Pseudoscience is something endorsed by many individuals in spiritual communities. Homeopathy (a scam, basicly pure water without any active ingridients, not even a molecule) is one example. The products are often very expensive and are advertised with scientific sounding descriptions (that to scientists are bullshit).  We also have mediums who all use cold reading (without being aware of it themselves at some occasions). Look at wikipedia if you don’t know what it is.

Let’s say we have a real phenomena that’s not yet measureable by scientific instruments. How can we know it’s real? By subjective experience! The problem is that subjective experiences are often very unreliable as we often delude ourselves. We have the placebo effect and a number of other phenomena that you can read in one of the many books produced by the skeptic community.

Their flaw is to go too far away with it and dismiss all subjective experience as only unreliable. For example: chi and chakras are often seen as superstition. The reasons are (from what i understand) the following:

1) It can’t be measured by scientific equipment.

2) Quacks like Deepak Chopra write about it. Other people use malplaced scientific terminology when they adress the subject (which actually make it pseudoscience even if it exist).

3) Many people imagine they experience it or just belive in it from blind faith. To meet someone you clearly see only delude themselves about it might easily make you dismiss the whole thing.

4) Not everyone are sensitive enough to perceive it even with meditation practise.

However, many people actually perceivechi in different degrees and dramatically alter their consciousness by focusing on chakras (and at the same time perceive strong chi phenomena). To just label it “relaxation response” only display a disinterest and lack of experience of the very, very strong sensations, trances and altered states of consciousness.

Still i understand that people are skeptical. At least in my culture (Sweden) it just sounds pure weird if you don’t experience it yourself to such a degree that you can’t deny it. This post does not provide any kind of evidence, just my view on the subject.

Are you self-sufficient? When we talk about this word we usually mean outer/material self-sufficiency or some kind of cold individualism.

There is also inner self-sufficiency that’s completly different from it’s material counterpart. We want to feel emotionally self-sufficient. To reach this we aim for the material kind and hope this will be mirrored inwards. It might, for a while or even your entire life. However, then it is inner self-sufficiency that’s dependent on the outer one. Hence it’s not actually self-sufficient as it needs something external.

So what is needed for inner self-sufficiency? Nothing! If you just drop your notions (well, you can’t just intellectually do it or use your willpower. It requires a lot of life experience and/or meditation practise) of needing something external to be complete in yourself. This is the opposite attitude from what you need for the outer self-sufficiency, then you really need to do stuff. The inner one is the opposite struggle, you need to deeply realise you don’t need to do anything (not realise with your mind, you can’t reach it by thought). You of course still have to attend to the material, outer kind, but see that it has nothing to do with the inner self-sufficiency. Let them co-exist in harmony. There is no need to be a conflict between if you don’t confuse one of them for the other.

I often fail at this myself. The failure is always transient, it comes and goes. The success is however always there (it cannot be be taken away by anything that happens as it’s not transient) waiting for the waves of distrust in it ebb out.

To label someone “good” or “bad” is a subjective opinion, and most important of all: a judgement. I often encounter the opinion that we ought not to judge people who do cruel unempathic deeds. I hear less often that we ought to not positively judge people who commit compassionate actions and help others.

I belive it’s equally important to not judge people in a positive way as it is to not judge them negatively. Both judgements are as difficult to avoid doing, you can find it out if you try.

When we create “good” people we also create “bad” people in contrast (and all scales in between). Hence, to judge people in a positive way is to automatically negatively judge other people. One cannot exist without the other. If you don’t judge yourself or others at all, you will accept both yourself and others as you are. This does not mean you cease having a moral, you just cease judging yourself and other people from it: letting you be yourself and others be themselves, which is the same as truly respecting yourself and others. This way you let yourself free, which will give a tremendous sense of inner freedom.

Almost nobody i’ve talked to agree with me on this matter. All of them belive in free will, that we are hence responsible for other actions and can be judged.

I’m not going to rationally argue against that way of reasoning in this post. Doing that would move the focus from what attitude is most healthy, to what position is true/false. To me, that is undebateable as opinions don’t have any truth value. Philosophy is not just something you do from your mind, but somthing you percieve from your heart.

Religion is often seen as a goal in itself and not as just a tool for growth. The attachment is very unhealthy and gives rise to obessesions and insane attachments to the truth value of the religious beliefs. People “buy” a package and embrace both the negative and positive aspects of their religion.

You don’t need any belief or personal religious convictions to enjoy the benefits of religion. The devotion, ecstasies and profound peace are all psychological states and hence accessable to everyone regardless of belief or lack thereof.

I sometimes visit a hindu ashram. There’s a lot of devotion there in the form of mantras and singing directed to hindu gods and a guru. I don’t know much about those gods or the meaning of the words and lack belief in them. Still i get strongly affected by the bowing, chanting and ritual. When we show passionate devotion to a symbol, person or thing we actually strengten and become more aware of what we percieve as the highest qualities in ourselves. You don’t need this devotion yourself to begin with, it’s enough to just be in the same room people who have it while they practise it. Strong emotions in groups almost always transmits to everyone present. That’s why some expressions of religions like charismatic christianity sometimes spread dramatically (revivals). You need to be inflicted with it from someone else.

It can be a very strong tool. The religious states are often very profound and includes states like temporary absence of all existential fear that can instantly cure any emotional traumas and full (but temporary) dissolution of all neurosises. When you work with such strong inner forces there are pitfalls.  You can start to belive in the religious dogmas present in the social context you had them in and become obsessed about it. If the context was non-religious and drug induced it can lead to a religious conviction and evangelism about the wonders of that particular substance, which can cause more harm then good. Some people also chase those religious experiences like junkies craving for a fix. The religions often have good strategies for handling those experiences, which you can use.

