Comix, kinda funny

Book recommendation

I recommend with all
of my heart, Siddhartha,
by Herman Hesse.

It is so beautiful
I cried and laughed
at the same time repeatedly.

I recognized so much of my
own inner journey
in this description,
and it was a wonder to read.

I read it first time when I was 15,
and after that I have read it
again many times.
Only to discover something
new each time.

Run out and buy it now! ;-)

Random arguable facts

Everything is nothing and nothing is everything

People are too scared of pain and sorrows

The seahorse male gives birth, instead of the female

Sex is not at all overrated, neither is romance

Too many people die before they die

I am in love with life, is life in love with me?

Bananas have a funny greenishyellow colour

Most people don't know themselves, even though they think they do

A shooting star has nothing to do with stars

There is a secret country where left socks, pens and lighters live in harmony with each other

Here is a beautiful poem about death
I heard recently and felt like sharing.
~ Aasa

Do not stand at my grave and weep

Do not stand at my grave and weep;
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die.

~ Mary Elizabeth Frye

Brilliant lyrics - smoke a little something and ... Enjoy!

GHOST SONG
~The Doors (of perception)


Awake.
Shake dreams from your hair
my pretty child, my sweet one.
Choose the day and choose the sign of your day
the day's divinity
First thing you see.

A vast radiant beach and cooled jeweled moon
Couples naked race down by it's quiet side
And we laugh like soft, mad children
Smug in the wooly cotton brains of infancy
The music and voices are all around us.

Choose they croon the Ancient Ones
the time has come again
choose now, they croon
beneath the moon
beside an ancient lake

Enter again the sweet forest
Enter the hot dream
Come with us
everything is broken up and dances.

Indians scattered,
On dawn's highway bleeding
Ghosts crowd the young child’s,
Fragile eggshell mind

We have assembled inside,
This ancient and insane theater
To propagate our lust for life,
And flee the swarming wisdom of the streets.

The barns have stormed
The windows kept,
And only one of all the rest
To dance and save us
From the divine mockery of words,
Music inflames temperament.

Ooh great creator of being
Grant us one more hour,
To perform our art
And perfect our lives.

We need great golden copulations,

When the true kings murderers
Are allowed to roam free,
A thousand magicians arise in the land
Where are the feast we are promised?

One more thing

Thank you oh lord
For the white blind light
Thank you oh lord
For the white blind light

A city rises from the sea
I had a splitting headache
From which the future's made

Objectively, I think this movie isn´t very good. But personally it hits me on a deep core level. I get totally emo for days every time I see it. And I think this song is very beautiful. Enjoy!
- Åsa

Random questions....

...I have been pondering...

-Can consciousness "understand" nonexistence?
-Can you experience an altered way of existence through trying to grasp that answer?
-Is human average perception and actions of and around love normally a way of trying to reach validation for our own existence and ego value? Is it only that?
-What is true and pure?
-Is there anything existing that is subjective?
-Can we have a soul and at the same time only live once?
-What is the nature of divinity if our existence is limited by one life only?
-Life is truly a miracle just as it is, just that we are alive is astonishing and strange...and the things we can do even more. Seeing these wonders, but then comparing them to the stages that we probably have the ability to reach. Why is it at the same time that we are so "low". Why does it seem like it takes an entire lifetime to become a true being, and still that is not enough? And why do humans in average never get there? Why is existence so cruel that it has made us into being that can grasp our own incompleteness, but still made it nearly impossible to change it? Humans hide their true nature so much, and they fight so much between themselves, even in small subconscious everyday struggles.
Is it necessary and why?
If you have an opinions about these things it is always nice to hear your thoughts. I guess as long as we all know we don´t have the truth, but an others point of view can always be comforting, even we agree or not.
:-)
~ Aasa

"Only when you drink form the river of silence shall you indeed sing."
~ From "The prophet" by Kahil Gibran

I love the philosophy of the
Tao Te Ching


"No growt without assistance
no action without reaction
no desire without restraint
give yourself up and find yourself again

Tangible things have no permanence
there is nothing we can hold onto in this world
let go and possess what is real"

"If you want to become whole,
let yourself be partial.
If you want to become straight,
let yourself be crooked.
If you want to become full,
let yourself be empty.
If you want to be reborn,
let yourself die.
If you want to be given everything,
give everything up."

"When people see some things as beautiful,
other things become ugly.
When people see some things as good,
other things become bad.

Being and non-being create each other.
Difficult and easy support each other.
Long and short define each other.
High and low depend on each other.
Before and after follow each other.

Therefore the Master
acts without doing anything
and teaches without saying anything.
Things arise and she lets them come;
things disappear and she lets them go.
She has but doesn't possess,
acts but doesn't expect.
When her work is done, she forgets it.
That is why it lasts forever."


