THE NIGHT I BECAME A BILLIONAIRE...

I don't know if this was a significant dream from a spiritual point of view or just a compilation of impressions and thoughts from the previous day... but the issue is important to me so I will write it down anyway.

I had found out that I had family I didn't know about. I was invited to someone's home. There was a guy there who turned out to be my cousin. He was quite handsome and a lovely person. He sat me down and explained to me that I was about to inherit a family fortune. It would make me the 25th richest person in the world. I was obviously stunned. A great sense of freedom pervaded me, and I was jolted into this other reality where all the petty concerns of ordinary life no longer affected me. It was like dying and waking up to another dimension. My cousin in the dream seemed like a spirit guide. My first thought was, however, what a lot of work there is going to be! I thought, now I must work to put the planet straight! I finally had the means to make a difference. I was a bit worried how I was going to manage it all, since my condition is what it is. Yet I figured that I would get lots of treatment, have more energy because of it and because of not having to worry about survival, and even though finding the right people to help us out may not be that easy it would work out somehow. There was no need or desire to be the richest person, just enough to make a real difference to all that is so upside down in our world. I did also realize that this state of wealth would soon seem perfectly ordinary to me.

More family came into the room but many of them didn't even say hello. They all seemed to be women. Finally one decided to engage me in some talk so she put a microphone to my mouth and asked, "So what is your patent answer when you are being asked what your most cherished values are?". I said, "I don't have any", meaning I have no patent answers as it must all be intuitive and spontaneous. I wasn't going to be part of a social charade. The lady turned away with dismay, looking very snooty. I then decided to say something, but it didn't come out that well because I had bread in my mouth. I tried to say, my most important value is compassion. Perhaps the fact that I couldn't say it loud and clear indicates that I still don't feel that I am able to feel 100 % compassion for all beings.

I woke up and lingered in the wonderful sense of freedom and deep purpose. Of course, money is a form of energy and doesn't really belong to anyone in particular, but karma is deeply attached to it. At the same time, money is like having health - it's just as arbitrary yet also deeply significant to one's view and experience of life. I have always felt very conflicted about the idea of being rich when so many are poor, and as my readers will know I have little tolerance for the aggressive, skewed and selfish marketing of what people call the law of attraction through books such as The Secret and its sequel The Myth (which I've seen but not read). In the dream this conflict was resolved as there was no negative karma attached to the money that I got to have and spend for the improvement of my health and life circumstances, enjoyment of life, but also for the better good of humanity and the planet at large. It was just floating around in the universe and landed in my lap.

In reality, I want my legacy mainly to be of a cultural nature (and how I want to do it has been quite clear for me for a long time), but there would be plenty more I could imagine myself doing if I had the money and energy to help put things into motion. Money, or its value, moves around. That is all. You and I can have it just as well as the next person, but we may just as well suffer the lack of it. It's all part of the experience of life and differing lessons our souls wish to learn, a pattern we got stuck in or a pattern we became liberated from.

Photos from above by Vivi-Mari Carpelan copyright 2012.

Gratitude - Not to be Forced

They say that feelings of lethargy, apathy, bouts of anger and other negative states of mind can come to sensitive people as this world is undergoing a transformative process. I suppose that's what I'm feeling... not like me to feel so listless and have such trouble getting along with people. I just want to run away and hide... I'm sure I'm not showing the best of myself but neither are people I meet. Things that wouldn't have been an issue ten years ago seem somehow aggravated today, as if people just can't help themselves. I so wish I could feel more compassion but I am just SO tired. I try desperately to hang in there and not fall prey to despair, so I suppose what I write about isn't always so uplifting either. I am here adding some things to the theme of forced gratitude. A few points overlap what I wrote in my last post.

I recently learned that children who were evacuated to Sweden from Finland during WWII are still plagued by the way they were always told to shut up and be grateful. They wanted nothing more than to be with their parents even if it meant chaos and famine, yet at the time it was thought better for them to have peace and enough food to eat in neutral Sweden. If they were unhappy, they were often severely punished. My dad was sexually abused. My mother was sent to some rich fosterparents in the capital of Finland where they only fed her cakes overflowing with cream and sugar. She was saved by this woman's sister and taken to a famous pediatrician who told them what she needs to eat to regain strength. They eventually adopted her and though they were quite rich, she had to sleep in the father's drafty reception room and always had runny eyes. When I was younger, she used to tell me quite often how she hated the idea of having to be forcibly grateful. Perhaps I have inherited this from her but I also don't like to have the idea of gratitude shoved down my throat. It was never a problem until I started to hang out with spiritually minded Americans online. They seem to be in love with inspirational quotes about gratitude and love to teach it to those of lesser knowing. The country's highly religious backdrop might have something to do with this. What strikes me as really odd though, is why anyone thinks that this should be necessary? I mean, I don't go around feeling totally hateful about life all day long and then communicate with spiritual people online in the evening. Of course there are things one feels grateful for during the day. As a means of self-preservation, one naturally looks for counterparts to all the shitty tings that happen in life. Don't people do this?? I'm sorry but it's hard for me to buy into the idea that people would be so dumb as not to get such fundamental issues on their own. But maybe people really are so removed from any natural sentiments/sensibilities and common sense? I was wondering about the same thing when Feng Shui became popular.

