A Roll in the Universe

A struggling friend reminded me of a situation I was in the autumn after my dear grandma died. Re-reading that gave me a surprise: I'd forgotten how down I was then. I remember crying during the meeting with my bosses, but I don't remember taking sick days and waking up angry every day. But yes, it all ended up well, better than expected, and yesterday, as I told a potential boss about my strengths and weaknesses during a job interview, I could honestly say I didn't lose my cool with customers or co-workers any more. "I have no reason to be angry at work," I said. Sweet. Today, I woke up feeling pretty good, and I mused on the messages in the book I am currently re-reading (here is a description of my first read ), and my praying to the Holy Spirit yesterday, and that the interview went swimmingly—personality test and all—and it hit me: I didn't second-guess myself after it was over. I usually find some fault with how I interact with people after the fa...

Ever since I discovered the ho'oponopono practice of forgiveness and healing about 3 years ago , I have used it, pursued it, and experienced healings big and small. I have taught it to a few friends. To my delight, they have embraced it and discovered for themselves the instant peace that comes with cleaning (as using ho'oponopono is called; you are cleaning your subconscious of unhelpful beliefs). My friend Alice showed me this picture she took from her hotel window in London: Every morning, I started my day by looking out that window. ILY, ILY, ILY. It was a beautiful way to start the morning. Every day, I felt the embrace of the city and I'd like to think that the city felt my ILYs. We certainly had nothing but pleasant interactions with people (and in fact, a few times, we had people offer unsolicited help!). I responded to her with this: The ho'oponopono "trick" of repeating to yourself "I love you" when in a negative situation really...

Interests keep changing. Or rather, focus does. I obviously still enjoy taking photographs, because I kept my camera busy during my vacation. But even photography requires inspiration—and weather that won't ruin a camera. And so I let Wordless Wednesdays slide. I stopped forcing myself and let my blog rest, too. The nice thing about long days on the autobahns of Germany, is that it is very relaxing. Nothing to do but watch one field after another blur by, sometimes spotting a bird or a cow or a house. But sometimes even that loses its charm and I ducked into my Kindle, finishing three books during my trip. But that—plus discussions about blog resuscitation with my good friend Alice —has given me inspiration. I know now where I want to take this blog next, and I even have ideas for a visual make-over. I don't think blogs are dying. They are too useful to do that. Blogs may no longer lead the pack in social networking on the internet, but they definitely supplement it ...

Dr Amit Goswami, a quantum physicist, discusses spiritual searching, consciousness, ego, free will… The whole shebang.

It's New Year's Eve 2012. I'm in jeans and a wool sweater, not in my high heels and sparkly top. My plans for a productive day and a party for one have been sidetracked. I feel lazy and low-key. And thoughtful. My neighbors are not being low-key; they've been shooting fireworks sporadically all evening. I sit here wondering if I should look out my window and see the colors and sparks. Nah. I'll wait till midnight. The neighbors will be bringing out the really fancy stuff then. *** I usually prepare a meditation of sorts for myself, but not this year. I don't desire anything. Is this lethargy or peace? It's definitely new. Maybe I just got so engaged in the end of the world December 21 2012 (in a very fun way) that I've already had my end of the year focus. 2012 has been the most low-key year I've had in years. I haven't fussed with anything. I haven't had any drama whatsoever. What new and unusual I have experienced has gon...

A miracle is an authentic switch from fear to love. When we speak from the ego, we will call up the ego in others. When we speak from Holy Spirit, we will call up their love. In 1967, my whole family fell apart. Mommy, Daddy, baby sister and I all ended up at separate addresses. I spent the next eight years living with my maternal grandparents—seven of those years in Norway. I saw my mother every two years during this, and my father and sister not at all. No wonder my parents’ divorce left me in such turmoil. It wasn't the end of just a marriage; it was the end of an entire family. The harm done was lessened with the love from my maternal grandparents. The problem with not growing up under the same roof as your parent(s) is that you end up not knowing them. Nor they you. For over 40 years, my mother and I struggled with having the label mother and daughter, but not the relationship. In metaphysical circles, we are told we get the parents we deserve because we planned it th...

I am going down yet another rabbit hole. It diverges from the one I was falling down about a year and a half ago . At least somewhat. All roads lead to Rome, but not all are main highways and will get you to your final destination; they do move you forward, though. My new rabbit hole is all about how, if I forgive everyone and everything, we will all cease to exist and happily so. Some background: I accidentally learned of ho'oponopono . In looking for more information, I ended up reading Joe Vitale's book "Zero Limits" (and I really liked it). All my decades of swearing to affirmations to accomplish something got set aside while I instead practiced on chanting "I love you" inside my head. I have since gone back to using my usual morning affirmation since that seems to be such a good set-up for me and my day. 1 However, the ho'oponopono method makes perfect sense to me and it is far simpler (and more foolproof) than affirmations. Affirmations req...

