Spirituality can refer to many different things.

When I look at the type of spirituality I am most familiar with, I find three facets. And one, two, or three of them can be present at once, in any combination.

First, there is fascination. We can be fascinate by many things, including the idea of what we may get out of spirituality (awakening, healing, peace, good rebirth), our own path and experiences (insights, dreams, glimpses), the stories in the tradition (cosmology, teaching stories), the teacher (personality, what they represent), more peripheral aspects such as reincarnation, supernatural powers, and auras, or even more peripheral things such as astrology, foreseeing the future, reincarnation, and also anything unexplained and weird such as UFOs, crop circles, ghosts and so on.

Fascination can be very helpful. It can make us feel good, hopeful, and inspired. It can help us stay with a path. It can be a needed temporary escape from problems. And it brings up projections, inviting us to find here what we see over there.

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It is always interesting to notice how different practices work together and how they may mutually support each other.

For instance, The Work and exploring sense-fields have a great deal of similarities, and there is also some cross-fertilization there.

In The Work, I explore the effects of taking a story as true, and find what is more honest for me than the initial belief.

And through exploring the sense-fields, I notice gestalts made up of image overlays on sense fields, what happens when gestalts are taken as real and substantial, and what happens when the images are recognized as a simple overlay of images.

The questions and sub-questions of The Work guide my exploration of the sense -fields. The sense-field exploration helps me notice the mechanisms here now, and in more detail. And through The Work, I get to see how beliefs play themselves out in my life in more detail.

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Again, very simple, and perhaps obvious both in a psychological and spiritual context. But also something I find helpful and fascinating just about every day. I often do this before falling asleep and after waking up, and also at times throughout the day.

I can explore what is here in sensation, either as an open exploration of the sense field.

Or if a specific symptom, emotion, mood, or anything else draws my attention, I can explore that.

What do I find when I bring attention to sensations? How does it show up in sensation? What is its sensation facet?

What is here as images overlaid on those sensations?

How do they combine? How do I experience the combination of the two?

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Byron Katie says there are no new stressful thoughts.

It’s a question and a pointer for exploration, as any other statement.

There are obviously new thoughts. Nobody had thought of e=mc² before Einstein. Or of Wexter before a kid thought him up a couple of weeks ago.

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Some stories seem unquestionably true.

I am a man. A Norwegian citizen. Of a certain age. A human being. An object in the world.

My culture - and most or all cultures - would say these are true, so I take them as obviously true.

And yet, if I take a closer look at them, what do I find? Are they as obviously true as they first appeared?

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I have written about this before, which is not unusual for me since I tend to revisit themes.

When I do The Work, I don’t have to only stick to my own beliefs.

I can also imagine what belief someone else has, and inquiry into that one as if it was my own.

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There are immense benefits of beliefs.

Stories themselves are obviously essential. They helps us orient and navigate in the world, and guide attention and action. Stories help us remember the past, envision the future, and make sense of the present.

We can of course use stories as guides, whether we see them as just guides or make them into beliefs.

So what is the function of beliefs? Why do we have beliefs when stories themselves are sufficient? What is the unique contribution of beliefs?

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Again, a very simple pointer, but that’s OK. It is how it is applied that matter.

I can create the conditions for whatever happens to nurture growth. To go from being a problem to support.

And it is all in how I receive it and relate to it.

I can allow experience as is, with heart. Can I be with what I am experiencing now?

I can notice and inquire into beliefs, to find what is more honest for me than the initial belief.

And I can live from the most juicy turnarounds, and in general live from more integrity.

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For people unfamiliar with The Work, the process may appear quite different than it does for the one doing it.

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From lead to gold. It’s a familiar analogy, but still useful. And it is a slight variation of a familiar theme of this blog, but I’ll still mention it.

When I resist emotions, they become lead. And when I allow them with kindness, they are gold. Resisting emotions, or any experience - such as sensations or images or gestalts such as pain - there is a battle. There is an image of an “I” opposed to the experience as an “it”, and there is a sense of the battle dragging me down. It becomes a weight on me. When I allow experience as is, with kindness, it is revealed as experience. Ephemeral. Insubstantial. I may even notice the quiet joy in experience itself. And there is also a sense of fullness, of coming home.

