Ziip-e fljy!

Lost comments

2011-12-28T09:55:00.000+01:00

UPDATE: I am trying out the instructions here:
http://www.ellenshapiro.com/blog/2010/02/so-you-want-to-move-your-comments-from-haloscan-to-blogger/
but I cannot seem to do it. Basically because the instructions are not updated to the programs.
Anybody with a clue that possibly could help me?

I am a bit sad. I swapped comment service for my blog, and all the comments that has ever been made in this blog is now deleted forever. New comments from now on will stay, but the old ones are still gone. Maybe I can retrieve them, but I don't know how.
I think the file that contain all the comments is an XML file. The blog service that I used before was called Echo: (Link to Echo)
If anybody has a clue, I would be extremely grateful for help or suggestions.
Sad me
- Åsa

Update: I have the comments in an XML file: aasaaaaaaaaaaa.blogspot.com-comments.xml

but I don't know how to export them to Blogger. If anybody knows I am happy about any kind of help :-)

Lojong

2011-12-19T16:53:00.000+01:00

Now, I think the way is to stop identifying with thoughts, and let them go. But if one must have thoughts, it is better to choose them, than to let them choose or control you. Maybe this list can inspire you to choose some good thoughts to be a part of who you are.
- Aasa

Lojong is mind training, a practice in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition based on a set of aphorisms formulated in Tibet in the 12th century by Geshe Chekhawa. The practice involves refining and purifying one's motivations and attitudes. The fifty-nine or so proverbs that form the root text of the mind training practice are designed as a set of antidotes to undesired mental habits that cause suffering. Prominent teachers who have popularized this practice in the West include Pthe 14th Dalai Lama and ema Chodron.

The aphorisms on mind training listed below are paraphrased from a translation of the Tibetan original.

First, train in the preliminaries.
Find the consciousness you had before you were born.
Let even the remedy itself drop away naturally.
Stay in the primeval consciousness, the basis of everything.
As you breathe in, take in and accept all the sadness, pain, and negativity of the whole world, including yourself, and absorb it into your heart. As you breathe out, pour out all your joy and bliss; bless the whole of existence.
Understand your attachments, your aversions, and your indifference, and love them all.
Apply these proverbs in everything you do.
When practicing unconditional acceptance, start with yourself.
When everything goes wrong, treat disaster as a way to wake up.
Take all the blame yourself.
Be grateful to everyone.
Don't worry – there's nothing real about your confusion.
When something unexpected happens, in that very moment, treat it as a meditation.
Work with the Five Forces. The Five Forces are:

Be intense, be committed.
Familiarization – get used to doing and being what you want to do and to be.
Cultivate the white seeds, not the black ones.
Turn totally away from all your ego trips.
Dedicate all the merits of what you do for the benefit of others.

Practice these Five Forces and you are ready for death at any moment.
All teachings have the same goal.
Follow the inner witness rather than the outer ones.
Always have the support of a joyful mind.
Practicing even when distracted is good training.
Always observe these three points:

Regularity of practice.
Not wasting time on the inessential.
Not rationalizing our mistakes.

Change your attitude, but stay natural.
Do not discuss defects.
Don't worry about other people.
Work on your greatest imperfection first.
Abandon all hope of results.
Give up poisonous food.
Don't indulge in malicious gossip.
Don't wait in ambush.
Don't strike at the heart.
Don't put the yak's load on the cow.
Remember – this is not a competition.
Don't be sneaky.
Don't abuse your divine power for selfish reasons.
Don't expect to profit from other people's misfortune.
In all your activities, have a single purpose.
Solve all problems by accepting the bad energy and sending out the good.
Renew your commitment when you get up and before you go to sleep.
Accept good and bad fortune with an equal mind.
Keep your vows even at the risk of your life.
Recognize your neurotic tendencies, overcome them, then transcend them.
Find a teacher, tame the roving mind, choose a lifestyle that allows you to practice.
Love your teacher, enjoy your practice, keep your vows.
Focus your body, mind, and spirit on the path.
Exclude nothing from your acceptance practice: train with a whole heart.
Always meditate on whatever you resent.
Don't depend on how the rest of the world is.
In this life, concentrate on achieving what is most meaningful.
Don't let your emotions distract you, but bring them to your practice.
Don't let your practice become irregular.
Train wholeheartedly.
Free yourself by first watching, then analyzing.
Don't feel sorry for yourself.
Don't be jealous.
Stay focused.
Don't expect any applause.

* The Tonglen and Mind Training Site
* LOJONG: Eight Verses for Training the Mind.
Offered by His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Do you control your thoughts, or do your thoughts control you?

2011-12-18T09:54:00.001+01:00

Remember, the truth can have so many hues and colors, and this is only one version of it. The world is a wondrous and playful place - So take it or leave it (as your truth or not) as you like. And thank you for taking time and interest!
:-)
- Åsa

- "The ultimate truth of who you are, is not I am this or I am that, but I am" - Eckhart Tolle

- "Your identity is made by ... your deep, driving desire. As is your desire, so is your will. As is your will, so is your deed. As is your deed, so is your destiny. - Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

- "Most people are so completely identified with the voice in the head — the incessant stream of involuntary and compulsive thinking and the emotions that accompany it — that we may describe them as being possessed by their mind. As long as you are completely unaware of this, you take the thinker to be who you are." - Eckhart Tolle

Human beings are the only species that has the ability to analyze our own existence; we have the ability of thought. The paradox of this gift is that we often forget that thought is just a tool, an instrument we can use, and instead we start to take it as the reality. The reality of yourself and our surroundings - we are our thoughts. If you feel you believe this to be treu,please take this little experiemnt before reading on:
Can you take one step back and just listen to your thoughts? What is being said? Have you heard any of these things before? take a few minutes and close your eyes and just observe and listen to your thoughts. Now, when you are done,- try to deeply feel the answer to the following question; If you are listening to your thoughts, who is the listener?

"The greater part of most people's thinking is involuntary, automatic, and repetitive. It is no more than a kind of mental static and fulfills no real purpose. Strictly speaking, you don't choose to think; Thinking happens to you. The statement “I think” implies volition. It implies that you have willfully chosen to think what you think (or that you think in the first place). For most people, this is not yet the case. “I think” is just as false a statement as “I digest” or “I circulate my blood.” Digestion happens, circulation happens, thinking happens.
The voice in the head has a life of its own. Most people are at the mercy of that voice; they are possessed by their thinking and its repetitive, unconscious content. This circular, repetitive, incessant thinking is conditioned by the past, and it keeps you trapped in the past. It is as though you continue to relive the past over and over again. Do you ever wonder why the same problems challenge you throughout your life? Your unconscious mind is re-creating them, but you don't even know it."
And what we think also create our reactions and our reactions create interaction that produces our experience of life and our surroundings. We are caught in our own net, and therefore we are caught in not really seeing ourselves, each other, and the world as it truly is. We don't think of this as something to control, but as something that just comes to us, like a pile of snow falling from a rooftop onto our heads.
Control is also often associated with something negative or forced, so we avoid the issue, dismissing it as being "unnatural".
Like this we never learn how to really love or understand; we see people through the interpretations of our mind; as Plato's shadows of their real self, cast upon a cave wall. We end up being reactions to our own minds stories. We believe them, and they control our lives, our way of thinking, acting and feeling; who we become. We sit in the boat of our life, but let others steer its course.
To be free from this way of living and perceiving has for me become one of the cornerstones in life. Here I will try to describe as best as I can what I have gone through to try and reach a clearer state of experiencing the outer world and myself, the stages that occur and the methods I have used to approach it.Hope this can give you something valuable, as it has helped me more than I can put into words. Enjoy!
- Aasa

In the search to discover your true self and your relation to thought, there can be many ways. Here is one way, divided into different stages.

1: You are your thoughts: You haven't considered to question your thoughts, you are them. If somebody is mad at you(or any other feeling), you get triggered and react back with thought and or feeling. If someone feels good about you, you automatically also feel good about yourself. And the opposite; If you feel bad you think bad. If you think bad you feel bad. - It is a circle that repeats itself, and you follow it like a shadow the way it leads you. What you think control how you act, how you feel, who you are, your life is in the control of your projections.

An example of this reacting pattern:
Somebody has said something that has hurt me and touched off a fight. At first, I am caught up in feeling hurt--my body aches and my mind is swarming with painful thoughts and associations. I don't like to feel this way, so I start to react against it. Yet the more I struggle with it, the more I become entangled and stuck to it. I start to tell myself stories that only intensify my pain: "This person will never understand me," "She/he likes to attack me, she/he`s too aggressive,"Maybe I need to leave this person,". Each of these stories touches off further reactions in me, and the more I get caught up in my reactions, the more I lose touch with what is really happening.
If I plunge into the story-"She/he likes to attack me, that's just the way she/he is"-I may then do something to get back at the person or I may decide to close myself off to her/him. Yet both of these defensive reactions only complicate the situation further because they are not accurate responses to what is really going on. I have fabricated a reality of who that person is to defend myself from feeling "bad feelings". And this I have done through believing in my thoughts and the stories they tell me. To find out what is going on, I must put aside my stories and bring some fresh awareness into the situation.

2: You question your thoughts: To regain awareness I need to step back from the whirlwind of my reactions. Although this may take some practice at first, it is always possible because the nature of awareness is mobile and fluid.
If you are starting to take a closer look at your thoughts, ask yourself this question:
Can my thoughts be a product of what I have learned through life and made my mind up to be? Are your thoughts fragments you have picked up on the road of your life and puzzled together to the whole that now makes up what you now call "you". Maybe you have taken these words (and sentences) from parents, friends, enemies, everything you met on your way, but most often not consciously. They just attached themselves to you and unaware (or maybe even sometimes aware), you adopted them, like little orfan voices in your mind. If you really manage to see and feel this clearly, it can make you understand yourself better and also that you are the one who have chosen, consciously or subconsciously your thoughts. These thoughts are numerous and can be anything from "I am not deserving of xxx". "Why do I never find a happy relationship", "Why is bad things always happening to me?", "Why am I not xxx enough?", "I will never be good enough at x", "I need x or x to be happy", "I am not happy" Etc, etc, etc.
If you often are stuck with thoughts like this, you might also choose a special way of seeing life to support your thought choices. This selective perception will make your chosen thoughts seem even more real to you. E.g: If you believe in the thought "bad things always happen to me", every time a bad thing happen, this is what you will put emphasis on. When good things happen, you overlook them, and still keep your focus on the bad issues that happened before. You aer sp trapped in your own story you are making it "come true". In this way, your thought becomes and supports your perceived reality.
The good thing about all this is, if you have chosen your thoughts, they are not who you are, they are onbly just a choice you have made and stuck with. And you can now, when and if you see this clearly, start to choose in a new way.

3: Observing your thoughts: Now that you are aware of your thoughts being in you, but not you, you can start to listen to them. This listening is not the way of listening you used to do before, taking them for the truth about yourself, others and life. Now you can look at them as something that is just babbling inside your head. ;-) (This can be a very funny stage, cause you might realize the absurdity of your thoughts, and also that you have taken them for the truth)
Now you have managed to take a step back away from your thoughts. You have realized they are not you and that you don't have to listen to them. You are observing them. (If you mange to do this, ask yourself an interesting question: "If I am watching my thoughts, then who is observing?")

Lets say you are mad at your girlfriend because you don´t think she gives you enough love. Write down the thoughts you have, and don´t be shy. Dont make them prettier or censor them. Let the angry, sad voice inside express exactly what is there and write it all down.

Then ask yourself this question: Is it true? In the example I used the man would have to go deep inside himself and ask himself, is it true that my girlfrined doesn´t give me enough love? And is it true that she should give me more love? Maybe the answer is yes, maybe no. The importance is to really try to find what your true answer is and get in touch with the deeper truth inside of yourself.

Then after that, go even deeper into the question and ask yourself. "Can I absolutely know that it is true?" Nobody is asking you to come up with a certain answer or force you to make a given one. Ask yourself.

When your have connected with your answer, whataver it is, try to feel out this one: How does it make you feel when you belive that it is true? How do you behave towards the other person in question? And how does behaving like that make you feel? Do you like the way you behave then, feel then?

Then try an other cenario? How would you be without the thought? How would you feel? How would you behave towards the person in question if that thought was impossible to think? Can you see any reasons to drop that thought?

Now, quite often thoughts we have about others can be projections of our inner minds and what we really should look and work on on ourselves. The mind just gets it backwards. So, try now and flip your thought around. Like in the example of the man who didnt think his girlfriend loved him enough. "I dont think my girlfriend gives me enough love" it will turn into "I dont think I give my girlfrined enough love". And wouldnt that be more true in a way? He wants to demand her to behave in a certin way that he sees as loving. Maybe he doesnt even know her and that she really expresses her love in ways he overlooks? Maybe when he belives the thought that she doesnt give him enough love he closes himself off to her and gets snarky and angry at her. Now the statement, "I should give my girlfrined more love" maybe starts to sound more true than "She should give me love". And there is an other way this thought can be turned around as well. "I need to give myself more love" That might be even truer. He demands love from her, but does he feel it in his own heart? And does he truly express it to himself and her? And in the ned, who can really know what is good for us in the long run? Maybe he even would learn something valuable and good because he thought she didnt give him love, or maybe it would even be good for him if she left him and something else came into his life? What is the deeper good is not possible to see in the moment from the narrow stand and view we have. So,- "My girlfriend needs to give me more love" Is it true?

Or maybe your thought is, "I am not loved". "Nobody gives me love" try to turn it around. "I dont love myself" "I dont give myself love" Stop looking outside. Everything you really need you have right in front of you :-)

So, give it a shot and test out your thoughts and beliefs. They might not be as true as you first think when they are not looked at or really exsamined by yourself and your deeper wisdom.

There are also other ways you can unravel the real truth behind your noisy thoughts. You can start with asking yourself some other simple questions to test the reality of them.

When you are taking a step back and listening to your thoughts; are you aware that you are thinking, that awareness is not part of thinking. It is a different dimension of consciousness. This awareness is the real you. It is the silent awareness of “I am.”

If there were nothing but thought in you, you wouldn’t even know that you were thinking. You would be like a dreamer who doesn’t know he is dreaming. You would be as identified with every thought as the dreamer is with every image in the dream. Many people still live like that, like sleepwalkers, trapped in old dysfunctional mindsets that continuously recreate the same nightmarish reality. When you know you are dreaming, you are awake within the dream. another dimension of consciousness has come in.

4: Release yourself from your thoughts:
While observing your thoughts, you might find a consciousness or being in yourself that is other than thought. (If you observe your thoughts, you have already entered the new consciousness of not being your thoughts.) Practice this first alone, with closed eyes. just be in this You that is the observer of your thoughts and stay with the experience.
So now, instead of continuing to be tossed around in turbulent reactions, you can let your new gained awareness and observation move back and forth from them, and simple acknowledge the whole scale of emotions and words they produce. (Emotions are most often products of the thoughts you are making). Dont try to make the thoughts go away. they never will. Thoughts are like waves in the ocean, they are there. but just observe them, look at them.
When you do this, it is as thought you step out of a blazing fire that is consuming you, and sit down next to it instead. Once you create some space for yourself you are no longer trapped in its flames. You can then allow the fire to be there as it is, without having to resist it. You will still feel its heat, but it no longer burns you alive. In other words, when you can make space for you feelings and thoughts to be there, and when you can be present with your awareness "next to them", "On the edge of them" you find your balance and awareness of being.
This brings relief and peace of mind. You are no longer stuck in the oppositional struggle, you no longer are your thoughts or the feelings they produce (more about feelings and how they are created), you watch them. You have found an other you deeper inside yourself. It also brings deeper clarity,-you can simply recognize that you are hurting/being sad/happy etc , without becoming so embroiled in the drama around it. You have more freedom of movement because you are not caught in reacting against the pain of thoughts or feelings produced by thoughts. And in taking this position, you feel more stability and strength.
(Don`t think about how to do this, because that is just an other thought, and your thoughts will try to be in control of you all the time when you are trying out these things - That is their function. So don't think about it, just observe and be in the observing experience and let it fill you. In other words - just do it. (Damned Nike ;-)
The experience of no longer being your thoughts and experiencing the freedom of not being identified with thought, might only be in a few seconds at a time, and then you might fall back into old ways (you are not the observer anymore, but identify with the thoughts). This is something that takes practice to stay with. But now you know the experience, you have been there and you can return there.

5: Non-attachment to thoughts last longer: The intervals of not being your thoughts last longer the more you practice this. Practice it and it and you will learn more every time to be the one behind the thoughts - Your true being.

6: Non-attachment to thought: makes you experience the world very differently. You experience the true joy of how things are without your thought-labels on them. After having practiced this many times alone, you might be ready to take it with you out in the world. Practice observing the world through the non-thought experience. Observe the consequences of interaction. You might experience that you see others that are attached to thought, but don't become part of their thought -"games" (Acting and reacting) anymore - As you now have learned, by watching yourself, these games or not done on purpose, they are done out of non-awareness of thoughts. You stop believing that these thoughts are the truth and just stay in the moment fully aware. So in a situation when somebody is projecting positive or negative thoughts on you, where you before would have re-acted to (re-act: somebody acts on you and you send that action back to them; you re-act the movement), you now see the cycle of action and reaction clearly, and take yourself away from it.
As you are seeing the pattern you will most likely not want to identify or willingly participate in it anymore. For the first time you have taken an active choice in the matter - you are aware. As long as you keep your focus on the inner observer of thoughts, seeing others and yourself from this point of view you no longer feel anger, hate, frustration, want or any other feeling for all the things made out of the action / reaction circle. You realize that it is not personal, but made out of unawareness, so you don't take it personal anymore. Rather you are observing what happens and let reality be what it is. You may also instead feel compassion and love for those who are trapped in these circles and want to help them; non-attached (unconditional) love guides you towards other people. The thing about such things is, nobody can really be helped. You are only ready for change at the moment you a ready. Before this moment such things will not make sense to you and you will reject them. Maybe you are not ready for this text now either. Maybe it doesnt make sense to you? that is totally fine, just let it go and go on your way where you will find other truths that speak to you instead. Or maybe you will look up this text again some other day and then it will speak to you. the best we can do is just to accept other peoples stages of mind, and let realty serve its cause and show itself to you.

7: The more you practice observing your thoughts, the longer the intervals of loving non-attachment lasts.
Here are some exercises that can help you get further in touch with your inner "silent" self:
a: Go to the forest (or any other form of nature) Set a total focus on your sensual experiences. How does it smell, what do you see, what do you hear, what do you feel? Focus totally on this. If silence of thought occurs, go with the flow of it, and keep observing.
b: Sit or lay down with your eyes closed. Relax and feel your body. Breathe slowly and deep. Feel the inside of your body, starting with your toes. Move up all the way through yourself until you feel all of you. You are connecting with your own aliveness and presence in the now.
c: Sit or lay down and close your eyes. Just listen and observe your thoughts. Let them go where they want. Given them total space to run around. Stay in this and just let what happens happen.
d: Sit or lay down with closed eyes. Follow your own breath. Have all of your awareness on the breath. Whern you breath in and when you breathe out keep your attention on it. Picture that you are breathing in from the soles of your feet all through your body and out of your head.

8: There is no road to happiness, happiness is the road:
Dont get frustrated if you don't reach a permanent stage of awareness. This would be what we would call enlightenment, and it doesnt really matter. You are not doing this to reach a goal, you are doing this to live as an aware person in the moment - this moment. So take your mind of any possible goal and concentrate on the now. You might do this better by:

9: Be aware of the illusion of time:
The now is the only thing you will ever experience. The past was the now back then - it is not anymore. The now is the only thing that can and ever will exist. The future is only a thought you have created in your mind - it is a constructed idea.
Your thoughts will most often be about these two non-existing times; the past or the future. Or as John Lennon put it so well" Life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans." But when you truly are in the now and aware, thought looses its control over you. Because to be in the now is to be present and aware of life itself, not the constructions of how your mind thinks life should be or it wishes it might be. As future and past are constructions, so are thoughts and the mind. They go together and feed each other in an endless circle. And they are all resistances of what is, the present, the now, reality. As long as you resist life as it is, thought becomes more alive. And the opposite is also true, thought naturally looses its power when you are aware and present in life, because reality doesnt need false constructions, reality just is as it is. In this sense thought only becomes a tool you can use, if you want to.
So this is the reason why thought will cling to the conceptual and created times (the past and the future;) it`s its way of becoming alive in your mind. When you see this arise in you, take yourself back to the present moment by being aware of the now, and practicing the ways of awareness described before in this article.

