Personal notes vol. 1

I decided to create a new series of posts on shorter personal notes. These will overlap some in topic with my ongoing journals.

Baffled by others when I don’t need to be

I sometimes lean into feeling baffled by others and the world. And behind that is a sense of superiority and arrogance.

I tell myself I am baffled, and part of me feels baffled. At the same time, I know very well some reasons why they behave as they do. So why do I sometimes lean into the bafflement? Very likely so I can feel superior and better about myself. I create a sense of distance to feel better about myself.

Of course, it doesn’t really work.

When I notice bafflement and a tendency to lean into it, I can remind myself that it comes from a wish to feel better about myself. It’s not a good look. It’s not necessary.

I can instead lean into a more mature side of me that does understand some of the reasons why people behave the way they do. (At least, some likely reasons. I cannot know for certain, of course.)

This more mature side of me also knows that the world is my mirror. I can take any story I have about them, change it to be about myself, and find genuine and specific examples of how it’s true.

I love my body

I know that some with chronic illnesses can think/feel resentful towards their body. That’s perfectly understandable, and I suspect we all have those parts of us.

At the same time, I love my body. I know it’s doing its best. I love how it keeps going in spite of the chronic illness. I love how it does its best to manage. I love how it keeps sending me clear signals, which I then either understand or don’t, and either act on or not.

I love how it supports my life. I love how it allows me to experience the full range of human experiences. I love how it allows me to participate in this amazing life.

I love you, body.

MAY 11, 2026

A spiritual butterfly

I went to an event in the Lake District with Zen people from my old lineage. Several asked if I was still involved with Zen, and I didn’t quite know how to answer. It’s complicated.

I am not steadily involved with Zen anymore, although since I left Kanzeon in the late ’90s I have gone to sesshins, I did sit with a couple of groups in Oregon, and so on. I have also been to Zen River in the Netherlands and hope to visit the new center in Spain. So I am not completely out of the loop.

At the same time, I very much continue to explore what Zen is about, and that’s far more important as I see it.

I have dedicated myself to inquiry – The Work of Byron Katie, The Big Mind process, Headless experiments, sense field explorations (Kiloby Inquiries), and some from Advaita Vedanta and neo-Advaita. I have continued with heart-centered practices – tonglen, ho’oponopno. I have continued exploring my own wounds and traumas (therapy, dialog, energy work, neurogenic tremoring, etc.). I have deepened into body-centered practices, especially Breema and Breema bodywork.

It may seem like I am a spiritual butterfly, going from one flower to another and then revisiting the ones with most nectar, and that’s true enough.

At the same time, I do typically go quite deep with each and over a long time. I did The Work just about daily for more than a decade. I did Breema bodywork just about daily for about the same length of time. I trained and got certified in the Kiloby Inquiries, did that to just about daily for many years, and also worked with clients at the Kiloby Center. I have done tonglen on and off for 35+ years.

This is all guided by my nature noticing itself, which makes a difference. And I do have a relatively good insight in the dynamics of the mind and psyche through my own explorations, a good deal of training, and – to a very small extent – through my many years of studying psychology at the university.

People say you need to stay with something for a long time if you want to dig a deep hole, which is accurate. At the same time, if you are guided by your nature noticing itself and some insight in the dynamics and nature of the mind and psyche, then whatever you do is digging further down in the same hole.

That said, do I wish I had stayed with Zen or something else for longer? Yes, a part of me has that wish. I see people who stayed with Zen and the same lineage for two or three decades and now, and remember I envisioned myself in that position. Of course, it’s not too late. And when I remember that, there is a question of whether I really want it. Do I want to go deeper in a lineage where so much is theater and marketing?

MAY 25, 2026

My real home

As a child, I had flashbacks to the time before this life. All was golden light, consciousness, love, wisdom, and with a profound sense of home.

To me, that’s my home, and this life is just a brief visit.

And fortunately, the two are not really two. I can find my home here. I can find what those flashbacks point to here and now.

Why Amma?

Why is Amma so central for me now? After so many years of Tibetan Buddhism, Zen, Taoism, Earth-centered spirituality, energy work, inquiry, heart-centered practices, and so on, why now Amma?

The short answer is that I don’t know. It’s what’s alive for me and I am going with it.

The surface answer is that she came to me two-and-a-half years ago. In November 2023, I was at my wits end with a karmic (?) pattern in my life, and the main Vortex Healing teacher suggested I asked Amma for help. I did, she came, and she took over my existence for 2-3 hours. Since then, she has been with me, taken over most healing sessions, and called me to see her physical manifestation in London last November and then going to her Ashram for ten weeks this winter. She is still with me. It’s as if everything is her or has her flavor.

And there are more answers to that question.

My mother was distant when I was little, and my parents used the crying-out approach with me. I have a deep need for healthy motherly love, and although I am learning to give it to myself, I also find that the divine mother, the divine feminine, is enormously helpful and important. Now, that has taken the form of Amma. This is Amma as a flavor of the divine feminine, as all of existence, as all of my experience. She also has a current physical form, which is a plus and I am exploring the role that plays for me and in my process.

Before I went to her ashram, I had the idea that she was all about love and hugs and her incredible work in the world. That’s true, of course, and there is far more to her, the ashram, and her work. She has a profound wisdom expressed in deceptively simple words. And she and her senior followers have a profound and lived understanding of Sanatana Dharma and Advaita Vedanta.

I find I enjoy the community around her, far more than I expected. It is a real community and many have a deep and lived understanding, including that we are all flawed and messed up human beings. There is a reason why so many are drawn to her, and it’s because we need it. We need that motherly love to find healing for ourselves and our lives, and we need and seek to find ourselves as it so we can give it to ourselves.

All of this fits very well into my path and orientation, and feels like an excellent flavor for me right now – and it will be a thread forever since it highlights a part of my nature.

JUNE 3, 2026

Feels like it’s going backwards

These days, it feels like I am going backwards. In many ways, it has felt like that for some years now.

There may be several reasons.

Because of my chronic illness, I need to rest a lot and often am unable to do things I would like to. My life looks very different from how it would if I had more energy and a clearer mind. It also means I am far less social than I normally would be, and unpracticed in being around people.

I have done some healing work for myself over the last few weeks – going into deep and dense issues like self-hatred, feeling unlovable, and so on. I have also worked on the densest issue in my system, without knowing exactly what it is. This brings up a lot of old unprocessed material, it makes me extra tired, and my systems tends to generally feel disorganized and struggling.

I am still in a dark night phase. This started in my late twenties and intensified strongly about fifteen years ago. It has gradually become less strong, and taken other forms, but I am still in it. In this particular dark night, it was as if the lid was taken off what’s unprocessed in me. Also, my health got a lot worse (that’s how it started), I have repeatedly lost much of what was/felt most important to me, things tends to go wrong, and so on.

All of this makes it difficult for me to function well, and that makes it feel like I am going backwards, at least in some significant ways. This includes in how I am with other people. I feel raw and unpracticed in interacting, including with random people when I am out doing errands.

