Why am I fascinated by these topics – the ones I write about here?
Why have I been fascinated by them since my mid-teens?
I could say something impersonal about it. For instance, I see them as important and often overlooked. That’s true enough. I see them as important, and the reason I keep exploring them is partly that not too many do.
The real answers, as usual, are much more intimate, personal, and interesting, and although there is an essence that’s the same for all of them, the answer for each topic also has its own flavor.
AWAKENING
Why am I interested in awakening? After all, I grew up in an agnostic/atheist family and culture, and still socially often label myself an atheist. I don’t see it as particularly noble to be interested in some of the topics of religions, considering how religions have often been used to justify dominance and different forms of marginalization and violence. Spirituality also doesn’t have a very favorable image, considering how it’s often used to indulge in fantasies and as an escape.
The answer is the oneness shift that happened when this human self was sixteen. In spite of labeling himself an atheist, and having little more than disdain for spirituality and religions, there was a oneness shift.
The oneness I am noticed itself, and that all content of experience to me happens within and as the oneness I am. That turned everything upside down and inside out, and thoroughly changed not only perception but the life of this human self in the world.
The answer to why I am interested in the topic is that I had to learn to navigate this terrain. I had to learn to clarify, deepen, invite and allow my human self to realign within it, and so on. That’s an infinitely long process, and even some decades later, I am still at the very beginning of it.
For years, I explored it on my own since I lived in a small town in Norway before internet and couldn’t find anyone who talked about this terrain in books or in person. That was a blessing, although also lonely at a human level.
Later, I found others who did talk about it, although often through layers of culture and sometimes assumptions. (Mystics from different traditions, Zen.) And later again, in my thirties, I finally found someone who talked about it more directly and clearly – especially Adyashanti, Douglas Harding, and Byron Katie. (These are contemporaries to me, and from a similar cultural background, so to me, they speak clearly and directly.)
HEALING
Why am I interested in healing? It’s because I need it.
I have trauma and wounds I wish to find healing for.
I have a chronic illness I wish to learn to live better with, and – if possible – also invite in healing for.
SOCIAL CHANGE
Why am I interested in social change, in creating a more life-centered civilization?
It’s because I wish it for myself.
I wish to live in a more life-centered and regenerative inner society, and that’s reflected in a wish for an outer society like that.
I wish to live in a society that is more life-centered because it’s more comfortable for me.
THE FAR FUTURE
Why am I interested in imagining possible futures?
More specifically, why did I start the Long Journey Home project?
It’s because imagining a civilization I wish to see is easier when I imagine it in the far future. If I only focus on today, my mind limits itself with ideas of what’s realistic. In the far future, just about anything is imaginable.
The contrast between this imagined future and now helps me shed light on our culture and civilization and how it’s internalized in me.
Mainly, it helps me clarify what I wish to see in the world, find it in me and the world, and live some of it here and now. It helps me change the culture and civilization internalized in me and reflected in my life.
REGENERATION
Why am I passionate about regeneration? Why do I write about it, and why do I have my own regeneration project in the Andes?
It’s partly because *I* need to regenerate. I need to heal and come to life. I am harmed by this culture and civilization, just like most of us are, and this living planet is.
It’s also because I am part of this larger living system, what happens to this living system happens to me, it’s severely degraded, so it only makes sense to encourage and bring in regeneration of this living system.
THE ESSENCE
So what’s the shared essence in all of this?
The essence is that the topics are personal and intimate to me, and something I deeply wish.
I need to learn to navigate my nature recognizing itself.
I need healing at many levels.
I deeply wish to live in a different inner and outer society.
I need the perspective from an imagined far future to more clearly see what’s here.
I need regeneration – of me and the larger whole I am part of.
It’s not for any abstract or noble reason. It’s far more close to home and practical.