10: Choose the thoughts you want to have in you, to improve your lifequality:
All thoughts do not make you unhappy or create illusions in your mind. You might learn thoughts that can help you improve and be happy. In this way thought are a tool for you and in your control, you are no longer just ruled by them unconsciously.
So now you can choose them with care; you choose the thoughts you want, for the person you want to be and practice them. Don`t worry if they won`t stick in the beginning. You learned your old thoughts by repeating them many times through the years. Do the same with the new thoughts.

Tip: If you feel that you still struggle with many negative thoughts and thought-patterns, you might try to redefine your thoughts and emotions before you practice the dis-identification with them. This technique might give you a good start on that.

Here are some examples of thoughts you might practice, that also can help you get out of negative patterns:

Practice unconditional acceptance, and start with yourself.
Understand your attachments, your aversions, and your indifference, and love them all.
When everything goes wrong, treat disaster as a way to wake up, learn, and do better the next time out of learning from your mistake.
Be grateful to everyone and understand that you can learn from everybody and everything, even negativity. If you feel it apply to you, use this text as part of your understanding.
Don't worry – there's nothing real about your confusion. It is created in your mind by you
Look at the world though you heart, be intense, be committed
Get used to doing and being what you want to do and to be.
Cultivate the white seeds, not the black ones.
Always have the support of a joyful mind.
Not wasting time on the inessential.
Change your attitude, but stay natural.
Don't worry about other people. This is your ego need to get and want. Focus on forgiving and releasing and you will be set free.
Abandon all hope of results. "There is no road to happiness, happiness is the road."
Don't abuse your divine power for selfish reasons.
Solve all problems by accepting the bad energy and sending out the good.
Recognize your neurotic tendencies and overcome them by observing them and letting them go. Never judge them or beat yourself up for having them. Accept and love is the key. These things are there because you have choosen to identify with them. Replace them with focus on positive thoughts and actions and use THIS as a tool
Exclude nothing from your acceptance practice: train with a whole heart.
Don't depend on how the rest of the world is.
Free yourself by watching and observing what is happening, and accept what happens, without getting stuck to it.
Focus your body, mind, and spirit on the path.
In this life, concentrate on achieving what is most meaningful.
More.......

2011-12-17T09:30:00.000+01:00

Outside the box

Don´t think outside the box

Instead - know that the box doesn´t exist
- except; in your mind

if you place it there

daydreaming

2011-12-15T12:47:00.000+01:00

A re-post from 2006

I would live in a big castle on a cliff up in the mountains
it would be a medieval castle and I would have lots off dresses from that time
I would also have some armor and knight equipment
and I would have a horse or two
and an owl that lived in the mountains but visited me every day
and I would have a knight by my side
and my knight would woo me and kiss my hand
and then we would fence each other a little with longswards
and both would win about half of the time
and we would both be very bad loosers and tickle each other
just for the hell of it

but I would not just live in the the castle
now and then I would live in a treehouse in the forrest
and it would be a brook just next to my treehouse
and I would only live from food that grew in the forest
and every morning I would collect herbs in a little basket
and while doing that I would talk to the animals
and my man would live nearby
and he would be "dressed" as a faun
and visit me in the middle of the night climbing up my tree
and do a romantic fireshow for me
and I would give him hourlong massages in a meadow
and we would lie there all day until the stars came out
and fall asleep in eachothers arms

And he would be
passionate and wild
compassionate and caring
show me his care and that he is there for me
surprise me again and again
love that I adore him and shower him with affection
do the same to me
gives me security but not be boring
gives me excitement but not be unsertain in his ways with me
love my company and miss me whilst away, but not be clingy
be considerate of my feelings and wonder about if I am well
let me spoil him with attention and love
let me be weird and caring and adore him, and not be afraid by it
Let me kiss him and cuddle him and give him lots of [sensured for sensitive readers]
Who wouldnt mind if we argued a little
and who didnt have a problem talking it out afterwards
loves sex in the weirdest, exciting places
loves sex in the cutest ,cuddliest places
loves to make love with me
loves to fuck me too
want to travel the world
want to live in New Zealand ;) (and a castle and a treehouse)
want to show me how much he cares and tell it to me until he thinks I am sick of it
(which I never will be)

a guy...
that I can talk to for hours about deep things
that I can talk to for hours about rubbish
that I can be silly with
that I can be serious with
that is emotional
that understands me
that is differnt from me and dares to be
that is the same in amny ways and dares to be as well
that I adore and look up to
that adores and looks up to me

and that loves to dress up in weird costumes and play roles with me
we could be Bonnie and Clyde
Or hippies at Woodstock
Or warlock and witch
and he would not be afraid to go out in the streets with me wearing it
so we could make fools of ourselves
just for the laugh of it

and in the forrest I would have a school for everybody who wanted to come
kids and adults
and it would be a place where everybody teached everybody something they knew well
(cause everybody has a gift of something)
and we would take turns to show eacother these things

and up in the castle I would have a huge fruitgarden
full of strange exciting things
were a lot of kids came every day and played and had fun
and often I would join them
being a kid myself

and I would have magical powers
to make people feel good
and this would make them do good deeds to eachother
and I might just make the world a little better in a small scale
but still I would be a person who made it better, not worse

imagine, you can be 3 kinda of people
the one who makes the world better
the one who doesn't make a difference
and the one who makes it worse

I prefer to try my best and be the first kind

and I would not be happy all the time
cause I woudl have bad times and sad times too
but this would be the reason why
I would be happy as fuck

~ the end

Sorrows and gifts

2011-11-20T14:26:00.000+01:00

To those in the world who make me feel sorrow or difficulties in my life;
Thank you for teaching me more about myslf and what I need to improve.
First it is hard and painful,- I don´t want it and struggle against what is happening. But then when I stop to truggle against "what is" and accept it, I understand that when it is here it can make me open myself more. Then I start learning from it instead of fighting it. It shows me what I need to change, and what thoughts I need to adjust. So I am truly grateful for it. It is a gift.
I just wanted to share this now in Christmas, when we have such a beautiful tradition of focusing on love and sharing :-)
- Åsa
PS: Here is a picture I took of a flower called "The Christmas Rose"

Ja visst gör det ont
- Karin Boye

Ja visst gör det ont

Ja visst gör det ont när knoppar brister.
Varför skulle annars våren tveka?
Varför skulle all vår heta längtan
bindas i det frusna bitterbleka?
Höljet var ju knoppen hela vintern.
Vad är det för nytt, som tär och spränger?
Ja visst gör det ont när knoppar brister,
ont för det som växer

och det som stänger.

Ja nog är det svårt när droppar faller.
Skälvande av ängslan tungt de hänger,
klamrar sig vid kvisten, sväller, glider -
tyngden drar dem neråt, hur de klänger.
Svårt att vara oviss, rädd och delad,
svårt att känna djupet dra och kalla,
ändå sitta kvar och bara darra -
svårt att vilja stanna

och vilja falla.

Då, när det är värst och inget hjälper,
Brister som i jubel trädets knoppar.
Då, när ingen rädsla längre håller,
faller i ett glitter kvistens droppar
glömmer att de skrämdes av det nya
glömmer att de ängslades för färden -
känner en sekund sin största trygghet,
vilar i den tillit

som skapar världen.

Seeking...

2011-11-18T13:03:00.000+01:00

A repost from 2006

ooxx-xxoo-o-ooxx-xxoo-o-ooxx-xxoo-o-ooxx-xxoo-o-ooxx-xxoo

permanent travel companinon...
obsessed about medieval times
creative and artistick
passionate
decicive
playful
optimistic
intelligent
sexy (yes, I am shallow, ha ha)
driven by a deeper passion for life and arts
and able to explore the darker sides of life

to be blown like the wind through the world and
explore the very essece of being, freedom, sensuality and discovery

Damn, it would have been nice to meet such a person.
Am I unrealistic?

ooxx-xxoo-o-ooxx-xxoo-o-ooxx-xxoo-o-ooxx-xxoo-o-ooxx-xxoo

~ Aasa ~

2011-11-11T04:32:00.000+01:00

Dragon for sale.
(a re-post from 2006)

I know it has been a long time since I have told anything about Eyolf, the dragon that lives under my bed. (For you who don't know him, you can scroll down and read the post belove to get to know him better)
This is mainly because there has not been much to tell, we have been living harmoniously together for a long time now

He doesn't make much of himself, when I am there he either sleeps or sneak reads Harry Potter books. When I am not there he goes for a flying trip or steals fudge from my closet.

But now I have some news....and they are quite shocking.
I was talking to this Norwegian guy, who showed a lot of interest in Eyolf.
And after I had answered several questions about him, he offered to buy him.
Normally I would not have been interested at all, I would have been shocked and appalled.
The reasons being that:
1: He is not mine
2: I am stupid with money and in general I don't like it that much, I choose more or less to pretend that it doesn't exist.
3: Selling a dragon? I am not even sure if I am allowed to import him to Norway.
Where do they stand on dragon import? Has it changed since they entered the Schengen agreement?
4: Its not very nice - neither to him or the dragon, he can be quite moody. (the dragon I mean, the guy I don't know about)

So, these were my reasons, but then he mentioned the price.
He offered me 2000 hugs, an offer that I find very tempting.
It is like telling an alcoholic he will have booze for life.
So......do you my readers have any suggestions about what I should do?

~ Åsa

PS: I submitted the earlier posts I made about Eyolf for those of you who don't know him from before.

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11/6/05
Purple spotted dragon

A dragon has moved in under my bed
Its smallish compared to other dragons I have seen
and has purple spots all over
I haven't dared to ask its name yet, but if I work up the courage to do so I will tell you

So far we have pretended not to see each other
And every time he blows a little flame,
we both just roll our eyes and afterwards look up into the ceiling (or in his case, the bottom of my bed) pretending it was just very natural that the bed nearly went on fire.
I am not sure how long we can keep it up like this

xxxx
Aasa

PS: I haven't dared to take a photo of him so you will only get something that almost look like him. Think of him as a mix between the both.

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11/22/05
Dragon under my bed

My dragon was gone for a while.
I don't know if you remember him.
He lived under my bed for nearly a month, didn't even introduce himself,
and then one day all of a sudden, ha was just gone.
I was very puzzled.
So puzzled that I actually forgot to tell it to you.
I actually missed him

Sometimes when he was sleeping I could hear him talk in his sleep
Then he would suddenly make a little growl and blow the tiniest, cutest little flame into the air

One time he burned my toe
After that I slept more carefully and a lot lighter

But the good news is
NOW he is back
I came home today and heard somebody gnawing on something
I am not very familiar with gnawing-sounds coming from my room,
so I entered it with some precaution
There I saw his purple-spotted tail sticking out from under my bed

I must say it was a happy occasion
Maybe I will even try to introduce myself now

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1/23/06
Eyolf the dragon

It has been a long time since I told you all anything about the purple-spotted dragon under my bed
I have managed to find out that his name si Eyolf
He also likes Yogurt with coconut-taste (I know...it sounds disgusting, but it is really good actually) and fudge.
(He eats the ones I put on the floor, even the package around them, but he has never touched the strawberry-flavoured ones)

That's all for now
I will tell you more if I find out more

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4/23/06
Eyolf and fudge

I have news about Eyolf, my purple spotted dragon.. ....and they are quite peculiar

Turns out that somebody else knows Eyolf, probably he lived under their bed, before he came to mine.
And they have even written a book about him
Look!

Now, some of you might claim that "Fudge" is the name of the chimp (or whatever it is, it is not as pretty as Eyolf, so who cares?) on the cover of this book, but that only proves your lack of reality perspective. I am pretty sure the chimp is trying to steal fudge from Eyolf, it must be a book about how they rival for it. I understand them very well.
But Isn't it great?
I want to buy it!
~ Åsa

Smart post title

2011-11-09T09:57:00.000+01:00

Hmmmmmmm
Blah blah blah
Some silly words
A picture or drawing for illustration
some more blah blah

A little more blah
some interesting words
more interesting sentences (maybe some that will make you think a littel extra)

some words trying to be insightful
or trying to understand something
more blah blah
Some quotes or references to a philosopher or psychologist / other
blah blah

some wishes and positive salutations to the people reading this blog and the people I know
...
more positive stuff
...
something to inspire you and make you feel good

a PS
a little extra blah blah
...

a hug or something similar

xxx
My name

2011-11-04T13:34:00.000+01:00

This is from the book "The Prophet" by Kahlil Gibran

In my opinion, one of the most beautiful books ever written

On Love

Then said Almitra, "Speak to us of Love."

And he raised his head and looked upon the people, and there fell a stillness upon them. And with a great voice he said:

When love beckons to you follow him,

Though his ways are hard and steep.

And when his wings enfold you yield to him,

Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.

And when he speaks to you believe in him,

Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.

Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,

So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.

He threshes you to make you naked.

He sifts you to free you from your husks.

He grinds you to whiteness.

He kneads you until you are pliant;

And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.

But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,

Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,

Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.

Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.

Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;

For love is sufficient unto love.

When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart," but rather, I am in the heart of God."

And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself.

But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:

To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.

To know the pain of too much tenderness.

To be wounded by your own understanding of love;

And to bleed willingly and joyfully.

To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;

To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;

To return home at eventide with gratitude;

And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

Read more from this book

The dance of the vounded souls

2011-11-02T00:13:00.000+01:00

A re-post from 2006, for new readers to enjoy
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He was...
a painful sweet taste, a sudden brush of a dreaming wind,
a sight behind shimmering eyelids, and a rush of soft smells to her senses.

He was a flickering picture, water running through her mind.
A thought she yearned to posses, but never wanted to own, never

He was a touch, a distant color yet to be seen, an unopened dream,
a wish, a longing, a desire
to strong to ever be fulfilled.

He was too much,
too far away in her mind
from himself
from her
and she knew it.....again

Love Addiction consists of two components:
Romance and / or Sexual Addiction.

Love addiction is a condition common for many adults that once were abandoned children, emotionally or physically abandoned. It might spread from dependency on only romance or sex, to a mix of both components. What was common for these children was the suffering of not feeling deeply loved and accepted in a healthy way, with a support to reach individuality, strength and selflove from the parent/s. Maybe the parents needed them to much (codependency) or never really saw them. Oftentimes these parents never got the love and support in childhood they needed either, so they didn´t have the foundation to take learning from on how to it to pass it on to their own children. This is no matter how much they even wanted to, or in their own way might have loved their child.

Sex and love addicts often don´t realize their problem or seek help before in total crisis (divorce, painful emotional breakdowns etc) and some times not even then. Normally they will try to get out of crisis through controlling their pattern in their own way. Altering the behavior by being abstinent or trying a new pattern, getting an other form of addiction ect. This is just like the alcoholic swapping beer for wine and will never help anyone in the long run, because the underlying conditions for the addictions will still be there.
As the addicted think they derive some pleasure out of their pattern, they will very often cling to it as much as they can. The state of addiction involves a lot of denial of own feelings, so in the addicted state of mind the addict will likely not be aware of his/her own pattern. They will be tricked by their mind to believe they are perfectly in their right to behave as they do.
If you feel this might apply to you in any way at all, please keep on reading and keep an open mind. It might change your life.

Sex and love addiction can involve many different antics; it may be a strong desire to have sex, masturbate, watch porn. It might be an urge to flirt, have affairs / relations or just create romantic situations and connections. Or it might even be a pattern to fall into romantic situations that always leaves you feel hurt or vounded, always ending up in situations where love brings suffering to you. In one way or another, it involves romance, sex or love in a way that is not healthy for the person, even though they might think so in the stanges of intense pleasure.
All these things are normal for every human, but enters a non-healthy state when the person in fact cannot be without these attachments. (Or drastically goes totally abstinent in a way of trying to control it all) When being alone for a long period of time without these elements is difficult to a stronger degree, and brings up emotions as anxiety and the feeling of withdrawal pangs. Or the reverse - if every time you get involved with someone it also brings with it a lot of anxiety, stress and mixed emotions.
If a person has entered a later state of addiction, his/her behavior might start to get out of control and even to have negative impact on their life quality. Other tasks as work, health or important things that are essential to have a rich, fullworthy life, are set aside to give room for the addition. The addiction takes the main role of that persons life, and this spiral only increases with time. Being a sex and / or love addict means your desires for these things are significantly impinging on your life in a negative way. These feelings and behaviors cause a great deal of shame, hopelessness and confusion for the addict, but at the same time the drive and urge for them are also extremely strong. It creates a feeling of meaning and being alive, because they have not developed a truly healthy relatonship to the self and their own inner reality.
The addicts might often engage in distorted thinking, often rationalizing and justifying their behavior or blaming others for problems. They generally deny they have a problem and make excuses for their actions, which for them might seem perfectly healthy and good. This despite it being an unmanageable problem in the addict's life. The reason might be the that to realize the addiction involves a mayor life change that also threatens the identity that the addicted has built up for her/himself. And it also involves facing the difficult feelings of non-worth and pain that is disguised by the addiction. This becomes very difficut as it includes changing a habit that makes them feel safe and good. As long as they feel good, and get their addiction, they don´t want to change.
Change often comes just when they have reached rock bottom and suffering enters their life at a high level, because of their actions. So it might take might take years and years of addiction and abuse to enter that state of mind, where recovery is wanted.
Sexual addiction might also be associated with risk-taking. In addition to damaging the addict's relationships and interfering with his or her work and "normal" life, a sexual addiction also puts other people and themselves at risk for emotional or physical injury (not using protection during sexual intercourse etc)
These behaviors naturally makes it extremely difficult to work or engage in healthy personal relationships, and normally a love/sex addict has no real feeling of what a healthy relationship is actually based on. They have never gone to the depths or experienced real love and commitment. They were not really given it as a child, and they never learned it as adults. Their way were the made kinda of love, the perverted copy of it. For them love and intimicy is the intensity they feel in connecting with someone else. It is not built slowly up through time, but it coes as a sudden blow, a hit in the meeting with an other addict.

But the first step is facing the addiction, and in that way also starting the path to a healthy life, where loving relations both to the self and others are possible.

Signs and Characteristics of Sex and / or Love Addiction:

# Lack of nurturing and attention when young
# Feeling isolated, detached from parent/s and or family
# Compartmentalization of relationships from other areas of life
# Seek to avoid rejection and abandonment at any cost
# Perceive attraction, attachment, and sex as basic human needs, on a par with food and water
# Insatiable appetite in area of difficulty (sex, love or attachment / need.)
# Inner (conscious/subconscious) rage over lack of nurturing, early abandonment
# Outer facade of "having it all together" to hide internal disintegration
# Mistake intensity for intimacy or love
# Hidden Pain
# Powerlessness over addictive sexual behavior.
# Resulting unmanageability of his/her life.
# Feelings of shame, pain, and self-loathing.
# Failed promises and attempts to stop acting out (seeking the stimuli of romance/sex).
# Preoccupation with sex leading to ritual.
# Tendency to leave one (sexual/romantic)relationship for another.(No real time alone)
# Afraid to trust anyone in a relationship
# Sense of worthlessness without a relationship or partner/s
# Escalating tolerance for high-risk behavior
# Intense need to control self, others, circumstances
# Presence of other addictive or compulsive problems (food, alcohol etc)
# Using others, sex & relationships to alter mood or relieve emotional pain
# Continual questioning of values and lifestyle
# Confusion of sexual attraction with love ("Love" at first sight.)
# Tendency to trade sexual activity for "love" or attachment
# Existence of a secret "double life"
# Refusal to acknowledge existence of problem
# Defining "wants" as "needs"
# Attempts to replace lost relationships/sexual encounters with new ones immediately

Many of these symptoms are also elements of codependency and intimacy dysfunctions resulting from childhood abandonment, emotional or sexual abuse. For this reason treatment and therapy for Love Addiction often includes trauma recovery work. Read what others have to say about love addiction.

Check yes or no to the self test presented on this page. A high number of yes would indicate romance/sex addiction. Remember that romance can be a delightful part of our love relationships and bring out the best in us. It is when we have become over-identified with this experience that it hurts a person.

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How is sexual/romantic addiction treated?

Most addicts live in denial of their addiction, and treating an addiction is dependent on the person accepting and admitting that he or she has a problem. In many cases, it takes a significant event—such as the loss of a job, the break-up of a marriage, an arrest, or health crisis—to force the addict to admit to his or her problem.

Support groups and 12 step recovery programs for people with addictions (like SLAA; Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous) have been proven very helpful. This program is designed to help the individual come through a recovery process on his own, but at the same time through the support and knowledge of the group. The goal is to stop the self-destructive patterns and find a life that is grounded in healthy living and selflove.

Find an SLAA meeting in your city

SLAA litterature

The healing of sex/love addiction focuses on controlling the addictive behavior and helping the person develop a healthy sexuality, sense of relating and self. Treatment can also include education about healthy sexuality, individual counseling, and marital and/or family therapy.

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2011-11-01T12:35:00.000+01:00

This guy is hilarious. He was not only a comedian, but in a way, one of the few voices left in America who just spoke the plain truth!
Here are a few different clips. Some more serious, some more silly! Enjoy!