I promised to help an elderly lady with her new computer the other day. I guess it's my own fault that I didn't focus and really think what it is she might need. I trusted that it was just about a few things that I should be able to figure out for her so she didn't have to take in anyone expensive. I didn't expect to get paid but I knew she'd give me a little something. Ok, good deal. Funny enough, everything that could possibly go wrong, did. Since I have no stress tolerance I was quickly in a really bad state of panic, but determined to see this thing through stoically. She however, became frantic as we didn't get anywhere and she was in a hurry as well. The irony is, she probably has money to pay for a professional and only wanted to help me. However the humiliation and the stress took a great toll on me. In the end I felt like an idiot (and was biting my tongue so as not to come out with the usual defensive nonsense arguments) and did of course not feel that she was grateful for my input. It hurt a little but what hurt the most was that she didn't consider my low stress tolerance though she knows about it. The totally unexpected negativity that came out in the situation made me want to run home and cry, which I did later on. She showed some surprising hardness that I wanted to escape. Now I am not wanting to hear some advice that I attracted it through some funny law that came into fashion yesterday. Sure some of it is fine, but when it becomes dogma... well I'll leave it at that.

I simply thought more of my abilities than I should have and was trying to help where my help was maybe not really needed, and the karma came back to me at once, which happens these days, since the pace has been accelerated. Of course, there was also an unhappy combination of circumstances. Anyhow, I really think the law of karma is as good a law as any, and it's been around for a long time. It's just a matter of understanding it. Perhaps in time we will gain more freedom and manifest things that are not from ego, but the way I see it is, as long as we're on Earth we're attached to karma. Funny though, I've had a dream in which I felt complete and utter lack of self-worth. I have never felt anything like this in real life. So I guess there is some subconscious process going on in regard to such issues (and it may well be connected to the collective). I feel that I'm having to battle it in some sense. I don't really feel appreciated by people right now.

People are quite out of control these days, I think that's pretty obvious to anyone who is able to see reality for what it is and feel real feelings. Sometimes we just can't muster loving feelings, compassion or anything else of a positive nature, even when we believe we should. We feel irritated and stressed. We may be aware of the possibility, that in some way the negative encounter was a lesson, but we don't always have the energy to go into it and it's not always sure this is what we should do. You know what? It's all part and parcel of the transition. We may be limitless beings but here in human form, there's a lot to deal with. Those who like to preach from above are not doing any favours. People who are dealing with real life feelings will eventually resolve them, or they will not. It's not for anybody else to determine. You can only let go of your negative feelings when you CAN let go of them. If I started to feel guilty about feeling negative feelings I would indeed only be prolonging my own process, as anything denied or repressed will still be there. I also believe that guilt really drags you down. Common sense, right?

What also strikes me is that people preach about the importance of feeling gratitude all the time and instigating "gratefulness days", yet when I look around online I see little of it expressed towards other people. For instance, considering all the time and effort some people put into replying to other people's questions or blogs, well one would expect a glimpse of "thank you" or a simple acknowledgment of the other's effort a litte more frequently than what one sees now. It doesn't have to be any bombastic feelings of gratitude of course... the more modest kind called common courtesy! One thing my mother did teach me was to express thank you a lot so maybe it's just me... not understanding that not everyone is used to it. It's also not very nice to respond to someone in a forum only to find someone else say the exact same thing further along the line.

I don't (as a manner of speaking) know what goes on in people these days and maybe it's best to know as little as possible. I mean, what I do see is already overwhelming... I have learned, that it's ok to say no to people although I was raised to be kind and nice to everyone. These two attitudes don't always seem in synch but we are living in times of change and there is no reason to plague oneself more than necessary with stressors that lead nowhere. A little bit of toughness is needed at times to get through to people. The compassion comes when it comes. You can't force anything. And you can always consider, whether all you want is to become a more succesful human being or an enlightened person. The latter is apparently not always a very cheery path to take, but somehow I suspect that it's a choice some people have made before they came here and so any attempts to manifest the opposite (a happy, succesful life) will probably go down the drain because it's not what the soul really needs. And gratitude comes when it comes! Courtesy can be taught, but not gratitude, though maybe one can work towards it in some indirect way.

