Det er no
Det er no eg skal gå eit stykke aleine
Eg skal ikkje seia noko
For det er no eg skal vere stille
Det er no det gjeld
Det er no det skjer
Det eg ikkje heilt kan vite kva er
____________________________________________________________________________________________
In English:
It is now
It is now I must walk a mile alone
I am not going to be talking
Because it is now I am to be silent
This is it
It happens now
That which I do not really know
Kan eg våge det
Å møte meg sjølv
Der
I stillheita
Kva vil eg finne
____________________________________________________________________________________________
In English:
Can I dare
To meet myself
There
In the Silence
What will I find
I like tall doors
The wide ones too
In particular beautifully decorated ones
They are not there to make you feel small
They stand tall just to remind you
That when you are in awe
Of their grandness and beauty
That is only a mirror
For the divine image in you
If the thought of what is behind evokes fear
The width and height are there to say,
Fear not, I greet you
Now open me, pass through
I embrace all of you and
I may even lead to something new
Summer 2015 was special for me. I had some kind of awakening. I had been reading The Untethered Soul by Michael S. Singer, probably for the second time. Slowly, yet also suddenly, I was overcome by a deep sense of joy. The joy was so real and rare, that I almost thought I had the Awakening.
What was it that created this deep and special joy, from within? It was the realization that I was not my thoughts. I had thoughts, but the thoughts were not me in themselves. To really see this with my inner eye was very liberating. They joy sprang forth from the heart of a free man. And the joy was profound and real.
After a long summer holiday which I remember very fondly, I went back to my work at the school. I remember not being able to hold it to myself, I had to share. This was almost too good to be true, and at least too good not to be spoken of and possibly spread to others. So I shared the testimony with those willing to lend an ear to my speech.
Looking back at it now, after all these years, nine years to be specific, I remember this joy, because it was truly life changing for me. It was a paradigm shift for sure. I had learned to have my center more in my heart and intuition, and much less in my ever changing and often weary and troubling thoughts.
If this speaks to your longing, and to your heart, then I believe to experience this is also possible for you. If your thoughts are discouraging and not very uplifting, then you can find great help in a shift like I experienced. And this is no commercial, and I am sharing this information for free. So why not pick up this book, The Untethered Soul, by Michael S. Singer and check it out for yourself?
Remember, give it time, you may not experience very much the first time you read the book. But reading plants seeds in your heart. Read it again. And before you know it, your heart awakens to the experience of a new and profound joy!
Light and love to you 🌄
Please feel free to share your thoughts and experiences in the comments below. I would love to hear from you, so would other readers.
As much as we need our ego, and it’s helpful till a certain extent that our ego is transformed and made more flexible, just as much we need to know that we are so much more than our ego. We cannot live and function in this world without our ego (so I am not proclaiming ego-death), but at the same time we cannot go on living meaningful lives in the second part of our lives, without some experience of this other than ego.
This otherness I speak of is the most beautiful thing in the wholeness of life. It is about a vastness of a self or Self, that goes far beyond our imagination. Our egos are a beautiful creation too, at least sometimes, but this vastness I am pointing to, is of a different quality all together. And it is there for you to see and experience if you so desire and you realise that is what you truly want and need.
When the message “you are enough” doesn’t speak to you heart anymore, it may mean you are ready for a step in a new direction. You may be ready for a deeper experience and knowing of the Great Mystery.
Our egos are limited and will die, when our lives are over. At least most of it will disappear I think, since it is mostly a structure created by our minds. But the vastness of Self, Being itself, is eternal. The Holy Book tells us that humans have eternity in their hearts, so it is into our hearts and to the depth we need to go if we are to know a fragment more of this Vastness.
It is this Vastness I am trying to point to in writing these blog posts and most of my poems. In realizing this bigger truth about my life and life in general, I have come into the experience of more freedom. I do still struggle with life, and very often it is my smaller ego that creates the trouble. It is not what other people say or do. It is how my ego percieves what they say and do. It is how my past history and emotions, which is my bigger ego and also hidden ego react to the experience I have.
By taking in, preferable in silence, and silent reflection, the other part of the picture. By realizing there is a Vastness, an Otherness, something Infinite holding us all, I am slowly able to train my ego into stepping back. I don’t need to make such a big scene out of everything. I am not governed only by the ego’s need to protect itself. I can be led more by Spirit and intuition.
The Spiritfilled life is the other way, the new way, the better way, and eternal way. I do want to be led by Spirit. I do want to know and experience Oneness with all. The Bible says, everything and everyone shall be one in Christ. That is the good news! That is what fills my soul, when my ego has failed me. And beware, the ego will fail us, and in particular we can grow tired of our own ego in midlife. This can even bring us into what John of the Cross called the Dark Night of the Soul.
Yet, I do hope you can take with you something for your journey by reading these reflections. And off course, I do only see in part, and I do know I may get things wrong too, but I also believe I have found some truth that I’d like to share with you, though simply so. There may be a part three of this text that will be postet later.
For now, be at peace wherever you are in this world – and do remember, “you” are part of this Vastness.
It is time for some longer reflections now. Some thoughts on ego and self. I have been thinking that everything we do are connected to our egos in on way or the other, either we are doing our daily work, building friendships and parttaking in family- or social life. Even our spirituality is very much a part of our ego and our ego identity.