2011-11-01T12:34:00.000+01:00

Co-dependency

Or the difference in

"being responsible for others and being responsible to others"

Let us embrace and own the idea that having healthy relationships in our lives is important. As a result, we need to make sure we bring our best we can be to the relationship process. What does it mean to be our best? To understand this idea we need to begin to understand the difference in between being re
sponsible for others and being responsible to others in our lives.

More recently, “co-dependency” has been adapted to help describe the behaviors present in any dysfunctional relationship where one person sacrifices “self” in the hopes of satisfying their needs of feeling wanted, desired, loved, valued, etc. These behaviors are often rooted in the upbringing in a dysfunctional family, where abuse (emotional, spiritual, physical or sexual) is present.

Co-dependency is generally used to describe any self-sacrificing, unhealthy behavior patterns which result from dysfunctional relationships adding more fuel to the dysfunctional relationship patterns. It’s a circular pattern of behavior that is often distructive for all those involved.

So, in other words, co-dependency can be defined as the tendency to put others needs before your own. You accommodate to others to such a degree that you tend to discount or ignore your own feelings, desires and basic needs. Your self-esteem depends largely o

n how well you please, take care of and/or solve problems for someone else (or many others). In other words, it is the denial or repression of the real self. It is based on the wrong belief that love, acceptance, security, success, closeness and salvation are all dependent upon one's ability to do "the right thing." In the process, the co-dependent denies who she or he really is. Once addicted, the codependent becomes blind to the reality of their own behavior and to their own self-worth.

They have good intentions; often the very best. They can often try to take care of a person who is experiencing difficulty, but the care-taking can become compulsive and defeating. Co-dependents often take on a martyr’s role and become “benefactors” to an individual in need.

The problem is that these repeated rescue attempts allow the needy individual to continue on a destructive course and to become even more dependent on the unhealthy caretaking of the “benefactor.” As this reliance increases, the co-dependent develops a subconscious sense of reward and satisfaction from “being needed.” When the caretaking becomes compulsive, the co-dependent feels choiceless and helpless in the relationship, but is unable to break away from the cycle of behavior that causes it. Co-dependents often view themselves as victims and are attracted to that same weakness in the love and friendship relationships.

Here are some unconscious deeper feelings that co-dependents often struggle with:

1. If someone important to me expects me to do something, I should do it.

2. I should not be irritable or unpleasant.

3. I shouldn't do anything to make others angry at me.

4. I should keep people I love happy.

5. It's usually my fault if someone I care about is upset with me.

6. I obtain self-esteem out of helping others solve their problems.

7. I tend to overextend myself in taking care of others.

8. If necessary, I put my own values or needs aside in order to preserve my relationship with my significant other

9. I have a hard time receiving things from others.

10. Fear of someone else's anger has a lot of influence on what I say or do.

The consequences of maintaining a co-dependent approach to life is a lot of resentment, frustration and unmet personal needs. When these feelings and needs remain unconscious, they often resurface as anxiety -- especially chronic, generalized anxiety or depression. The long-term effects of co-dependency are enduring stress, fatigue, burnout and eventually serious physical illness.

Characteristics of Co-dependent People Are:
-An exaggerated sense of responsibility for the actions of others
-A tendency to confuse love with the feelings of pity

or guilt
-A tendency to do more than their share, all of the time
-A tendency to become hurt when people

don’t recognize their efforts
-An unhealthy dependence on relationships. The co-dependent will do anything to hold on to a (often destructive) relationship; to avoid the feeling of abandonment, even though the relationship is bad for them
-An extreme need for approval and recognition
-A sense of guilt when asserting themselves
-A compelling need to (passively) control others
-Lack of trust in self and/or others
-Fear of being abandoned or alone
-Difficulty identifying feelings
-Rigidity/difficulty adjusting to change
-Problems with intimacy/boundaries
-Chronic (subconscious) anger
-Sometimes poor communication in relationships
-Difficulty making decisions

Questionnaire To Identify Signs Of Co-dependency

This condition appears to run in different degrees, whereby the intensity of symptoms are on a spectrum of severity, as opposed to an all or nothing scale. Please note that only a qualified professional can make a diagnosis of co-dependency; not everyone experiencing these symptoms suffers from co-dependency.

1. Do you keep quiet to avoid arguments?
2. Are you very worried about others’ opinions of you?
3. Have you ever lived with someone with an alcohol or drug problem or who hits or belittles you?
4. Have you ever lived with someone or stayed in a relationship that was not good for your overall mental health?
5. Do you often feel that the opinions of others more important than your own?
6. Do you have difficulty adjusting to changes in your life?
7. Do you feel rejected when significant others spend time apart from you?
8. Do you doubt your ability to be who you want to be?
9. Are you uncomfortable expressing your true feelings to others?
10. Have you ever felt inadequate?
11. Do you feel like a “bad person” when you make a mistake?
12. Do you have difficulty taking compliments or gifts?
13. Do you feel humiliation when a close one makes a mistake?
14. Do you think people in your life would go downhill without your constant efforts?
15. Do you frequently wish someone could help you get things done?
16. Do you have difficulty talking or relating naturally to people in authority?
17. Are you confused about who you are or where you are going with your life?
18. Do you have trouble saying “no” when asked for help?
19. Do you have trouble asking for help?
20. Do you have so many things going at once that you can’t do justice to any of them?

If you identify with some or several of these symptoms; are dissatisfied with yourself or your relationships; you should consider seeking professional help. Arrange for a diagnostic evaluation with a licensed physician or psychologist experienced in treating co-dependency.

When Co-dependency Hits Home

Recovery and treatment

So what is really the difference in being responsible to others instead of being responsible for others in our lives? To understand that we need to understand both ourselves and our close relationships better.

The first step in changing unhealthy behavior is to understand it. It is important for co-dependents and their family members to educate themselves about the course and cycle of addiction and how it extends into their relationships.

A lot of change and growth is necessary for the co-dependent and his or her family. Any caretaking behavior that allows or enables abuse to continue in the family needs to be recognized and stopped. The co-dependent must identify and embrace his or her feelings and needs. This may include learning to say “no,” to be loving yet tough, and learning to be self-reliant. People find freedom, love, and serenity in their recovery.

So, yes, hope lies in learning and understanding more. The more you understand co-dependency the better you can cope with its effects. Reaching out for information and assistance can help someone live a healthier, more fulfilling life.

Everyone carries some baggage from their life’s journey. We can see that we are all lugging around some different sized loads – but we all have a load to bear. It is irresponsible for anyone to try and dump their baggage on someone else and equally irresponsible for us to carry someone else’s. It is important that we all carry our own load. (We all have baggage – we just need to learn how to carry it gracefully.)

With this baggage carrying analogy, we can see that if someone is trying to carry the load of another the weight becomes unbearable for one (he/she has been dumped on) and the other person is experiencing unbridled freedom – no worries. This isn’t good for either person.

Everyone has their own baggage or burdens to live through and carry. Life is just that way. Things happen on an everyday basis – we all must experience, learn and (hopefully) grow through these experiences, thus becoming more graceful at carrying our own burdens. If we try to carry this baggage for another, then we are depriving the person of experiencing his/her life. We are getting in the way of the lessons that are being introduced to them. We are feeling responsible for their life – for their happiness – for their success – even for their failures.

The same can be said if we try and get others to carry our life’s baggage. If we keep handing it off and not dealing with it ourselves then we are expecting someone else to be responsible for our lives. We are giving up our power. We will miss out on all of the opportunities we are presented to experience, learn and grow as a person. We will never learn how to gracefully walk with our burdens – our baggage. We are not being responsible for ourselves or our life.

Instead, it is a much more healthy approach to living if we consider ourselves responsible to other people rather than being responsible for other people. Sometimes life dumps a trunk on us and we need genuine help to carry it. It is far too heavy to carry alone. These are times in life that are extra heavy, extra difficult, extra trying. In these cases we are all responsible to ask for help and those of us who are able would be loving and supportive to help during those times of trial – ie. illness, death, divorce, natural disaster, abuse, war, etc. These times call for assistance – a temporary sharing of the load that someone has experienced in their life. To help the person struggling is to be responsible to them - we are there to help, supporting others during difficult times of trial and pain. We are assisting, not trying to carry or control the burden alone. We are helping out for a while until such time as the trial is lifted.

One of the most commonly identifiable behaviors/attitudes in co-dependency is that of trying to control our environment (namely relationships) to satisfy our deep need of wanting to be loved. Have you ever found yourself saying things like:

“If I was good enough, strive to make and be my very best he/she would love me.”
“If I don’t do it, the job won’t get done or won’t be done right and people will be disappointed in me.”
“If I volunteer more, I will be liked and respected.”
“I know so much through my experiences, it is my responsibility to pass on this information to everyone whether they think it is important information or not.”
“If I do things perfectly, I feel safe, and people will respect me.”
“My spouse/significant other will always be happy if I just behave in a certain way and/or provide for their every need.”
“If we pretend that the abuse or wrongdoing isn’t happening, things will work out okay"
“If I can just avoid saying anything confrontational, but just make a even better effort in fixing things, then they might be fine in the end.”
"I need to give 120% - one hundred percent of myself all the time.”
“A job worth doing, is worth doing perfectly.”
“If I feel guilty, I must have done something wrong, so I need to do anything in my power to fix it"

All of these statements suggest a strong issue of co-dependency. Here we are trying to carry someone’s baggage rather than letting them carry it themselves. It is a place where our boundaries blend in too closely with those boundaries of our family members, friends and loved ones. They all suggest passively having control over other peoples’ opinions, thoughts and feelings – being responsible for others. If we have co-dependant attitudes/behaviors, deeper down we believe that we are influential of all the circumstances – we are able to “make" someone happy, sad, angry, furious, out of control, elated, content…the list goes on and on. With co-dependant behaviors/attitudes come the belief that through our actions we control how all other people see us, value us, and respond to us. This is a recipe for disaster.

Rather than allowing others to own their own reactions to situations, we believe they should respond in a way defined (and usually desired) by us. In many situations this isn’t necessarily “evil” control, but actually stems out of good wishes and wanting the best for others. It is just very misunderstood. Many of us want our family members to be happy and satisfied with life. We desire love and nurturing relationships. We want our bosses to approve of us and like us. None of these desires are wrong unless they get in the way of living life in an honest way where we are feeling responsible for other people.

It is important that we learn to live life in a way that is true to who we fundamentally are and what we believe. To live otherwise is to live in a falseness-of-self that will always come back to haunt us. We can’t “make” anyone feel, act, or be someway they don’t choose to be themselves…that is their choice (not ours) to make. Often times a person can get trapped in this cycle when involved in a relationship where he/she really cares about how the other person feels about him/her.

Remember back to your youth…as a teenager, we often would discover someone and develop a huge crush on him/her. We would wonder what they liked to do and what kind of things happened that resulted in smiles and laughter in their lives…we look for those things that made them tick. Then, we might have tried to emulate this type of person so that the object of our desire would “like us.” Maybe, if we were able to perform perfectly, dress perfectly, behave just so - this person might even fall in love with us.

We did our homework. We discovered what was important to him/her and then snared them in the trap of our charm. Weeks or months later, we possibly discovered that there were things about him/her that we weren’t all that wild about. Maybe we became sick to death of going shopping or having football games on t.v. every Sunday. We may even have tried to change them a bit…maybe bringing up other options for entertainment that were important to us – we encouraged them kindly (or forcefully) to just try and see how wonderful these things could be. We wanted them to change to fit what our real desires were – what was really in our hearts. Instead of respecting that they where who they were and we were who we really were – that person behind the persona of “perfect.”

Does this scenario sound familiar? Unfortunately, it is all too often the case in relationships – even past our teen years. The passionate infatuation stage wanes and we find ourselves tired of trying to be someone we aren’t and then wanting to have our partner “just love me for who I really am.” We may also attempt this same type of manipulation with our parents or other significant people in our lives. Trying desperately to gain approval, acceptance, love – it just doesn’t work. We cannot (nor should we even try) get people to feel things they do not want to feel – even love. (Sorry Cupid, those arrows really don’t work!)

The best we can hope for and actually what we should be striving toward, is being true to who we are in our hearts. That doesn’t mean to be blindly accepting of our behaviors (both good and bad). But rather to live true to our values, skills, personality, and all those gifts that enrich our personhood. We need to discover, learn and grow in who we are. Then, we bring our “best” self to the table of any and all relationships. If the “object of our desire” isn’t receptive – that may be quite sad (and sometimes devastating) – but it is his/her choice. We shouldn’t try to manipulate this process. It is the best for all involved.

If we think about it logically and remove our personal feelings from the observations, it really makes a lot of sense. If we are respectful of others’ boundaries and desires as well as our own, the result will be good matches rather than manipulated partnerships. Everything will be out on the table with no surprises. We won’t be trying to change anyone and no one will be trying to change us. We will all be living in truth rather than wishing for what “could possibly be if he/she would change.” The result will be an honest connection between people who share common values, beliefs, convictions, interests, etc. Not only will we be loving someone as they are – we will be loved for who and what we are – “loved for being me!”

How we choose to shape our lives :-)

2011-10-20T10:58:00.001+02:00

Like muddy water our hearts await cleansing;
turbid or clear, its nature is of our choosing.
Black or white, right or wrong -
these things come from the heart and its training:
Destiny is shadowed by the color of our intentions.
- Tao Te Ching

Two Wolves - A Cherokee Parable

An old Cherokee chief was teaching his grandson about life...

"A fight is going on inside me," he said to the boy.
"It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves.

"One is evil - he is anger, lies, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, self-doubt, and ego.

"The other is good - he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.

"This same fight is going on inside you - and inside every other person, too."

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather,
"Which wolf will win?"

The old chief simply replied,
"The one you feed."

Just being

2011-10-17T14:11:00.001+02:00

I want to make today's post about something I have thought a lot about through life. About our relation to the so called "negative" emotions we have.

All from childhood, we learn in this society, that some feelings are "negative". A natural cause from seeing something as negative, is trying to avoid or escape these things. Also we are taught that some feelings are positive - joy, happiness, and comfort. As a consequence, these are the feelings being socially accepted to express. Because of this, a lot of us also try to focus on these feelings - we don't want to be sad, we want to be happy.
Happiness is the ultimate feeling that we all are journeying towards - that we are taught is the ultimate goal. Society teaches it to us and the message is easy to pick up everywhere.
You might think that this is something you have decided yourself, because happiness feels good, and sadness not, but just take a moment here and dig a little deeper. Don't just throw it away with that thought before you have read what I have to say.

So, we are taught to strive for happiness**....and finally, in the western societies, it is what we all are searching for. Think about it....what you want to find in a new job, with money, with travels, with discovering yourself, with a partner, a new place to live, children. We are taught that we need satisfaction, and through satisfaction comes happiness, and "happiness is life".

The search for happiness is also found in different religious or philosophical movements.
What makes us happy and how can we find it?
Or the answers are already given to us through recipes of how to make us happy.
One angle is telling us that love is the only true and pure feeling. Love is what we should all fill ourself with, and love will take away hate and negativity.
Is it really that simple?
Is it really true that all you need is love?
Seeing things trough these glasses of reality, I realize that to me they look tinted on the outside, so I with them I will see the world colored, but not as it is.
Can we really set fixed values on feelings?

Now, I have always been a strong believer in the power of love and especially compassion, but does it really take us forward to surprise parts of our own natural instinct and feelings? I am not saying that if we get angry, we always have to express it. Sometimes I feel that being part of growing and getting emotionally mature is the ability to actually be able to contain your own feelings and feel them internally, without necessarily having to express them externally (but neither surpress them). To have room for your own sentiments inside yourself.

I can look at this strictly from an angle of experience....Let us say that you feel sadness. Is it uncomfortable? If it is, have you asked yourself WHY it is uncomfortable?
Is it the sadness in itself that really is uncomfortable and a "negative" feeling, or is it the frames you have created around it, that is making it so?
Maybe you think that I am taking this too far?
Maybe you think that you could not possibly have such power over feelings, but just take a minute and try to look at it, for real!
When you are sad, what is the focus you have?
Do you allow yourself to be sad?
Do you let it in without judgment?
Or do you fight it or try to find ways to be happy again?
Do you define it as a negative place state of mind, or are you comfortable just letting it exist?

Is it possible that the struggle AGAINST the sadness is what makes it uncomfortable as a feeling and not the sadness in itself?
I can honestly say that I have had times when I felt sad and at the same time perfectly good. Actually, the feeling of sadness was a state of mind I "enjoyed" in that moment.
Is it possible that your reactions and perceptions of this feelings is what is making it "negative" and uncomfortable?
Could the feeling in itself - "sadness", be just an altered state of mind, with no minus or plus labeled to it in reality. Just something different on an emotional scale, that changes.
isn't change a natural cause in nature? How can we just stay in one thing all the time?

If you look at nature - at anything in nature, it seems to have a built in strive for balance.
It can be found everywhere.
Just take your sight. (You can try this out.)
If you take something of a color (chose a strong, vibrant one, just to make the example clearer) and hold it about 30 cm from your face. Then hold your gaze at it for about one minute without blinking. Then, when you take away your stare from it, look directly at something white. What you instantly will see is the natural opposite color to the color you were looking at. Direct oppositions in color neutralizes each other and creates balance. You eye is producing a fake opposite to the color you were looking at. This is your eyes way of creating balance, as the rest of nature also does.
Nature strives for balance, so why should we struggle against it?
Emotions come in us like the tide of the water. If it goes up, it is natural that it must go down later. So why do we fight it?
If everything flows in a natural stream of balance, cant we just go with it?
Maybe we can look at our emotions and not see them as being good or bad...But maybe we can see them for just being.

If anybody disagrees or has a different point of view I would be very interested to hear it, so don't hesitate to make your comment against me.

~ Aasa

**read: happiness for the ego

Like a tiny flower

2011-10-17T01:51:00.001+02:00

Remember the little things that can make your days shine -
The color of a leaf, a smile from a stranger, the sun through your window,
a friend from the past returning to your life
These are the things that matter. The love that you give, the warm words that you share.
Why hold on to negative things when we can pull ourselves up with positive words and smiles? Hold on to the good. Spread it around you, you will see how everybody is reaching out for it. I do believe all human just want the good deep down. If we just remember who we really are, our true nature, we can spread this goodness further and further out.
Many hugs to all of you out there.
- Aasa

HOMEPAGE

2011-10-01T12:34:00.003+02:00

Hei alle sammen!

Jeg har en ny hjemmside! Her kan du se fler av bildene mine og lese litt mer om meg og hva jeg jobber med.

Jeg leier også ut fotostudio i Oslo. Alt dette finner du på siden - bare følg LINK :-)

Hello everybody!

I have a new webpage for my work! Here you can see samples of my photos, read about my work and also get information about the studio I am renting out.

Have a look! :-)

Look around you....

2011-08-21T08:55:00.001+02:00

Do you really see? Do you use your eyes and look through
...not just on? All these pieces that are built around us. Forming the castle we call society
What is it there to protect you agsinst?
Life?
Do you run around in your own circle? - thinking your forced way was created by yourself? Did you ever see the barrs that fenced you in? Did you ever look out and longed to break free? Did you ever question the things you have done? Did you ever realize the slow death of your soul?
entrapped in a soft, gentle, suffocating loveembrace - with school, money, career, house, loans, papers, satisfaction, ego
a slow distruction
a gentle dieing
of the free, lovely, playfull being that you are
Why do you seek these things? Do you think they will make you happy? - more complete? - fulfilled? At peace at last?
Do you think a marriage contract will make you love more?
Do you think being beautifull will make others like the real you better?
Do you think knowing time will make you more in control?
Do you think a house will make you feel safer?
Do you think prestige makes your selfworth deepen?
Do you think money will make you happier and more free?
Do you think having the things other people have will make you more accepted?

Do you think any of these things will last?

Let us run away together! ;-)

Longing and eternity

2011-08-07T11:00:00.000+02:00

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.

Into the wild

2011-08-06T20:37:00.000+02:00

"There is pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep sea and the music in its roar;
I love not man the less, but Nature more."
— Lord Byron

I love nature like nothing else. Maybe because I feel it is the one thing that can get me back to the thing we all hunt around after when it comes down to it, the feeling of a meaning with our lives - a feeling of importance, an answer without a question. So, that is how nature make me feel, an answer arises inside of me in the forest, in its stillness, babbling brooks and shimmering lights. A feeling of purpose coming from nowhere and arriving within. I am at peace there, and I need nothing more than the trees and existence itself.
Because of this I have always been touched deeply by different medias describing this feeling, such as films, books and poetry. One of these were the film "Into the wild"

Into the Wild is a film based on the 1996 non-fiction book of the same name by Jon Krakauer about the adventures of Christopher McCandless.
Plot:
Christopher McCandless is a top student at Emory University and an athlete. After graduating, he decides to give $24,000 of his savings account to Oxfam and later, to burn all the money in his wallet. He hitchhikes to Alaska to live in the wild. During his adventure, he encounters several unique people that change his life before he faces the dangers of wilderness.
A story of a man who left society behind in his search for truth. The truth within himself and the truth in being.