Artwork: "Early Morning", mixed media on paper by author, all rights reserved 1997

Reality Is Real And How To Survive Life

I spent several years at the University of Helsinki in the 90s learning about the basic nature of reality being an illusion, but at the end of the day I learned nothing whatsoever of any use. Life was still the same. I was hoping I could arrive at some feeling of interconnectedness with all that is, and feel oneness. But it simply wasn't time. I've always liked the old zen story that goes something like this: "First you see a tree as a tree. Then comes a time, when the tree is no longer a tree. However, at the end of your explorations into the nature of the tree, the tree is again just a tree".

I guess I'm at the point where the tree is really a tree and nothing else. In my view, it doesn't really matter for us whether reality is an illusion or not. It's useful to us to know that it's malleable and that we can affect the order of things through the focus of our mind, but our reality is still our reality. At a certain point in our development we have only certain choices available to us, because we have specific set of tools at the time and not the more expansive knowledge required to make a more informed and wiser choice. This also applies to our perception of reality, which can only change when we are ready for it. So while in some sense we have free will, it's doubtful whether we can really apply it all that often other than regarding little matters such as having soup or salad for dinner. Many people speak of options that will secure a happier life for us. Yet those options can only come to play when we have full understanding of it and have transcended the karmic bonds that tie us down.

Could karma really be abolished in a dualist reality? Dualism implies, of course, that there are polarities and that one event will cause another. What it is, is simply the law of cause and effect. There may be alternatives available to those who have transcended the attachments of this world (quite the feat to arrive at that!) or to some beings who are here only to assist humankind in growing into more responsible and loving beings. I used to take karma very seriously and try and make sure that I paid off everything that might be brewing in my subconscious mind. I have changed perspective a little but am still very respectful of the consequences of my actions. One source has suggested that I am one of those who don't have to worry about karma because my initial intention in coming here was infused with compassion. I can relate to this idea since I've always felt this must be my last life and I have also felt that this life is not about creating a safe haven on Earth for myself even though I'd like to feel more secure. I have definitely been scared of this place, and the traps that abound. I had fear that I would get caught up in some karmic drama that would tie me to this reality for many lifetimes. For many years I also resonated very strongly with the ideal of the Bodhisattva, the Buddha of Compassion. Ironically, my life was so complicated that I also felt it was a burden - a duty. One of my artworks features a woman lying flat on her stomach in her bed with a whole bunch of Bodhisattvas stacked on her back.

Enormous changes are pervading our world and there is definitely a transition going on that involves very high frequencies of energy. As we are not used to this and are having to adapt, many of us feel very much out of focus and may display a whole array of mental and physcial symptoms. From where I stand, this really is no joke. For those who want to know more about the ascension and light working, please refer to the links at the bottom of this page. As for myself, I have noticed that my states of mind tend to fluctuate in accordance with the so-called energy alerts. The infiltration of energy is of course tied in with the universe, and it is also fluctuating in different ways depending on cosmic constellations and other factors. The way people react is of course individual. Many experience that their subconscious traumas are all surging to the surface in an intense and rapid fashion. For instance yesterday, I was feeling pretty okay until a close person did something that I interpreted as some form of callous and selfish act. "Why do you always think the worst of me?", he has often had the reason to ask me. Yes, why indeed? Why am I so suspiscious of him and why does he have to recieve this kind of energy from another person? You see, we are both in it, we are a constellation that makes sense only as such. Yet we both should look into our own history to see what is causing this repeated pattern. What made this incident different from others though was the scope of my reaction. I wasn't able to call him at all during the whole day, so I wrote rather nasty e-mails that were supposed to ensure that he would not take advantage of me in any way. Needless to say, my nigth's sleep was truly bad and the next day I felt that I have no right to walk the face of this earth. But... maybe the worse it feels the greater the change?

What caused my reaction to be blown out of proportion like that? Well, my guess is that there is something in the air... But I also sensed that all my disappointments with people who I feel have let me down in the past surged up like an activated volcano. Isn't it funny how one moment you think everything is fine and then the next you're crawling and whining on the floors of hell? I know now that this is not just about a pathology (meaning the symptoms of traumas of the past). It is that, but it is also about other things. For the life of me I can't concieve of the importance of trying to prevent these things from happening by resorting to medication - unless you're really chronically depressed in the clinical sense or have a mental illness. Of course it takes a good doctor's intuition to determine which it is, but since we know or suspect that our own purification is now intensified, we might like to think twice about the happy pill.

