddenly respectability doesn’t seem so appealing as before. You can go a little crazy and you can even make fun of your culture. It will not be such a big deal anymore and others making fun of your culture don’t look like attacks anymore.

I would never, just for example turn into a Balinese even if I tried my absolute best for the rest of my life to adjust and learn. I would always have my roots in Finland for my body, my nervous system, my mind has been growing in a different atmosphere even though it will adjust in time but I’m still always a guest on this earth and I can respect that any culture and people living in it have their own ways but I’m not so interested in people who carry their culture around as something more than a fun play. It gets too heavy after a while. I always find myself more attracted towards those who have gone beyond that. Who I can truly meet as something more than a product of their heritage and upbringing. Freedom in me greets the freedom in anyone who has got it. I will automatically find it more appealing and I feel more spaciousness and connectedness around those people. People who do not look me just as my appearance as my human self.

Let’s meet as presence.

I’m going to say it.. I usually don’t but…. oh, god.. here it goes:

-Namaste

Bali Diaries: part 1 - Fight within and diseases

I’m here in Bali. Writing this from my balcony by the riverside. It’s a real paradise but I have been feeling quite weak ever since I traveled here. (almost exactly 1 week ago) I seem to have energy only in short periods and after that I get flu-like symptoms and have to rest for most of the day in my air conditioned house. I had a period for about 1 day that I felt I was getting back to normal.. but nope, I’m even more tired now than before. 

I noticed from the period of having my strength back for a while that I felt like I was lost. I felt like I didn’t know what to do and actually I felt a little guilty not doing anything as one “should” do in a place like this.. There is simply so much possibilities. 

I went yesterday to the rice fields for a lunch and stayed in shadow like I have stayed this whole time. I haven’t really been into trying to get tan because I’m in here for almost 3 months so I don’t have any rush to get tanned to get people in Scandinavia envious. In the restaurant I saw a girl traveling clearly for a shorter holiday in Bali. My impression of her was fairly typical tourist impression. She seemed stressed in her appearance and she was fire-department-red for staying too long in the sun and yet she chose the place in the sun in her black top and shorts at the hottest time of the day and ordered a drink with ginger. I thought just “Wow.. that’s something..” She took out both her iPhone and iPad and started taking pictures of the surroundings, the foods and drinks that came to her. (probably face booking them too) It was just very interesting to watch somehow. It seemed like she was out on a power holiday to see and experience everything so at least she has some good stories to tell when she’s not here anymore and a skin cancer to remind her in her old days that she went to places. I imagine her getting a real nice photo-collection and saying to everyone who would ask “You have to experience bali at least once in your life!”. I giggle inside myself a little because I think I have used that phrase on someone and I have traveled also in this manner before.

Now it’s funny to see the contrast between the enthusiasm and sense of adventure that I have had before compared to now when I really just came to live here for a while and enjoy slow pace of life. It’s not just the outer travel that has calmed down recently but also the inner travel is not so extreme and crazy now. The addiction and thrill of energetic/spiritual experiences/knowledge and whatever interesting phenomena I have encountered on my way seems to be becoming more and more secondary. That’s why for me Ubud is the most interesting place to be for me at the moment. I can go to public sauna on the rice fields where all the new-ageys come after their hard day of yoga, crystal awakening ascension workshops or whatever they have. I went to the sauna few days ago and I went quite early so it wasn’t too crowded. It stated very clearly on the door “SILENCE!!!” and It felt such a nice place to be not having to talk to anyone and everyone was silent. Then in comes one yogi -girl who starts chanting very loudly and passionately “OM GAM GANAPATAYE NAMAHA!.” and another girl joins her as I’m going silently “Really? I mean Really?!..” Until a guy comes in very politely saying “Please, this is a silent are, you can sing beautiful songs but please do it outside, it’s a silent area.” Then they eventually stop clearly disappointed and one of the girl answers -Well, doesn’t the music also come from a space of silence” That’s when I felt like I must be in one of J P Sears’ videos and I felt that I could not decide what my reaction could be.. I felt like laughing and crying at the same time but mostly It was the ultimate moment of exhaustive sigh and a facepalm. I Could feel the same feelings of disbelief coming from the guy but he just clearly stated “No, We will not discuss philosophy about it.”

Why I mentioned that it’s probably the most interesting place for me is because I recognise myself in each of these characters and I do have compassion for it. I can see myself few years ago in both inner and outer travellers which doesn’t make a great difference in the end for both are in stress to find something to report and say “I found happiness and fulfilment here, I don’t feel separate anymore, I can finally accept myself”.

I started out talking about my body and how it doesn’t feel fully functional yet. I see that it’s actually very much needed just for myself to have an excuse to be still and relax, not to try to accomplish something. I am, I exist, I am here and now and there is nothing to do, there are no goals unless I choose so. Sometimes I just tend to forget that and start forcing myself and neglecting my true feelings. I’m actually quite content just going out couple of times per day to eat something good or have a nice massage. Yesterday I even got my first facial ever. Life is very simple at the moment and I needed physical weakness to allow myself not to feel bad about not doing much.

-See ya’ll later, Warm greetings from the Tropic.

My terrace -Ubud