Thought about the film:

It is a story as old as stories themselves, a theme which we have seen or heard in many variations before - A man leaving his old, safe life behind, going into the unknown, looking for true meaning. And many movies have also been made of the subject.
I am tempted to call these movies the "Carpe Diem-films". The stories that are meant to show you something deeper, that is whispering softly, or shouting out loud to you - "seize the day!" Disappointingly often these films are just a stew of sentimentalism that hardly ever seem heartfelt or genuine (e.g: the movie "The bucket list", featuring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman)
But "Into the wild" is something different. It is an exception to the rule, a story that genuinely speaks from the heart and also reach you there...this movie wakes you up, shakes you. It crawls under your skin and moves you. And maybe it might even make you rethink some of your life values.
It is a movie quite unlike what we are used to these days in the film-land of sentimental trow-up. At least I feel that I haven´t seen anything like it in a long time.
Into the wild is really worth a visit to the movies and hopefully, maybe later, it will take you to a visit to the forest ;-)

- Official site
- The original article that inspired to the book

Vulnerability and gentleness

2011-06-19T09:35:00.000+02:00

"I praise what is truly alive
what longs to be burned to death
And so long as you haven`t experienced
this: to die and so to grow,
you are only a troubeled guest
on this dark earth"
- Goethe

- A text about personal transformation, and relating to others. How can gentleness and feeling pain really be a powerful strength?

When we first open to our pain, it often feels as though we are bleeding. yet this kind of emotinal bleeding helps awaken the heart, allowing vital energies in us that have become coagulated to circle again. To let our pain move in this healing way requires awareness, courage, and gentleness--being present with the pain instead of believing scare stories in our mind about where it might take us, opening ourselves to the place where we hurt inside, bringing caring presence to it, and letting those we love see it as well. In this way, helping us connect with our warrior spirit, pain can become a friend and ally.

A close friend, Tracy, has told me about some of her struggles, and transformation, relating to exactly these issues, and her partner Mark. She had a long time been feeling very resentful about her partner, but during a process where she allowed her pain about it to flow, finally accepted the situation. Thus when she felt her disappointment that Mark wasn't everything she would like him to be, and let this touch her, she realized, and expressed;
"We each have differences and imperfections that hurt each other. Yet there is nothing wrong with feeling that pain. it makes me feel my heart`s blood--my openness to myself, to him, and to love itself." In proclaiming her vulnerability this way, she was stepping beyond her fear of pain and heartbreak.

Unfortunately, the word vulnerability has pejorative meaning in our culture. Associating it with weakness and powerlessness, we often think of a vulnerable person as someone who is overly sensitive to being hurt or offended. Yet sensitivity to offense is something quite different from the genuine vulnerability of letting our heart be exposed. The ego is always fragile and easily wounded. It is a brittle shell or facade, a pretense that "we are in charge", that "no one can get to us" that we are "captains of our own fate". It is fragile because life is always threatening to expose our pretense of having power over life. By contrast, acknowledging our basic, human vulnerability--our openness to reality--is a source of real power. In fearlessly allowing our-selves to be vulnerable, we embody the bravery and gentleness of a true warrior.

Tracy confessed and described, that always before, she had tried to make her partners meet her emotional needs in devious, indirect ways. She would avoid stating he real feelings and needs openly because she did not like to feel exposed. It was much safer to manipulate her partner into blaming him when he failed to do so, or just withdraw.
In every relationship, there are times when one partner wants to connect more deeply, but that other is not as emotionally available at the same moment. At first when Tracy experienced this with Mark, she would feel hurt, and then contract, protect herself, attack, or hold it against him. Then, as her hurt and resentment built up, she would start to think about leaving him. Yet in learning to be compassionate toward the vulnerable part of herself, where she felt hurt by Mark`s unavailability, Tracy could let these hard, defensive edges fall away. When she softened to her pain, she could simply tell Mark about it, instead of holding it against him or shutting down her love. Expressing her needs more openly, rather than manipulating or accusing him, allowed her love to keep flowing. And she expressed that she felt stronger: no longer did she have to live in fear of pain or feel victimized when she got hurt. In this way, thorough making friends with our vulnerability, we discover a new kind of flexibility and power.

We usually think of vulnerability and gentleness as the opposite of power. Yet the softening that happens when we work with our pain can be quite compelling and influential. We become like water, which can generate electric power precisely because it flows so willingly, without resisting gravity or the contours of the land. Water is extremely vulnerable, in a sense. It is soft, it does not resist the touch, it can be molded into any shape, and it receives whatever we put into it. Yet for wearing down what is hard and tough, nothing surpasses it. Just as water, which is so soft, and accommodating, can reduce the hardest of rocks to sand, similarly gentleness is one of the most irresistible human qualities and can penetrate even the hardest of hearts. Whereas hardness stirs up aggression, gentleness provides nothing to resist.
So when Tracy show her vulnerability by saying, "I want to feel close to you right now", or "I just need to feel your love", Mark could not resist her. Because she was so appealing at the moment, he would often want to put aside his self-involvement and give her what she asked for. And when she could expose her pain-"It really hurts me when you get so tight"-instead of trying to get him to change, this usally made him soften. No longer was she the fussy princess expecting him to be a perfect prince.

In learning to appreciate and trust her broken-open heart Tracy says she felt more connected with life than ever before, and more capable of handling the challenges of an ongoing relationship. This was a tremendous victory, which only made her stronger and more attractive.
Men can particularly have a hard time seeing that their willingness to be vulnerable is often what touches women the most. They imagine that it is a sign of weakness, and that it will lead to scorn or rejection, or that they will loose control and disappear in the feeling. However, as one woman friend of mine put it,"I find it quite magnetic, when a man lets me see his vulnerability. It only turns me off if he tries to get me to reassure him about feeling that way. If he just presents it openly, I find that courageous and admire him for it." What she is saying is that ego fragility-trying to cover up the rawness of one`s heart-is unattractive, while fearlessly revealing it can be most appealing.

Thus the rawness of the broke-open heart, which being in moments of disillusion, is the transmuting force in the alchemy of love. When we let our heart break open, a certain sweetness starts to flow from us like nectar. As the Sufi teacher Hazrat Inayat khan put it,"The warmth of the lover`s atmosphere, the piercing effect of his voice, the appeal of his words, all come from the pain in his heart." This is one of the great secrets of love. Instead of trying to ward off his pain, which is futile anyway, the lover can use it to transform himself, to develop invincible tenderness and compassion, and as the troubadours discovered, become a "gentle man" as well as a heroic warrior in the service of love.

Letting the heart break open awakens us to the mystery of love-that we can`t help loving others, in spite of the pain they cause us, for no other reason than that they move and touch us. in ways that we can never fully comprehend. Indeed, if those we love perfectly matched our ideal dreams, they would not touch us so deeply. What we love is just not their pure being, but also their heart`s struggle with all the obstacles in the way of its full, radiant expression. Although their imperfections cause us pain, they also give our love a greater purchase, a foothold, something to work with. It is as though our heart wants to ally itself with the hearts in those we love and lend them strength in their struggle to realize the magnificence of their being, beyond all their perceived shortcomings.

So, just as rocks in a stream accentuate the force of the water rising against them, the obstacles to perfect romance can help us realize the power of our capacity to love and who we truly are and what we are made of. - They force the heart to stretch so that it can embrace all of what we are.

This, more than finding the prefect relationship or having someone give us everything we want, is what can heal us.

Building healthy relationships

2011-05-02T10:29:00.011+02:00

The following is from A Conscious Person's Guide to

Relationships

Involvement, Yes;
Addiction, No.

To get the most from your relationship, you'll find it helpful to distinguish between involvement with a person and addiction to being with the person. Let's define these two terms. Involvement means "l share my life with you." Addiction means "l create the experience in my mind that I in one way or another need you. You provide me with a feeling I want and therefore I need you in my life. Without you I cannot find this to the same degree"

Involvement means spending some good time together. Addiction can have many ways of showing itself in a relatinship. It can mean creating emotion-backed demands in my head that dictate what my partner should say and do -- in other words "ownership." In other words, you do not love the person, but who the person COULD be if they changed. It can mean a need to constantly be around my partner, or to give total focus on on them and not myself. This will fill the void of other feelings I might have. It might fill my conscious or unconscious needs that are not met by myself. Or it can be an easy way for my to escape my own depression or other feelings I do not want to deal with. Addiction has many faces, but what it has in common is the unbalanced way it presents itself. It does not set a base for a healthy, balanced, true realtionship between people, no matter the nature of the relation (Frined, lover or companion).
Involvement means that I choose to share of my life with my beloved and build a mutual reality together based on trust and openness. It means seeing the other person for who they are and following the natural flow of energy that flows between us. Of letting go and of coming back. Of giving room and space to yourself and to find together in closeness. Addiction means that I feel insecure without someone, or something (Sex, attention, flirt, companionship, or something else) -- l want him or her to save me. I don`t want to do without this in my life no matter what it costs me or if I get it from people who are not good for me.
A natural involvement gives me the opportunity to experience all of the beautiful, loving things that a relationship can bring into my life. It also lets us shoulder together the responsibilities and problems of life and develop a mutual trust. Addiction opens a can of worms that makes me tarnish the beauty of my relationship. It makes me impose a lot
of emotion-backed models of how my partner, frined or lover should be for me to let myself be happy. It also puts a great deal of preassure on my partner,- through addiction I place my hopes and dreams on the other person for them to carry. It is not hard to understand that such a burden is not healthy for anyone to put on their shoulders.

Since a balanced involvement offers us the deeper enjoyments of a relationship, and addiction leads to misery in a relationship, let's look more closely at how involvement and addiction interact. It's possible to have a relationship in which there is:

1. Maximum involvement and maximum addiction.
2. Minimum involvement and maximum addiction.
3. Minimum involvement and minimum addiction.
4. Maximum involvement and minimum addiction.

Since these four possibilities create varying degrees of heaven or hell in a relationship, let's find out how you can set up your relationship so that it can be as heavenly as possible.
But first, remember that I am talking about your own involvement and your own addictions. It does not refer to what your partner says or does. Instead it puts the spotlight on how you are
operating your head. And this is good news. Any approach to getting the most out of life that depends on manipulating or changing another person is ultimately doomed to fail. But when
you know how to succeed within yourself, you have all the aces in your hand. Actually it's only your mental habits that stand between you and your continuous enjoyment of the melodrama of
your life.

Let's look at setup number one -- maximum involvement with maximum addiction. In this state you have deeply involved your life with the life of another person. You are living with your
partner, and are usually with him or her many hours each day. You are addicted to being with this person. You have "territorial" feelings toward your beloved; you have many
emotion-backed demands of how this person should act to fit your models. We often call this situation "romantic love." Once the romance is killed by addictions, what's left is just "possessive
love."

Romantic or possessive love is unstable and tends to be emotionally explosive. Frequently heard are such statements as "lf you really loved me you would . . . ." (fill in your addictive demand). This romantic-possessive aspect of the maximum involvement and maximum addiction phase keeps you yo-yoing up and down. You're very happy when things are fitting your addictions; you're very unhappy when they aren't. And in this phase, love is highly conditional. I love you when you meet my addictive models, and I'm rejecting you when you don't. Romantic or possessive love can create beautiful feelings at times. But it is a bumpy road-often with a washout at the end.

Now let's look at what happens when you have minimum involvement and maximum addiction. This is when the tears get to flow in your soap opera. It's usually called "broken heart." Minimum involvement means that you do not spend much time (or any time)
with the other person, but you're still creating the experience that your happiness depends on being with him or her. Minimum involvement and maximum addiction sets you up for triggering
disillusionment, cynicism, anger, resentment and the whole Pandora's box of separating emotions. Although you're not involved in living together, your mind can still produce an intense experience of jealousy.

A third type of situation occurs when there is minimum involvement and minimum addiction. It's often called "good friends." Since minimum involvement means that you're not
spending much time together, you're not tuning in to the richer veins of human experience that more involvement offers. However, you're not creating a lot of stuff either, since your
mind is not playing out heavy addictions about how the relationship should be. With minimum involvement and minimum addiction, your relationship is generally a light and pleasant
one.

It's the fourth state that gives you all of the goodies of a deep relationship and none of the unhappiness. This is characterized by maximum involvement and minimum addiction. In
this state, you consciously enjoy the relationship and realistically play the relationship game. By having the opportunity to more deeply participate in each
other's thoughts and feelings, you have the greatest opportunity to create all of the beautiful sharings that the relationship can bring you. And yet by minimizing your addiction, you do not
keep the here-and-now muddied up with emotion-backed demands that your partner say and do things differently.

In this ideal state, your love is less and less conditional. You can communicate with your partner and tell him or her what you prefer in the relationship. But you quickly work on
yourself to handle any addictions you are creating that can chip away at your feelings of love. You get to cooperate in the great adventure of life together and to contribute to each
other's well-being. Here's a chart that can be helpful in sorting out how involvement and addiction interact to determine the quality and quantity of your relationship.

INVOLVEMENT ADDICTION WHAT'S HAPPENING

Romantic or
Maximum Maximum Possessive Love

Minimum Maximum Broken Heart

Minimum Minimum Friends

All the Goodies
Maximum Minimum No Unhappiness

The importance of working on your addictions is spotlighted by what I'm going to call the "law" governing relationships: IF YOU DON'T HANDLE YOUR ADDICTIONS, YOU'LL AUTOMATICALLY DECREASE YOUR INVOLVEMENT. From this it follows that to maintain a high level of involvement or to increase your involvement, you must handle your addictions. Now you've got the key to living "happily ever after" -- or at least knowing what the problem is!

Want to look more into this?:
Recommended book
Video clip:

2011-04-17T10:47:00.003+02:00

Who You Truly Are
Inner abundance

"Acknowledging the good that is already in your life is the foundation of all abundance.

The fact is: Whatever you think the world is withholding from you, you are withholding from the world. You are withholding it because deep down you think you are small and that you have nothing to give.

Try this for a couple of weeks and see how it changes your reality: Whatever you think people are withholding from you—praise, appreciation, assistance, loving care, and so on—give it to them. You don’t have it? Just act as if you had it, and it will come.Then, soon after you start giving, you will start receiving. You cannot receive what you don’t give. Outflow determines inflow. Whatever you think the world is withholding from you, you already have, but unless you allow it to flow out, you won’t even know that you have it."

- Echart Tolle

- Link to original text

In the same spirit, let me also include one of my favourite movie clips:
BEETHOVEN: ODE TO JOY:

The hope of spring

2011-04-16T10:08:00.000+02:00

"Even if blame seems more than justified, as long as you blame others, you keep feeding your pain and get trapped in your own ego. There is only one perpatrator of evil on the planet - human unconsciousness. That realisation is true forgivness. With forgiveness your victim identity dissolves, and your true power emerges - the power of Presence. Instead of blaming the darkness, you bring in the light."
- Echart Tolle

Today I just woke up, and went out to see how the weather was. It wasn't sunny at all, it was actually grey and raining. But after standing outside for a while, I could hear the birds chirping in the trees and fluttering around the house. I was surprised to see how this actually moved me so much that I started to cry a bit. I had no idea how much I have been longing for spring. And just this little preview of it made my eyes water with emotion.

There is something very special about spring. the time in the year that comes after we have spent so much time in the cold and darkness. Spring is like a new hope. Snow melting to unveil flowers, a smile after sadness, seeing your loved ones after a long journey away, and I think that was also what touched me. And then I felt this new hope in my chest too - all the feelings that had been hid by the darkness of winter bubbling up and wanting to bee seen and acknowledged again. Spring is like falling in love. It melts the ice and old hurt from your heart and turns you to light and warmth.

I have never liked to favorite anything, cause I don't like to treat things differently, (like they have different value). But in this case I must make an exception. Spring with all its signs of hope is definitely my favorite season.

I honestly think that if I just get some sun and hugs every day, nothing else would bother me :-)

Here is a beautiful song to enjoy while you are sitting in the sun

THE ILLUSION OF REALITY

2011-04-15T12:11:00.000+02:00

Explained through quantum physics.
This is fascinating stuff. Take your lunch break to watch this while eating.
It will be well worth your time, if you have ever asked yourself questions
about reality and the world
Enjoy!
- Aasa

2011-04-04T16:09:00.000+02:00

MANIPULATIVE PEOPLE

Have you ever met a person that in one way or another can make you doubt yourself but you cannot explain why? Do you know somebody that just makes you feel that something is wrong, but you cannot pinpoint what it is? They make you feel bad, but they seem totally nice and even wonderful...Still being around them is in the end frustrating for you, but you still don´t know why. You have probably met a manipulative person.
- To call on and discover manipulative people before you get attached to them, can save you much trouble and suffering.

- There are different degrees of manipulative people.
At the end of the spectrum are those with a personality disorder called antisocial behavior. But the type of manipulative people I am gonna talk about here, however, are those you encounter in everyday life. They are people who function well socially, and stand out as completely normal people. They can actually very often be incredibly friendly and welcoming, positive and gentle. Anyway, they have a hidden agenda: to "win" over others.
There are many reasons for a person becoming a manipulative individuals. And there are also different aspects driving such a person. I am only going to mention a few examples here.
What can drive a manipulator can be a subconscious goal to feel better, or a need to "win", be in control or get their way. Their need for this can lie in different aspects.

- The neurotic:
If they are more on the neurotic side, what drives a manipulator can be low self esteem. If they don´t feel in control, this low self esteem will surface. As long as they feel like they are the ones who are rejecting you, and not the opposite...as long as they feel that you want and need them, they are in control. They need to have the upper hand. The moment they feel like they don´t have it, it will plunge them in the oposite direction where their feelings of rejection, sadness or even despair lies. So they don`t feel above, they see themselves as below and they will avoid this at any cost. When they avoid this they will not have to deal with their inner deeper feeling of rejection and low self worth, which they try to cover ut in diferent ways.

- The caracter disturbed
The other aspect that might drive a manipulative is a character disturbed personality, who just hasn´t developed enough conscience. Their primal drive is just a basic need to win or get their needs and desires met, and they have not developed a sense of responsibility for their deeds in getting there. Their feeling of guilt is underdeveloped. In other words they have no real developed empathy for other people, so they have no real concerns or guilt feelings about using manipulation to get the things they want.
A quick way to look at these two different aspects is: "A common saying among professionals is that "if a person is making everyone else miserable, he is probably character disordered. And if he is making himself miserable, he is probably neurotic."

A key caracteristic to of both kinds of manipulative people is that they most often are unwilling to take responsibility, and will avoid this by different means. This is why manipulative people can be extremely good at covering up their own agenda (and there are some manipulators that are not even aware of it themselves. These are normally children of manipulators, who have learned passively how to behave and never gotten aware of it consciously.)
Here are some pointers to manipulative behavior:

- Flipping the coin: A manipulator can gain control over you and escape responsibility by making you feel like you are the one with the problem and not them. Being around a manipulative person can be extremely distressful. Especially if they are good at masking up their own agenda and manipulative ways. In the end you might reach a level of frustration that ends in an emotional outburst after all the things they have put you through that you have endured. Then this tactics is often used by the manipulator to make you feel like you are the "crazy one". You had the emotional outburst, right? That it is stemming from their manipulative behavior never seem to come into consideration.

- Bagatelizing: Making your feelings or the issue you are taking up into issues of minor importance. This might be done actively by plainly saying so, or passively for instance by laughing or making a joke of it. A manipulator can state passively or directly that something is of minor importance, or that the issue or incident brought up was done with the best intentions from his/her side. Both methods will make the manipulator look as a better person. In the first example cause it makes the manipulated person feel like they are being hysterical and making something of minor importance into big issues. And in the last example, because their intentions "were good", the manipulated is brought to guilt because they are questioning them. These tactics might very often be followed up with some flatter, to make it look like the manipulator is not really criticizing you, but actually supporting you, something that will ensure you get even more guilt, and will not backfire on them for what they did to you in the first place.

- Denial: Tactics can be direct denial or passive denial. The latter can be made by behaving like they haven´t understood that they has done something that was not good. This also creates a lot of insecurity in the person that brought up the subject. They might get to a point where they start to question their own judgement and feelings, and therefore it is a very strong weapon in manipulating them further.

- Being vague: Being vague is a very typical manipulative trait, because manipulators avoid taking responsibility. If a manipulator is asked something they don´t want to answer, or don´t know the answer to, being vague is a method for them to keep control of the situation. Instead of saying the truth or "I don´t know" something vague with many interpretations comes out instead. To be vague is a way of not having to be responsible for what they have said. In the end, it might have been you who misinterpreted it all, right? So if or when the subject comes up, this can be played to their favour.