Life is, for one thing, not about being happy all the time. I know that many disagree; there is in some western cultures a tendency to want to have partytime with cream layer cake every day. There is also a frightening tendency in children today of wanting everything right now instead of learning the noble art of waiting. I can imagine it would be hard to be a parent these days! When I see how stuck many of my friends are because of having children at a time in their life when a certain fatigue is already kicking in, I do not envy them. Children can be a blessing, no doubt. But they can also be a distraction and a heavy challenge. Many artists like myself have also concluded that the need to fulfill themselves through parenthood is not really there.

Anyway, I was talking about happiness. Does it really exist, I sometimes wonder? I think a life could harbour more of those fleeting moments of happiness or contentedness if your life's beginning was a happy one and your life's lessons were not all that deep. But let's face it - some strong souls have chosen to either take care of their karma shit or to learn something valuable and deep about this reality. It seems that the latter may be the case with me though I used to think it was the former. Fact remains - I feel screwed up right now. I can assure you that I've been pretty distressed a lot of my life and can't really recall many moments during which I actually felt happiness. But mixed up and confused about my direction - nooooo... not really. Now it's as if my neat pack of cards had been shoved by the devil himself! The curious thing is that during the intensified process that began at Easter, I have also enjoyed many surprising things in a deeper and more meaningful way than before. After my tough months in the USA last winter I allowed myself a little more care about my personal well-being and this opened the doors to more of life's little luxuries.

At the moment I don't have money, and you really need to have some in order to do things that make your boring day-to-day life a little more appealing. I really cannot make any money at the moment, as I am not allowed to from the point of view of the law. Anyway, I am not talking cream layer cake every day. But I've decided that I deserve more opulence than before, and so at the risk of building up debts that I won't be able to pay I am allowing myself some cheap roses every once in a while, a yummy cheese cake, a cd that I buy on the internet, pretty tea cups from the English antiques store in town, some cool new clothes from the postorder catalogues, soap that smells heavenly, candles lit in the evening, incense burning, a good film to watch in my rather appealing red sofa with all its cushions... Ok, so if abundance is available to all, certainly I can start here as well as anywhere? It's risky though. How do you avoid being foolish and ending up with bills you can't pay? Well, I guess you try and focus on the fact that this is what you truly deserve and keep up some kind of motivation to 'fix' it, and then hope the opportunities arise as the universe is benevolent to those who are willing to work with it and not against it. I don't know any other way.

The things that are free are... well, there really aren't many when you live alone - and certainly not in these days of extreme capitalism that even make healing a commodity only the rich can afford. So... a walk in the forest with my cats. Perhaps a walk to my powerspot on the cliffs by the sea, which ends up brightening my spirit though it seems like a drag at the time. Using my art supplies until I run out... What I'm really doing is fighting loneliness and despair.

Someone explained the difference between emotions and feelings. Emotions being our reactions to things we don't understand, and feelings being a whisper from spirit about the state of affairs (well roughly speaking anyway). I spent a great part of my life denying my emotional life and so I haven't really known mine for more than about ten years. Perhaps it accounts for some of my rash reactions that embarrass me more than anyone else. So what exactly are my problems? Well, I'd say it's the "usual". Fear of rejection because no one cared when I was little (and by the way, I hated being a child because it disempowered me!), as well as a lack of trust in the way of other people. I get very annoyed for both of these reasons if I am being made to wait or people make promises they don't keep. This is what happened yesterday too. This brings me to the issue of hurt.

I know all about the ideas that emotions are only within us and we are the only ones responsible for them. But once again I would like to remind you that this is a polarised version of reality. This cannot be the one and single truth simply because it represents only one point of view in a constellation. Now at the other end we have the idea that all hurt is caused by external sources and so they should be condemned or obliterated. Isn't it time we learned to embrace these extremes and look at what it is we get if we join them together and follow the middle path? I don't think that denying that somone has caused us hurt is helping the world in the least. Of course they should be accountable for what they do onto others! It's ridiculous to abolish the idea of victimhood, it's as I've said before the same as claiming that Hitler was a chimera. No, these are real things. They are real in this realm. All we can do is become more informed and open up our hearts to prevent ghastly things from happening. Until then, we need to take responsibility for our own hurt emotions and examine them closely, but meanwhile, the other party might have a reason to look into the things they throw at other people. After all, it's all about constellations, right?

Artwork: "Broken Promises", handmade collage by author, all rights reserved 2008

Random Thoughts On Spirituality From January 2007

These paragraphs were written when I first went online and took part in discussions on spirituality. Since I didn't want all of my thoughts to get lost in cyberspace, I collected them and saved them, and will give them a new home here in this blog space. Again, I have changed since this text was written, but still hope someone might get something out of my musings!

