Just a little post....

...to the beauty of the libélula (dragonfly)

New Facbook page

I have made a Facebook page for my photos
Check it out and add yourself as a fan if you like it
Then you will also get a discount if you buy something from me
:-)
~ Aasa

Amazing!

Join!

New group on Facebook
Join it now and end war forever!
;-)

To everybody with....

....a low attention span, a fascination for obscure information and a good taste in books
Note to self:
"Must read":

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

Quoting time

"True friends stab you in the front."

"No parachute? Wow! This is so cool!"

"Å våge er å miste forfestet et kort sekund. Å ikke våge er å miste livet"

"We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly."

"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense."

"Beauty in things exist in the mind which contemplates them."

"Most people are as happy as they make up their minds to be."

"There is no road to happiness, happiness is the road"

"Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment."

"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"

This is from a very good book, called "The prophet" By Khalil gibran.
One of the reasons I really enjoy it, is that I took a liking to it already as a little child and I made my mother read it to me as a goodnight story. My favourte chapter was this one:
xxx
Aasa

Then a woman said, "Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow."

And he answered:

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 hold 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 than 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.

~ Kahlil Gibran

All the chapters
Reason and Passion
Love
Self-Knowledge
Giving
Friendship

Good and Evil
Freedom

New address from 27.12.08

Åsa Bergem
Sverdrupsgate 9 A
0559 Oslo
Norway

(That is NO hint at all from me of course
about X-mas gifts or other forms of bribery. ha, ha ;-)

List nr 13: Things I loved as a kid

After having worked with children a lot, you start to think about some things
Like the development of personality
The funny thing is that you see their differences and personalities sooo early. Its truly fascinating
And I see that the things I loved to do as a kid, reflects who I am still today.
I was talking to my sweet grandmother here the other day and she told me stories from when I was a kid. She said that these were a few of the things I loved to do:

1.Go up to a big mudpond close to the house and jump all around in it (especially those time they put on my shiny, white, newly washed overall)

2.Sing, sing and sing. After she had put me to bed and gone downstairs I would always get up and hold on to my bed while singing to myself until I collapsed in my bed and fell asleep

3.Invent stories. And it seems I was very good at it as well. I have a friend of mine who still believes that I had tree blue cats. She claims that she even saw them (this is what makes me believe I was a real badass at telling the stories, haha), but that they were blown away by the wind, she claims, and that's how I lost them.

4.Dares. I could for some reason never say no to a dare. I ate dangerous stuff just because somebody said that I wouldn't do it. And got in trouble with the kindergarten, doing stuff people told me I wouldn't dare to do. Ha ha! Nobody tells me that I cannot do something!!!!

5.Doing stuff that seemed risky. Me and my best friend had a favorite hobby: Climbing roofs and jumping from the next roof to the other.
To get to the first "Starters roof" at my house, we had tree options.
-Either to climb a pretty easy and safe way (which we never chose, as it was boring)

-Or go through the neighbor's gardens (where there lived a woman who always used to scream at us, if she saw us) which I did now and then, cause it was a little fun,

-Or climb a plank we called "the rotten one" (which looked like it would collapse any day soon and which also was very hard to climb and which we were advised never to climb again after a neighbor saw us doing it), Of course I chose this one I most of the time, haha!

6.Draw. I have been drawing like my life depended on it ever since I was a tiny little bugger. My mother had to buy new sheets og paper all the time cause I was drawing so quickly.

I used to draw my own comics that often had either a comment on political, romantic or religious issues (yes, we were quite occupied with politics even though we didnt get much of it), I find them quite satirical and funny when I read them now. (Looking at this drawing - what do you think he is saying?)

Then in 7 grade there was this girl that drew very slowly and precise. This influenced me a lot, since I thought it was so pretty, and I had a looong period where I made the most awfully boring drawings. I later found back to my more "rough, and quick" style, which I still prefer.

7:Climb. All kinds of stuff. Trees, buildings, roofs. (See point 5)
The tree on the picture is one of my fav trees in the world. (I think I am secretly in love with him.) He is a grand old oak - they are my favourite, because they are so gnarly, twisted, powerful and nice.

8.Talk and laugh. I seemed to be an extremely outgoing kid. And also almost happy all the time. My teacher called me our class butterfly, twirling from person to person laughing and talking and smiling.
I had an extreme downperiode from 13 to 19, being very introverted and shy. (Mostly because of some really bad experiences) But now I feel I am back to my true nature.

9.Explore. Every little mudpond was a little adventure full of magical worlds. I still think they are and I never get tired of exploring :)

10:Cuddle and hugs. Will never get tired of that. I have never met anybody yet that has "outcuddled me". I can cuddle for days straight. Ha ha!

A tiny, little flower

There was this tiny, little flower
living in a veeery big forest





















Sometimes this forest was so dark
and filled with scary things





















Drawings by Aasa

Ode to joy

Who can beat this version of Beethovens "Ode to joy"
All credits to the extremely handsome and sweet Erling for this found

Here is an other brilliant video. Made by Pixar before they were bought by Disney.