Giving warnings: A super way to ensure they will never have to take responsibility. Example: A person can say "I don´t want commitment or a relationship right now". Then after this initial warning they might act as they actually want one, even lead the other part emotionally and physically into it. This will give them all the benefits from it. Then, if the situation gets difficult or it is time for some responsabilities, they might pull out of it and bring back the initial warning they gave to escape responsibility. They can be extremely convincing about why they acted in a different manner after their initial warning. Maybe they were just swept away by their feeling? but they also told everything to you in the beginning? So in the end you are the responsible one, not them. So they can leave the situation feeling no responsibility for the damage they have done, even put it all on the other part. And this is basically what manipulative people are after, direct or passively. So this makes initial warnings quite a strong manipulative weapon. But if you know how to look out for it, you can get away from people using them before they do.

- Play innocent/ confused: To pretend like they don´t understand or even know what you are talking about is also a powerful way to get out of responsibility. They might even make you mistrust you own judgment and think you are the one who is doing something bad for accusing them of these things. To avoid the blame for something by pushing the feelings of guilt back on you.

- Ignoring: To just ignore what you said and move on to other subjects. Pretend they didn´t hear it / receive your mail / letter / message etc or the easiest way, to just bluntly ignore it and not answer at all. In this way they can make you insecure about the things you have said, and you will need much force to repeat it. Something they wish you will not, so they can avoid responsibility and confrontation.

-Take the role as a victim: by making themselves a victim they can make others feel guilty. Guilty for "accusing them" or anything similar. Making a victim feel worse will bring up a lot of guilt in a person, so a victim role is a good escape for confrontations.
An other benift from the victim role is getting compassion or pity from others. Both these examples can give them a passive control over other people.

- Blame others: Taking away focus from themselves by talking about others behind their backs. Seen in this light they may also appear good, because "they don´t do such things". It might also be a passive way of telling you you should never behave like the bad examples they are giving of the others. In other words, it might work as a passive warning or even threat. I.e: Taking about an ex wife and how she behaved. Maybe she showed them lack of interest or love. By telling you this, they are passively stating to you that you must never do the same, or even, that they need much attention and that you need to provide it. They are also showing themselves in the victim role of somebody else, and gets pity out of you, ensuring that you will not do the same to them if it works.
An other method in blaming others is stating that they are only protecting themselves / reacting to the other persons behavior. The others started it, they never did, they are only defending themselves or reacting to being maltreated. (Again they are avoiding responsibility)

- Lie: To lie about parts of the story or all of it. Manipulators are good liars and know well what things to tell you and what to hide. They can follow your reactions closely and play on it to win. Twist the situation after how you respond to it, and bend the truth to fit their stories.

- Distracting: To direct focus in an other area to take you away from the issue you are bringing up, so you will forget it.

- Make you feel guilty: A very powerful method that gives them total control of you and make them able to manipulate you even more. Many of the above tactics have this effect.

Are you interested in learning more about manipulative people and how to deal with them. Read the following book, I can really recommend it
- In sheep´s clothing: understanding and dealing with manipulative people.
- Other article about emotinal manipulation

Drawing by Solveig, 4 years old

2011-03-21T00:16:00.001+01:00

A repost from 2007

Gil : Kids - it's fabulous the freedom they have , they have no limits
Åsa -Yes, they are genuine in so many ways
even to the level of cruel
I love it
They can look at you and say, "I hate the drawing you ar making now, it is not good"
and then you make an other one and they are in heaven
Gil says:
I'm uploading on flickr a drawing by my daughter, she is 4 and made it yesterday, I had to scan it because I found it was fuckin good, see. I asked her where she found the idea, she said "in my head. It is a monster, and those are his teeth"
This is what I call freedom
Åsa - says:
OHMY! that is so great
I miss the times when I drew like that

Night thoughts

2011-03-12T22:57:00.025+01:00

Who is ready to love? equally? openly?
not cling to the other for savior
nor pushing each other away
I don't want to climb your walls
I don't want to rescue you

These "games" of our hearts
they betray us again and again
Who is ready to really love?
Just him and her, alone and together.
- Aasa

All poems and photographs by Aasa Bergem

I am standing here quietly
listening to the leaves sing in the trees
filling everything around and in me
with a warm, nestled presence

then, just in a flash
just in a moment
like a bittersweet kiss
I understand deeply
that which has no words

˜*•.•*˜

To F

The branches move sadly in the wind
like hands waving goodbye

I opened up
to a new place
where i can truly feel

I slept too long in a dim light
but finally, I am really here
and it hurts
I love you

˜*•.•*˜

These memories are
like a glass jar filled with
light, green shimmering in summer shadows.
Standing in a windowsill, embraced by
smells of warm spice
and vanilla. I buzz like a tiny little
bee around the jar. Feeling the
softness of my shivering wings as I
fly. A moment with no time, but
just these dreams that form like flickering sun
behind closed eyelids

˜*•.•*˜

A faint longing can be sensed
rustling in the bushes
Close your eyes
and touch the grass with your feet
ever so gently
It´s a forgotten tune
maybe from childhood

But behind these hills,
shivering in the trees,
they soak your skin with life again,
and wander with you thought the soft shadows

˜*•.•*˜

Yes, do that, moon-wanderer
take your heart like a big wet rock
and throw it into the sea of clouds
I will not stand in your way
if our love scares you so

I can even stand next to you
watching it slowly sink to its black, hidden bottom
saying things like"Yeah, let's shock it"

I have done it so many times now
It doesn't even hurt anymore

although i used to hope you were different

˜*•.•*˜

I don't believe in the longing love anymore

in the dreams

in the missing

No, I believe in silence

in the night

and everything that is in the darkness

that is waiting to be seen

˜*•.•*˜

I stretch myself outwards and blend with the clouds
I am a tree with the winds blood in my veins
that feels its leaves fold out,
curiously

I stretch deeper, higher, faster, on -
until everything in me pulls
up, up, up and beyond

to all endings final surrender
I am spread out like butter,
soft, slowly and salty

now, dark, waving clouds are bursting
from my new-found roots
there, i can see the ground, far down
where you are left behind

no i am finally
smiling

goodbye

˜*•.•*˜

I have eyes in my hair
that blow with the wind
and reach out to find
an innocent smile without a wish

I want to know what we really believe in
and what we hide
between our thoughts
in the hope of something out there...

˜*•.•*˜

Benches in the night are draped in sorrow

around them thoughts are filled of all that could

have been

in the day, in the sun

so their cold, nightly solitude

grow even stronger

˜*•.•*˜

In the cool knowledge of
warm windows and sparking walls
far inside
I move beyond

the leaves are crushing under my feet
this is my blanket
and my fireplace are the blue shadows
that sing around each trunk
in the night

˜*•.•*˜

The night make tender dreams arise
that daytime leaves unknown
they gently flow like faint, sweet smells
from old and hidden wells
and gardens overgrown

˜*•.•*˜

I have something hidden
something forgotten a long time ago
a childhood memory perhaps?
a dream, a hope, a wish?
i don't know what it is
i only feel this sad and beautiful longing
stream through me
like the sight of a bright, warm window
after a long nights walking
in the blue shadows of the night

˜*•.•*˜

longing
without wings
without flight
without eyes

longing
without a face
without knowledge
without mind

wordless
timeless
but eternally returning

longing

˜*•.•*˜

Some road resemble
like a memory in a forgotten street
a place you have visited in your dreams

they make you smile
like wordless memories
and a cat finally come home

2011-03-12T10:29:00.001+01:00

I just love this song so much. It is a comfort and inspiration. Easy listening, simple words, but a deep meaning

LET IT BE
When I find myself in times of trouble
Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be

And in my hour of darkness
She is standing right in front of me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be

Let it be, let it be
Let it be, let it be
Whisper words of wisdom
Let it be

And when the brokenhearted people
Living in the world agree
There will be an answer, let it be

For though they may be parted
There is still a chance that they will see
There will be an answer, let it be

Let it be, let it be
Let it be, let it be
Yeah, there will be an answer let it be

Let it be, let it be
Let it be, let it be
Whisper words of wisdom
Let it be

And when the night is cloudy
There is still a light that shines on me
Shine on until tomorrow, let it be

I wake up to the sound of music
Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be

Yeah, let it be, let it be
Let it be, yeah, let it be
There will be an answer, let it be

Let it be, let it be
Let it be, yeah, let it be
Whisper words of wisdom
Let it be

The happiest countries in the world

2011-03-05T09:01:00.001+01:00

This was a very interesting poll

There seem to be something to learn from Scandinavians :-)

Scandinavia is not a religious country, but a lot of people are spiritual, and maybe this is one part of our happiness. I will post an old classic here, that will never die, because it is relevant in age of the world. Lets make this our goal! Enjoy!

2011-03-04T09:10:00.000+01:00

This is a very good, guided meditation, that works very deeply if you follow it right. I have used it many times, and find it to be quite poerful. Hope you will enjoy :-)

- Aasa

	Jeru Kabbal - Quantum Light Breath .mp3

	Found at bee mp3 search engine

Here is an other meditation, that can be done by anyone, no matter your mental og physical condition: Link: Smiling meditation

BOMB-THREAT!

2011-03-03T14:17:00.000+01:00

( a re-post for new adult-children readers)

This story is not BASED on true incidents, it is (scarily enough) ALL true!
With the hand on my heart - I promise!

I was walking in the forest today and found a strange-looking wooden thing lying in the bushes (I usually snoop around a lot when I walk there)
It looked like it had some sort of on and off button on it.

I was walking together with a friend of mine, and at this point she had started to wonder why I disappeared into the bushes. So she came looking for me, asking what I was holding in my hand.
After stearing at it for quite a long time and examining it thoroughly, I managed to identify this fearsome object. And of course did not hesitate a moment to inform her, because I understood the true severity of the damned thing.

It was the on and off switch to the most dangerous and explosive bomb made in the entire universe (yes, a lot of bombs have an off-switch as well)
This bomb was made by the Vogons in a vicious plan to explode into pieces and wipe away earth for good. Luckily they had obviously lost the most important part, the on-button. And that is the only reason why we all are still alive today.
By her face I could tell she obviously had some doubts about my explanation.

She turned her back to me, persistent to walk on, showing a peculiar little interest in such an important matter.
But I couldn't walk further before I had found out what to do with the dangerous thing I was holding in my hands.
I stared at the switch very hard, trying to figure out if hard staring could help in any way.
After a while of staring it was pretty clear it didn´t help at all.
It dawned on me that I had to come up with an other solution than hard staring, but my mind was blank.
I wasn't sure if it was a good idea but I decided to search for advice. Sadly enough the only advicer around was my friend, who seemed to have a reckless relationship to bombs in general.

She advised me to throw it away, back into the bushes (and since it was of wood it wouldn't harm the nature anyway, she argued)
I thought about this opinion for a while and asked her if it wouldn´t be a little heedless to throw away such a thing....
What if the Vogons found it again - then we all probably would be...
pretty D-E-A-D
pretty F-A-S-T
Didn't she think it would be for the better if I brought it with me?
She said it would be okay to throw it away, and she also had quite a stern and convincing voice - I was just about to believe her.

I was nearly swept away by the environmental point she made, but still my doubts were clinging to me. So I asked her if she would take full responsibility if the Vogons found the on-switch to their eart destroying bomb and blew us all away
She said she would
She sounded so self assure I couldn´t doubt her for a moment. (Although I was shocked to observe that she even smiled while saying it)
I threw the botton back to where it had been, secretly admiring her bravery and somewhat impressive and shocking carelessness.

So now you all know
that if suddenly we all die in a huge explosion
I am not the one responsible for it
You MUST BLAME HER!!

------------------------------------

PS: I woke up in the middle of the night with an awfull thought
What if she was a disguised Vogon, sent out to trick me?

XXX
Aasa

2011-03-03T09:54:00.000+01:00

Our approach to life and what it can do to us
Internal locus of control.
Just a few thoughts.

"The mind that turns ever outward
Will have no end to craving.
Only the mind turned inward
will find a still-point of peace."
~ From the Tao Te Ching

Take Free Locus of Control Test

This is a matter of perspective and where you put yourself in relation to the people surrounding you and what happens in your life. A person with internal locus of control feel responsible for their overall position in life. It is a person who will not say things like "I failed my exam because it was hard" or "because the professor hates me". Instead they simply ask themselves - "what was done wrong this time in order to cause thit result? And "how can i prevent this from happening the next time?"

They will never say "I didn't find work because of the high unemployment in the country i live in", but instead they think of what more can be done to get them a better chance. To sum it up, these people do not ignore external life conditions, but they never hang the responsibility of their failure upon them, they never play the victim's role , they know that there is always something that can be done. (And if it is not, they fully accept it and move on, instead of identifying with the situation)

The opposite way of dealing - external locus of control, is the person who feels that things outside themselves move against them. In other words, they play the victim´s role, partly because they don't have any other explanation. They may hang their problems on god's will, bad economy, lack of luck or anything else, the common factor in the resonnement is that the reasons are outer and not internal. The person might be conciously unaware of this, but they take no own responsability for their life by this passive approach.

Making these things concious is the first thing one can do to change this approach to life, if you want to change it. And by becoming more aware of your own role and approach, you will also find that you overall will feel a lot more powerfull, happy and strong (Belive me - taking out of personal experience here)
If you feel that you have external locus of control, maybe it's the time to change some of the fake beliefs that caused you to have such a way of thinking? Be brave and look at yourself with brutal honesty.
~ Aasa

In the 60s Psychologist Julian Rotter developed a theory called Locus of Control of Reinforcement. His theory centered around whether someone thinks their life is more influenced by external factors like fate, genetics, luck, environment (external locus of control) OR by internal factors like effort, tenacity, and free will (internal locus of control).

Your results suggests you strongly believe that internal factors like drive and free will define you whereas external factors like genetics, fate, luck, and environment have little or no effect.

Locus of Control Test Results

Internal Locus (81%) Individual believes that their life is defined more by their decisions and internal drive.
External Locus (19%) Individual believes that their life is defined more by genetics, environment, fate, or other external factors.

Take Free Locus of Control Test
personality tests by similarminds.com

2011-03-03T09:43:00.001+01:00

Three random thoughts about life and personality and attractions:

What we seek is always inside ourselves. What we want from the outside are twisted reflections of our own mind and feelings we carry that we consciously don't know about. This is the way to get to know them. Look at what we want from others, or what we make them feel.

If we stand still and don't try to catch those "illusions" we never get to know for sure what they are about. And we can learn about ourselves what we seek and project to the world and on or loved ones. Do you often feel rejected? Or do you often make your loved ones feel rejected? So you are creating rejection in one way or another. Why? Where does your own inner rejection come from? Old thoughts learned from parents or society? Learn from what gives you pain, anger and sorrows, instead of casting it away. To listen to your inner "voices" is to grow as a person and become wiser every day.

An other though - there is also a natural flux in our mind and subconsciousness. A drive that moves us in ebb and flow. Processes always moving from inward to outward, from alone to together. Like night and day. Day is outward and night is inward. If youth was summer and elderliness was winter ... then we could say by silogism that as we get old our inward processes get longer and our outward processes get shorter.

So, to be with somebody and to love them is to learn these things:

To learn about yourself, and your deeper unconscious feelings. To grow and be thought by them and through this also to learn about an other person. To in the end see through your own projections and see the other as they really are. that is when you come to love somebody for real. And then. to flow the natural flux of life, the aloneness and the togetherness. The solitude and the uniting. This is, to me, what creates true, mature love, if we are able to do it.

now here is the last perspective, and I think al together they blend and make a whole image of our human existence. The first is the physical. The second the biological. The third is the spiritual. In some ways, they can seem to be contradicting each other, but they are really completing each other. The spiral part is to go beyond the human personality and find the inner silence and the core of your being. In this way you can move beyond conflict and address others with love and acceptance - what the centre o your being is truly made of. Here is an e-book from an author who has inspired me very much on the spiritual realm. Enjoy!

Some good videos with political content

2011-03-03T04:43:00.000+01:00

The Daily show

This show is really good. You cannot go to the news channels anymore to get the truth in the U.S. Now maybe this is one of the few voices left in there who really does! Enjoy!

A remix of Bushes speeches, made into the classical song of John Lennon. Imagine!

BLOOD

2011-02-02T18:06:00.000+01:00

Have you ever thought about the reason why sex is so good? I mean, just technically why? (The other reasons I leave to you ,-) No, think about it. When an area is stumulated the blood rushes to those parts of your body. It fills up, it is almost "collected" and centered there. Then, in the orgasm, it is realeased in a rush. All that blood that was there floods out again in an instant. And that is why first, the area where the blood was felt so good, and after, why the body feel so good, when the blood rushes back there, giving it rest and pleasure.
It is so many simple little things about blood. Just think about when your arm falls asleep, and you cannot move it, it feels like dead - the blood is gone from it. Then when the blood returns you can again move it. You were alive, your arm was alive, but without the blood there was no life.
No wonder many cultures have celebrated blood and worshiped it as the thing itself that contains life, that the soul lives in and so on. Or how religious costums, where blood must be drained from an animal before it is eaten by man. (Because allegedly then the soul of the animal is gone. Then it is pure enough to eat.)
Was just something I thought about. How these things amaze me, because life amazes me. I wonder about the soul. What is the soul?
I used to be a person who belived in a life after death. I more or less dont anymore. I picture some energy will move on. Maybe my dust will be a flower or some grass, I dont know. Is that all, I dont know either. But I guess I have gotten used to the thought that to me, it might very well be like sleeping. Now, dont get me wrong. I like sleeping. But forever? Would be nice to wake up now and then.
So, that is why I am thinking about all these things. Cause maybe they have a link and maybe they dont. But one thing is for sure. Blood creates life and lets it live. When do you ever feel more alive than wen the blood rushes through you?
It is something to think about at least
- Åsa

Deeper awareness of ourselves

2011-01-08T14:51:00.000+01:00

A leap of faith
I was just reading Kierkegaard, and something he described really hit me. I recognize my life in it. To see yourself going through these things is quite striking.
I will post it here to share it with more of you, and if this can help anybody like it does for me , I would be very happy.
- Aasa

Kierkegaard, in "Sickness until death" analyzes despair as a dis-relationship to the Self, to the source of being human. For Kierkegaard there are three major forms of despair :
first, despair that is subconscious;
second, despair that is conscious and which manifests itself as weakness;
and third, despair which is conscious and manifest itself as defiance.

In the subconscious form of despair, the person is out of relation to the Self, but is unaware of it. Such a person, according to Kierkegaard, tends to live a hedonistic life, dispersed in sensations of the moment, having no commitment to anything higher than ego-impulses.
This is the stage of aestheticism and Don Juanism.
Here one can see a type of existence in which people not consciously realize they are in despair, although as Kierkegaard points out, the compulsiveness for infinite sensation and pleasure together with intruding dark moments of boredom and anxiety reveal that all is not well.

If the person allows the dark moments of boredom and anxiety to enter fully into consciousness, then comes the awareness of de-relationship to the Self (Jung), and the feeling that one is too weak to choose the Self since that demands the acceptance of one´s strength to make that decision.
Here the person despairs over weakness to commit to something higher than ego-impulses.
But if the person penetrates more consciously into the reason for weakness, then comes awareness that the excuse of weakness was really only a way of avoiding the strength already there. What the person originally took to be weakness is now understood to be defiance, i.e.,a refusal to commit!
For Kierkegaard,the despair of defiance is a higher consciousness, a realization that one has the strength to choose the Self, or in his terms, to make the leap of faith which requires acceptance of the uncontrollable and transcendent, but that one chooses not to do so in dark defiance against the powers which transcend reason and man´s finitude.

In defiance, one refuses to change! In the despair of defiance, one refuses possibility and infinitude. In the despair of weakness, one refuses actuality and finitude. To refuse one is to refuse both.
Those caught in the despair of weakness need to become aware of their strength and shake of their victim identity. Those who control need to see how control can be a false strength and to value the openness to what cannot be controlled.

For Kierkegaard, resolution and transformation come ultimately when despair in all stages is overcome through a leap of faith. In this leap one accepts at the same time one´s weaknesses and one´s strength, the inter mixture of the finite and the infinite realms in being human, and the realization that human beings must move between the opposites rather than identifying with an absolute.
...
The famous psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung also had similar thoughts on the last stage of this inner journey. He thought that the life of each person was a complex and mysterious whole. But the particular course of their development coming from personal family experiences, cultural influences, and innate temperament, tended to lead a person to emphasize one part of the personality and to de-emphasize the conflicting part

Yet, that other opposing, unaccepted side was there wanting to be acknowledged and often intruded upon the consciously accepted side, affecting the person´s behavior and disturbing his or her relationships.
Jung thought the task of personal growth was to see the value of both sides and to try to integrate them so that they could work together in a fruitful way for the person.