On the issue of unconditional self-love

I think that these questions are at the very core of spirituality, and therefore very confusing. Most of us are at some stage of the process of comprehending what love really means, so there are conflicting feelings and thoughts involved. We are being pulled in two directions. Most of us have spiritual maturity and insight regarding certain issues but we act child-like on other issues. I think that this site contains a lot of insight! But I wonder about the idea of "looking for what you really want". That could be misleading, I think? Children "want" things. It's an ego's request for something to be entertained by or to identify with. It's easy to get all entangled in the quest for the "real" wanting as opposed to a supposedly fake wanting. I think a lot of people get stuck on that issue however much they want to be spiritual. That's just it! You also want to be spiritual. I think it's a phase, and a very needed one. It's not something you can bypass, so really, I think it's ok if you have a lot of wanting going on in your life. But maybe it's important to also bear in mind that you will eventually have to get out of that stage. You've got to "grow up". It's maybe alluring to be engaged in all the wanting, because it's entertaining you. But you're not still there. Tricky!

Personally, I find some comfort in realizing when I'm trying to entertain myself. As one of you were saying, it's okay to have negative feelings or any feelings, for that matter. The point is to take a step back and look at it. Okay, now I was grasping. Now I'm entertaining myself. Now I was feeling hatred. Now I didn't honour my heart. Sometimes we look and we don't know what the heck is going on! But gradually we get somewhere. Slowly. I don't think it can be a fast kind of revelation. If it were, then it would mean that we were very simple beings. But we are not. So it's slow, arduous, painful, oh god it can be hell sometimes. Although sometimes you might want to think that the darker it is, the closer you are? It's really dark before dawn. But I think you will learn to love and honour yourself, because evolution has to go somewhere (and it can only go in two directions, right?). In the end, whatever "the end" means (I don't know!).

I don't know a lot of things. But maybe that's good too. "Not knowing" can be a good state, a place where you give up some of your need to control and all that wanting, and try to listen to the heart instead. I think self-love just happens. You may not even recognize it for a while, because it doesn't look like the kind of love you are used to hearing about. Putting yourself first and all that obscure nonsense that so-called experts on the soul are telling us! Sorry if I'm sounding harsh but there's a lot of advice out there that doesn't suit everybody, as it all depends where you are at in your development. I think those words by Raskin were full of insight. However, the process to get to that kind of blissful state of an egoless kind of universal love is not all so nice and guey, a lot of the time. On the other hand, it's a journey, and should the goal really be more valuable than the journey itself? At least as intellectual beings we can step back and look at the pain and think "hm, that's kinda interesting"!

On the issue of activating other people's shadow-selves

Apart from a host of other problems, I find that one is particularly painful. I seem to unintentionally activate the shadow in other people (especially those of the opposite sex). I'm always alert, perceptive, inquisitive, demanding, questioning, poking and just being me. I have been raised to be polite, but it doesn't help much when that thing in me emerges. I seem to say or do just the very thing that person doesn't want to hear or acknowledge. I'm not saying that this doesn't also help me to see my own shadow and whatever behaviour requires improvement. But to always have to play the role of an adversary or a "holy fool" is not funny, but rather depressing. Does anybody recognize this in their own lives?

Later: At a point in time, if we continue on our spiritual quest, there will most likely be equanimity. A state of mind where we are no longer reactive to other people's standpoints. I think we all agree on that? However, the road to reach such almost utopian awareness sure is a bumpy one! I know we create our own reality, but on the other hand since we are all interconnected, it would seem strange if we could fly around above all of what is going on in the world and not have to get personally involved. One of my personal challenges has been to dive into the chaos of reality as perceived by the collective mind. I navigate somehow, using my common sense, my intuition, and deep thinking. I try and observe my own patterns of behaviour and seek ways to change them. Yet during this process, I also have to live and co-operate with others. I'm not the type to piss others off, not in general. But when a person has a strong mind and some perceptiveness to see what is wrong with a lot of things, and often feels disrespected, then it's hard not to put a foot down and say no, I won't accept this. It's not always the wrong thing to do. Chögyam Trungpa also says in "Cutting through spiritual materialism" that saying yes is not always the answer, sometimes saying no is going to help the other person much more. My point is, is that it's not always bad to activate somebody's shadow-self. This is what I think. I think someone has to do it so that other people's shadow-selves can come out in from the dark and be healed by the light of consciousness. Maybe even Hitler "had" to come and do what he did so that it would get people thinking more deeply about certain moral values.

