Year: 2021

To be yourself?

To be yourself?

Reminded of how much I wrestled with that admonition of “be yourself”, like in my late teens-early adult years (o pretty long I think). I just couldn’t understand what was meant! That it was something desirable, which was talked about, was called upon, so much I understood, but I was clueless.

It is normal in your teens at least, the search for identity, trying out who to be? My dilemma probably went a little deeper. Had to do with the fact that I ended up with older people in environments celebrating high, refined ideals of how to be, so early, I think.

An unreliable memory

An unreliable memory

This morning I passed this house on Dalagatan in Stockholm. I took a picture that I shared on Facebook. I wrote:

“Passing the ‘Eastman Institute’, which is an eye clinic for children… Learned the other day that it was actually THAT very Eastman, George Eastman, who once donated the money to start that place. He who made his fortune inventing the 35mm-film and the “Kodak”-camera.

I like photography. And I had read this story in detail with great interest a few days ago. So it had created a vivid memory.

After a while, it was an acquaintance who pointed out that wasn’t it rather a DENTAL clinic for children? She had got a brace herself from there a long time ago.

And, of course, that’s what I had read! And I had no problem recalling the actual story. That Eastman cared about the young people having good teeth, because a healthy, beautiful smile does so much to promote a good life, etc.

But completely unconsciously, I had embellished the whole thing (photo pioneer=children’s eyes?). And if I hadn’t been corrected, that particular version would have been even clearer to me. I had even retelled it to others…

This was long, about a small event in everyday life, but that tells me something important. On the theme of false, fabricated, or at least refined, memories. The unreliability of memory? The creativity of memory?

Doomsday scroll?

Doomsday scroll?

Some new words that have made their way into the Swedish Academy’s dictionary (SAOL) are presented in the evening news. Among other things, “doomsday scrolling”.

What was wrong with Freud?

What was wrong with Freud?

We like to pick on Sigmund Freud. He thought and he wrote so much that is strange.

Sometimes it feels as if he has become like a mix of “The Father” in his own imaginative theories, which are challenged and killed (and devoured ) by his sons – and by Särimmer in Norse mythology. He’s constantly re-emerging so you can beat him up again 🙂

But sometimes people manage to remind themselves that, okay, he actually lived a hundred years ago. How much else crazy and limited didn’t happen then! Diverse cultural personalities who were petty-Nazi, racist, misogynistic, etc. And at the same time recognized talented, artistic, profound, wise and sensitive individuals.

And then you can normally calm down a little, get your pulse down. It’s like you still have some basic understanding of what’s called “mentality history”, which can then be activated. Collective development has taken place on certain levels.

But, and this is where I was going to come!, I wonder if we who have taken deep impressions of new age/esoteric ideas can even be extra inclined to judge Freud? And have a hard time agreeing with his flaws? That our thought apparatus may even have become a little loose or underdeveloped in some respects because of those spiritual conceptions? How come?

Well (speculative), for being dazzled, intoxicated by the idea of “eternal, timeless wisdom”, “enlightened people” (and even the company of such individuals), etc., which have existed in all times & as have seen the world o their fellow men much as we ourselves can do, to the point, that Freud can then be dismissed as mediocre or a parenthesis.

When, in fact, he was so much ahead of his time that many of his discoveries has not yet had time to sink in… His thoughts still offer resistance, they are challenging. (Although a lot has also become part of the usual vocabulary, of course, and of the usual way we are looking at ourselves and each other.)

And he was a man of his time, as well.

Is divination science?

Is divination science?

To be able to “classify” or say something about another human being, or himself for that matter!, personal qualities and destiny, etc. Astrology, graphology, chiomanti, frenology, coffee grounds… Similarities and differences? “Science”? What are you thinking?

First of all, graphology stands out from the other “-ogies”, as I see it. The others (incl. tarot, i-ching, etc) I think – if anything – can serve as a medium for the interpreter’s own wisdom and psychological insight, human knowledge, life experience… A form of cold reading.

But this to have a larger system that you submit to, trust, I think can further foster and stimulate one’s openness, positive seriousness, sense of responsibility, etc. That is, a positive thing.

But, that actually there is not so much to “touch” in the tarot cards or planetary constellations, which says something specific about the person you have in front of you. More than that the accumulated knowledge accumulated over the millennia around, for example, astrology or i-ching gives a very deep undifferentiated picture of man.

Yes, there were some quick thoughts. (But, i.e., graphology I want to place in a middle ground, it is more “science” than the others.)

Where my spiritual journey began

Where my spiritual journey began

This is where my spiritual journey began. In fact, exactly 40 years ago. In the middle of christmas shopping in ’81. A man in a busty parkas and a far too big a hat, with a basket on his arm, called out to me who was out to buy presents for my family.