Some time last month, I was listening to a new spiritual podcast, and the speaker said that we can all heal ourselves and each other by stating, "I love you. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you." Apparently, this series of four short statements healed all the patients of a psychiatric facility, simply by being uttered by a doctor while he was looking at the patient files. I was intrigued. So I googled the phrase and discovered it comes from a Hawaiian spiritual ritual called ho'oponopono .* I found a blogpost that described this "cleaning" process. I found an online article claiming that you can heal the whole planet with ho'oponopono because everything that comes into your sphere of experience is your responsibility.** I searched Amazon for books describing ho'oponopono. I bought Mable Katz 's book "The Easiest Way" .*** And her title may not be an exaggeration. After reading her short book, I have replaced my usual rit...

I own the extended DVD set of "What the #$*! Do We (K)now!?" , also known as "Down the Rabbit Hole". I can't remember now how my browsing the internet today started, but I ended up learning a lot about the science in "What the Bleep": It's terribly inaccurate. There are other inaccuracies or downright errors, but for the most part quantum mechanics only work on quantum levels, not at sizes like a basketball or a universe or even a mere atom. And that spoils all New Age claims that it is quantum physics that explain the Law of Attraction or any other woo-woo belief, like spontaneous healing, psychic phenomenon or near-death experiences. Dang. I was so hoping science could explain these things by now. My surfing has brought me to The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry . There I have found good writing, and proper skepticism. Not the finger-pointing pooh-poohing of beliefs, but rather a behind-the-scenes look at some claims and what's factually ...

I'm consolidating a bit. My other blog, Budding Yogini, will cease to exist soon, but all posts are transferred here and tagged "spirit" and "budding yogini". I no longer feel the need to keep my spiritual musings separate from other musings. I'm still a budding yogini, though.

Give me a good digestion, Lord, and also something to digest. Give me a healthy body, Lord, with sense to keep it at its best. Give me a healthy mind, good Lord, to keep the good and pure in sight, which seeing sin, is not appalled, but finds a way to set it right. Give me a mind that is not bored; that does not whimper, whine or sigh. Don't let me worry overmuch about the fussy thing called I. Give me a sense of humor, Lord; give me the grace to see a joke, to get some happiness from life and pass it on to the other folk.

So there I was, waiting for the bus home, feeling sluggish because of an exhaustive round at my acupuncturist's . I leaned against the side of the bus shed, reading the latest issue of "Science of Mind Magazine" , idly paging through the daily affirmations. I started reading the accompanying text for today's: Sometimes it's easy to forget that there is only one volitional factor in the Universe, and that is Spirit. Easy to believe when things go well. Instead of feeling abandoned by God when things don't go well, the article suggests we focus on the above-mentioned core truth - one power, one source: Then we could say, "This must be good. It's all God, so let me look for the good." As I read that, a wailing ambulance drove by. I continued to hear it for a while, remembering that a friend had said that because of having to drive in and out of streets to get to the urgent care entrance, which was within view from my bus stop, you could hear the amb...

Gratitude is about making a list over everything you have to be thankful for: Health, family, job, home, food, a lovely day, a gift from a friend, a computer to write a blog on, electricity to run the computer. That's what some who teach about gratitude say. Me, I disagree. Oh, making a list every day is a very helpful tool for increasing awareness about how much you have to be grateful for. But that's all it is, in my opinion: A tool. The goal is not to make lists, but to be be naturally grateful without thinking. I have observed people who are struggling. They write a list all right - a list of all their troubles. Then they end it with a list of things to be grateful for, as if the two cancel each other out. They don't. Or: They write their lists to in order to make deals with higher powers: If I am grateful, then the Universe will take my problems away, seems to be the attitude then. Some people's gratitude lists or blog posts read rather like the bargaining some peo...

Two years ago, I wrote a post about my exploration of Mahatma Gandhi's quote , "If you don't find God in the next person you meet, it is a waste of time looking for him further." I haven't been exploring that concept lately, but today decided to try again. As before, I added to my affirmative set-up for the day with a slight change in wording: "…and teach me to find God in everyone I meet today." Now, I didn't have the exact same experience as the first time I tried it, but I did end up having a lovely day. I found myself observing how pleasant other people were. I noticed I was more forthcoming and helpful. Observing the crazy hair-do of a store clerk made me only wonder how the cut was done, not whether or not it was attractive; in other words, I did not judge. The best part about this business about finding God is that it always removes or dampens that side of me that is critical, cynical, stand-offish, selfish. I have to say that I've enjoye...