The trick for most of is is surely to know when it's better not to be assertive or offensive or just whatever that could bring about bad blood, to have discernment enough to see that the person in question is not at a point where they can actually get the message. I'm thinking that there has to be some balance between our own personal-self control and a spontaneous way of being. I personally feel that both ends of the stick are detrimental. So what about the "middle way"?

I think that when you actually do know a little bit more about the deeper meaning of life and where we are heading to than a lot of people around you, then it's a really tough place to be, because more awareness kind of also implies more responsibility for your actions. No? You can't put yourself above others, because evolution is not about ego-tripping. So one has to try and tune oneself down, check the ego-issue all the time, be careful, and as one of you said, think a moment before we react. (In my case I've needed to learn to be less cautious, and actually show anger when it's appropriate and not later when I can no longer make a stand!). Still, we cannot excerpt ourselves from the humdrum and chaos of life with other people. We will be activating other people's shadow-selves, whether we like it or not. I hope I'm not just making excuses for myself but I guess this is what I meant. That there's also a mission in the fact that we influence others and help them become aware of their issues. I mean that it just happens, it's not something you can decide and say something like "well somebody had to tell you what you're doing". That would be arrogant. It's best to just be whatever you are in this moment and fix yourself as much as you can but also accept that you're playing a certain role in the game called human life. Am I making any sense ? :-)

I totally agree that we have our own reality with our own personal sets of beliefs. It's good to keep in mind that it's all relative. But we have to live in this world somehow and what often happens to good little girls (like myself) that we are being used as a doormat. That's hardly conducive to spritiual growth. So we have to make clear to ourselves what we really stand for and then actually stand for it, if under attack.

However, not all situations in life are confrontational so the activating of other people's shadow-selves can happen in a subtle way. Maybe you invested a lot of energy in a relationship and then you get dumped because you wanted to grow but the other one didn't. It hurts. But maybe the other person did learn something from the experience in the end. Who knows. All we can do is play along. But the deeper you go into opening your own heart up, the more it also hurts when you meet resistance or have to back off because you're not dealing with a situation correctly. Learning through the difficult experience of being said "no" to or being rejected even though you're doing things right (or so you think at least), or having to say "no" when somebody is manipulating you, is part of "growing up" and it hurts.

Later: It would be good to get away from the constant need of acknowledgement and positive feedback from other people. So many of us have not been seen enough as children to have a strong sense of self. Or then we are struggling for recognition for some other reason. One of my favourite quotes from a transpersonal psychologist has been "you have to be somebody before you can be nobody". No point in dreaming away about enlightenment (meaning liberation and no more ego-bonds) before we have become real persons, that is people with a sense of self. I risk sounding bookish but what I remember from Sartre's philosophy was the idea that we become somebody only in the eye of the other. I've carried that idea with me all these 20 odd years, and it helps to justify the pain that goes on in the interaction with other people. And as someone here was pointing out, it's probably a never-ending story! Or at least it is a really long story. Some of us are working a bit harder than others. I believe we made that choice on some other level of existence, but anyway, the point is that we probably need to make clear to ourselves by whatever means necessary that we have to respect each other and the level of being and understanding that the other person seems to be at. I'ts pretty obvious that without that respect the planet will go under, isn't it? I have a relationship with a person who gets very angry at some things that unassumingly jump out of my mouth. This person defends the outburst by saying that I shouldn't have said that thing in the first place. Obviously I cannot be controlling everything I say. Gee, some pardon please! Obviously this guy also cannot help that I touched on some sensitive area in his mind. We both end up feeling wronged. This is just to show how hard it can be to get out of a pattern with someone. Yes sure, I believe I should fix myself first then maybe others follow, rather than the other way around. But how can I do this? Surely I also deserve to be respected as someone who still has issues to work with. If I care about the person who acts this way in my company then the solution may not be to just walk away. I wouldn't want for people to walk out of my life just because I have a stubborn behavioural pattern.Later: I guess sometimes we are challenged in cruel ways so that our subconscious crap will really rise to the surface. Many of us have to learn to stand up for ourselves and not accpet all the shadows that other people project on us. That is maybe one way towards a greater sense of self-respect. But what is all this anyway, self-respect, self-love, self-esteem...? I think you can have a sense of self-esteem yet still be challenged in ways that are far more complicated than you could ever have dreamt of or found in a book. Very often there is a hole in the whole, a piece missing from the puzzle that makes it hard to deal with life from a standpoint of equanimity even if the elements conducive to such a viewpoint seem to be there. It would be easy to fix if you could pinpoint exactly what it is. But sometimes it's very hard to get the clues because maybe it's about really deep issues of what Truth really is.