When I believe a story, it is lead. When I inquire into and clarify it, it is gold. Taking a story as true, it is inevitably at odds with (my stories about) reality, and there is stress, tension, a sense of having to defend the viewpoint of the story, a sense of being right, and all of that is tiring and a weight on me. Inquiring into the belief and finding what is more honest for me, there is relief, receptivity, kindness, perhaps even a measure of wisdom. What appeared as a problem - whether it was the topic of the belief, or the belief itself, is now revealed as a guide and support.

When I take the mental field as substantial and real, it is lead. When I recognize it as what it is, it is revealed as gold. Taking my own world of images as real and substantial, there is stress. I create an imagined world as overlay of the sense fields - sensations, sights, sounds, smell, taste - forget it is imaginary, and get weighed down by it. The images of I, the wider world, and their relationships, appear as real and substantial, and I experience those relationships as precarious, slightly uneasy, and at times tense. When recognized as my own world of images as it happens, the edge goes out of it. Now, it is all recognized as images, interpretations, questions about the world. Innocent. Insubstantial. Ephemeral. They are still very useful for orienting and navigating in the world, but I don’t need to scare myself by them. The images of I, me, the wider world, relationships, and a world beyond these images, are all images. Helpful, and an overlay of images.

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I enjoy watching the Winter Olympics, especially sitting in my little log cabin with thick snow-drifts outside, a warm wood stove, and hot cocoa. It is entertaining, with all the drama, joy, disappointment, mishaps, unfair conditions, generosity, and suspicions of doping. It all belongs to the Olympics, and it is the reason why we (some of us) find it so entertaining.

It is also a great opportunity to notice a few things about myself.

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Byron Katie says reality is kind.

Is it true? Is reality kind?

In a conventional sense, it is sometimes true, and sometimes not. It mainly depends on the situation, and is slightly moderated by how we see it. We can always find the silver lining.

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Spirituality can easily be an escape. In fact, it often is.

And yet, when I tell myself that is wrong, and take it as true, that too is an escape. There is nothing wrong with escapes. It is a stepping stone. An expression of human life. A safety valve when no other option is open to us.  (Because other options are not familiar to us, or do not appear to us.) One of the ways the universe is exploring itself. A part of the terrain we humans can explore and become familiar with. An invitation for others to notice and inquire into their beliefs about escapes. And it can be an invitation for us to take a closer look at what is going on.

That said, here are some ways spirituality can be an escape:

Spirituality can mean many different things: Belief in religion. Participation in religious institutions. Genuine glimpses and opening experiences. Airy-fairy sentimentality. Hard-nosed testing and application of pointers from spiritual teachings. The world as it appears when reality notices itself.

In each of these, apart from perhaps the last, spirituality can be an escape. It can be made into a belief, and any belief is an escape. It is an escape from allowing experience as is. (Taking a story as true is a distraction.) And it is an escape from what is more honest for us.

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It is common to experience both healing (short term) and maturing (longer term) through inquiry and The Work. It is not important why it happens, but i am still curious. What do I find when I explore it in own experience?

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If I didn’t have you by Tim Minchin.

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As so much here, this is very simple and a repeat of previous posts. But it is something I keep noticing throughout the day, so why not write it down.

Fear comes up. There is resistance to that fear. Identification with that resistance fuels belief. And attention goes into the belief.

There is of course more to it.

The initial fear comes up because of friction between my beliefs of what should be and what is. Not wanting to experience that fear comes from beliefs about the fear. And it all serves to take attention away from the fear, and also the initial friction. It helps me avoid finding what is more honest for me than the initial belief. And I want to avoid that because of beliefs of what may happen if I do.

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When someone dies young, it is a reminder to investigate our own life and beliefs.

What beliefs come up in me when it happens?

Here are some typical ones in our culture, which most of us have absorbed to some extent:

It is unfair. Life should comply with our wishes. Life should make everyone live a long life.

He didn’t get to live a full life. She wanted to do so much more.

I wanted to have her in my life longer. My life will be miserable without him. I can’t make it without her.

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It is pretty straightforward to open for gratitude: Write gratitude lists or letters. And it is also pretty straightforward to meditate or pray, at least with some guidance. Or to practice acts of kindness, or become more engaged in ones life.

But how to forgive? For many of us, that seems far more mysterious.