I enjoy Oprah's Soul Series radio podcasts and have just listened to her interview with actor Rainn Wilson . At one point during the interview, Rainn gave a good list of "life's big questions", and I feel like trying to answer them: What does your soul look like? I love Oprah's answer in the interview: "My soul […] looks like everybody I see." As for me, I find I am stumped by the question. It leads me to another question: Why does my soul have to look like anything? But you know, Oprah's answer is a good one because it echoes the truth that the world that we experience is a reflection of who we are. But the soul is beyond our everyday lives and our bodies; it is who we are when we aren't humans, inhabiting these bodies. It is what keeps us alive, even when mind and body fail us. It is the spiritual equivalent of a heart beat. And that has lead me to my answer: My soul looks like a breath. What do you miss most about being five years old? Dur...

Vel, jeg rotet meg inn på en religionsdebatt på news. Jeg hadde mye på hjertet, men valgte i stedet å poste noe av det her, i stedet for der. Utgangspunktet er altså Richard Dawkins . Tilhengerne hans sier bl.a. at Dawkins forholder seg til rasjonelle vitenskapelige metoder. Jeg påstår at Dawkins ikke forholder seg til vitenskapelige metoder, ellers hadde han tatt høyde for all data ang. religion. Han har i stedet valgt å fokusere kun på ekstremistene innenfor religion. Og det er det jeg har problemer med å godta hva gjelder Dawkins' forskning. Så til det jeg skrev som jeg fant ut passet like greit her: USA har ingen statskirke, ergo ingen majoritetsreligion (om man ser bort fra kristendom som et hele). USA har langt flere små, uavhengige trossamfunn enn hva f.eks. Skandinavia har, og med det mener jeg trossamfunn som har medlemsliste, møtelokale, osv. Det gir langt større valgmulighet og det kan også være grunnen til at folk som er lei vanlig kristendom ikke må søke ateismen, sl...

It's been a long time since I last had a book I wrote in. Oprah and my hairdresser talking about notes and Post-its littering their Eckhart Tolle books made me think about the last time I had a book that so delighted me or inspired me that I underlined whole passages. I do have several books that have umpteen bookmarks in them (most are by Joseph Murphy), a bread crumb trail I can follow back to the passages that meant most to me. But I no longer write in my own books. That's because I leant one of my inspiring books to a classmate who complained about how distracting my scribbles in the margin were. I shouldn't do that, she said. So I stopped. But now that I think back, and when I think about the unexpected doorway that discovering other people's notes in books is, why should someone else dictate what I do to my own books? I guess I could lend them with the warning that they're getting more than just the author's thoughts or emphasis. What I really want, is a b...

Lately, all my reading and listening to the webcasts from Oprah's shows on "A New Earth" with Eckhart Tolle, keeps pointing out that we are essentially whole. The body is essentially healthy; disease is layered on top of the health. Our souls are also well, seeming not to be only because of a clutter of pain and fear layered on top. And all my reading and listening says that if you stop dwelling on the thoughts of pain and fear, you will automatically become whole - or more correctly, rediscover your wholeness. The habitual backdrop of pain and fear in your thinking can be stopped using several methods, but they all have one similarity: Replace an undesirable thought with a better one. When I attended a local course on the Law of Attraction, the habitual bad thoughts were identified as those that often contain the word "not". When you start speaking in negatives - "I can't lose weight" or "I don't like my job" - the way to take cont...

Talking about digestion is something old people do. So let me talk about my digestion now and get it over and done with because I really don't want to be having this conversation when I'm old. I am currently reading a book, "Hidden power for human problems" by Frederick Bailes . I hadn't heard of Bailes until quite recently, when I was reading about Thomas Troward . (I wander with Google like other people backpack foreign countries.) So I ordered a book, and am enjoying it. Bailes claims that there are some basic attitudes that give us trouble, that trip us up. He also claims that it doesn't take 50 years to undo a 50-year-old habit. One of his examples involves a man with an ulcer. I have been to the doctor's today. I described my grab-bag of symptoms, stating that I've always had sluggish digestion, ever since childhood. The doctor told me to avoid milk products, gluten, potatoes and coffee, and prescribed ranitidine . I got tired of constantly bein...

There's a movie called "Esoteric Agenda" making the rounds. I actually watched the full 126 minutes this movie lasts, and it is, in my opinion, a shining example of how erroneously we can connect the dots and see patterns where there are none, inventing monsters under the bed with no other evidence than an absence of light there. I'm basically saying, don't watch it. So why am I even mentioning this? Because the movie, though it has a feel-good "love is the answer" ending, spends an hour and 45 minutes trying to convince you that "they" are out to get you. No, really. Using the end of the Mayan calendar, some dubious explanations for the word Israel and an even more dubious correlation drawn between paganism and socialism, with the Bush family geneology thrown in - just for starters! - the movie tries to convince the viewer that there is a plot to rid the planet of 5.95 billion of its 6 billion humans. Somebody wants you to starve to death, or...