"Fill your bowl to the brim
and it will spill.
Keep sharpening your knife
and it will blunt.
Chase after money and security
and your heart will never unclench.
Care about people's approval
and you will be their prisoner."

"Giving birth and nourishing,
having without possessing,
acting with no expectations,
leading and not trying to control"

"Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations."


"Practice not-doing,
and everything will fall into place."

"Look, and it can't be seen.
Listen, and it can't be heard.
Reach, and it can't be grasped.

Above, it isn't bright.
Below, it isn't dark.
Seamless, un-nameable,
it returns to the realm of nothing.
Form that includes all forms,
image without an image,
subtle, beyond all conception.

Approach it and there is no beginning;
follow it and there is no end.
You can't know it, but you can be it,
at ease in your own life.
Just realize where you come from:
this is the essence of wisdom."


Read more from the Tao Te Ching

Merry Xmas

Give a goat to a family in need

In our western society we have a huge pressure and focus on mass-consumerism.
Now in Xmas times, instead of giving to those who have everything, maybe we can give to those who have less, to somebody that actually need it...
World vision; give a present that counts
Gaver som forandrer verden
The 10 Principles of Greener Gift-Giving

The strenght of weakness

"Now I want you to listen to me closely. You're not a bad person. You're a very good person, who bad things have happened to. Do you understand? Besides, the world isn't split into good people and Death Eaters. We have all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the power we choose to act on. That's who we really are."
- Sirius in Harry Potter

- I have felt one thing to be very true; the grandest of strengths is daring to accept personal weakness, in front of an other...but especially and maybe before the latter is even possible - to yourself...Give up the fight and see your humanity in the eyes, shatter the perfect image you strive for, dare to show hurt, vulnerability, all those feelings we in general try to hide so well, but still all carry somewhere inside.
But I guess this is something that needs to come from within...I just had it come to me strongly one day. I had of course heard people say it many times before, thought it sounded good and true, but it is a huge difference in understanding something with your head, and getting a understanding deep inside...like an answer that arises from the core of yourself.
Can life ever be about winning? Gaining power? Be the best one? Be the prettiest one? The smartest? The most desired? Well, of course yes, it will make you feel great, cause in that moment you feel it is overwhelmingly wonderful and strong. It is a feeling of pleasure and winning. But then it fades and you always need more. For some reason these things never last long, these outer "winnings" fade quickly, and one needs refill. It is an eternal chase because the feeling is there merely in the minute you achieve it. So you need it again. And in that way it never stops. You get into a circle of wanting more, which is like an endless spiral moving upwards and that makes you thirst more for every conquest. So, in a way you win, but in an other you loose, again and again and again and get more caught into the net the more you play it. Until one day, I imagine, you get to a place where this is the only things that matters to you, and that is what you live for...a true nightmare. You have forgotten the core of life.

I think you can win, but in the long run and in a totally different way...rather opposite actually. And this is the strongest battle your soul might ever win too. You can except defeat. You can give the battle over. You can unclench the fist that holds around power, success, beauty and all that, and give in to what we really are...human beings with weaknesses and strengths. We are not either or....we are.
I don´t mean to sounds like a preacher now, but maybe I do. I just had this come to me so strongly today and I just needed to express it in words. And maybe, give somebody else a spark of inspiration on the road they are walking too...who knows?

Merry Xmas everybody
Warm hugs
~ Åsa

Kan speilet tale

av Sigbjørn Obstfelder

"Kan speilet tale?

Speilet kan tale!

Speilet skal se på dig hver morgen,
forskende,
se på dig med det dybe, kloge øie,
- dit eget!
hilse dig med det varme, det mørkeblå øie:
Er du ren?
Er du tro?"

Longing and eternity

The following passage is from Smilla's sense of Snow, a 1992 novel by Danish author Peter Høeg. A strange mystery that involves a child's murder and an eeriey trip to Greenland. The book is also made into a film, casting Julia Ormond

Do you know what the foundation of mathematics is? ... The foundation of mathematics is numbers. If anyone asked me what makes me truly happy, I would say: numbers. Snow and ice and numbers. And do you know why?
Because the number system is like human life. First you have the natural numbers. The ones that are whole and positive. The numbers of a small child. But human consciousness expands. The child discovers a sense of longing, and do you know what the mathematical expression is for longing?

The negative numbers. The formalization of the feeling that you are missing something. And human consciousness expands and grows even more, and the child discovers the in-between spaces. Between stones, between pieces of moss on the stones, between people. And between numbers. And do you know what that leads to? It leads to fractions. Whole numbers plus fractions produce rational numbers. And human consciousness doesn't stop there. It wants to go beyond reason. It adds an operation as absurd as the extraction of roots. And produces irrational numbers.