Of course, the ideas of going forward or backwards are ideas. The measuring stick and what’s measured are both mental. They are mind-made and really a fantasy. That doesn’t mean they are not sometimes useful, especially if they are recognized as fantasies and held lightly.

JUNE 9, 2026

CFS & showering

For me, it can be surprisingly exhausting to take a shower, and I see that others with CFS/ME experience the same.

What works for me?

Slow movements. In general, I find that slow and gentle movements work better for me.

Cooler water. Hot water seems to bring about exhaustion, maybe because my body needs more energy to regulate and deal with it.

Short showers. I usually soap up, rinse, and am done.

Resting before and after. I take time to rest before and after. If I am going out, I schedule a good amount of time between showering and going out.

Sitting if possible. (Usually not possible for me, which is OK. The other things are enough, usually.)

JUNE 17, 2026

A visual oddity: 2D becomes 3D

I have noticed a visual oddity for a while – some years now.

When I look at a 2D image, there is sometimes a shift so I viscerally experience it as 3D. I see 3D depth, just as when I look at a real-life scene, and there is even some parallax when I move my head. It’s very interesting and doesn’t happen all the time, but often enough.

JUNE 20, 2026

Favorite… anything?

YouTube showed me a video where a couple guessed each other’s favorite color, food, movie, and so on.

For me, that doesn’t quite make sense. It would be impossible for me to have favorites in that way. It all depends on what it’s for and when and how.

For different things, and in different situations, I would have different preferred colors, or food, or movies, and so on.

Also, my favorite is usually something I haven’t tried before. I like to watch movies I haven’t seen yet, and eat food that’s new and unfamiliar to me. That’s my favorite.

Summer solstice & illness the last ten years

The summer ten years ago, I got Lyme disease in Southern California. The doctor there did give me antibiotics but it was far too short, which I also knew at the time. For the next few years, treatments at a specialist clinic in Gdansk and Vortex Healing helped me get much better in periods, but it would always come back in the summer. The CFS virus – likely Epstein-Barr – would also come back in the summer. About 5-6 years ago, I was able to get rid of both through Vortex Healing. A senior student did frequent sessions over several days, and several senior VH teachers also did something that seemed to work for good.

Since the, other things have happened in the middle of summer, usually around summer solstice. It’s been covid, almost dying of sepsis, having the nerves in my neck seriously pinched from someone using a massager on me there against my protests (I knew how dangerous it can be), and more. The sepsis and nerve problems had me whisked away in an ambulance. And it all happened on or a few days after summer solstice.

This year, I again got sick shortly after summer solstice. I feel pretty terrible with fever, aches, headache, nausea, dizziness, and strong discomfort through my body. I am wearing wool socks, winter hat, and lie under a thick wool blanket, and I am still freezing – in spite of it being a warm summer day (about 24 degrees I think). Most likely, it will be fine, but it is a reminder of what’s been happening around summer solstice for ten years now.

Why this pattern? I am not sure. I deeply love Norwegian summers. As a child, I also loved summers since I could chose my friends to be with. The rest of the year, I had to spend time with the bullies at school. Maybe there is a connection? As soon as the summer wanes, something in me may be reminded of my social life at school which was mostly terrible.

JUNE 28, 2026

Why didn’t I continue with Zen?

I loved living at the Zen center in Salt Lake City in the ’90s. The only reason I left was because staying in SLC was not an option for my wife. (She told me the day after our wedding.) If I had stayed, I imagine I would have continued.

And I did continue, only with other teachers – some in the same lineage and also a couple of local groups and teachers in Eugene, Oregon, when I lived there.

I also continued with Adyashanti who was/is in the same lineage and was asked to teach by his teacher, a dharma sister of my teacher.

There is another answer, and that is that I am interested in what Zen is about, not Zen itself. I have gone deep in other explorations, including different forms of inquiry and traditional Buddhist sense field inquiries and have had a daily exploration of these for years.

There is yet another answer, and that is that staying within one tradition, and especially with one teacher, comes with an expectation of becoming a senior student, taking on responsibilities, and eventually becoming a teacher. Too much in me doesn’t want that. I feel I have too much of my own trauma.

Also, because of that trauma, I imagine I won’t be very good at it, I really don’t like attention or expectations, and I tell myself that there seems to be others who are able to accept that role, and may even enjoy it, so there seems to be little or no need for me.

For the same reason, I have perfected the art of hiding, downplaying, and not expressing my own insights or noticings when in these kinds of groups.

Without this trauma, would I have continued in one tradition and possibly started teaching at some point? It’s difficult to say. I am not drawn to the responsibilities that come with it, or being treated differently because of a role, or being the object of projections. But it would be nice to share, and it would give me an opportunity to go deeper.

JULY 3, 2026

The unloved life / the unloved life

The unlived life. That’s a theme for me. Throughout my life, there has been a parallel unlived life that I have longed for. As a child, I longed for that deep sense of home I remembered from before this life. I longed for a peaceful and more free and loving family comfortable in their own skins. I loved for friends that were more accepting and kind. In my teens, I longed for a girlfriend, and especially one (a good friend in real life) in high school. And so on and so on. As an adult, my health as made my mind put more in this imaginary and parallel unlived life.

When I wrote the title, I accidentally (?) wrote unLOVED life. And when I wrote “unlived” in the first sentence, autocorrect changed it to unLOVED. That’s as accurate and more important.

Having a part of me in this unlived life, and being caught up in regrets, shoulds, and so on, means that my actual life is not fully loved. My actual life is the UNLOVED life. If it was more fully loved, I imagine the unlived life would seem different.

How would it be to more fully love this life? As it is? As it was, according to my imagination?

JULY 8, 2026

I didn’t evolve so much

Looking at my photography over time, I see that I haven’t really evolved that much beyond where I was in my teens and early twenties. Some of my best photos are still from that time, especially the ones from Yellowstone, Southern Utah, and Nepal.

I feel that’s the case with my life in general. I haven’t evolved much beyond where I was at that time.

That’s partly because of the enormous influx of inspiration and insights that came with the oneness shift when I was sixteen and for many years after. I am still digesting.

It’s partly because my life got massively derailed when I went against my clear inner guidance, married for the first time, and left just about everything that was important in my life. I was on a path that felt profoundly right, and left it for one that felt profoundly off. I have not recovered from that derailment.

It’s partly because of my very human issues – not enough, unlovable, not wanting to be seen and so on.

I have largely coasted on the flying start I had in many areas of life. And that’s not satisfying in the long run.

In photography, I want to get more serious. I want to see if I can go beyond familiar territory and lift the quality a bit.

I have put in quite a bit of work in meditation, inquiry, and so on, but also here, I have coasted compared to what I wanted. I wanted to continue with my residential Zen training, and that was one of the many things derailed when I was twenty seven or so.

Also, in one sense I did get derailed when I went against a clear inner guidance on major life decisions, and it did have a huge and often terrible impact on my life. In another sense, it’s not possible to derail. This is all life unfolding. My life is a local and temporary expression of life and existence as a whole. This too is life expressing, exploring, and experiencing itself in always new ways. It’s all true at the same time.

