“Unrest within the heart” – that is something I know from personal experience! Like from spending too much time and thoughts on computer games, social networks and other outward things.

In my previous entry, about a social computer game, I mentioned that it had a centrifugal effect: Pulling the mind outward from its spiritual center toward peripheral things, outward things, shallow things. That is a pretty harsh drawback to anything, really… if you are into centering in the first place. It would seem that a lot of people are not.

Boris Mouravieff seems to have held the view that about half the population does not have a spiritual soul. This is not defined by race or gender or some such, but a separate property of the soul. Or lack thereof, so to speak. I doubt it works quite like that, but it certainly seems that some people are utterly immune to spirituality. Not necessarily the rabid atheists: If anything, their opposition could be due to feeling the threat of  conversion, much like people who react strongly negative to homosexuality are found to be somewhat excitable by such things, and sometimes switch sides at a later time.

But there are people who just don’t get it. They have an absolute conviction that there is no “in there” in there, no spirit or soul, that they are obviously meat and this is how things should be.  In a way, they are better off than those of us who keep struggling to wake up, and then fall asleep again without ever getting out of bed. I mean metaphorically, as in spiritual awakening, but it probably doesn’t help that I have had this tendency in physical life as well…

But the great saints, sages, gurus etc seem to agree that God (or Heaven or the Higher Self or whatever is really important) is always “in there”, and that over time a kind of center of gravity develops and grows stronger. The inner world, which at first seemed like a small thing, turns out eventually to be greater than the outer.

I should specify that by “inner world” I do not mean the imaginary world of daydreams or fantasies, although in its own way these too are signs that the human mind is not merely a computer. But the spiritual center is different and indeed opposite from the fantasies of the mind. These, too, are centrifugal: Pulling us outward and away from our true home inside.

To return to this inner home (in wordless prayer or meditation or just a simple willing act of the soul) is  a wonderful feeling, sweet and pleasurable to such a degree that it will often spill over onto the body’s senses, perhaps giving us goosebumps or a sense of pleasure (that is quite distinct from sexual pleasure, if anyone wondered). I believe it is similar to the feeling of a child being caught up in the embrace of a loving parent – but to be honest, I cannot remember such a thing from my own life.

Ironically, I have found that it is mainly the return there which gives such a pleasure. Staying there for some length of time does not, at least for me. I have not seen anyone else write about that particular aspect yet, but I cannot help but notice the similarity to Jesus’ story of the prodigal son. When he returned, there was partying, but his brother who had always stayed there, in his Father’s house, did not get such a party. That is not to say that he had drawn the shortest straw, for his Father said to him: “My child! You are always with me, and all that I have belongs to you.”

At first, the gravity of this inner center is quite weak, at least for most of us who have it at all. But it can grow over time. And as I mentioned a few years ago, the presence of people with a strong inner gravity can help strengthen our own, perhaps more than anything else. (Or perhaps prayer and meditation is more effective, I am honestly not sure though. In the beginning at least I think the presence of others is the most efficient.) This may sound counter-intuitive: If they have a strong inner gravity, would not that pull me outward from my own center and toward theirs?

The misunderstanding lies in the very fact that we can only speak of this in parables. It is not actual Newtonian gravity (although I am quite sure Newton had it, and in spades). We just use gravity as a way to illustrate or make it easier to recognize this when it happens to you. In reality, the center of gravity inside another is also the center of gravity inside yourself!  All is one, one is all.  So that is why their very presence pulls you into yourself, into your own heart, where you will find what you long for.

In the absence of such a person – often a saint or guru or bodhisattva – modern man can often find a similar help in the writings of such a person. Even the writings of someone who has left this world can have this effect. We are then touching on an area similar to the reverence for saints, and I believe the two overlap, but I will not go into this today. I will just say what I have experienced to some small degree and heard for truth by better men, that the presence of someone who is grounded in their own spiritual center will help strengthen the same in you. This seems to depend entirely on that other person’s integrity, not their orthodoxy, which may not completely overlap.

In other words, someone may be a master of the study of the correct faith, but their actual presence is of little value. Another may be useless for teaching, or possibly even worse than useless, but their presence radiates a call to turn inward that anyone with a trace of the same calling will feel. Why it is so, I know not.

I probably understand very little of this, so you may want to go to other sources. But I hope something has stirred within you, a feeling of the pull from that other center, that is opposite to the worries and entertainments of the world. Me, I am still kind of suspended between them, but I believe the interior castle is still growing. If I am given time, I now have hope that I may have a home there that will never be rocked by the strongest storm, even – I hope – the one that will one day blow out the candle of my earthly life.

I hope that is still far off, though.

Thank you for the memories. One day, they will be all that is left.

According to Buddhism, there are five sure things in life.