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This has come up in a couple of conversations recently: The value of creating reversal lists.

When we experience loss of a desirable situation - health, a person, a relationship etc. - it is easy to habitually remind ourselves of what was desirable for us in it. We exaggerate what was good, and overlook what didn’t work so well. And that is a guaranteed way to make ourselves miserable.

So why not do the reverse? Why not make lists of what we didn’t like?

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I see the term nondoing being used in different ways.

Personally, I prefer to not use the word since it can so easily be misunderstood and lead to unnecessary confusion.

But what does it really refer to? I don’t know enough about Taoist or Buddhist philosophy or practice to say for sure what is traditionally meant by the term, but I can say something about what comes up for me.

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I went into a bookstore a couple of days ago and found copies of Sarah Palin’s autobiography prominently displayed in the fiction section. It may have been a staff person who deliberately placed them there, or a customer with a sense of humor. For a book with so many obvious distortions and factual errors, it is perhaps a good placement.

But all biographies and autobiographies are in a very real sense fictional. They are heavily filtered through interpretations and whatever information is available - itself just a selection and heavily interpreted.

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A rambling post…..

Blogs - including this one - can easily be seen as self-indulgent and self-absorbed, an expression of our individualistic and navel-gazing contemporary culture, and so on. All of that may be true. I often have the thought that this blog is way too self-absorbed.

And yet, if it also is universal - a mirror for what is going on here and for also for others - it may be interesting and even at times helpful.

It also seems that there are two ways of being self-absorbed.

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It is curious how illness - whether mental of physical - is often associated with shame in our western culture. I have experienced it myself related to chronic fatigue. There is a shame around lack of energy, not being as social or engaged as I normally would be, not being able to do as much or what I normally would do, and so on. It is as if I am not only responsible, but somehow morally at fault.

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Neatorama asks why are people so interested in this Tiger Woods thing?

There are probably many different answers.

Here are some that come up for me, from my own experience in getting interested in certain stories in the news:

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I came across a new blog called Freedom or Necessity, which is an exploration into the question of free will.

It is an eternal question for us humans, and interesting to explore in our own lives.

The first thing that comes up for me is a set of additional questions: what does free will mean? For whom may there be free will? Who or what is choosing, if there is free will? Is there an entity choosing? Someone or something somehow set apart from everything else? Is that possible? On what basis are these choices made? What are the influences on these choices? What are the restrictions on these choices? If there are influences and restrictions, to what extent is it free?

My take on it is very simple-minded, and not so different from what I have explored earlier in this journal.

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The appendix is shown to support the immune system, in contrast to the previous view of it having no function at all. And what about junk DNA, do we know it doesn’t have a function?

Western science has had a tendency to assume that if we don’t know its function, it must not have one. It is obviously a silly assumption.

So the question then is, where and how do I do the same? Where do I assume that if I don’t know the function of something, it must not have one?

When I look, I find I do it all the time.

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One of the few things I watch regularly from the world of TV is Mr. Monk.

And one of the recurrent themes is his desire to be reinstated as a police officer, and repeatedly failing.

It is a good reminder of something most of us do:

He wants to attain an image, fails and despair, and overlooks what he already has.

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Each state, and any content of experience, is an invitation.

It is an invitation in many different ways.

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I have admired Stephen Fry for years, first as an actor and comedian, then as a deeply reflected, outspoken, and heart-centered human being. And now, having watched his documentary The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive, as someone who publicly allows himself to be deeply honest and vulnerable.

A few weeks back, one of his Twitter followers called his tweets a bit boring, with Fry  - caught in a dark mood - responding that he would retire from Twitter, and the two finally resolving it.

Our culture has certain ideas of what is good and desirable and what is not, and growing up and living within our culture, we absorb these ideas and come to take them as our own. We internalize them. As we all do, no matter which culture we were born into. Overall, it is a good thing. It is functional. It helps us function as a society.

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Michael Dowd and Connie Barlow (America’s Evolutionary Evangelists) have published a new, as always excellent, podcast. Among other things, they talk about Blasphemy Day and ways of relating to religious fundamentalists.

There are many ways to relate to fundamentalists, and as usual, these are all mirrors for ourselves. We can find it here, in our own daily lives and right here & now.

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