JULY 11, 2026

Cat looking at something above my head

After the initial oneness shift when I was sixteen, there were huge energies going through my system, and I also noticed a lot happening on top of my head and above my head.

I lived in the basement living room in my parents’ house at the time, and we had a black cat. She would often sit and stare at something above my head. Most likely, she could see – or sense – what was going on there, and that it was somewhat unusual.

JULY 13, 2026

Why & how I write here

Why do I write on this blog?

One reason is that I need to get it out somehow, and I don’t talk about these things with many. It’s a way to digest, process, and think out loud.

Another reason is that it may resonate with others. I assume there is something universal in all of my experiences. It says something about what humans can and do experience, and it often says something about our more fundamental nature.

For the first few years of this blog, I wrote in a more impersonal way. I wrote about my own personal experiences and noticings in a more general way. I hid the personal behind the universal.

Over the last few years, I decided to more often lead with the personal. Sometimes, I go a little overboard in the other direction and hide the universal within the personal!

It may be good to more consistently and intentionally include both: start personal and mention the universality of it at the end.

Just now, I went back to some recent personal posts and added a universal note at the end.

JULY 17, 2026

It’s all, not me **

From my Oslo journal for today:

I woke up feeling pretty awful again, as I have since I got the flu almost four weeks ago. Still coughing, sore throat, ear infection (not sure if the antibiotics are helping), extra fatigued, strong brain fog, and generally feeling sick and unwell.

At the same time, it’s also clear that this is all happening within and as this awake space that’s all and any sense of a me, I, doer, observer, or someone being sick or can have any label happens within and as.

That seems to be a better way to phrase it. This awake space is all, and any experience – any content of experience, the wider world, this human self, any sense of me, I, doer, observer, anything that can have any label – happens within and as this awake space.

In a sense, this awake space is what I fundamentally am, and yet it’s not a me or I or anything else.

It’s just all. Nothing is not it. As soon as something appears, it’s made of this awake space.

JULY 20,2026

Heat & productivity

Our land in the Andes is low enough – 1000 meters above sea level – that it gets warm and/or hot in the early afternoons, especially during the dry season. I notice it has a big impact on my energy levels, and I organize my days as the locals do with getting up early to get some things done, resting/napping during the hottest time of day, and then possibly doing some things late afternoon or evening.

Since I have a chronic illness (CFS/ME), it’s especially noticeable. And since it never really gets cool, at least not to the point where I feel cool and need to put on something else than a t-shirt to stay warm, it’s as if my body never has a chance to reset. It’s always struggling with managing the heat and keeping me cool. I imagine a good deal of resources goes to that.

This is, of course, one of many effects of the global warming we are in the middle of. More and more people will struggle to get things done as Earth warms up.

Also, as people point out: In spite of the heat waves many places in the world this summer, this is still a cool summer compared to what’s ahead of us.

They are not two inherently different worlds

I don’t have the sense of this world – with a human body and senses, and the world without are inherently different. When I was close to dying from sepsis, it felt like the death of this body would just be like slipping out of clothes (as many say). When someone I know dies, I can still connect with them for a while – just like I connect with people at a distance when I do energy healing. I remember how it was before this incarnation.

Of course, they are different world and different in important ways. In one, the body and senses are here, and in the other they are not.

And yet, they both happen within and as what I am. Whatever happens now, with this body, happens within and as what I am. Whatever happens after this body is gone happens within and as what I am.

That noticing has been here for some decades now so it’s visceral.

And I also have enough experiences to show me the sameness of the two, as I mentioned above. I connect with people after they move on, for some weeks or months.

I had flashbacks to how it was before this incarnation and still remember it (or remember the memory of it) – all is Spirit, all happens within and as Spirit/consciousness, a profound sense of being home, a profound sense of love. And I have explored that since. I have intentionally noticed that here too, in this life.

JULY 22, 2026

My body needs attention **

Just like a child, plant, or animal, or anyone in my life and my life in general, my body needs my attention.

I am pretty good at having attention both in the wider world and in this body and this human self, often at the same time. That’s because it’s all happening as part of the field of content of experience. They are part of the same field, and any boundary is imagined to help navigate and communicate.

Most of the time, I am present with this body and personality.

Except, it seems, when I get absorbed into a project. Most recently, that happened when I worked on the plant database. For about two weeks, that was just about all that was in my life from I woke up to late evening when I went to bed.

I noticed the shift as it happened, that it was one-sided and not aligned with my awakening and healing path, and I remembering wondering what would happen. What happened was that I got sick with the flu for a month! It’s as if my body said: I need your attention, and this is how I’ll get it.

The invitation is: How would it be to allow myself to get absorbed in a project and still be present with it and this body and human self?

It’s an experiment as so much in life.

JULY 24, 2026

Jean de Florette / Manon of the spring **

I saw Jean de Florette for the first time today and got hooked enough to watch the second part, Manon of the Spring, after. I saw the first in a movie theater, and the second at home. Both made a big impression on me, mainly because I see myself in that life and the situations they experienced.

It reminded me of Finca Milagros and our water situation. Since we have a couple of dry periods a year – one is 3-5 months long with maybe one rain each month – and the water from town is unreliable, we are doing quite a bit to collect rainwater. We have enough to water the plants for a few weeks (?) dry periods, but have a long way to go before we are fully self-reliant.

Just like Jean, I am doing my own calculations. The rainwater tank for the big house is 30,000 liters which is filled with three or four nights with good rain. (200m2 and 40-50mm a rain.) This water is currently used for watering the plants but I would like to set it up so it can be used in the houses as well. We also have a rainwater collection system for the small house, but since the roof collapsed it’s not working now. Here, the roof is 100m2 and the tank is, I think, 20,000 liters.

It reminded me of our decisions for what to grow. I see myself in Jean and his city-ways, calculations, and initial optimism. In my case, I hope to eventually be able to sell plants from our nursery (we have several hundred plants there now), food from the food forest, and hopefully roasted Maya nuts in some years. My initial optimism is predictably tempered now that I see more of the complexity in all of this work.

It reminded me of unfair and small minded interactions in rural communities. In our case, a big part of the roof of our house collapsed less than two years after it was built. The whole roof – with large roof beams and tiles – fell down next to our bed while we slept, and I still have PTSD from it. The architects and builder immediately denied any responsibility, even before we had any discussion or analysis about it. A third-party report said the builder and architects were responsible and they predictably did not accept it. The architects went one step further and sued us last year for defamation, as a strategy of intimidation. This whole experience has been extremely stressful and it will be very costly to repair the roof. We have still not been able to do it, almost two years later.

It reminded me of my own lost opportunities and regrets in life, including in romantic relationships. I have more than one from early in my adult life, similar to César. I had everything I dreamt of in my first serious relationship and let it go when she wanted us to get married. I wanted to too, but she gave me an ultimatum that hurt me enough to not say yes.