You do not, however have to belive in any of the dogmas of the religion. If you chose to, you might become less rational, more superstitious, intolerant and fearful. Just see religion as a tool you get can rid of when you no longer need it.

Moral panic, religous and political fundamentalism, close-mindedness, intolerance, the list goes on - it’s all symptons of compassion combined with fear.  It does not always have to be bad, if it’s fear based on something real, but then i would rather call it compassionate concern (and does not have to include the emotion of fear).  We often see it in the media, they try to build up your fear about something, and appeal to your compassion to ban it (video games, movies or whatever it might be).

It can also lock the mind into certain belief patterns and guard it against change: If you fear you will go to hell if you change your religious beliefs, then from compassion with yourself you need to make sure your beliefs remains unchanged. And it doesn’t always stop there. The same poisonous mix of fear and compassion might make you desire other people to join the same belief structure and violently oppose other beliefs. Most conflicts among decent people are caused by this.

In order for compassion to be pure, it has to be undiluted by fear and beliefs. It needs to speak from itself, like a clean lense without stains. If you increase your compassion without decreasing your fear, you might turn into a very controlling, moralistic person.

One way to protect yourself is to watch out for bad fuel. If you notice your compassion is about to be fueled by fear, stop it right there! When it’s pure, it’s self-fueling, and doesn’t need any other emotions to ignite it.

If you were one of the members in a circle of friends and they would construct a collective moral and try to force to you to follow it by threats of abduction or stealing your money, would you consider it healthy? Would you support such a system?

Society wants to control our behavioral patterns by fear: threats of violence, deprivation of liberty through imprisonment and economic punishments.

To break the law is in most cases considered immoral by the majority, it’s a taboo. I experience it too with most laws, it’s a strong imprint from society and also corresponds to our collective culturally internalized moral. Sometimes, as i assume you’ve all noticed, there are discrepancies between our own personal moral and the collective moral codified as laws.

I belive we need to apply the same attitudes to ourselves as we apply to society. We all got neurosises, and irrational fears that affect our behaviour. The way to deal with those is to not feed or act upon them.  By doing this we gradually let go of the neurosises and negative emotions.

The neurosises of society needs to be dealt with the same way. If there are laws based on fear, incorrect data and generally feeds the collective neurosises of society, then we have to, if we follow our conscience, stop feeding those laws. Don’t follow them, break them, don’t be afraid of it.

This is an answer to a comment i recieved to my last post.

Dirk wrote:

At the moment, I myself meditatie for maximum 20minutes (mostly around 10-15), a few times a week.

I do think that my efforts doing only 15 minutes of meditation, not even on all days, are still useful. I can not meditate for longer, because it would get me frustrated and irritated. 15 minutes feels nice, after this time I get restless, and an internal fight starts, of boredom against disciplin (boredom always wins).

The commentor gets frustrated and bored. What is frustration, boredom? To get frustrated is to want something and not get it. Being bored is to have expectations of the present moment to be something else then it is. I belive it’s therefore important to continue to sit in meditation when encountering those emotions and just watch them arise and pass away. There should be no need for disciplin at all in meditation. If there is an internal fight between boredom and disciplin, there is resistance.

Show no resistance to the boredom, just let it be there and don’t expect your experience to be in any other way then it is. To wait until your mind gets more peaceful before meditating more is quite risky. It might never get more peaceful. I think it’s important to let the meditation confront the “not-peace” and accept it, just watch it without feeding it.

Changing environment might also be helpful. To sit in nature can have a very enhancing effect, so do sitting with other people. To me doing 1-2 hour qigong before meditation helps me tremendously. If time is an issue, that might not be possible, but even if work and sleep takes 16 hours, you still got around 6 hours left to meditate (if the remaining 2 hours goes to eating, and other activities).

We live in a busy society, you probably don’t have the time to read. Still it’s good for us to read. We develop intellectually, expand our vocabulary and hence improve the ability to express ourselves. Start with a book, maybe something by Kafka and begin with 30 seconds a day and gradually increase it to 2 minutes.

Sounds ridiculous?

For some reason a vast majority of all people accept the same reasoning when it comes to spirituality. I don’t know how many times i’ve read the advice to meditate 30-240 seconds a day. And the articles always assume everyone in the west only got that amount of spare time. If that’s the case for you, you’ll probably die soon from stress anyway. With meditation and any spirituality it’s the same as with everything else. You need practise and your results will be in proportion to time spent in conjunction with talent.

If you want to start with ANYTHING, you need to spend at least 30 minutes (and preferably increase it) a day. This includes spirituality. There are no shortcuts (except drugs, which is true both when it come to spirituality and body exercise). You can of course always get a placebo effect, though, but no substantial results. Two minutes of doing anything a day will be utterly meaningless. I automatically discard anyone who claims you can learn anything with almost no effort as frauds or people who don’t know what they are doing. If you want to be REALLY good at something you need to live and breath it.

I stumbled upon the following website: http://www.brainmusicpower.com/

They promise to teach you how to instantly meditate like the greatest gurus. It even becomes contradictory; If anyone can instantly meditate like the greatest guru, then there’s nothing “great” or “greatest” about them. Maybe someone should start a website with the promise: INSTANTLY LEARN TO SWIM LIKE Michael Phelps!

I created this blog  with the focus to post articles, text and podcast interviews/dialogues about spirituality, religion, psychology, philosophy, consciousness and existential issues.  Some political, humorous and cultural content may occasionally slip through.

Those areas will be approached from a  rational and experiental perspective. Too often a rational approach means locking out subjective experience and vice versa. I want to connect with my readers/listeners on both an empathic and intellectual level.