Redefining emotions

2011-01-03T11:43:00.000+01:00

I found this online, and I think it is a good method. It is also a known technique in classic psychology, only the approach is somewhat different. For me it did a lot, so I want to share it with those who read my blog.

"In order to be brave you must first start by being afraid
for true courage lies in the overcoming of fear
not in its absence"

~ Aasa

Learn to feel your emotions fully and not resist them
Allow your emotions to flow, even the painful ones

1 Accept full responsibility for your emotion
No matter who or what you think caused your emotion
You take full responsibility now

2 Name your emotions
Giving your emotion a name increases clarity, awareness and consciousness
Don't just say you feel sad bad or mad
Expand your emotional knowledge until you can positively identify the feeling of violation, disappointments, anxiety, shame, embarrassments and much more

3 Let go of the story
The story is whatever outside yourself that you think caused your emotion
Literally see the story being cut off from your emotion and fading away
Let go of the story and keep the emotion that you created which now has a name

4 Accept the emotion
This means not judging it . Good or bad
Accept the emotion in a spirit of gratitude and learning
This is necessary to do the next step properly

5 Feel the emotion
With no judging or resistance
Simply feel the emotion
Notice where in your body you experience the emotion
Raise your consciousness as you become a witness - observe your emotion

What you resist will persist
and allowing the emotion in this way is the very opposite of resistance

6 Ask for clarity
In a spirit of learning and willingness to grow
Ask for insight as for the reason to the emotion
Don't go back to the story - the cause of the emotion is you and nothing outside yourself
Ask, what do I need to learn from this emotion?
Also ask, what ineffective belief do I own that has created this emotion?

7 Identify the belief
Create a space for the answer to come (it will come)
At the root of nearly every painful emotion is an ineffective belief
You may believe that you must make everyone happy
You may believe that you cant be loved if you are not perfect
You may believe that you are simply not worth it

8 Replace the belief
Once you have identified the belief, choose to replace it with a more effective belief
Literally say to yourself:
I now choose to reject this (ineffective belief) and adopt this (empowering belief) in its place

The United States of Whatever

2011-01-02T15:41:00.000+01:00

A song about a guy you maybe know????

I'm just a regular Joe with a regular job
I'm your average white suburbanite slob
I like football and porno and books about war
I've got an average house with a nic hardwood floor
My wife and my job, my kids and my car
My feet on my table, and a cuban cigar

But sometimes that just ain't enough to keep a man like me interested
(Oh no) No Way (Uh-uh)
No, I've gotta go out and have fun
At someone else's expense
(Oh yeah) Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

I drive really slow in the ultrafast lane
While people behind me are going insane

I use public toilets and piss on the seat
I walk around in the summertime saying, "How about this heat?"

Sometimes I park in handicapped spaces
While handicapped people make handicapped faces

Maybe I shouldn't be singing this song
Ranting and raving and carrying on
Maybe they're right when they tell me I'm wrong

Naaaah!

You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna get myself a 1967 Cadillac El Dorado convertible, hot pink with whaleskin hub caps and all leather cow interior and big brown baby seal eyes for headlights, yeah! And I'm gonna drive around in that baby at 115mph getting one mile per gallon, sucking down quarter pounder cheese burgers from McDonald's in the old-fashioned non-biodegradable styrofoam containers and when I'm done sucking down those grease ball burgers, I'm gonna wipe my mouth with the American flag and then I'm gonna toss the styrofoam container right out the side and there ain't a God damned thing anybody can do about it. YOU know why? Because we got the bombs, that's why.

Two words. Nuclear fucking weapons, okay?! Russia, Germany, Romania - they can have all the Democracy they want. They can have a big democracy cake-walk right through the middle of Tiananmen square and it won't make a lick of difference because we've got the bombs, okay?! John Wayne's not dead - he's frozen. And as soon as we find the cure for cancer we're gonna thaw out the duke and he's gonna be pretty pissed off. You know why? Have you ever taken a cold shower? Well multiple that by 15-million times, that's how pissed off the Duke's gonna be. I'm gonna get the Duke and John Cassavetes...
(Hey)
and Lee Marvin
(Hey)
and Sam Pekinpah
(Hey)
And a case of Whiskey and drive down to Texas...

Why don't you just shut-up and sing the song pal!

I'm an asshole and proud of it!

Detox

2011-01-01T15:21:00.000+01:00

- A repost

So, I have started a process of detoxing my entire body. The aim is better general health and more energy. I have also noticed that my thoughts and feeling actually also turn clearer through this process, which has just been a surprising bonus for me. Also, I am enjoying a lot being creative with making these new types of recipes and dishes. If anybody request it, I might put out some here in my blog.
Here I will write some of the things I am doing, as a tip to others who might want to do the same, but don't have time to find all the information. Hope it will be helpful. And remember, you don't have to do this for the rest of your life.Try it out and see if it changes the way you feel in any way. It can also be good to just do it as a 3 month diet, to get some of the toxins of your body flushed out. Good luck ;-)!

First of all, exclude the most evident health dangers from your diet.
These are changes anyone can do that doesn't take much effort:
- White sugar. Switch to brown sugar (or even better, stevia if you can find it) and keep the intake low. Be aware of the continents of sugar in the things you eat/drink. Take a look at this website, it is a good indicator (and a bit shocking)
- Normal salt. Buy sea salt or herb salt. And naturally, keep the intake low
- Avoid butter or margarine. They are very high on saturated fats , and are highly acidic. Buy or make ghee, which is non-acidic and a monounsaturated fat

If you want to take further steps for your health, keep in mind:
- Get information on the acidic / alkaline level in your body. A very common factor of disease and premature aging in the western society is a high acidic diet. Look at the chart on this page and compare it with what you normally eat. Keep in mind that the most acidic foods are: Table salt, sugar, yeast, fruits and fruit juices, coffee, normal butter or margarine, beer, wine, dairy products and animal products as beef, pork, chicken etc...
- Drink water. (Not too much, not to little)
- If you can, switch to organic food or look for bio food. A high percentage of foods are genetically manipulated/modified, sprayed with toxins and treated in other ways that will harm your health.
- Keep the intake of alcohol to a healthy degree.
- Drink green teas/ herbs for cleansing and detoxing. (thnx for the tip Henry)
- Drink vegetable juices (for detox), or green smoothies(recipes) instead of fruit juices
- Other

Extra tips for more energy:
- Throw away body care product that contain many toxins. Try to find the simplest and more natural ones. Don`t over use these products. They should only be a supplement to aid your body, not the thing that makes it run.
- Cut gluten from your diet (or at least do a test to check if you react to gluten)
- Cut dairy products:(Coconut milk is a very fine substitute) Cutting milk may also be good for your skin. Read here why.

Veganism:
To exclude dairy products from your diet will increase energy and stamina. You can supplement milk with soy products or coconut milk (for cooking)
If this is too difficult for you, try out:

Vegetarianism:
Vegetarians live about seven years longer, and vegans (who eat no animal products) about 15 years longer than meat eaters, according to a study from Loma Linda University. These findings are backed up by the China Health Project (the largest population study on diet and health to date), which found that Chinese people who eat the least amount of fat and animal products have the lowest risks of cancer, heart attack and other chronic degenerative diseases.
Animal products are the major sources of dietary saturated fat. Vegetarianism is therefore also a very good way to keep a balanced weight and body fat, to stay fit, and clean from heavy digestive foods which strain your metabolism.
I have been a vegetarian for 17 year. As a vegetarian you avoid a high acid factor in the foods, which are very beneficial. But this is not a total requirement for a healthy life style, if you feel that you cannot go through with it. But, if you want to try out the vegetarian diet, be sure to:
Get enough proteins, B12, iron and omega 3 fats. B12 is normally found in animal food, so you should consider supplements

22 Reasons to Go Vegetarian Right Now
The Health Benefits of Vegetarian Diet
Health Benefits of Vegetarian Diets

I will extend this list through time
Any links or tips? Feel free to post them under comments
and I will include them in the article
Thanks
- Åsa

2010-12-28T01:20:00.007+01:00

Emotions and personal growth

"As one lamp serves to dispel a thousand years of darkness, so one flash of wisdom destroys ten thousand years of ignorance."

- Zen quote

I do not subscribe to certain popular beliefs that some feelings and emotions are negative. I believe that none of them are "negative"; they are all part of you; they are life expressing itself through you, also giving you important messages of who you are and who you were.

During the process of growing up almost all of us will

have found the need to hide are true feelings and who we felt we were for real. In order to gain self knowledge and relate in a healthy way with others and ourselves, we need to get out of such destructive cycles. They maybe helped us survive in difficult times in our past, but now they hider us in relating truly to others, and in achieving inner peace and happiness. So we need to get in touch again with our emotions. Part of this is to be honest about what we feel without judging or labeling the emotion itself. We need to let the experience of the emotion flow freely through us, without resistance. In this way, the emotions are released, which means that we do not end up clinging to them, or making them part of who we are, of our own identity.

Every human being has a right to be open and to feel the emotions that enter their body. The thing we do not have a right to is to blame others for those emotions. If you want to gain your own autonomy, strength, inner wisdom, and continue on our personal growth, this is a very important step to realize. To deeply understand that you are the one who is producing your emotions, and to take responsibility for those feelings. This way you will own your feelings as your own.

Our feelings can be our very best friends, letting you know what you can trust and not trust.

Letting you know your own boundaries and limitations, and letting your heart be open to both pain and love, two feelings which are highly intertwined.

How can you feel love, without being open to the pain it also brings? How can you feel happiness without sorrow? Or put even better in the words of Kahlil Gibrans book, "The prophet":

On Joy and Sorrow

"Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. And how else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven? And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives? When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

Some of you say, "Joy is greater thar sorrow," and others say, "Nay, sorrow is the greater."But I say unto you, they are inseparable. Together they come, and when one sits, alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.
Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy. Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced. When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall."

Link: Read more from this book

And so it is, that without joy, there can be no sorrow, and without sorrow there can be no joy. So there is no need to be so easy on judging them as good or bad, but take them as they are: Two shades of the same color.

But there are also other ways of taking responsibility for your emotions. We need to see how we are making ourselves feel the different things we are feeling. they are not just something that is throw down on our heads, like snow from a full roof in wintertime. We react to a situation with thoughts, our thoughts then again creates emotional responses, and then we feel them. Some thoughts and emotions stay with us though, and gets stuck in our bodies and thought-patterns as belief-systems. Sometimes consciously, and sometimes we are totally unaware that they are there. This is why we need to find them, feel them, and let them free. It is also important then to redefine the thought-patterns they are stuck to, to make us react, think and feel in a new and healthy way, instead of the old pattern we have identified with.

Taking responsibility in this way, is also withdrawing the thought of an other person or situation "making you feel this" and taking the focus back to yourself:

Link: Redefinin g emotions, a short guide

If you want to express your emotion and talk it out with somebody, you might say"My feelings got triggered and felt angry when you did x" . This clearly shows you taking responsibility for the feeling, and is not blaming the other person, but is merely an expression of the situation. This allows you to work and improve to not let this situation arise again.

The opposite example would be if you said: "You made me angry when you did x" With this sentence you create blame and guilt. Emotions which often are just meant to hurt the other person deliberately, as a revenge for them maybe unwillingly hurting you. Don't get me wrong, to have a conscience is always helpful and also very valuable.

It makes you take healthy choices and consider others peoples feeling. Guilt is never healthy, for either part of a situation.

An other aspect of this situation is that the other person actually never made you angry. You made yourself angry. We need rather to look at our anger, or whichever feeling or emotion that is surfacing and see why it is making us angry, be aware of what it is saying to us. In this way we can gain in self knowledge and become the directors of our own lives! We can understand ourselves deeper and also heal old wounds from the past that complicates our lives and makes us miserable.

To be happy is not just something that happens to you when the right circumstances are there. To have a happy life is hard work; hard work of awareness!

A way to get better in touch with your emotions is meditation. It helps you to get in touch with your genuine feeling self, your intrinsic being. Counselling can help to get things off your chest and give you support to move through difficult situations. Journal writing is another excellent way to stay in touch with yourself.

Rome was not built in a day; and personal growth is a task of a lifetime. But no matter what, each step brings you closer to you, and who you really are. And each step that makes you get stronger in touch with your feelings and emotions, will allow you to feel more alive within each moment. And this is a wonderful experience. But that doesn't mean that this will be pleasant all the way, but rather the opposite.

To face yourself and all the difficult emotions you have suppressed can be quite demanding and hard. but the more you can stay open to them and let them flow, the less it will hurt you. Most feelings and emotions when accepted, even sadness end up feeling quite comfortable. If you "take the whole package" as we say; the "good" with the "bad", stay awake and accepting to what is happening, no feeling really feels negative, but flows through you sometimes almost pleasurably.

There is also something about facing emotions and letting them free, that gives us a healthier life in general. For instance, if you do not show your anger you might think that no one will know you are angry, and you avoid a difficult confrontation. Thing is; people who do not genuinely express themselves when they are angry tend either to find themselves from time to time exploding in arage or maybe expressing this rage thought passive aggression instead. Both reactions that are more difficult for both parts than the original display of anger.

Working out feelings and emotions and getting in touch with your genuine felt self offers an inner richness which is totally independent to any material wealth.

Astronomy facts

2010-12-26T13:10:00.000+01:00

Binary stars:

Are made of two stars that are genuinely
close to each other and bound together
by mutual gravitational attraction.

The two stars orbit around a common center of mass.
For each star, the other is its companion star.
The components of binary star systems
can exchange mass, bringing their
evolution to stages that single stars cannot attain.

Hubble image of the Sirius binary system, in which
Sirius B can be clearly distinguished (lower left).

Reality, balance - a random stream of thoughts

2010-11-30T08:51:00.000+01:00

The ocean, rolling in a steady, salty beat, a tree, its soft lullaby of leaves, carrying me in its branches, the feeling of just being. The moment where suddenly everything meets. Nothing is different, yet everything is. You stand still in life, you just are, exsist. But its not a "just". This pure exisitence is more, it is a moment that seems like a lifetime. A moment where you find a total peace, an end to the restless search that always pushes you on.
This search that I both love and hate at the same time. That makes me explore, discover, learn and live, but that also makes me homless, left without roots, a home or a harbour.
But in this split second everything seems to make sense, everything is clear and simple.
It is the moment your soul rests with everything around you.
This is one of the most beautiful things I have ever experinced.

The direct opposite are the moments of enless questions.
When the world is to close to me, when the meaningless words that sourrounds me everytwhere, sting me profoundly.
When the ugliness of unseeing eyes makes me want to escape, somewhere, away, from all this fragility of the flesh.
Away from our patterns of behavior that is so easy seen through. And that look so utterly pittiful when you do.
Away from the predictable ways of thinking, from settlement into habit,
and the souls afraid of dieing, that never learns to live.
Away from the illusions we create in the name of love, truth and society, from the lies we take as our lives, and the patterns we build as our personalities and so steadily believe in.

Did you know that it is possible for a szicofrenic with a split personality to have one personality with remarkable physical differences to the others? I have read about a case where a woman had 12 different personalities and ONE of them had cancer.
So what is consciousness? What is your reality? Your truth?
Do you know who you are?
Do you?
Or do you just think so?

This world scares me and amazes me at the same time,
All this life swarming around me, everywhere, knitted together with so much death.
It is beautifully morbid.
And as far as I know, I never even asked for it. That's the paradox of it all. I never recall asking for this.
I am just here, and now I am forced to question my own existence, and not just mine, but everything.

What is this we call reality?
The Buddhists claim that there is a veil of illusion in front of our eyes, and to see behind it is pain. So, we illusion ourselves. Or if we dont, our lives will be suffering and knowledge.
The Taoist claim that knowledge is pain and a step away from life, and that the natural, unforzed stream of life is the key to true happyness. "There is no road to happyness, happyness is the road."

I often feel both these views so close on my body. In the times where I see the clearest, it is like I get separated from the rest of the world. I have never felt more alone than in the moments where I feel a breakthrough where I can see deeper.
And I have never felt closer to life, love, everything, like in the moments where I just let go and am totally in the present.
But maybe I never can escape the rise and fall of these two extremes.
Nature strives for balance in this world, and evidently so do we.

These where just some thoughts on a rainy day that I felt like sharing.

**Aasa**

Social sexuality

2010-11-25T09:28:00.001+01:00

Based on erroneous theories about embryonic hermaphroditism, Freud proposed that all human beings were born with an unconscious bisexual disposition. Through the course of normal childhood development, individuals repressed their "homosexual side," thereby assuming a heterosexual identity and achieving psychological "maturity." Thus, while Freud recognized the potential to be attracted to both women and men, he maintained that actually being bisexual was a neurosis.

Freud influenced popular understandings of bisexuality for much of the first half of the twentieth century, but his was not the only voice on the topic. Freud's associate Wilhelm Stekel agreed that everyone had an innate bisexual predisposition. However, diverging from his mentor, Stekel contended that this initial bisexual potential led naturally to having relationships with women and men. He felt that both homosexuality and heterosexuality were symptoms of a neurosis, since being exclusively attracted to one sex required sublimating a basic part of oneself. "There are no monosexual persons!," he emphatically argued.

The KSOG measures sexual attraction, sexual behavior, sexual fantasies, emotional preference, social preference, heterosexual/homosexual lifestyle, and self-identification. Individuals rate themselves on each variable for their past, present, and ideal futures using the Kinsey scale, resulting in a twenty-one category profile of sexual orientation.

The Klein grid has been popular among bisexual activists, as well as sex educators and therapists, because it recognizes the complexity of sexuality, including the fact that aspects of sexual orientation can change over time and that sexual self-identification is not necessarily reflected in current sexual experience.

Despite the attention given to bisexuality in the work of Freud, Stekel, and a number of other psychoanalysts, scientific research on sexuality largely ignored the issue. Historically, most researchers failed to consider bisexuality a specific sexual identity. They combined the responses of individuals who expressed a desire for both women and men with the data from those who were exclusively attracted to others of the same sex or excluded bisexuals from their studies altogether.

The research of Alfred Kinsey and his colleagues in the late 1940s and early 1950s was groundbreaking for its recognition of the inadequacy of reducing the diversity of human sexual experience to a heterosexual/homosexual binary.

Finding that 28% of women and 46% of men had responded erotically or were sexually active with both women and men, Kinsey's studies awakened other researchers and the American public to the prevalence of bisexuality and challenged the distinction psychoanalysts made between the normal and the pathological.

Kinsey, however, was reluctant to use the word "bisexuality" to describe this behavior because of the term's historical usage to refer to the physical or psychological combination of the feminine and masculine. But as a result of Kinsey's research, the earlier senses of bisexuality were largely displaced by the modern meaning of being attracted to both women and men.

Some scholars have since challenged Kinsey's methodology and data (while he interviewed more than 11,000 women and men, he limited his samples to caucasian). But his conception of human sexual behavior as a continuum from heterosexuality to homosexuality, rather than a dichotomy--what has become known as the Kinsey scale--has had a lasting influence on how sexuality is perceived.

Building on Kinsey's attempt to qualify sexual experience, other researchers have devised instruments for assessing sexual orientation that rely on multiple factors. The best known of these scientific tools, the Klein Sexual Orientation Grid (KSOG), was developed by psychiatrist Fritz Klein in 1978.

The World Spins

2010-11-20T00:15:00.000+01:00

I LOVE the soundtrack from Twin Peaks. The music is composed by the genius Angelo Badalamenti. Many of the songs, sung by Angel voice, Julee Cruise.
It is a mix of darkness, sensuality, innocence and light, that to me is just pure maigic. And after having heard the story behind the music, and the genuinity is was preformed with, it just touches me even deeper. Julee Cruise confessed that she sometimes might sing slightly off key, basically because she was so moved and touched by the music that she was close to bursting out in tears while singing.

Here is one of the songs. Enjoy! :-)

Love

2010-11-18T13:58:00.003+01:00

- A repost from 2007

I started to think about my last post a lot.
I have always been in the opinion that an emptiness inside comes from not loving oneself completely and that the only solution is acceptance and love towards oneself. (it cannot be filled up from the outside)
I am still in that opinion but I think I forgot some very simple things in that conclution.
(I know this is also me starting to (over-) analyze things again, but I have been in that habit for more that over 15 years so what can I say, ha ha)
I forgot the simple fact that we are social creatures who I think have are naturally drawn to love, both the need for expressing and wanting love back.
(So a longing for something and an emptiness does not necessarily come from deeper wounds, but also from a natural drive in the human mind that is going unfulfilled.)