It reminded me of larger collective issues around water and ecology. Where we are in the Andes, people live as if there is no tomorrow when it comes to water. (Which means there will be no tomorrow when it comes to water! Or, at least, a very difficult tomorrow.) The water from town is dirty and makes people sick. They don’t care for the origin of that water. They don’t plan head. They allow unlimited drilling and use of groundwater. Corruption makes it difficult to make good decisions. People there cut down trees and vegetation that otherwise slows down and brings rainwater into the soil. Because of the deforestation and mismanagement, the springs, creeks, and rivers dry up and the groundwater is contaminated (from sewage and septic systems) and depleted. It’s utter insanity and few take it seriously.

In general in our culture, there is an astonishing lack of basic water literacy. Jean and the Soubeyrans grow food on naked soil, without mulch, in mono-cultures, apparently without improving the soil, and so on. A wiser approach is to build terraces to slow down and allow rainwater to infiltrate, improve the soil in terms of structure, nutrients, and microbial and fungal life, use mulch to protect the moisture in the soil, plant ground cover and a mix of plants so there is no naked soil, grow in layers, and so on. A rich and layered vegetation cools the area through shade and evapotranspiration, and it allows water to infiltrate which feeds springs, creeks, and rivers. Ground water has a huge impact on the landscape, ecosystem, and human life so it’s vital to protect both the quality and quantity of this water. Forests shape the local, regional, and global climate, and bring rain to areas that otherwise would be much more arid. A rich largely native vegetation is essential for human life.

“Overthinking” is sometimes appropriate

I am at yet another crossroads in life, and consider my options at our land in the Andes and also my financial situation.

I receive a very small pension because of my disability, and inherited some money – a portion of which has gone to the land and infrastructure on Finca Milagros, and also half of the initial small house. I could sell my half of that house to A., and take some inheritance and build my own small house further in. Then, I would have my own place in a relatively quiet (?) location. My pension would give me enough for daily life there, but not for larger projects, repairs, and so on.

I also have questions about the land. Partly, it’s the complications of owning it with others. Partly, there are questions about water, wildfires, heat, drought, and so on. It’s difficult to say how the climate will change in the coming years and decades, although it’s a good bet to assume hotter temperatures, longer and hotter drought periods, and possibly more intense rain. The droughts mean that there is an increased risk of wildfires.

There is also the rising costs, which I guess you find all around the world. Corruption, which as a Norwegian is extremely difficult to accept and not want to make a big scandal about. And just general ignorance and stupidity and people not caring about the longer term and collective impacts of their decisions.

In this case, it’s appropriate to think through it all. And it’s good to see that these are all thoughts and images and not the actual reality… and that life is a gamble. Whatever I do is a gamble. It’s more a matter of what kinds of gamble I want to make, what fallbacks I have, and if I can live with the possible outcomes.

JULY 28, 2026

When life goes wrong & my role in it **

I woke up feeling drained this morning, which is not unusual for me. It’s typical for living with CFS/ME, and not surprising after six weeks of flu and recovering from the flu.

I notice my mind also goes to familiar unresolved themes in my life.

My disability pension is too small to live on. I am unable to work. For a while, I got by with seriously frugal living and help from my parents but they are no longer around.

The roof of our small house in the Andes collapsed two years after it was built, almost killing us in our sleep. The thick roof beams and heavy clay tiles crashed to the floor next to our bed. A report found the architects and builder responsible but they denied responsibility from their first response. The architects went into a denial and attack approach and sued both of us for defamation.

The mind goes to a series of examples like this.

Ten years ago, the municipality put sewage lines through the middle of my parents’ garden even if the written contract stated they would put it along the border. This led to a loss of 500 m² of buildable land in a desirable location. In addition, the contractor stole the deep rich soil, likely sold it for a significant profit, and replaced it with clay that nothing would grow in. I was in contact with lawyers who said we had a strong case and the municipality would suggest a settlement before a court case. My father refused to cooperate and said he would never have anything to do with lawyers. My brother sided with my father, as he always did. This meant the house was worth considerably less when it was put out on the market some years later, likely at least 200,000 euros.

In the 2010s, I was in a process to apply for disability. Central people in the process made a series of errors. For instance, after I had spent years going to a long list of specialists, I was told to come back to the main doctor and receive the CFS/ME diagnosis. Instead, I found myself with a different doctor who started the process from the beginning. Years later, they admitted they made a mistake. After all this, when I finally applied, my application was denied. They apparently deny disability applications for CFS/ME by default. I had to take it to court which was another distressing process.

In the early 2010s, my health was better and I still had residency in the US. I love the Bay Area and feel profoundly at home and alive there, and easily meet likeminded people which I hardly ever do other places. I stayed with a friend there, and got two dream jobs. I then got a long term rental in the Marina area through another friend, in a beautiful apartment and for a symbolic price. At the same time, a friend of mine in the UK (who was apparently interested in a relationship with me which I was not at all) had started talking with a non-dual mentor of mine whom I trusted. They both decided I should leave everything in the Bay Area, go stay with her, and take an offer to teach art at a school. It felt deeply wrong, but since they both insisted so strongly, I thought they must know something I didn’t so against my better knowing, I went. Predictably, It turned out to be a disaster and misery all around – in terms of work (wasn’t at all what I had been told and lasted two or three weeks), my health (this was winter in the UK which was terrible for my health), and otherwise – and I lost my opportunity to live and work in the Bay Area.

More immediately, my friend I am staying with has trouble sleeping so she is sometimes up long into the night, and not very careful with closing doors. Even with earplugs, I wake up from the slam and my bed and walls shaking. Where my head is in the bed is also by the wall to the kitchen, and when she slams the kitchen cabinet doors closed it’s as if an explosion is going off and everything shakes. My nervous system is already on edge because of all the trauma so it means my system is on constant high alert. I mentioned it once without anything being resolved. I brought it up again yesterday which may help with the night peace, we’ll see.

These are just a few examples from the last few years. The list is much longer and there are similar types of examples from the last 15 years especially. For instance, when I got divorced at the beginning of the 2010s, I was very sick with CFS in Norway and trusted my ex to do the process correctly. It turned out she took all the money from the sale of the house (more than 300,000 USD) and I also lost everything I owned apart from what I had with me in a suitcase.

I have abandoned a series of very promising careers, mainly because of my health combined with not wanting to be visible. It started with art (was the youngest to be accepted into the most prestigious art exhibit in Norway, was a student/apprentice of a remarkable painter, had everything going for me including a deep passion) and then went on to other fields.

My deepest wish in life was/is to have a family of my own, but that never happened. The closest I came was in my first serious relationship. She had a young son and a dog so we had an instant family. It was likely the happiest period of my life and felt profoundly right. She was six years older than me and wanted us to get married. I wanted that too. Unfortunately, she gave me an ultimatum, and I felt so hurt by it that I abandoned that too.

There is an endless series of examples like this. Of course, I am sure everyone can come up examples like this from a lived life. It depends on the filters we use.