In spiritual or psychological contexts people often recommend that you walk away from people who, as someone suggested, act as robots to certain stimuli. Sometimes it's easy to do that. But sometimes it's really hard to go, because it feels like betrayal. Maybe because we are also repeating a pattern of sticking by our parents as children, or some such incident. Or maybe because we are not really sure if we already got the lesson in its entirety. I often find that when I think I'm clear about one issue, something new and surprising pops up from the subconscious mind. So I have, seemingly at least, a choice of dealing with all that subconscious content or then turning away from the process and taking the easy road which is to look for a more pleasurable way of existance. However then I wouldn't have much to give to the world. And I think I want to contribute, after all. Try and put up with all the shadows in this "valley of the shadow of death". Continue to be strong and stand by those who are also unfortunate and in need of support. I can't leave a fellow soldier to die in the warzone. I wonder if it's really bad to be a martyr? To want so much to help that you are willing to risk your own wellbeing and comfort?

On the issue of sacrifice

How can we always know what our highest moral values are? It's not always so easy to be in touch with Truth. Our judgment is being clouded by so many emotions, not least personal traumas from the past. I'd love to be able to say "thus spoke my heart". But I'm not sure it's my heart that's speaking. How can I be 100% sure? A lot of maniacs are preaching all kinds of things based on what they think their heart or their God is telling them, but it doesn't mean it's of any practical value or conducive to a positive evolution. The same with sacrifice. How exactly are we supposed to define sacrifice? Sometimes I don't get what I want, I get what my soul needs instead. But at the moment when I feel distraught that I'm not getting something, it may feel like sacrifice. It of course doesn't mean that on the basis of that experience I will go out into the world and preach that sacrifice is a virtue either :-/.

My boyfriend has to take care of his traumatized kid. In fact he has to sacrifice his personal life because it's against his moral values to put the kid in a foster home. Thus he has to sacrifice his care for me. He has nowhere to put the kid for even a few days, so he cannot leave his home and pursue other interests, such as seeing me. Then there is me. The future is not known. I have no guarantees that I will ever get what I feel that I need with this guy, because he happened to put a child into this world. Should he be "punished" for having been so "stupid" as to make a baby with his ex-wife who turned out to be a luney? Should I so easily turn my back because right now the times are bad and our shadows are emerging due the stress? Who knows, maybe it's a one in a lifetime chance to fix some old trauma such as co-dependency? When can we ever ask for guarantees? Maybe it's all the wanting and the asking for guarantees that make us truly unhappy, not just the lack of the physcial prescence of someone we care about? Sometimes when we suffer the reward actually comes later. How are we supposed to know? It cannot always be there, in the here and now. The mutual exchange is not always equal to equal in the present moment either.

Should we always abandon people because they make our lives more uncomfortable? What if your loved one is suddenly in a wheelchair. How easily would you abandon them? Or if they go into a coma that can last for god knows how long. Will you be unfaithful during that time?

I just don't see these things as simple choices at all. Maybe my mind is too screwed up. Or maybe my heart is telling me to wait, don't follow your immediate urges. Stay and listen... and in time you may see things that you were not able to anticipate. They could be good things? I've had to put up with discomfort all my life so I know what it is like. I cannot kill my body so there's not much to do about it, but to accept. It is bloody hard. But I don't know if it makes me a more stubborn person in a good or a bad way? Maybe I'm too used to it to understand anything else. On the issue of envy

I think I can say that I am not an envious person. And that is in a country with a people noted for that particular vice. Well, I don't think I ever wanted to swap minds with anybody else. Maybe that's what helped. I felt I was doing enough, working enough, being more or less smart enough. However. As I'm getting older I find myself having traces of envious thoughts. Weird residue from my shadow-self comes up. That's because I'm feeling pressure to fit in with society. More so than ever. And I've struggled with my physical ailments for so long. I'm getting tired of seeing such fit and radiant people all over the place! I'm starting to wish that I could have some of all that success... I've worked so hard, I've earned it! To think that the reward will come later and will be so much more satifsfying for being deep and spiritual, well, when is that day ever to come? A person is happy in relation to his or her environment. If you're gloomy and everybody else is, too, then it's not so bad. If you're gloomy (or sick or poor) but those around you are not, then it's like being in hell! The same with envy; you may not be envious because you are bad in some way, but because others seem better. it's all relative. Maybe it helps to bear that in mind? And maybe to try and stick to people who don't activate a feeling in you that life is unfair and you are less succesful than they are. Or ask yourself if you would really like to be them? Brrrr! At least it's a thought that puts me off altogether, regardless my physical appearance and lack of health.