But since the society we have built up have lured us into so many traps we forget the simple gift of love in its pure form.
We see movie love and happy ever after love. Money love and love for things. We are chasing substitutions for love because we have not been taught have to go for the real thing, or maybe we are just to scared.
We go for an eternal chase for what we think are happiness and love and forget that it is right at the spot where we are.
Happiness is not in the end of the road it is the journey itself.

That's why its so common to some day wake up with a big questionmark and feel that a lot of ones lives have been wasted, I think... Or going around with an empty feeling inside, longing for something that one just doesn't quite know what is.
Cause we are always chasing something in the far distance when our treasures is to be found in the very moment we are right now.

It seems we humans come back to this again and again. We can fill our lives up with distractions that will keep us from feeling the emptiness a life without a centered and loving self brings.
We can have jobs, goals, lovers, money, things, activities, excitement and thrills, but when all these areas are "used up" we are back to where we started or what we fled from. The emptiness that we ran from will not go away just because we run.

Also we have all these things in our society today that contributes to making this void larger. All the propaganda and brainwash that damages us daily. Its so sad how we have built up our lives.
We are trapped in living-ways maybe 70% of us don't want and long out of.
What have we done with nature and our connection to it?
Just the simple way of being in the moment and enjoying life for what it is.
Loving, freedom , connections to others and to nature
........Just being.
We are forced into roles and lives we choose only 50% (no less than 50%) ourselves and the brainwash in being convinced that we choose it 100%. (Do you really think you choose it yourself?)
This is the cruel rule of survival today.
In our lives, when we are born, we are given an ocean of freedom.
In our society today and out of what we have created we have freedom too, more freedom than ever in history........
but yet so little - compared to what life gave us from birth.
We forget true freedom, believing we have to live like we do, and we forget the pure selfless love.

I want to put a Shakespeare sonnet here that I have posted in my blog before.
I think it is beautiful because it shows a different side of love that we are not used to think about these days. The love that is selfless and doesn't change because of outer happenings.

Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever-fixÃƒÂ¨d mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

To me love is somethingn selfless that wants the best and that is truly open.
I am not a Christiann, but I think in the teachings of Jesus there is a lot to be learned that we should try to remind ourselves in these times we have now. (And then don'tnt mean Christianity and what it has been made into through the years. I mean the teachings and words claimed to be of Jesus)
We se terrorism and cruelty striking upon innocents. And we see the victims of these terrorist acts reacting to this cruelty with revenge and behaving just like terrorists themselves.
We see nations that still have death-penalty, which is just an other form of revenge and murder, only in that setting the state is the assassin.

I only whish that some day we all humans will learn to love selfless and reach out for those who need it. That we will see beyond just our own horizon and understand how much this also wil benefit ourselves and how much we actually need it too.
Selfless love gives back to you 10 fold. Selfless love brings us out of the emptiness...
Just because of the simple fact that you become a part of love and in loves nature. And because love makes more love to grow in its path.
(Now I am not talking about the "love" that wants, but the love that is without desire of wanting or earning a gain)

With selfless love you make the world go one step forward and the human you touch with it, will reach out to receive this gift and give it on even further.
That is how love in its pure form works, and its just as "easy" as to open up your heart.
Both love and hate spreads with a huge speed and blossoms when we send it out.
(being in the danger of sounding like a silly beauty-queen with her final appeal in front of the judges here : )
It is our choice if we want to make this world a little better or a little worse.
If we want to take it a step forward or a step back.

I want to use an old hippi-clicheee as I am a true hippie of heart:

:)
Aasa

2010-11-18T00:23:00.000+01:00

The only certain is uncertainty

The only constant is change

Phantom of the opera

2010-10-27T02:31:00.000+02:00

For those dark and hopeless roantic souls (Including myself) Enjoy! :-)

A tribute

2010-10-20T05:17:00.000+02:00

Venninde, vi skal alle dø engang
Men noe lever alltid, den røde , røde smerten i din sang
Har gjort ditt hjerte sterkere enn døden

~ Inger Hagerup

I am the poem

I am the poem never born
I am the letter someone's torn

a path that no one walks along
a melody without a song.

I am a prayer that's heard by none
I am a childless woman's son

a string no hand has drawn up tight,
a fire that will not ignite

Leave me! Release me! Let me flee
from soul and body, rock and tree!

But nothing answers when i plead.
I am those things that don't succeed.

Jeg er det dikt

Jeg er det dikt som ingen skrev.
Jeg er det alltid brente brev.

Jeg er den ubetrådte sti
og tonen uten melodi.

Jeg er det stumme leppes bønn.
Jeg er en ufødt kvinnes sønn,

en streng som ingen hånd has spent,
et bål som aldri er blitt tent.

Vekk meg! Forløs meg! Løft meg opp
av jord og berg, av ånd og kropp!

Men intet svarer når jeg ber.
Jeg er de ting som aldri skjer.

To Tunger

To tunger har mitt hjerte.
To viljer har mitt sinn.
Jeg elsker deg bestandig,
og jeg blir aldri din.

Dypt i det røde mørket
fikk livet dobbelt form.
Der kurrer det en due.
Der hvisler det en orm.

To tunger har mitt hjerte.
Hør på det likevel.
Bli hos meg og gå fra meg
og frels meg fra meg selv.

Two tongues

Two tongues are in my heart
with two wills speaks my mind.
I love thee forever
and I am never thine.

Deep in the red darkness
life took a twofold form.
There is a dove a-cooing,
there is a hissing worm.

Two tongues are in my heart,
do listen all the same
Stay with me, leave me forever
- save me from who I am

2010-10-20T01:42:00.000+02:00

You are like nobody since I love you.
Let me spread you out among yellow garlands.
Who writes your name in letters of smoke among the stars of the south?
Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed.

You are here. Oh, you do not run away.
You will answer me to the last cry.
Cling to me as though you were frightened.
Even so, at one time a strange shadow ran through your eyes.

Now, now too, little one, you bring me honeysuckle,
and even your breasts smell of it.
While the sad wind goes slaughtering butterflies
I love you, and my happiness bites the plum of your mouth.

How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me,
my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running.
So many times we have seen the morning star burn, kissing our eyes,
and over our heads the gray light unwind in turning fans.

My words rained over you, stroking you.
A long time I have loved the sunned mother-of-pearl of your body.
I go so far as to think that you own the universe.
I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, bluebells,
dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses.

I want
to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.
~ Pablo Neruda

What is real???

2010-10-09T23:55:00.000+02:00

Not what you wish for
Not what you want
Not how your loved ones describes it
Or how the world proclaims it
Not how your heroes speak of it
or how you dreamed of it as a child
Not how your parents told you it was
Or how your daydreams made it look like

Reality can come in many shapes
That makes your mind belive them
Cutting through it all
can be the task of a lifetime
Sometimes you want something so much
that you are unable to see the truth
To tell yourself a "truth" is easier
than to realize what really is

Its so hard to be human sometimes
Its so hard to stay true
But I must, how can I not try? To not try would be to live a lie

Use your eyes and see behind the veil
Let go and posess what is real

Shit hap...

2010-10-08T10:21:00.009+02:00

Hello all of you out there
I mark today as a lovely day to laugh of ourselves and everything we take so serious.
Life is a weird, little lump of meanings and strange fuzz. We run around being upset, sad, happy, puzzled and caught up in our own silly little problems. But maybe all this silliness, is just exactly that; silliness. Understanding the absurdity of our little lives, sometimes then best thing to do is to just laugh.
Here is a silly, little list for starters (my personal fav is the Surrealism one, he he!)
Hope you`ll enjoy!
~ Aasa

Shit happens
Taoism - if you understand shit, it isn't shit
Hinduism - this shit happened before
Confucianism - Confucius say "shit happens"
Buddhism - shit will happen to you again
Zen - what is the sound of shit happening?
Islam - if shit happens it is the will of Allah
Sikhism - leave our shit alone
Jehova's Witness - knock knock shit happens
Atheism - i don't believe this shit
Agnosticism - can you prove that shit happens?
Catholicism - if shit happens, you deserve it
Protestantism -shit happens, amen to that
Judaism - why does shit always happen to us?
Televangelism - send money or shit will happen to you
Rastafarianism - let's smoke this shit
Nation of Islam - don't take no shit
New Age - visualize shit happening
Shintoism - you inherit the shit of your ancestors
Hedonism - i love it when shit happens
Satanism - sneppah tihs
Capitalism - this is MY shit
Existentialism - what is shit, anyway?
Scientology - if shit happens see Dianetics p.137
Mormonism - excrement happens (don't say shit)
Baptism - we'll wash the shit right off you
Mysticism - this is really weird shit
Voodoo - shit doesn't just happen, we made it happen
Disneyism - bad shit doesn't happen here
Communism - let's share the shit
Conspiracy theorism - THEY shit on us
Psycho-analysis - tell me about your shit
Amish - modern shit is useless
Trekism - to boldly shit where no-one has shit before
Descartes - i shit therefore i am
Freud - shit is a phallic symbol
Acupuncturist - hold still or this will hurt like shit
Politically correct - internally processed, nutritionally-drained biological output happens
Einstein - shit is relative
Materialism - whoever dies with the most shit wins
Vegetarianism - if it happens to shit, don't eat it
Environmentalism - shit is biodegradable
Americanism - who gives a shit?
Wicca - you can make shit happen but shit will happen to you back threefold
Surrealism - fish happens

2010-10-07T23:49:00.000+02:00

This is one of my favorite poems. I ma sorry to say the English translations sucks camel balls. So if somebody else wanna give it a go, feel very free to do so :-)

- Aasa

Amor Fati

Not like a Caesar did,
shall you arm yourself with sword
to defend yourself against the world
instead these words, amor fati, love thy fate.

get hold of this formula
as your strongest liberator.
You have chosen your path in the wilderness
let others paths go their ways

Even your pain will serve you
Broken, crushed and miserable
you can see that it reunites you
with what is necessary.

Also the fall , also the betrayal
serve you as your friends.
Your defeats are rich gifts
laid into your hands.

At the end of your road you will satisfied
of being worthy of your fate
know that this is what I wanted
All that happened to me is fair

Then, when the green valley of life
walked through
Say, nothing I will change.
Everything I receive as it is.

Original:

Ikke som en cæsar gjorde,
skal du med et sverd bevæbne
deg mot verden, men med ordet;
Amor Fati – elsk din skjebne.

Denne formel skal du fatte
som din sterkeste befrier:
Du har valgt din sti i krattet.
Ikke skjel mot andre stier!

Også smerten er din tjener.
Lammet, sønderknust, elendig
ser du at den gjenforener
deg med det som er nødvendig.

Også fallet, også sviket
hjelper deg som dine venner.
Dine nederlag er rike
gaver, lagt i dine hender.

Engang skal du, tilfredsstillet
av å bli din skjebne verdig
vite: Dette har jeg villet.
Alt som skjer meg skjer rettferdig.

Si da, når din levegledes
grønne skog er gjennomvandret:
Intet vil jeg anderledes.
Intet ønsker jeg forandret.

- André Bjerke

2010-09-28T23:20:00.002+02:00

Text and photo by Luca Pagliari
b/w silver fiber print

I am losing you, i feel you slightly sliding away, suspended by a frail thin thread

and you swing, and wait, expecting me to begin weaving again
but i’m old and tired and i can’t make it anymore

i struggled all the way down, and learned the impossible, i learned to unlearn

----------------------------

HUNA

2010-09-26T13:40:00.000+02:00

An old re-post from 2007:

Before I was only flying. Now I am finding natural borders.
Borders can be beautiful

-----------------------------

I saw these basic "rules" of the Huna philosophy some years ago. I was struck by the thoughts expressed in such a simple and free way, that had been through my mind many times already.

To see how much you influence your life, sometimes even unaware of it, is really powerful. I think we often see life as something "coming to us" or something "happening to us".
How often we give all of our "power"up to the world and exist as mere reactions to others.
We forget how much we create of our lives through our own perceptions and our ways to deal with things.
Just some thoughts on a rainy day
~ Aasa

THE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF THE HUNA PHILOSOPHY:
IKE (ee-kay) - The world is what you think it is.
MAKIA (mah-kee-ah) - Energy flows where attention goes.
MANAWA (man-ah-wah) - Now is the moment of power.
MANA - All power comes from within.

HUNA PHILOSOPHY

Huna is an old shamanic tradition. It can be thought of as a non – exclusive spiritual teaching based on human psychology in Hawaii. The engine that drives Huna energy is one we all possess, our own breath. Through use of breath, the Huna philosophy says that we can clear blockages and release fear. Huna is an ancient teaching that offers a philosophy of life with simple but strong techniques of manifestation. Archaeological research traces Huna back to the earliest reaches of civilization, with the first historical presence traced through hieroglyphic images to ancient Egypt.

2010-09-26T00:18:00.000+02:00

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

Without words...

2010-09-25T14:24:00.000+02:00

...we understand no-mind;
without shape, we understand true nature.

With relaxed mind, we grasp the meaning of Tao;
with the boundless Way, we understand truth.

The Great Way shines in our heart;
with wisdom we may understand its nature.

Comprehending the diverse keys of the profound and glorious Tao,
we are as buddhas and will come to know the abode of the immortals.

Tao is within us all...

With many voices it has but one beautiful song;
many aspects but only one essence.

Though we are not bound, we are always connected.

Buddhahood is meditation;
with constant attentiveness our mind travels far;
into the highest hills and all over the world.

Elusive, delicate - we see the cosmos is empty as well as full.
Nothing beyond, Nothing in hand,
Beauty, Spirit, Tao - all one...

~The Book of the Heart: Embracing the Tao

Stars

2010-09-21T18:03:00.001+02:00

Look at the stars...

How small our lives seems then

Our troubles

We can just laugh, and not take it all so seriously

Life is funny...

Veg(etari)anism vs. eating animals?

2010-09-21T10:47:00.027+02:00

Now, I have always been asked, when telling people I am vegetarian, my reasons WHY? I normally resond: "ooh, well, it is a lot of blah, I will tell you later" I figured after 17 years, later has finally come ;-)
So, let me first get this streight. I hate preachy moralism. I am not presenting this to change you. I am presenting this to give out some information that changed me. And that I found very valuable and important enough to make some life changes on my own. We all contribute to things in our own way and make our own choices. But they are better made if we are informed. From that point we can make the conscious choices that are the best for our lives. So this is my strongest reason for making this post.
I will mostly present most of this straight out in facts and research, which I find to be explanatory enough themselves, and which I also generally prefer to read in case like this myself.
- Aasa

First of all, before you read my list, I want you to try a thought experiment. Imagine first your favourite kind of animal, an animal you know that you like, or your own pet, whichever is closets to you. Then apply the treatments discribed belove to this creature. Then after you have read this list, answer this question; Would you object to these procedures if they were done to the animal you had in mind? Is there any good founded reasons to give one species a different treatement than an other? What justifies this difference?*

Contributing to climate change
According to the UN, the livestock sector (animal farming) is responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, around 40 percent more than the entire transport sector—cars, trucks, planes, trains, and ships—combined.

Health
Vegetarian diets tend to be lower in saturated fat and cholesterol, and have higher levels of dietary fiber, magnesium and potassium, vitamins C and E, folae, carotenoids, flavonoids, and other phytochemicals. Vegetarian diets are often associated with a number of health advantages, including lower blood cholesterol levels, lower risk of heart disease, lower blood pressure levels, and lower risk of hypertension and type 2 diabetes. Vegetarians tend to have a lower body mass index (BMI) and lower overall cancer rates.
Despite some persistant confusion, it is clear that vegetarians and vegans tend to have more optimal protein consumption than omnivores. Studies also show that in parts of the world where milk is not a staple of the diet, people often have less osteoporosis and fewer bone fractures. The highest rates of osteoporosis are seen in countries where people consume the most dairy foods. (Be aware that the food industry often give other information for the benifit of distrubuting their products)
Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for all individuals during all stages of life cycle, including pregnancy, latactation, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes.

Destroying of species
Fish: Modern industrian fishing lines can be as long aas 75 miles - the same distance as from sea level to space. These fishing lines does not only take in the fish they are aimed for but also many other species.
The average (shrimp) thrawling operation sweep up fish, sharks, rays, crabs, squid, scallops. They throw 80 - 90 % of the sea animals it captures overboard, dead or dieing, as bycatch: typically about a hundred different types of fish and other species.
For every ten tuna. sharks and other predetory large fish that was in our oceans fifty to a houndred years ago, only one is left.
Many scientists predict the total collapse of all fished species in less than fifty years.

When it comes to meat it is an other issue, where species are drastically altered into creatures that cannot live a natural life, for the benift of consumerism. They normally also loose the ability to walk, even stand upright and reproduce. (In factory farming animals are reproduced through artificial insamination.)

Pollution
Farmed animals in the United States produce 130 times as much waste as the human population—roughly 87,000 pounds of shit per second. The polluting strength of this shit is 160 times greater than raw municipal sewage. And yet there is almost no waste-treatment infrastructure for farmed animals.
Conservative estimates by the EPA indicate that chicken, hog, and cattle excrement has already polluted 35,000 miles of rivers in twenty-two states.

Factory farms

- Of the meat on the market "99.9 percent of chickens raised for meat, 97 percent of laying hens, 99 percent of turkeys, 95 percent of pigs, and 78 percent of cattle come from factory farms. (Not family driven farms)”

1. produce highly infected animals
Scientific studies and government records suggest that virtually all (upwards of 95 percent of) chickens become infected with E. coli (an indicator of fecal contamination) and between 39 and 75 percent of chickens in retail stores are still infected. Around 8 percent of birds become infected with salmonella.... Seventy to 90 percent are infected with another potentially deadly pathogen, campylobacter.
Chlorine baths are commonly used to remove slime, odor, and bacteria. This clorine baths also stay in the meat. It is allowed for up to 11% of the meats full weitgh to be the substance of clorin bath.

2. Has as a main goal is to keep profits up and costs down. Ethic considerations are not part of this equation.
Animals are bled, skinned, and dismembered while conscious. (As an example: In America, where the USDA’s interpretation of the Human Methods of Slaughter Act exempts chicken slaughter, the voltage is kept low–about one-tenth the level necessary to rend the animals unconscious.) This is common presedure and only one example out of many on unethical treatment of living creatures in factory farming. (And not as many would think, exceptions)

3. use antibiotics to raise sick genetic mutants in crowded, filthy conditions
In the typical cage for egg-laying hens, each bird has 67 square inches of [floor] space [or less than ¾ the size of a sheet of typing paper]. Nearly all cage-free birds have approximately the same amount of space.

4. contribute to the creation and spread of new viruses (influenza)
Breeding genetically uniform and sickness-prone birds in the overcrowded, stressful, feces-infested, and artificially lit conditions of factory farms promotes the growth and mutation of pathogens. The “cost of increased efficiency,” the report [by the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology, which brought together industry experts and experts from the WHO, OIE, and USDA] concludes, is increased global risk for diseases.

5. contribute to antibiotic resistance (MRSA)
In the United States, about 3 million pounds of antibiotics are given to humans each year, but a whopping 17.8 million pounds are fed to livestock—at least that is what the industry claims. The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) has shown that the industry underreported its antibiotic use by at least 40 percent.... Study after study has shown that antimicrobial resistance follows quickly on the heels of the introduction of new drugs on factory farms.

6. violate the human rights of their employees
Illegal aliens are often preferred, but poor recent immigrants who do not speak English are also desirable employees. By the standards of the international human rights community, the typical working conditions in America’s slaughterhouses constitute human rights violations.

7. change or ignore regulations in order to make more money
High-speed machines commonly rip open intestines, releasing feces into the birds’ body cavities. Once upon a time, USDA inspectors had to condemn any bird with such fecal contamination. But about thirty years ago, the poultry industry convinced the USDA to reclassify feces so that it could continue to use these automatic eviscerators. Once a dangerous contaminant, feces are now classified as a “cosmetic blemish.” As a result inspectors condemn half the number of birds.