Some beliefs that come up from this: I am a victim. I am a victim of their actions. I am the victim of others.

In a conventional sense, it may be true that in some of these situations, I was harmed by the actions of others. At the same time, I can see how my own patterns played a role in these situation. I could have acted differently to prevent, clear up, or resolve them. I could have been more clear with the office that restarted the diagnostic process. I could have been more clear I didn’t want to use those architects – they didn’t match what we wanted and seemed inexperienced. We also received a warning about the builder, which was quickly retraced, but we could and should have looked further into it. I could have clarified and pushed the lawyer option more strongly with my father. Another more healthy person would have managed most or all of these situations differently and had a different and likely more desirable outcome.

A common theme is self-abandonment. Because of my disability, I often feel I don’t have the energy to fight. This comes in addition to conflict avoidance and other strategies to deal with my own wounds. One of my core wounds is being / feeling unlovable. And one of my main strategies is to try to be as invisible as possible.

This all comes down to wishing to be a better steward of my own life. I can be aware of my typical patterns, anticipate them, and take precautions. I can enlist the help of others. I can more clearly be on my own side (which is also the side of others since everyone benefits from actions taken from more clarity).

I called this “when life goes wrong”. Of course, that’s just according to this personality. Life is not inherently right or wrong, it just is. It unfolds. What’s happening here are the local and temporary expressions of the universe and existence as a whole, expressing, exploring, and experiencing itself in always new ways. That’s an important side to this too. It helps me hold it more lightly, while still wanting to be a better steward of my own life.

My forties – living unlived life **

My forties were a revisiting of my teens and early twenties in many ways. I got to live life experiences I felt I missed out on then, especially in terms of relationships.

For instance, I got to have a relationship that was fun, pleasurable, and light and lasted a few months. She was younger and unusually attractive. Before that, I had a relationship that felt deeply right and nourishing with an artistic Central European which appealed to dreams from my early twenties. Then, someone I had an amazing friendship with and whose striking classical beauty fulfilled a teenage dream. These were all sincere relationships, and they all happened to fulfill something unfulfilled from earlier in life. I mention the beauty, artistic life, and so on knowing it can be seen as superficial. Still, it went deep and healed something in me.

I also got to live in different places – Norway, California, Switzerland, and Devon in the UK. I finished a graduate degree. I even got back into comic books and graphic novels.

Life gave me opportunities to experience what I wished for earlier in life and was still unlived.

It felt and feels like a revisiting and a healing process. Something in me fell more into place because of having those experiences.

Why did I miss out on these life experiences in my teens and twenties? In my teens, it was mostly because of the social anxiety and feeling out of place in the social life in school. In my twenties, it was not for lack of opportunities. It was mostly because I took life and relationships enormously seriously which excluded a lot of experiences I otherwise would have had, including more fun ones. My guidelines for myself were sincere and they became restrictive which was likely in response to fear. I made up noble and restrictive guidelines for myself to manage my own fear and insecurities.

For instance, I spent just about all my time on studies, art, watching serious art movies, reading serious books on Buddhism, art, and science, spending hours daily on serious meditation and body-centered practices, and so on. In terms of relationship, I wanted to find someone who was on an awakening path similar to me, and I didn’t find many my age that fit that criterion where I was – first Oslo and then the Zen center in Salt Lake City. (In Oslo and at the Zen center, most women dedicated to awakening were much older than me and/or less interesting for other reasons.)

I should also mention that this theme unfolded parallel and intertwined with the dark night process. These experiences lightened the darkness and also, often at the end of the relationships!, brought up deeper unprocessed material in me.

Note: This is from my Oslo journal.

JULY 29, 2026

Spiritual ancestors? **

I saw a quote from Thich Nhat Hanh about how he first had the historical Buddha as a spiritual ancestor and later included Jesus.

I understand the narrow meaning of a spiritual ancestor, and I can find some for myself. They include the historical Buddha and Jesus, and a long list of others including Daoists, the author(s) of I Ching, mystics from many times and traditions, and modern ones like CG Jung, Erik Damman, Arne Næss, Joanna Macy, Adyshanti, Byron Katie, and others.

As important as this core is, it also feels a bit contrived. In reality, all beings and all of existence feel like my spiritual ancestors. It’s all existence unfolding and exploring, expressing, and experiencing itself in always new ways. What has gone before is all my ancestor, it has all led to what’s here now. Even what we call the present is my spiritual ancestor since it’s already gone by the time a thought says anything about it.

In an even more real sense, my nature – this awake space – is my spiritual ancestor. It’s what everything happens within and as. It’s what forms itself into everything.

In a conventional sense, the list is smaller and more specific. In a more real, lived, and visceral sense, existence as a whole in all its expressions is my spiritual ancestor. And in an even more real sense, my nature – the consciousness I am – is my spiritual ancestor since it forms itself into this whole field of experience which includes everyone and everything.

On my own / visceral shifts

I notice some shifts this summer.

One is that I am content with being on my own, and enjoy it a lot. In the past, and especially in my teens and twenties, I often felt I missed out if I was on my own. Somehow, my life and experiences was more valuable or valid when with others. That has lessened over time, and now the contentment of being on my own is here at a visceral level.

Another has to do with the future. I cannot really contact the future anymore at a visceral level. Of course, I have some images about the future for practical purposes, like mirages, and that’s about it.

Related to that is something about death. Both of my parents died within the last year so it’s likely related to that. Viscerally and in the foreground, I know this human self will die and that it can happen at any moment. It creates a heightened sense of immediacy in my life.

All of these shifts are noticed. They are here, as visitors. They are lived by me as a whole. They are here as the body is here.

It all seems ordinary and organic.

JULY 30, 2026

Computer programming

I taught myself programming when I was ten or twelve and we got a CBM 64 computer. I taught myself BASIC, machine code, Pascal, C, and possibly a few other languages. I made my first website in 1995 in my spare time at the University of Utah with our own AOL account. Later in the 1990s, I taught myself SQL, ColdFusion, and database development. And in the 2000s, WordPress and Drupal/Joomla. It’s always been mostly for fun and for my own use, although I have built databases – often online and searchable – for free for organizations I have been connected with.

My earlier writings **

I recovered and added a couple of articles I wrote in 1997.

Ecopsychology, Ecospirituality, Deep Ecology, and Health (1997) – shorter

Outline of a Holistic Worldview – Ecospirituality, Sustainability, Ecopsychology & Deep Ecology (1997) – longer

It’s interesting to look at these now. I remember my enthusiasm at the time, my wish to continue writing about these things, and maybe teach at a college or university. That did not happen, partly because of going against my clear inner guidance that same year (going to Wisconsin and abandoning just about everything important in my life) and partly because of my health.

Also, I see an interesting dynamic. After the oneness shift, my mental aspect tried to make sense of it. It sought out worldviews that matched the immediate noticing of oneness and all as a seamless whole. That’s mainly what these articles are about. These days, that’s less of an interest, maybe because it’s all more lived and familiar and that’s less needed.