Redinfing emotions

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

I am in looove!

Simplified MBTI test

Test Results
Your personality type is ENFP.

Extraverted (E) 71%	Introverted (I) 29%
Intuitive (N) 64%	Sensing (S) 36%
Feeling (F) 60%	Thinking (T) 40%
Perceiving (P) 82%	Judging (J) 18%

Links

• Great info on all the the types!
• Excellent explanation of what the letters mean
• Descriptions of the various personality types
• Career information based on your type

Two poems by André Bjerke. Illustrated by Lise (Nemi). Click on to enlarge.

Existentialism

An existential philosophy and psychology school of thought is under the belief that human beings are alone in the world. This aloneness leads to feelings of meaninglessness which can be overcome only by creating ones own values and meanings. We have the power to create because we have the freedom to choose. In making our own choices we assume full responsibility for the results and blame no one but ourselves if the result is less than what was desired.

Existential anxiety has to do with the big questions of life, its meaning and which is our place in it; to the Doctors Good and Good, existential anxiety is about despair, alienation, and emptiness, and there are people who suffer from such feelings, it certainly can be a problem for some of them.

In the past the world was a relatively predictable place. People grew up in stable families, and they had a fairly clear sense of what their roles in the world and society would be. Now we live in a changing world, and a world in which every generation have less common principles to embrace, long have been gone the flower children, the excess of the 80's, and the already cynical "generation X" from the 90's. Is this sustained and rapid change in society plus the emergent and ever-growing consumerism that try to cope with the lack of certitude that have made difficult for people to know which is their place in the world, and understand how they fit in.

Existential anxiety can be triggered by abrupt life changes, like the death of someone close to us (persons who have made of being a parent the main reason and sense of their life and then suddenly lose a child), the loss of the self image (for example have made a very important part of our identity our job and suddenly lose it, being the best student and drop our grades, or build our sense of self worth around our physical beauty and see it diminish); in all of these cases besides the obvious pain and inherent difficulties implied in all of these losses, there is a sense of loss of our place in the world.

If you feel like existential angst is getting the best of you please by all means seek professional help, self-awareness, responsibility and contemplation are healthy and positive, endogenous or severe depression are not, and not every existentialist is depressive, but many depressive people lean towards a quite high score in existentialist anxiety, so take a good look at yourself, the only person who knows how much of this is because you are a highly intellectual and/or cynical but happy person, and how much of this is because you might be suffering of a condition that cause you suffering and can be treated quite effectively if you give yourself the chance of get help, is ultimately, you.

Bottom line: be yourself, live for yourself, be your own person and remember that the control over your own life is ultimately yours, sure being ultimately alone doesn´t sound as the most cheery thought, but looking at it the other way around, it also means that you are completely free for build for yourself the life that you want to live, and if you feel like somebody's puppet, is only because you are allowing it yourself.

Gotland

Going to Gotland (the most beautiful place on earth)
tomorrow morning, for the mideval fair
See you in a week or two
;-)

Time and gravity

~ From the Book "Naive - Super" by Erlend Loe

"......It is a lot more I didn´t know about time.
In a lab in Bonn there is a 3 meter long metal cylinder. Paul writes that it is shaped like a submarine and lying in a frame of steel surrounded by wires and other equipment for measurements. It is an atomic watch, and at the moment it is the most accurate clock on earth. It is more accurate than the rotation of earth.
An accuracy like that surprises me. It evidently has nothing to do with earth. It is just something somebody has decided. I like that. Strangely enough I feel that I can grasp time in a better way because of this. I want an atomic watch for my birthday.

As a compensation for the the irregularity of earths rotation they add a second now and then. The last time this was done was in June 1994.
Nobody told me about this.

Because of the atomic watches the definition of a second has changed. Before a second used to be defined as 1/86.400 of a day, but now it is 9.192.631.770 rotations of a celsium atom.
I think that is a lot of rotations.
This information puts me out a little. I feel a little sick and have to get the ball. I throw it for a while against the fridge until I am able to read on.
..........
Now I am reading on.
It just gets worse and worse.
Paul says that the gravity influences time - the man has no limits
Completely without warning he says that time is influenced by gravity and by movement.
I look at the cover of the book. It is published by a serious publish house. What he says is very likely accurate.

I get annoyed.
Why has nobody told me about this?
Doesn´t physics teachers understand that this makes a lot of difference?
Maybe they knew it all along? In that case I should get a revenge on them. I should push one of them hard in the back when they are not at all expecting it.

On the sun the time passes two million times slower than on earth.It is because of gravity. Paul says it is stronger up there.
I thought time was time and gravity was gravity.
It is obviously not like that.
With a couple of really good atom watches one can prove it in the empire state building.
This is not something I am making up.
If you put an atomic clock in the bottom of the empire state and one on the top, after a while you would see that the one on the top goes a little faster.
During a lifetime you will save a couple of 1/1000 seconds if you are on the street.
The one on the top of the empire state will be a little older than the rest of us.
I put the book down.
I feel very drained.
This definitely changes a lot
Time doesn´t exist"