-It is sure that you will lose your youth.

-It is sure that you will lose your health.

-It is sure that you will lose friends and loved ones.

-It is sure that you will lose your belongings.

-It is sure that, in the end, you will lose your life. And whatever the other losses you have not yet experienced, will come with it.

Obviously all this is true even if you have never heard of Buddha. It is just that they like to meditate on it more than others, I guess. In that regard I am a “Christian Buddhist”, in that I see detachment from things in this world as a message shared by the Buddha and the Christ, whatever else they may disagree on.

Jesus told a story about a farmer that had grown rich, so much so that his barns could no longer hold all his stuff. So he decided to tear them down and build new and larger barns. “Now you have much good saved up for a long time to come” he said to himself. That night, his soul was demanded from him (in death). What benefit did he have of all that he had gathered?

In the Christian Church, where I learned most of what has been useful in my life (beyond what I learned from my parents), we used to have yet another song that I find myself singing now. As always it is in Norwegian, but the lines in question translate like so: I will sing about victory when my earthly hope is being crushed; instead I now own a heavenly, which remains in the test of the baptism of fire.

To briefly return to the Buddha, who lived for about 80 years, wandering through the lands of India and teaching Liberation from all worldly attachments. When his life came to an end, these were his last words, or at least they can be translated like this: All things that have form are subject to decay. Strive diligently!

What for, when all things are falling apart anyway? For that which has no form. Now, I may not personally be striving very hard. But now that one of the minor “baptisms of fire” has come over me, by the treachery of my landlord, I have an opportunity I would not otherwise have had:  To know for sure whether I am attached to the things that can be seen, or whether my heart remains in that which cannot be seen.  For the visible is temporary, but the invisible eternal.

Of course, as long as I can still play Sims 3, it is not much of a trial though…

What is this light? It could be a help to keep you on the right path, or a trial that could pull you off the path and into chasing your own tail.

This is something I thought was pretty obvious, but I can see that in a subtle way it can be misunderstood, perhaps even two ways. So I thought I should bring it up. I may as well use an example from my own life, since I am not such an amazing master that I should point at others and tell you what they should do.

I was born in 1958 and grew up in a small farming village on the west coast of Norway, back before Norway became one of the very richest and most advanced nations in the world. We had no television, and the government had a monopoly on broadcasting. It is not surprising that I grew up without knowing quite what meditation was. Even the church was state-owned, back then and there.

When I was still in my teens, I joined an old-fashioned Christian church. (Not the state-owned one – it did in fact avoid membership lists as a blasphemy.) I began to pray earnestly to God. After a while, I decided that it would be impolite to just rattle off my wish list and hang up, so at the end of my prayer, I would simply wait respectfully for God in case He wanted to say something to me as well. He did not, at least in any literal sense, which may be just as well.  But in that silence I could sense something, like an aura, which seemed to come from a direction at right angles to all of our three dimensions. Turning my attention that way, in my mind of course, I received peace and energy and clarity. What happened was that I discovered meditation, untaught by any human soul. You may say that I learned meditation from God.  (Although I only learned the name later.)

Now I could think that I must be some Very Important Person in the cosmic scale of things, to discover something as fundamental as meditation without being taught by mortals. In a manner of speaking, I could be said to be equal to whoever first brought meditation to our Earth and founded the first mystic religion. It is possible to see it in that way. But it is a pretty stupid thing to think.

What happened then  was that I received a gift. A very precious gift for sure, but in itself it did not make me a better person. It had the potential to transform me, sure, but that was not yet happening, or at least not from that reason. It is a fairly slow process, meditation, at least for most of us. And despite learning meditation directly from Heaven, I was very much a “most of us” in terms of progress.

I have also experienced the bliss of religious ecstasy that is, as they say, better than sex. Admittedly I am not that much of an expert on sex, but it certainly was more blissful than anything I had experienced, awake or asleep. The Hindus, or at least some of them, have a saying about samadhi – their religious ecstasy – that “when you have experienced this, you know there is nothing greater to experience”. That was how I felt at the time, although I am not sure whether I was right. I have in fact never experienced anything greater, emotionally speaking.

Even that, however, did not make me into a saint. I had and still have much the same temptations. Well, some of them gradually change over time, of course, but none of these things made me into the awesome spiritual person who one would expect to have such experiences. They were gifts. Growth is something else again.  Some people get more gifts as they grow. Actually, I think that is pretty common. But sometimes gifts come at the beginning, or in the middle, and sometimes they even come and go again. It varies depending on the gift and the way life was meant to be for each of us.

So if you see great lights, hear voices from Heaven, leave your body, experience five minutes lasting for five hours or the other way around,  if you are healed from serious illness or even heal others, these things are not in and of themselves important for your spiritual growth. If you are obsessed with yourself and don’t live a life of helping other people, there is no point in any of these. Or as a better man has said: “If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.” (St Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13. Good stuff all around.)