Eat more in a crash

When I am in a CFS-crash, or just extra fatigued after activity, my body craves food and especially quick energy.

That’s not surprising. It’s my body’s way to take care of itself and try to boost the energy as quickly as possible.

AUGUST 3, 2026

Nobody reliably on my side **

One of the big issues in my life is that I never felt I had someone reliably on my side.

My parents were there in one sense, but not reliably on my side. When I was bullied at school, they just told me to accept it and not do anything about they. They also did not do anything, and no teacher ever did anything. Friends at school would be my friends when we were together, but switch to the bully’s side against me when a bully was present.

I was physically strong – would typically win wrestling matches, arm wrestling, and so on – so it was not physical bullying. It was psychological and social. I would get hateful looks when I answered the teacher’s question. (I was always very well prepared and almost always knew the answers.) I would be frozen out from social groups. I also experienced the classic thing where I would get chosen last for teams even if I was quite athletic.

From this, I learned to abandon myself. I have often not been on my on side in life, even as an adult. I have not stood up for myself or what’s important to me. I have yielded to what’s important to others, even if I knew it likely was a terrible decision for me (and sometimes for them too).

Also, there may be sides of me that got me into that situation as a child. I accepted it, so it was easy for others to continue with it. I had quite unusual interests and passions, and was also highly sensitive.

I also see that my family continued this pattern of not reliably be on my side. A few years ago, when the value of my parents’ property was reduced with at least 200,000 euros through a clear mistake by the municipality (they put a large sewage line through their garden and in the wrong location), I contacted a lawyer so we could receive compensation. We had a very strong case, and it would very likely be resolved long before any court case. My whole family strongly and automatically rejected it without any discussion. My father said he would never have anything to do with a lawyer. It didn’t matter for them. My parents didn’t need the money, and my brother is financially well off. I am the one who desperately would have needed the money due to my disability and very low income. They didn’t take that into consideration. That’s one of many examples.

Intergenerational and collective trauma

It’s been very helpful for me to look at my own wounds, hangups, and traumas in the context of intergenerational and collective trauma. It has helped me to see that what’s personal is also collective. We are – at least many of us – in the same boat. It’s not unique to me. What’s in me is part of larger patterns.

My parents and brother always denied that anything was going on, even if the family was clearly dysfunctional. In that sense, I was alone with it. But that too is an expression of the wounds and trauma, and it doesn’t change that it’s all part of much larger patterns.

AUGUST 3, 2026

Tarot for my health

I see I Ching, the tarot, and so on mainly as a reflection of archetypes we all have in us, and sometimes as an intentional use of synchronicities. I asked AL to do a tarot reading about my health. And this was the result.

The result seems to mirror the process I am already in, and is a support and encouragement for that process. I like that it’s undramatic, an encouragement for a natural process, and also ties in to the dream I had a couple of days ago.

See below for an AI take on the cards.

Based only on the question (“My health”) and the cards

Overall theme

The spread suggests that the next phase of healing comes less through greater effort and more through openness, receptivity, and creating the conditions in which healing can unfold naturally.

The past: Eight of Pentacles

This card acknowledges sustained effort, discipline, and perseverance. It suggests that a great deal of work has already been invested in understanding or improving health. The message is that this foundation already exists; more of the same may not be what is needed now.

The present: Ace of Cups

At the center of the spread, the Ace of Cups points to emotional and physical renewal. It suggests opening to healing, allowing emotions to flow, and becoming receptive to nourishment, support, and restoration.

Guidance: Page of Cups

The Page of Cups encourages listening carefully to the body’s signals with curiosity rather than fear or judgment. It suggests trusting intuition, remaining open to unexpected insights, and approaching healing with a beginner’s mind.

Higher influence: The Empress

The Empress represents nature, nourishment, rest, compassion, and the body’s innate capacity to regenerate. The card suggests that healing is supported by creating an environment of care, beauty, good food, connection, and closeness to the natural world.

Foundation: Page of Wands and Ace of Wands

Together, these cards point toward the emergence of new vitality. The Page suggests taking small, life-affirming steps and remaining open to new possibilities, while the Ace represents the beginning of renewed energy and life force. Rather than promising dramatic change, they suggest that genuine renewal often begins quietly.

Summary

The spread suggests that the most important shift is from striving to allowing. It emphasizes receptivity over effort, nourishment over struggle, and creating the conditions in which the body’s natural healing processes can express themselves.

In the context of your life

A confirmation rather than a new direction

Seen in the context of your life, the cards feel less like a prediction than a confirmation of a transition that has already begun. The Eight of Pentacles reflects decades of searching, learning, spiritual practice, therapies, research, and persistent attempts to recover your health. It acknowledges the sincerity and dedication you have brought to that journey. The message is not that those years were a mistake, but that they have served their purpose.

A return to your natural way of being

The remaining cards suggest that the next stage is not about becoming someone new, but about recovering qualities that have always been most natural to you: trust, intuition, love of nature, creativity, openness, and following a quiet inner knowing. Rather than organizing your life around illness and healing, they point toward organizing it around living.

From self-effort to support

One of the recurring themes in your life has been the feeling that you had to carry everything yourself. The Empress offers a different possibility. You immediately associated her with Amma and the experience of unconditional love and being held that you found at her ashram. Whether understood spiritually or psychologically, the card suggests allowing yourself to receive support rather than relying almost exclusively on determination and self-effort.

Echoing the dream

The reading closely mirrors your recent dream of the group of female healers. In both, healing comes through trust rather than control. You do not have to understand everything, explain everything, or make the healing happen yourself. Your role is simply to become available to it.

Barichara and regeneration

The reading also resonates with your vision for Barichara and Finca Milagros. Your hope has never been merely to own land, but to create a place of regeneration—for the forest, the soil, wildlife, and yourself. The Empress naturally evokes this vision. Living close to nature, restoring degraded land, growing a food forest, eating nourishing food, and allowing life to follow its own rhythms all reflect the same principle expressed by the cards: healing arises when the conditions are right. Just as you cannot force a forest to regenerate, you cannot force your own healing. You can only cultivate the environment in which both become possible.

The deeper message

Taken together, the reading suggests that much of your adult life became organized around surviving—through illness, spiritual discipline, and difficult life circumstances. The invitation now is not to abandon everything you have learned, but to let those experiences become the foundation for a simpler and more natural way of living. The emphasis shifts from striving to receiving, from fixing to nurturing, from control to trust, and from trying to make life happen to participating in the life that is already unfolding.

In one sentence

You have already done much of the work. The next chapter is about returning to your natural way of being and creating a life in which healing, like the regeneration of a forest, is allowed to emerge rather than forced.

AUGUST 4, 2026

Inability to take the view of others

I have a somewhat challenging relationship with my brother. One side is that we are quite different in our orientation and worldview, and he doesn’t waste an opportunity to point it out and show me that I am wrong. (He is very conservative, a climate change denier, and so on.) I don’t bring up these topics since I don’t see any reason for it. Another is that any interaction with him, and especially around practical projects, typically gets immensely complicated.