Later: If you consider that all of us have limitless amounts of potential, then it's really hard to be envious and greedy! I have everything I need to succeed with whatever I'm meant to succeed with, and anyway all that is not really always just up to what I want or what I think about myself as an individual living a certain life. I always think well, the challenges I have is my karma and all I can do is try to fix it. Why bother with craving for something other people have? I might get those things in the end or I might not. I think believing that we create our own reality can be misleading because yes, I think we do create it, but there's also so much in our subconscious mind that direct us. No way can we control our life. Best let go of the control and let life take it's course, and rely on our higher self and intuition to keep us from more trouble. Life just is, life creates itself, hop in the carriage and try to keep your horse on the road, but don't obsess. Well, that's just some of my thoughts anyway.

The idea about getting taxes is probably based in greed and envy like a lot of other things in society. Like the idea that the state shouldn't give too much to the poor because then they would get lazy and not fix their own situation. This is not an assumption, it really is how the authorities (and other people) usually think. Actually some new research proves the opposite. When you feel that people are generous towards you, you feel happier and more motivated to get going with your own life. The barrier of greed and envy can be very very daunting and have a paralyzing effect on those who are less fortunate.

Later: Nothing new under the sun... The age-old issues are always coming out in new versions by new generations. Hopefully we're starting to get somewhere, though! :-/

Well, my ailments are purely physical and the rest is hypersensitivity about the ways of the world, but if I could rely on my mind only I would be a happy person indeed. However, my body has taught me to respect boundaries, and how boundaries actually make us more creative beings. To work with a limited amount of tools is truly challenging, and usually produces more creative results than limitless capacity and access to "everything" (I used to do research on creativity). There is hardly any sense in anything if there are no boundaries? At least from the human perspective?

Boundaries are interesting also from the point of view of greed and envy. Personally, I'm a lover of abundance (or rather, opulence) and don't believe in ascetism. Still, in my own life the kind of abundance that I would appreciate is lacking. I feel like an idiot because I cannot figure out why. I must be missing something glaringly obvious. Is it again a lesson of boundaries? That sometimes people cannot have it all. That even if we have limitless amounts of know-how in a deeper and "higher" sense, then on the physical level it's not always possible to manifest all that. For any number of reasons such as karma, environment, collective issues, and so on. I guess I feel that not only should we respect our higher selves and believe in its power, but also respect the lower self with its scary and chaotic sub consciousness and limiting effect on our lives (including our bodies and our physical environment, of course). To learn to work with the lower level can be as big a challenge as learning to work with the higher levels. On the issue of fearI would normally have bypassed a thread dealing with aliens or whatever the "Others" may be called, but am glad I read it after all. The level of the discussion was really high. It's a tricky thing to grasp the idea of oneness, but my own experience is that once it becomes clear, then it explains a lot, a lot, a lot... maybe everything.

I agree that we shouldn't be bashful about presenting the real person behind the words. After all, we all have a personality for the very sake of expressing it, don't we? And all we have really are subjective points of view that we can agree or disagree on. Discussions for and against can become clinical without a touch of humanness in them... I learned early on to suppress my feelings but I felt quite clear on a mental and spiritual level. It was weird because I didn't feel grounded, yet I had no fears. The fears came when I opened up my emotional deposits and was pretty much swamped by them. There is enormous power in the content of the subconscious mind. Yet by suppressing it we can never become whole, as it won't disappear. Most of the time it's about the beliefs that have arisen from the perceptions which have become distorted beyond recognition. My suggestion would be to keep the beliefs fairly simple, because then you are less likely to get lost in them and be overwhelmed by all kinds of irrational fears.

We don't have to look far to see the "devil". The more you open up your heart, the more perceptive you become. This is anyway how I see it. There's a very fearful time when it's very difficult to tell what fears are real and what are not. I think most people try to avoid getting themselves into that kind of a state. But personally, I felt I had to go through all that, it just had to be done, like springcleaning. Let us try to stick to Earth and mostly deal with fears that are close to us on the physical level. Things we can see and that are easy to agree on. To give power to fears about abstract things is in my opinion a hazard. It is so hard to have a good frame of reference. I'd like to say "reliable" frame of reference, but I guess it's hard to find anything really reliable in this world! Try to stay grounded and always in touch with your own inner self, with your heart and your common sense in conjunction. That would be my advice to anyone who feels insecure (I still do, but I survive!). Ok. Phew, that was it. Hopefully enough for a while. I'm sorry I had eliminated all the great comments that were made by other zaadster during the process of writing these things, but I tried to compress this text to my own views only. God, I take myself too seriously and I think way too much. I should loosen up a bit! :-)

Artwork: Abstract Digital photograph by author, all rights reserved, copyright 2007