It is a common mistake when we experience something super, that we want to go back and have it again. This is not unique either. When Jesus was illuminated on the mountain with Moses and Elijah, his disciples wanted to build a cabin there so they could just remain in that cool place. Instead, Jesus went off to Jerusalem and was crucified.

So the thing is, having those cool experiences may be something that is given to weak-hearted people so they don’t give up entirely. Or it could be something that is given to Very Important Persons so that they can help others, I suppose. But they are not the purpose of life, certainly not of spiritual life. If you don’t really understand much and you never hear anyone at the other end when you pray, but you give love to others without asking for anything in return, you have advanced far beyond one who sees great lights and feels electric currents surge through the body, and then keeps chasing that experience for the rest of his life.

So that’s the way it is, I believe. The voice in my heart seems to agree, but you know I am not so transparent that I could not fool myself. But when the holy scriptures from far away and long ago also agree, I feel pretty safe to post this, that it won’t lead you astray. Hopefully neither will the cool spiritual experiences, if you ever have those.

We should reflect on what we did, but not in a bad way.

I have written before about how repentance is awesome. Of course, it is much more awesome than I could possibly tell you. That goes without saying, for great spiritual teachers over the centuries have spoken of it, people who I would not dare to compare with.

So  today I will write about reverse repentance, anti-repentance, the evil twin of repentance. Surely that is more original. And not so far off: I have actually done this myself in the past. Light send that it stays in the past. But if others can find this and become aware of it in the same way, I will be happy. For a human, it is pretty much impossible to never make moral mistakes, or “sin” as our grandfathers used to say.

(I think a short word is still a good idea, given how frequent such mistakes are; but in America especially, the word “sin” has changed meaning for many people. And there are others who think it is strictly religious word and is not relevant to them, as if one cannot make mistakes without divine intervention! What the hell. The opposite is more likely.)

Now, making mistakes is bad enough, but as I said, it cannot really be avoided when one is human. What we can avoid is 1) going out of our way to make mistakes, 2) defend them afterwards and 3) regret not making mistakes.

Yes, this is what I mean by reverse repentance: To regret not having made a wrong decision. That seems plain impossible, but it is not. There is even a Biblical reference, for those interested in that: “For sadness according to God’s mind causes repentance to salvation, which no one regrets; but the sadness of the world causes death.” (2. Corinthians 7, 10.)

The “sadness of the world” may well be read in a wider meaning, but in this sense it is thoughts like: “If I knew he was so gullible, I would have taken his stuff”, or “I was sooo close to getting into her pants, if only she had drunk a little more”, or even “Why didn’t I think of this belittling comment until after he left.” In all these cases, to varying degrees, we regret not having hurt another person in some way. Of course, in most cases we don’t self-identify as evil, but rather think that they deserved it, or it would have felt good, something like that. Few people really thrive on the joy of seeing others suffer. Usually their suffering is incidental, it is our feeling good that matters. Although in some cases yes, the two are strongly linked.

Now there is not hurting people, there is hurting people and regretting it, there is hurting people and not regretting it, and there is regretting not hurting people. This is, to put it bluntly, a sin worse than sin. It is going over an accidental good deed in our mind and erasing it, replacing it in our spiritual balance sheet, or “thought tape” or “Akashic record” if you want, with the evil we would rather have done.

Just like repentance causes the mistakes to be undone in the invisible world, in a manner of speaking (they still exist as echoes in the physical world, of course, and perhaps bad habits) – so  this “reverse repentance” actually inserts a mistake where there was none.  It may not feel like it at the time, but we will definitely learn at the end of our lives that hurting others for selfish reasons is not a good idea. There will be enough of such things, that we have done without thinking and never repented, to floor us when we go through our life review. There is no need to deliberately smear ugly graffiti on our Akashic records, or book of deeds.

So that is the life experience I wish to share with you. Please take care, and wake up when these thoughts present themselves. Let a bell ring when even a small such thought comes up, a regret of having passed up a temptation. (Of course, sometimes temptations present themselves repeatedly and if we eventually fall in them, that is sad but not what I talk about here.)

Again, going back in time and deliberately inserting wrongness in our life beyond what happens spontaneously, is a terrible thing, and something that can happen to perfectly normal people, even those who go to church or synagogue, mosque or temple. So I wanted to share this, even if I am not a spiritual teacher. I hear so little about it, and it is so important.

May the Light forgive me if I speak of things that are too deep and mysterious for me, but I myself had to go back and undo such damage as I had inserted into my own life in that way, and there are probably still corruptions left that I will not find until my life review. I wish I can spare someone that.