The most recent example is from today. He bought a Mac from 2011 that he wants to get working (he is too cheap to buy a new one even if he is well off), so he asked if I could install an older MacOS on a memory stick. I said yes, and assumed – and still assume – it’s pretty straightforward. He sent me a link to page 354 on a forum with extremely complicated instructions where 99% doesn’t apply to my side of the process. I asked him about it and suggested my part was more simple. From his response, he doesn’t seem to be able to differentiate the full project with all its complexity from my relatively small and simple job, and what info I need to do it.

I have long understood that he has trouble imagining the view and experiences of others. I experience it in just about any interaction with him, and it’s a big reason why it typically gets immensely complicated. What’s simple with others feels like pulling teeth with him. I also suspect it ties into his flavor of conservatism. He doesn’t understand that others are not as privileged as him. He doesn’t understand the many factors that makes life much more difficult for many others, including social background, abilities, opportunities, and so on. So he instead choses to blame the victim and support policies that benefit the already privileged at the cost of the rest of society.

He is also not very open to new experiences while I am at the other end of the spectrum. He lives a five minute walk from where we grew up. He doesn’t really travel. He listen to the same music as he did in his teens. That’s not bad or wrong, of course. We need people like that in society. But it may be related to challenges in taking the perspective of others. He seems to lack that curiosity. (On the other hand, I seek out new experiences, moved abroad early in life, travel and have lived many places in the world, always listen to new and “exotic” music, and so on. I am curious about the experiences of others.)

Why do certain world issues have a charge for me?

Why am I concerned with authoritarian leaders like Trump and Putin? People who don’t understand what it means to have authoritarian leaders? People who ignore immensely important issues like global ecological overshoot?

Why do those issues in particular have a charge for me?

It is partly because it’s important for the world, obviously.

At the same time, there are always also more personal reasons. And as much as this sounds like a cliché, they often tie into our childhood experiences and family dynamics.

In my case, my parents loved me, gave me a materially safe home, wanted the best for me, and so on.

And there were also family dynamics that were immensely difficult for me.

My mother would nag my father without much break, and he never – as far as I am aware – stood up to her. He allowed it to happen, and was complicit in it. In one sense, she was an authoritarian bully and he allowed it to happen. My older brother passively joined in with these dynamics, in the sense that he never spoke up about it and was on their side. When I spoke up about it as a child and later, and was strongly attacked by my parents for doing so.

I have a kind of bystander trauma from it, which partly takes the form of a freeze & fawn response since I couldn’t do much about it. Fortunately, these dynamics were not, at least not obviously, directed to me. I was more of an observer and bystander.

These dynamics are reflected in what I experience a charge about in the world. I get upset when I see authoritarian leaders and people who support and defend them. I get upset when people seem blind to hugely important issues in the world. I get upset when dissent is suppressed. I love when people speak up and are able to initiate change. I love when people care about truth and life.

That all ties into my own childhood and family dynamics.

That’s how it is for many, and it’s not wrong. It’s part of the drive for many who work for social justice, sustainability, and so on.

It’s good to acknowledge and be aware of.

It is also good to find a healthier relationship with it all, and healing for these patterns in myself. That will allow me to find more peace in myself, and also be more effective in the world: less reactive, less one-sided, more understanding, more nuanced, and more able to step back when that is wise and engage when that is needed.

Note: This is from April 15, Reflections of Society etc., but I thought I would include it here.

AUGUST 8, 2026

Silence

I love silence. As I write this, it’s 6am, silent, and I am not doing anything to change that.

I listen to music a lot and enjoy it. And to be honest, I mostly listen to it to drown out noise from neighbors. The door slamming. The sometimes loud voices of people outside. The scraping and banging.

Without that, there is no need for music. I love the silence.

Note: This is from my journal from today.

Nobody will read it – is that true?

As I write here, or anywhere on this website, I have the thought: Nobody will read this.

Why would anyone read it? Even people close to me don’t read it. They may take a quick glance at one or two articles on the front page, and that’s it. I know that from the little feedback I get. And none of it is about the content. I don’t know if anyone has said it’s interesting or helpful to them.

Is it true that nobody will read it? No. I do. As I write, I read it. It’s for me.

Note: Also from my journal from today.

AUGUST 8, 2026

Being honest with myself is good medicine

I talked with JH today, and the topic got to how we relate to disappointment, our lives not turning out the way we had hoped, and so on. I have found that being the most honest with myself is the most helpful here.

For instance, I don’t know what would have been on the other paths. I have friends who have had children and spouses die relatively young, or other things thrown at them that has been far from easy. I would have brought with me my hangups, wounds, and traumas, and who knows how that would have played out. One thing is for certain, and that is that it would not have been the way I imagined. (Although, of course, it may also have been fulfilling, meaningful, and joyful.)

JH brought up another aspect of this honest, and sometimes brutally honest, view. In my case, I now have time. I have just enough money to get by. Many would want that kind of life. (Although likely not the fatigue, brain fog, and PEM which is pretty debilitating.) On the other paths, I may have been stressed, overwhelmed, and maybe not as good at it as I had thought. It would certainly have come with challenges and things this personality wouldn’t have enjoyed.

This is all sobering. The reality is, I don’t know. I don’t know how those other paths would have been. I don’t know what would have been there for me. I don’t know what’s better, if there is a “better”, in the bigger picture.

Of course, there is also grief, sadness, anger, and more in response to my lost life and dreams. That’s very understandable and completely valid. These feelings and reactions are natural, and even healthy. And if I lived this life again, knowing what I now do, I would definitely have made other choices. If only to see what would have been on those other paths.

My life during the pandemic **

I know that life was difficult for many during the pandemic and I don’t want to dismiss or downplay their challenges.

For me, it was good. I loved that the streets were silent. I loved my long walks in the forest. I loved that much of what had only been in person now were online. (Much easier for me and others with disability.) I loved my many months at the cabin by the lake in the forest near Oslo.

Since I have a disability, my life wasn’t that different during the pandemic. Others joined my lifestyle, and it made me feel less unusual. (Even if I didn’t wish for a pandemic or for others to have their lives restricted or upended.)

I was privileged during the pandemic. I had a place to live. I was free to go for walks. I had easy access to nature. (My childhood forest was just a five minute walk down the street.) I had food and all the basics covered. I had a cabin where I could spend as much time as I wanted.

Many others were not so lucky. In other countries, people were confined to their apartments or houses. They were not free to go for walks. Many did not have access to nature or a cabin they could go to. Some lost all or most of their income and found themselves in a very difficult financial situation. Some lost people close to them, or they lost their own life. Some found themselves in countries where the government were either irresponsible (Trump’s USA) or overly strict (China).

From another planet? *

This is something I rarely mention, mainly because it’s not so relevant to much.

I since my early teens, I have had a vague sense of being from another planet, one where the civilization is far beyond the current human one. (Which, to be fair, wouldn’t take that much. Current human civilization is still in its infancy.)