I have also been thinking, probably inspired by Carl Jung, the famous psychoanalyst, that our ego has different parts. In my layman-way-of-thinking I would separate the ego into 3 parts: the smaller ego, the bigger ego and the hidden ego. Let’s first talk about the bigger ego.
The smaller ego (persona, Carl Jung) is the person I see myself to be in my daily life. This is the ego I try to, want to, pretend to and dare to show the world. I started out thinking this was the bigger ego. But off course it is not. You will understand when I continue.
The bigger ego is everything I know myself to be and has developed into at this moment. So in a way the bigger ego includes all knowledge of my history and past experiences too. I hide some of the things in my ego to the world, and maybe no one gets to see everything. Maybe that is not even possible, even if I wanted to be 100% transparent. The ego parts I hide from the world, are the things a believe not to be of value, not acceptable, yes even shameful or sinful. The ego I hide, which is part of my bigger ego, is not the same as the hidden ego which I will explain next.
The hidden ego is close to the understanding of shadow in the way it is explained by Carl Jung. The hidden ego is not something I consciously hide, but it is hidden even from me. This is the ego I catch glimpses of when I have I strong reactions to something or in a situation. I do catch glimpses, and sometimes even more of this ego is revealed to me. Whether I will include this revealed ego in my bigger ego depends on whether I accept this as part of my ego or not. It is also a question of maturity, fear and love. As we grow in self-love I do think more of the hidden ego in us shows itself to us, it tests us almost, and asks whether we are ready or not to include more of ourselves.
Maybe now then when I have explained these 3 ego parts in a very simplified way, we are ready to name a fourth ego? As our ego includes more and more since we grow in acceptance and tolerance, and grows in flexibility, we grow into our total ego. I don’t think you’ll find your total ego during a lifetime, but maybe you can get close. The more of ourselves that are integrated, and the more we individuate as Carl Jung would say, the more we see of our total ego.
A lot of self-help literature talks about these ego parts, sometimes not even the total ego, and tries to encourage us to believe in a part of our ego. A repeated message is “you are enough”. I do believe that as we grow in self-acceptance, our ego becomes easier to live with for ourselves and for others, so eventually a flexible ego is quite enough to handle life and live well. But there is more to it, if we seek it. Here comes some more background information, before I explain further.
This is actually the more exciting part. This is one of the main reasons I am blogging about the contemplative life. Our mature egos will get us far, but I really do believe we are more than our ego. Part from Carl Jung, another inspiration of mine is Michael A. Singer who wrote the very wise book “The Untethered Soul”. In this book he explains that we are something other than our thoughts. In one sense we are the ones that can observe our thinking mind, therefore we are not our thoughts. These truths are part of my background for saying we are more than our egos. Another source is the Bible and the words of Christ that talk a lot about how we are one with God, yes, there is an oneness that includes more than our ego. And Father Richard Rohr says something like, everywhere is the presence of God, it is only our awareness that is lacking. This is truly exciting!
There will be a day for most people, very often in midlife, when we realise that the phrase “your are enough” does not comfort us anymore, it doesn’t satisfy our heart. We need to dig deeper, in order to breathe and go on living. Please continue reading the second part of this text which is in the next blog post.
Peace!
Det kan smerte når nokon seier
Ro deg ned
No blir det for mykje
Ikkje berre du som tel
Gje deg no
Ein sleppe taket
Kva gjorde eg no
Og kva gjer eg
Skal eg halde det inne
Kva meiner du
Da er tida likevel god
Det blir eit pusterom
Ikkje eit tomrom
Nei for det ein pustar i
Er fylt med noko meir
Nokon gong blir det for mykje
Hjartet kan berre opne seg so mykje
Og andre vil også ha rom
Og nett når rommet fyllest av kvarandre
Da blir det ikkje eit einerom
Ei heller eit tomrom
Det blir berre fylt
Med meir
ChatGPT translation mostly:
It hurts when someone says
Calm down
Now it’s too much
It’s not just you that matters
Give it up now
One lets go
What did I do now
And what am I doing
Should I hold it inside
What do you mean
Then time is a good thing
It becomes a breather
Not an empty space
No, for what one breathes in
Is filled with something more
Sometimes it becomes too much
The heart can only open so much
Others also want space
And just when the room is filled with each other
Then it does not become a solitary room
Nor an empty space
It just becomes filled
With more
Come away now
Take a step back
You have been out too long
Take a breather
Breathe deep and slowly
It is so easily forgotten
You shine so brightly always
To transform darkness to light
You need to see yourself, yet also remember
Who you are
With me
Within and without
Be now
My child
Eat and rest
Høyr
Høyr venen min
Eg kviskrar noko
Til deg
Høyrer du
Eg har kviskra det sia du stod opp
Høyr på meg no
Set deg ned
Eg ber deg
Du må høyre meg
No
Må du
Berre høyr
Eg kviskrar til deg
Eg seier det no
Høyrer du
EG ELSKAR DEG
Her kan du høre diktet opplest:
An English translation, helped by chatGPT:
Listen
Listen my friend
I whisper something
To you
Do you hear
I have whispered it since you rose
Listen to me now
Sit down
I beg you
You must hear me
Now
You must
Just listen
I whisper to you
I say it now
Do you hear
I LOVE YOU
Hear you can listen to a reading of the poem:
We all care about our own
We all care about our own
You name it
What we need is to truly
know and
be known
That is liberation
A Contemplative Life 