Archive for the ‘life wisdom’ Tag

Practice: Being Grateful

To be grateful is something that almost all of the great self help coaches, Priests and Dalai Lama are telling us to be. Yet it is so hard and so easy to forget. I will try to practise this today and it will be a total mix of everything. I am grateful for Dalai Lama who is writing in an easy way how we can live a more peaceful life. I am thankful that I right now have the possibility to live the life I really want to live. I really appreciate that I have all the clothes I need and that I have a computer to type on. I am thankful for all the workers who put an effort into getting me this wonderful piece of equipment. I really appreciate all the wonderful teaching I have recieved from my parents, all the teacher I had at elementary school, Sven my kick boxing coach, My Judo teacher who introduced me to meditation when I was 11 years old,  Satyananda who is writing all this wonderful books, Janakananda and his very practical approach to yoga, Omananda , the teachers at Chalmers Technical University, Dalai Lama, Timothy Ferris and his book who really taught me that it is possible to live life exactly as you want and still be of service to other people, Annete Simmons and her really nice book on how to write interesting stories, Jeff Howe and his very inspiring book on how we can collaborate on an even bigger scale now due to Internet , Andreas Öberg who really inspired me to think outside of  my limiting beliefs, Per Ekengren who really opened my eyes on how to save money and use resources even more efficiently at the same time, Neil Natura who really taught me to believe in myself, Neil Strauss and his great teaching on how you can evolve in how you handle social situations, all the people I have met who inspired me in a situation where I did not expect to be inspired, Susanna and Jens and their very hands on approach to helping you to do the postures right in Ashtanga Yoga, All the wonderful yoga teachers, Anna, Turiya, Omananda, Sita, Anananda,  Agnidara, Lisbet etc.

heart of darkness

“ It’s a way we had over here with living with ourselves. We cut ‘em in half with a machine gun and give ‘em a Band-Aid. It was a lie. And the more I saw them, the more I hated lies. “

 It is from the movie Apocalypse now and I have seen it more than 7 times over the years. In the documentary “heart of darkness” Francis Ford Coppola’s wife is telling us that they risked their own money and property in making this movie and she was willing to take that risk. I think that kind of willingness to risk everything you have is something that really gives a rich life. The movie itself transcends the Vietnam war and explains the painful dreamlike journey that life can be.
The pain was more than I could take and I released my legs from the Lotus pose. I started to see the connections with lines like ”Break on Through To the Other Side ” and how I experienced life. A journey where there is a dimension of peace and happiness which you cannot reach with logic. In the quest for this eternal truth and blissful state people have used psychedelic substances, alcohol, religion and meditation. The more I saw of the daily struggle for different people the more life seemed like a bad dream. The guy I talked to in England who had been living like a dog in a small house on the yard with his father beating him regularly was something I could not understand with logic but i could understand the pain to some extent. It opened a painful insight about human behaviour. For a long time I had dreams where the only option I had to survive was to kill other people. I get surprised with my own reactions to fear. My daily life was rather peaceful but then I had this dreams which really scared me beyond reason.  After a long and intensive period of meditation and yoga I had a dream where I was chased as before but this time I decided I rather die than being in this loop of violence. All of a sudden the dream changed and everybody was walking around peacefully. It was like if a stone was lifted from my chest and I woke up full of energy. But this was just a short glimpse and The nightmares returned in other variations . An attitude I want to avoid is to become one of those “holier than thou” yogis.

“In short, most of us think we really are “holier than thou,” although we may not be willing to admit it. Most of us know we wouldn’t do the awful things that set us apart from those ordinary people who stumble along the way — all those folks who are just average. ” from abcnews

. This holier than thou mentality creates a setting where you have to put a lot of dreams and emotions under the carpet and suppress them to fit in. I have tried kick-boxing, tennis, weightlifting, Ashtanga yoga, Sivananda yoga, Satyananda yoga etc. and I pick something there and something there and out of that i build something that suits me. If I should give some advice it would be to try to stay open in life and find the flow which feels good and right inside. here are two people I really find inspirational. First it is Travis Barker on drums   and then Junior in break dance .

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