It's a form of madness. Because the irrational numbers are infinite. They can't be written down. They force human consciousness out beyond the limits. And by adding irrational numbers to rational numbers, you get real numbers.

Because now, on the spot, we expand the real numbers with imaginary square roots of negative numbers. These are the numbers we can't picture, numbers that normal human consciousness cannot comprehend. And when we add the imaginary numbers to the real numbers, we have the complex number system. The first number system in which it's possible to explain satisfactorily the crystal formation of ice. It's like a vast, open landscape. The horizons. You head towards them and they keep receding.

Click here for a film clip of the mathematics scene.

Do we want to repeat history?

The American president Barack Obama
receives the Nobel peace price of 2009.

"I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace."
~George W. Bush (From a speech at the Dept. of Housing and Urban Development in Wash. DC, 6/18/02.)

"The instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace"
~ Barack Obama (10/11/09)

According to Nobel's will, the Peace Prize should be awarded to the person who:
"shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses."


The Nobel committees choice for this years peace price is again making a ridicule of the symbolism of the price itself, when president Barack Obama entered the pantheon of Nobel Peace Prize winners. Just nine days after ordering 30,000 more U.S. troops into battle in Afghanistan, Obama delivered a Nobel acceptance speech that he saw as a treatise on war’s use and prevention. In his speeches, Obama refused to renounce war for his nation or under his leadership, saying defiantly that “I face the world as it is” and that he is obliged to protect and defend the United States. “To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism, it is a recognition of history,” he claims. And continues; “The belief that peace is desirable is rarely enough to achieve it.”
The speeches held by Obama concerning the war in Afghanistan is strangely alike those held of Bush to justify the war in Iraq. Back then the general crowd was cheering and agreeing the logic of war being necessary for the means of peace. We see the exact same thing happening now - Obama was in mostly welcomed and celebrated in the streets of Oslo. It took most people several years with casualties and damages before turning and going against Bush and the war in Iraq. Do we really need to go through all that one more time to open up our eyes? An other interesting thing about Obamas Nobel peace price speech is that it is not about peace, but it is more or less a defense speech for the war he is leading now. By sending another 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan – on top of the 21,000 he dispatched last spring – this year's Nobel Peace Prize laureate will have tripled the American military presence there by the time the last of the reinforcements arrive in mid-2010.

While he has made some strides for international diplomacy, Obama was given the prize only a few weeks after his election. In awarding the prize to Obama, the Nobel panel cited his call for a world free of nuclear weapons, for a more engaged U.S. role in combating global warming, for his support of the United Nations and multilateral diplomacy, and for broadly capturing the attention of the world and giving its people “hope.” But the Nobel committee made its announcement in October when he wasn’t even nine months on the job, recognizing his aspirations more than some of the achievements he has done alter on.

So, maybe Barack Obama has a few achievements to show for so far, but if the price was presented to him after these deeds as well, would they be enough to overshadow two other important factors. One - the fact that Obama is in all his speeches justifying and now also escanning the war in Afghanistan with sending 30,000 more U.S. troops into battle.
And two - if we consider how many people who are working hard and has done so much for peace, it is an offense to give it to Barack Obama at this point. Mahatma Gandhi, the greatest symbol of peace and non-violence in the 20-th century, was carefully kept away from the Nobel Peace Prize till he died, despite decades of selfless hard work. In view of the length of time, the degree of suffering and the sheer bravery of the previous winners of this award, this is a terrible mistake. There are thousands of more worthy candidates out there, actually doing stuff, putting their life and well-being on the line. And they are also so much more needing of the attention the Nobels peace prize can give them to continue and uphold the efforts they are doing for peace. Obama is in no need of such attention, and it is very unlikely it will change his politics in any direction. The trouble is they're not a famous president.

What Obama gave to the world when he entered into office was hope. Hope for change in a world filled with war and injustice. He gave hope through words and speeches. To give promises of hope is all good and can give inspiration to many. But it does not qualify for a peace making politician. It is important to see the difference between words and action. Especially if the actions show themselves to be the opposite of some of these words. And so far, Obamas actions are not deserving of what this price symbolizes. So, one can then wonder what the foundation of a Nobel peace price now is grounded upon. Has the true symbolism of the Nobel Peace Prize lost it´s value?

Prior leaders that has been given the Nobel peace price:
Mother Teresa (1979)
14th Dalai Lama (1989)
Aung San Suu Kyi (1991)
Nelson Mandela (1993)