Animal intelligence:
*Now, if you followed my advice above you have thought about your favourite pet/an animal species you like put into these situations. Did you feel it would ahve been different if it was your pet in these situations? If yes, what makes this difference? Is it because the pet is known to you? Is this reason good enough? So, does your cat or dog deserve higher moral treatment than any other species? At least if you willingly eat a chicken there could be no objection to eat a cat or a dog, by logical sense. Or do you think your pet is more intelligent than the animals that we use for food?
In this light I would like to give a few fact about animal intelligence:
Generations of farmers have know that clever pigs will learn to undo the latches of their pens. Gilbert White, the British naturalist, wrote of one such pig, a female, who, after undoing her own latch, "used to open all the intervening gates, and martch, by herself, up to a distant farm where a male was kept; and when her purpose was served" - a great way of putting it - "would return home by the same means."
Sceintist have documented a pig language of sorts, and pigs will come when called (to humans or one another), will play with toys (and have favourites), and have been observed coming to the aid of other pigs in distress. Dr.Stanley Curtis, an animal scinetist, empirically evaluated the cognotive abilities of pigs by training them to play a video game with a joystick modified for snouts. They not only learned the game, but did so as fast as chimpanzees, demonstrating a surprsing capacity for abstract representation. And the legend of pigs undoing their latches continues. Dr.Ken Kephart, a colleage of Curtis`s, not only confirms the ability of pigs to do this, but adds that pigs often work in pairs, are usually repeat offenders, and in some cases undo the latches of fellow pigs.
Did you know that fish build complex nests, form monogameous relationships, hunt cooperatively with other species, and use tools? They recognice one an other as individuals (and keep track of who is to be trusted and who is not) They make decisions individually, monitor social prestige and vie for better posistion (to quote from the the peer review journal Fish and Fisheries: "They use Machiavellian strategies of manipulation, punsihment and reconciliation") They have significant long term memories, are skilled in passing knowledge to one generation through social networks, and also pass information generatinally. They even have what the scientific literature calls "long-standing "cultural traditions" for particular pathways to feeding, schooling, resting or mating sites."
This are just a few examples.

I will contontinue to update this list as I gather more facts.
Thank you for taking interest

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

- Much of the information is taken from the book "Eating animals", by Jonathan Safran Foer. A book that is really worth the read. And if you thoguht you knew a lot about the food you are eating, it might surpirse you on many accounts.
:-) Aasa

LINKS:

(If you have any good link suggestions, feel free to post them in the comments section)

Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer
Jonathan Safran Foer's Controversial New Book, Eating Animals
Avoiding Factory Farm Foods: An Eater's Guid
Meet your meat, documentary on facory farming
Clinical research articles
Vegan Helath study, by Michael Klaper MD
Cancer and the vegetarian diet, by William Harris MD
Vegan health study/Institute of Nutrition Education and Research

2010-09-18T16:31:00.000+02:00

WORDS

Words are lumpy, little things that crowd and control our lives.
Its is strange how much we let them pull us in different directions. Can words really cover what we want to express?
So often I have seen words create barriers, in an attempt to get them to bring somebody closer to each other. And how often is not a word for me, something totally different for you?
Have you ever felt trapped behind words? Or just not found the right words to express yourself, maybe because it just didn't exist or cover what you felt? Of course there are other methods than words to express those thing, but that is not my point :-)

We live in different meanings and carry different encyclopedias in our minds. My "independence" might have all different feelings stuck to it and mean something totally different than yours.
Maybe we all should be born with a manual and a dictionary for each person?

There is also some other interesting phenomenas about words. If you have friends who tell you how good friends you two are. Have you ever noticed that they often behave like less friends, that the ones that actually don't tell you this so often. Maybe sometimes words can function as band-aid for bruised friendships. At least it seems that it can be an expresison for a wish about how things could be.
I think this is very often the way words are used. As expressions for wishes, or hopes for how things should be. We affirmate, compliment, and dream.
Words can unite, make love and wars
I guess it is important to not forget that words are just sounds, and the people behind them don't always mean exactly what you make out of those sounds.

Well, I am wishing all of my readers a splufigially, smengastic day in the sun.
Lots of warm thoughts from Norway
xxx

Aasa

2010-09-17T12:02:00.000+02:00

Elephant art
Hoax or truth?
Judge for yourself

Not many poeple know that elephants can be quite the artists.

Pictures which were are claimed to be painted by elephants have gone on display at an Edinburgh gallery.
An art graduate brought the paintings from Thailand to the Gallery They include "self-portraits" by Paya, who is said to be the only elephant to have acomplished paintings with his own likeness.

Paya is one of six elephants whose keepers have taught them how to hold a paintbrush in their trunks. They drop the brush when they want a new colour.
Mrs Khunapramot, from Newington, said: "Many people cannot believe that an elephant is capable of producing any kind of artwork, never mind a self-portrait.
"But they are very intelligent animals and create the entire paintings with great gusto and concentration within just five or 10 minutes - the only thing they cannot do on their own is pick up a paintbrush, so it gets handed to them.
"They are trained by artists who fine-tune their skills, and they paint in front of an audience in their conservation village, leaving no one in any doubt that they are authentic elephant creations."

Elephant painting

Mrs Khunapramot reveals that it took about a month to train the animals to paint. Elephant expert Dr Joyce Poole, who has studied the animals for 30 years, said she owned an elephant painting but had not come across animals painting their own images.

The Oslo-based scientist said: "I have seen elephants painting, but it was very free-flow.

"It's certainly capable of drawing an elephant, and could be trained, but might not really understand what it was doing."

I think I am in love with The Muppets

2010-09-11T00:23:00.000+02:00

What Muppet are you?

Animal
You are Animal.
You are completely nuts, but fun to be around.
SPECIAL TALENTS:
Drums, Women, Food.
HOBBIES:
Drums, Women, Food.
FAVORITE EXPRESSIONS:
"Louder!", "Food now!" and "Want Woman!"
LAST BOOK EATEN:
"The Musicians' Guide to Drums, Women & Food"
NEVER LEAVES HOME WITHOUT:
An appetite.

You are Gonzo the Great
You love everyone, and still you get shot out of a cannon on a regular basis. Oh, and you are completely insane and have a strange fascination for chickens.
ALSO KNOWN AS:
The Great Gonzo, Gonzo the Great, Just Plain Weird
SPECIES:
Whatever
HOBBIES:
Tapdancing blindfolded on tapioca while balancing a piano on his nose, backwards, five times fast.
FAVORITE MOVIE:
"From Here to Eternity...with no brakes."
FAVORITE TV SHOW:
"Touched By An Anvil"
QUOTE:
- "No parachute? Wow! This is so cool!"
- "But you act ludicrous.
Gonzo; Of course I do, I am an artist"

Take this quiz!

Book recommendation

2010-09-10T00:24:00.001+02:00

I want to make a book recommendation. I don`t do it often...only if I have read a book I find truly amazing, that abselutely aught to be shared with others. While reading this book I was actually looking forward to go to bed at night, just to continue reading.

The book is taking place in New York, brilliantly told in the voice of a nine year old boy, who has lost his father in a tragidy, and is in his own way trying to find him again.
It is written very much like a thought pattern, where we meet more than one person. Following these people we are lead deep into their world, maybe even deeper than they even can see themselves. It tells of the fragility of being human, of being alive, of relating to each other and to our own self and our pain. And it also tells of love. Not a clichee love or a fairt tale love, but the love between different people, a mother and a son, a grandmother and her grandchild, of siblings and of lovers and the very human and difficult way we handle our love with.
This book feels most of all honest and deep in its reality, and that is what touched me most of all. A peculiar and different voice that finds its way in to you.
The book has a title that discribes it very well;"extremely loud and incredibly close" and that is exactly what it is. You will never forget this read!
Enjoy!
- Aasa
Link: Bu y it.

2010-08-25T19:36:00.000+02:00

A post to longing

To my beloved

En liten vise
Om kvelden når det mørkner, og alle går til ro,
da stenger jeg for stall og for låve.
Og spurvene, de netter seg i hver sitt lille bo,
da går vel også du til din kove.
Men siden vet jeg ikke å få tiden til å gå,
for i de lange netter, da lenges jeg så,
da har jeg ikke sinn til å sove.
..................................................................

En vise til
....
mellom oss to var det inga bru
men eg var hjå deg det må du tru
i kvar liten blund
i kvar vaken stund
den eg drøymde om
var alltid du

More Tao

2010-08-21T09:42:00.001+02:00

A few thoughts of lately:
Sometimes, if you watch and observe your toughts and your mind, staying aware and without any identification or roles in it, it can be quite funny.
It is like watching a stubborn and persistent child saying things and wanting things that are, you find in the end, actually quite absurd. In knowing that there is a difference to your ego desires and you, to your thoughts and you - it actually is comical to listen to your own mind. Thoughts that before maybe even made you suffer and cry. I figure this is the secret into understanding Buddhas wonderful and simple smile. Don´t misunderstand - I am not putting myself next to him, I am putting us all next to him :-)
Here are two little stories that made me laugh and that illustrates this point very well:

"...After two ducks get into a fight, which never lasts long, they will separate and float off in opposite directions. Then each duck will flap its wings vigorously a few times thus releasing the surplus energy that built up during the fight. After they flap their wings they float on peacefully, as if nothing had ever happened. If the duck had a human mind it would keep the fight alive by thinking, by story making. This would probably be the ducks' story:

I don't believe what he just did! He came to within 5 inches of me. He thinks he owns this pond! He has no consideration for my private space. I'll never trust him again. Next time he'll try something else just to annoy me. I'm sure he's plotting something already but I'm not going to stand for this! I'll teach him a lesson he won't forget.

An other story with the same topic:
Two Buddhist monks, Tanzan and Ekido, were once traveling together down a muddy road.
A heavy rain was still falling.
Coming around a bend, they met a lovely girl in a silk kimono and sash, unable to cross the intersection and in tears.

Tanzan, feeling compassion for her, at once picked her up and carried her to the other side over the mud.

Ekido did not speak again five hours later, when they reached their lodging temple.
Then he no longer could restrain himself.
"Why did you carry that girl across the road?" he asked Tanzan, "We monks are not supposed to do things like that"

"I put the girl down hours ago," said Tanzan. "Are you still carrying her?"

Winnie The Pooh and a tiny bit of Taoism

2010-08-16T17:44:00.000+02:00

--------------
Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to
watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will suddenly
know everything there is to be known.
~Winnie-the-Pooh
--------------
"How do you do Nothing?" asked Pooh.
"Well, it's when people call out at you just as you're going off to do it
What are you going to do, Christopher Robin?' and you say,
`Oh, nothing' and then you go and do it. It means just going along,
listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering."
--------------
"Rabbit's clever," said Pooh thoughtfully.
"Yes," said Piglet, "Rabbit's clever."Piglet
"And he has Brain."
"Yes," said Piglet, "Rabbit has Brain."
There was a long silence.
"I suppose," said Pooh, "that that's why he never understands anything."
---------------
"The atmospheric conditions have been very unfavourable lately," said Owl.
"The what?"
"It has been raining," explained Owl.
"Yes," said Christopher Robin. "It has."
"The flood-level has reached an unprecedented height."
"The who?"
"There's a lot of water about," explained Owl
--------------
Poetry and Hums aren't things which you get, they're things which get you.
And all you can do is to go where they can find you.
~Winnie-the-Pooh
--------------
Lots of people talk to animals. Not that many listen though. That's the problem.
~Winnie-the-Pooh
--------------
They're funny things, accidents. You never have them till you're having them.
~Eeyore
--------------
Before beginning a Hunt, it is wise to ask someone what you are
looking for before you begin looking for it.
~Winnie-the-Pooh
--------------
Rivers know this: There is no hurry. We shall get there one day.
~Winnie-the-Pooh
--------------
"It's a funny thing about Tiggers," whispered Tigger to Roo,
"how Tiggers never get lost."
"Why don't they, Tigger?"
"They just don't," explained Tigger. "That's how it is."
--------------
"I don't see much sense in that," said Rabbit.
"No," said Pooh humbly, "there isn't. But there was going to be
when I began it. It's just that something happened to it along the way."
--------------
“Don't underestimate the value of Doing Nothing,
of just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear.”
- Winnie the pooh
--------------

I post for the emo souls ;-) from an other

2010-08-12T08:37:00.017+02:00

"...I want
to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees."
~ Pablo Neruda

"Det var en fest kun før natten den sorte;
Hun var en gæst kun, -- og nu er hun borte."
~ Henrik Ibsen

I have written a poem in norwegian and the english translation is kinda bad. So, if anybody have any suggestions about improvemnt, feel very free to come with them :-)
~ Aasa

Silent knowing
I whish to speak to you through words without
letters whish to reach you there behind
everything that whiz through me in
the moment you take my hand and
softly brush my skin It opens up
to you, reach for you, nearly
pulls against you like close is not even
close enough my skin whispers stories, it
sighs in simple enjoyment over
your warm hand I see
your eyes your words the hours but
they do not really know yet only
my skin reaches behind it all
it knows
the wordless
it knows more
than both you and I

Stille viten
Jeg ønsker å snakke til
deg gjennom ord
uten ord jeg ønsker å nå det
bakenfor som suser gjennom meg i
øyeblikket du tar
min hånd og stryker sakte over
huden min den åpner seg for
deg strekker seg mot deg nesten
stritter etter deg som om
nærme ikke er nær nok
huden min hvisker historier og
sukker i en simpel fornøyelse over din
varme hånd jeg ser øynene dine, ordene,
øyeblikkene men de vet ikke, skjønner ikke
riktig enda kun huden min kommer bakenfor
den vet
det ordløse
den vet mer
enn både du og jeg

~ A rainy afternoon in Oslo, 2010

2010-08-02T15:35:00.006+02:00

Because poetry...
whispers between the lines, directly to your soul

English translation will follow
Enojy! :-)
~Aasa

"Drømmer og utopier sier de kloke menn,
de som er kalde av hjertet. Hør ikke på dem lenger
Livet er ikke bare hus og penger
Vi er bestandig på vei
Bestanding et stykke lenger
På vei mot seier eller nederlag
Det haster - Det haster i dag!

Vær utålomodig menneske
Sett dine egne spor
Det gjelder vårt evige korte liv
Det gjelder vår jord"
~Fra "Vær utålmodig menneske" av Inger Hagerup

Fra en annen virkelighet

Syk blir en av ropet om virkelighet.
Altfor nær var jeg tingene,
slik at jeg brant meg igjennom
og står på den andre siden av dem,
der lyset ikke er skilt fra mørket,
der ingen grenser er satt,
bare en stillhet som kaster meg ut i universet av ensomhet,
og av uhelbredelig ensomhet.

Se, jeg svaler min hånd i kjølig gress:
Det er vel virkelighet,
det er vel virkelighet nok for dine øyne,
men jeg er på den andre siden
hvor gresstrå er kimende klokker av sorg og bitter forventning.
Jeg holder et menneskes hånd,
ser inn i et menneskes øyne,
men jeg er på den andre siden
der mennesket er en tåke av ensomhet og angst.

Å, om jeg var en sten
som kunne rumme denne tomhetens tyngde,
om jeg var en stjerne
som kunne drikke denne tomhetens smerte,
men jeg er et menneske kastet ut i grenselandet,
og stillheten hører jeg bruse,
stillheten hører jeg rope
fra dypere verdner enn denne.
~Gunvor Hofmo

Ja visst gjør det ondt
Av Karin Boye

Ja visst gör det ondt när knoppar brister.
Varför skulle annars våren tveka?
Varför skulle all vår heta längtan
bindas i det frusna bitterbleka?
Höljet var ju knoppen hela vintern.
Vad är det för nytt, som tär och spränger?
Ja visst gör det ont när knoppar brister,
ont för det som växer
och det som stänger.

Ja nog är det svårt när droppar faller.
Skälvande av ängslan tungt de hänger,
klamrar sig vid kvisten, sväller, glider -
tyngden drar dem neråt, hur de klänger.
Svårt at vara ovuss, rädd och delad,
svårt at känna djupet dra och kalla,
ändå sitta kvar och bara darra -
svårt at vilja stanna
och vilja falla.

Då, när det är värst och inget hjälper,
brister som i jubel trädets knoppar,
då, när ingen rädsle längre håller,
faller i ett glitter kvistens droppar,
glömmer at de skrämdes av det nya,
glömmer at de ängslades för färden -
känner en sekund sin största trygghet,
vilar i den tillit
som skapar världen.

I kväll har himlen ingen skrud
By Karin Boye

I kväll har himlen ingen skrud.
Han huttrar naken.
Och aldrig såg jag förr hans blick
så alltför vaken.

Säg, när du somnar in i kväll:
En dag är vunnen.
På vägen där man mister allt
en rast är hunnen.

Så skall du leva dag för dag
och ständigt mista,
och ändå vilja vara kvar
in i det sista.

Så skall du finna livet starkt,
som orkar brinna.
Så skall vart miste bli en vinst --
ty du skall hinna

allt längre mot den livets grund,
som fött dig naken
och bortom alla drömmars svek
är själva saken --

tills i ditt största mistes stund
din själ förbrunnen
går till de släckta ljusens stad.
En dag är vunnen.

You shall thank
By Karin Boye

You shall thank your gods,
if they force you to go
where you have no footprints
to trust to.

You shall thank your gods,
if all shame on you they pin.
You must seek refuge
a little further in.

What the whole world condemns
sometimes manages quite well.
Outlaws were many
who gained their own soul.

He who is forced to wild wood
looks on all with new sight,
and he tastes with gratitude
life's bread and salt.

You shall thank your gods,
when your shell they break.
Reality and kernel
the sole choice you can make.

Tonight the heavens have no garb
By Karin Boye

Tonight the heaven has no garb.
He shivers naked.
And never saw I yet his gaze
so all-too waking.

Say, when you fall asleep tonight:
A day is won.
On the road where one loses all
a rest's begun.

Then you will live from day to day
and lose, lose fast,
and yet desire still to remain
until the last.

Then you will find life strong,
if you can burn.
Then will each loss become a gain -
for you shall turn

ever further towards that ground of life
that gave you birth,
and beyond all dreams' deceit
the cause is there -

until in the hour of your greatest loss
your soul, burned down,
goes to the place of extinguished lights.
A day is won.

longing

2010-07-30T13:25:00.000+02:00

Noun 1. longing
long·ing (lông'ĭng, lŏng'-)
A strong persistent yearning or desire
A strong wanting of what promises enjoyment or pleasure
yearning, hungriness
hankering, yen - a yearning for something or to do something
pining - a feeling of deep longing

Do we want to repeat history?

2010-07-04T18:06:00.003+02:00

A re-post from 05.11.10 after request from a reader. Enjoy!
~ Aasa

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)

"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war."

~ Albert Einstein

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 far it rather screams loud of clever propaganda.

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)

Obama

2010-07-04T09:05:00.004+02:00

A re-post from 05.11.10 after request from a reader. Enjoy!
~ Aasa

A tiny kick to the rejoice of the world

I have for a while thought about the matter that it seems most people who are so-called "liberal" wants Obama to win and now celebrates like it is the the revolution of the decade.
But do we, so far, know much about his actual plans and what politics he will really aim for? Yes, he is certainly not Republican, so he is by far (In my opinion) the better choice of two, but is he really as amazing as everybody now seems to think? Is he 'the new political messiah' as people think him to be? Or is he getting a free ticket to this label simply because of his skin color and clever propaganda?
(Now I think it is wonderful that the man will actually fight against racism and for gay rights ).... But look now anyway here on a few of the cases the man actually aims for:

-Unconditional support for Israel
-Escalation of the War in Afghanistan
-Continued military rearmament in the U.S.
-An emergency package that is a pure gift to the richest, and a fraud against the American people

Judge for yourself
But personally I do not believe the promise of greener pastures in the US yet.
If Obama was in Norwegian politics, he had not been labelled "radical" but "very conservative"

~ Åsa

Norwegian poetry I

2010-06-27T12:19:00.000+02:00

As always, I am no fan of translations, because so much is normally lost in them. I don't like the English version of this that much, but I want the people who don't read Norwegian to read it as well, so I post both. The Norwegian version is in nynorsk, which has a very beautiful way of it that is melodious and perfect for poetry.
This poem is truly beautiful and one of my favourites

Hope you´ll enjoy

~ Aasa

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It's the Dream

It's the dream we carry in secret
that something miraculous will happen
that it must happen --
that time will open
that the heart will open
that doors will open
that the mountains will open
that springs will gush --
that the dream will open
that one morning we will glide into
some harbor we didn't know was there..

Det er den draumen

Det er den draumen me ber på
at noko vidunderlig skal skje,
at det må skje -
at tidi skal opna seg,
at hjarta skal opna seg,
at dører skal opna seg,
at berget skal opna seg
at kjeldor skal springa -
at draumen skal opna seg,
at me ei morgonstund skal glida inn
på ein våg me ikkje har visst um.

~ Olav H Hauge

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I am also a big fan of this Norwegian poet.

I hold your head

~ Stein Mehren

I hold your head
in my hands, as you hold
my heart in your affection
as everything holds and is
held by something other than itself
As the sea lifts a stone
to its strands, as the tree
holds the ripe fruit of autumn, as
the world is lifted through worlds and space
So are we both held by something and lifted
to where mystery holds mystery in its hand

Jeg holder ditt hode

Jeg holder ditt hode
i mine hender, som du holder
mitt hjerte i din ømhet
slik allting holder og blir
holdt av noe annet enn seg selv
Slik havet løfter en sten
til sine strender, slik treet
holder høstens modne frukter, slik
kloden løftes gjennom kloders rom
Slik holdes vi begge av noe
og løftes
dit gåte holder gåte i sin hånd

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