The ad appeared in the FB feed just now & I visited the website. It must be some subdivision of the Hare Krisna movement in Sweden? The books look exactly like then! I bought/got the titles from him, and for many years they followed me along when i moved, and they stood on every bookshelves. I don’t think I’ve ever read them tough…

So, most of all, it was the conversation with him that sparked something inside me. We stood there in the cold for an hour or more. Ethical, moral issues. I was at an impressionable, searching age. Shortly thereafter, I became a vegetarian, etc.

Then followed a few years of what you might well call “sect tourism”, a curiously flickering, snooping around. Like a birdwatcher who ticks off exotic specimens in his list. (Occasionally I went and ate at their restaurant, Govindas, at Fridhemsplan in Stockholm & it is now only a few years since it closed, so it was situated there for a long time.)

Think of the Hare Krishna movement with some warmth actually. Then they can be as much of a cult as they want.

Better late than never

Better late than never

This is so internal, I’m reluctant to post it. But I’ll do it anyway! It’s part of my own story. Perhaps it has a general message built in even.

The movement around Danish mystic Martinus Thomsen (1890-1981) has had its fair share of quarrels, internal battles. Of course. Why would it be any different from other cults?

But at least one such old lockdown seems to have been released. Earlier this week, a delivery man arrived at The Martinus Institute in Copenhagen, which the institute inform about in an email. With him he had an absolutely invaluable material – for those with an interest in the history of this Martinus movement, at least. Many cartons with original manuscripts, films, hand-painted centuries-old glass plates (like those in the picture! this was before the slide projectors), personal possessions, etc. Stuff that a close co-worker and friend of Martinus Thomsen had been keeping since the founders death and had been reluctant to give up.

A general message? That with age can come more sense, wider perspectives, a greater capacity for self-examination, an urge to put things behind you and try to reconcile while time is, perhaps.

Maybe it’s because it’s Christmas time 🙂 🎁

(Photo: Jens Christian Hermansen)

“It was supposed to happen!”

“It was supposed to happen!”

And once we get to where we’re going (and the stations along the way) one often have the feeling that it was “meant” to be just as it turned out… Perhaps there lies such a planning behind one’s life,? Or, this type of reflexion its mostly a function of our human, grandiose & creative tendency to automatically try to create wholes of fragments… Magical thinking.

I guess I’m on the brakes here. We seem to “have it in us”, wanting to see reasons behind what is happening to us. Some more than others, too, as it has been researched… I’ve referred to this study before, I know… Here is an abstract with a summary of what they found:

Farias, M., Claridge, G., & Lalljee, M. (2005). Personality and cognitive predictors of New Age practices and beliefs. Personality and Individual Differences, 39(5), 979-989.

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2005-12590-013

What they did (free from memory) was to put people in front of a computer screen where 100 dots appeared in random combinations. They asked the test subjects to tell when they saw a motive (I think the instruction was that intended patterns could appear?) … And “newage-ers” saw significantly more of these… animals, angels, etc.

Thus, it was found that people who had certain holistic, paranatural notions of existence tended to see “meaning, order” even where there was none. How to understand that? It’s akin to superstition. Which Enlightenment, positivism, has taken out of us to some degree. It has made us more scientific and sober. On guard of ourselves. Against our human tendency to want to see connections, patterns? And to some degree we have become too skeptical & “clever” perhaps, as well… But anyway…


Too good for parenting?

Too good for parenting?

Do not post this to take the honor of an old servant. Weise the Elder has a particularly comfortable and well-stuffed place in my interior from my upbringing.

https://www.aftonbladet.se/nojesbladet/a/v58p7m/andreas-weise-insett-att-min-pappa-inte-var-en-foralder

But from time to time you hear such testimonies, even from children of people who may have meant a lot to others. (The only one I can think of in a hurry is the author of Wonnie the Pooh.) But where children as they get older feel they want to get another say.

And this reminds me of an “esoteric,” spiritual model of explanation I’ve had around me all my adult and half-adult life. Namely, that some are not actually suitable as parents (or spouses for that matter), because of their high level of spiritual development.

I can tell right away that I don’t believe in that much anymore. This may or may affect to some extent. I don’t know exactly how life works. But if you fail in these respects – which of course you do, more or less, no one is perfect – then I don’t think it is mainly in metaphysics that you should seek answers.

Unpleasant spirituality

Unpleasant spirituality

Long and Learned by the philosopher Jules Evans. Just a chapter of something bigger. I’ll admit I didn’t read it to the end. I got stucked in my own thoughts. This unabashed elitism…

And I think that this is, among other things, what can be so shabby and repugnant, unsubstantiated, with contemporary esoteric holistic new age spirituality. A hundred years ago, things like hiearchies, coterie, ûbermensch ideals, etc. were in time. It isn’t anymore.

https://medium.com/spiritual-eugenics/6-dune-the-hermetic-order-of-the-golden-dawn-and-occult-eugenics-8a6f0d3e04e7

“Since about 1900 the better stocks have not been replacing their numbers, while the stupider and less healthy have been more than replacing theirs. Unless there is a change in the public mind every rank above the lowest must degenerate and, as inferior but push up into its gaps, degenerate more and more quickly.”

— WB Yeats, 1930