I don’t really take it literally. I take it as something far more universal. It’s pretty easy to see that our current human civilization is in its infancy. We are a very young species, and our civilization is even much younger. We are in the very first phase of having what we consider advanced technology – one that, combined with our huge numbers, can and does change the planet as a whole.

As so many point out, our collective wisdom is far behind our technological level and power. Our collective stupidity almost ensures that we will, and are, doing very stupid things that impacts this planet as a whole.

It’s also not difficult to see some of the causes of this problem, including a collective Western worldview that assumes separation. That false sense of separation allows us to harm Earth and think it’s mostly OK, we’ll somehow get by. The reality is that we are destroying the web of life we are part of and fully depend on for our own lives and existence. What happens to Earth happens to us in a direct and immediate way. (It also allows us to harm each other and think it’s OK, which it isn’t. Also here, we are harming ourselves in an immediate and direct way.)

It’s not difficult to see some of the solutions: a worldview that assumes oneness, that we are a temporary and local expression of this always evolving web of life. An economic system that takes ecological realities into account, and so on. I have outlined some of how this may look in the Long Journey Home project.

And it’s not difficult to see that our insights, knowledge, and skills, even at its highest level, is also just barely scratching the surface. This too is an expression of a species in its infancy. There is infinitely further to go in art, science, medicine, an understanding of who and what we are, our maps of the world and ourselves, and so on.

Seeing all this, it makes sense that I – or anyone else with some interest in this – may feel like they are from another planet!

The edge effect in my life

In ecosystems, we often find the most diversity at the edges – where two landscapes meet. These edges have the diversity from both and also the diversity only found at the edges.

I also find the edge effect in my own life. I have lived for several years in three different countries on three different continents (Europe, North America, and South America), and for six to nine months in three other countries on two continents (Europe and Asia). This has enriched my life, as has having friends from around the world and from different cultures.

I have formally studied several topics full time and in-depth, including art, architecture, and psychology. (Went to graduate school for the two latter.) And I have a deep interest in a wide range of other topics.

I have trained in several spiritual traditions and several forms of therapy and healing.

I have had a few significant relationships with people who were quite different from each other.

These are some of the edges that makes life rich and interesting, and something new comes out of these edges.

Spiritual traditions vs what they are about

In a slightly different life, I could easily have been a priest of some kind. But in this, it has not been possible since I am interested in what religions and spirituality are about, and not the religions or traditions themselves. I would be more loyal to what works than any tradition.

AUGUST 10, 2026

Do I have Complex PTSD?

Complex PTSD has become fashionable, in a sense.

It’s likely “fashionable” because it’s now being more fully recognized and diagnosed. It has likely been relatively common in our Western culture for centuries. In a domination culture, people will have PTSD. Trauma is part of what perpetuates a domination culture.

Although I haven’t been diagnosed, I assume I have it too, or at least some version of it. I am familiar with the diagnostic requirements and it’s a match.

My noise reactivity & CPTSD **

My whole life, my system has reacted to noise, and especially some kinds of noise.

I am pretty sure this has to do with my wounds and likely trauma from early in life.

My mother would nag, complain, and order my father around almost constantly. And when I say constantly, that’s actually accurate. It’s difficult to convey how extreme it was.

When I brought it up, including at maybe five or six years old, the whole family would turn against me in anger and deny that anything was happening. My brother bought into their pattern and dynamics instead of questioning it.

Fortunately, she didn’t do it – or anything similar – with me, perhaps because I wouldn’t allow it. But she was preoccupied and not very present or available for me when I was little. She obviously had her own traumas and troubles, and dealt with it – distracted herself from it – by treating my father like this. It became her compulsion and almost life purpose.

I had my room next to the dining/living room growing up, so I heard her the whole time through the wall and doors. Later, when I was about nine or ten, I moved into the basement room – which was very nice with a fireplace, wood stove, wood panels, and so on. It was also directly below the living room, so there too, I heard my mother constantly verbally mistreating my father.

It was unbearable and overwhelming, especially because it never seemed to stop. It was relentless. (It actually went on until the last moments of my mothers’ life.)

I am pretty sure this is why my system now is hyper alert and hyper reactive to noise, especially similar kinds of noise: People talking intensely, loudly, or non-stop, or noise coming through the doors and walls.

It also reacts to people harshly turning newspaper pages, since that’s what my brother would do when with my parents. His tension and stress came out partly that way.

Growing beyond our trauma **

Some (Jung?) talk about growing beyond our trauma. The trauma is still here, but we find ourselves as much more than it and it takes up less space in our lives.

I can relate. My trauma is still here, although I am much less caught up in it than I used to be. I know it’s a very small part of who and what I am. My life is much more than the trauma.

I see – and viscerally feel – it more in context, and have a different relationship with it. I have learned to befriend it more.

Civilization game

This morning, I remembered the civilization game that’s been on my mind for a while – at least since Oregon in the 2000s when I was talking with DS about it and seriously considered developing it, and really from the 1990s when I was especially into global ecological overshoot, ecological footprint, and so on. That time, it seemed a bit overwhelming. Now, it seems I can likely do it.

I am developing some principles, guidelines, and simple prototypes to see how engaging it is. It should be a “page turner” where you stay engaged to see what happens next, otherwise it’s not worth it.

The framework includes: Lila – Existence, the universe and Earth exploring itself in always new ways. Earth as a seamless evolving living system, with humanity as just one of many temporary expressions. Deep time long before and after humanity. (As the context, not part of the gameplay.) Global ecological overshoot and ecological footprint as core measures. And regeneration as one of the themes and options.

It’s experimental, just like the universe, Earth, and life is. It’s more experimental than educational or ideological.

The focus is on the coming decades and centuries of ecological crisis, and how we navigate through it.

It assumes a great diversity of responses to these challenges. Each community and region has its own response, often dramatically different from each other.

It’s non-ideological in that it acknowledges that all responses have upsides and downsides and consequences in the short and long term. These are interesting, not the ideologies themselves.

It’s played at three levels: local, regional, and global. Although not at the same time.

You can choose a community to be involved in. There will be a great diversity of these.

Each community and the regional and global conditions, start now in 2026 with real-life data as much as possible. It starts real, and then becomes speculation.

It takes developmental levels, trauma load, and more into account.

The choices the player faces should all be real, reasonable, and “good” choices. Each one comes with consequences, both desirable and shadows.

Some decisions have effects far into the future. The accumulated decisions creates a great deal of divergence over time.

Sometimes, circumstances may require us to choose something we wish we wouldn’t have to choose, or something not aligned with our preferences or ideology.

It assumes autonomy. People and communities have their own minds, priorities, and preferences.

It includes randomness and these accumulate over time to create different trajectories.

There are occasional wildcards – unusual events that impact one or more of the three levels.

It will go about 500 years into the future.

The intervals expand or shrink dynamically depending on calm vs crisis periods (shorter steps during crisis), and the steps tends to become longer the future into the future we go.

The game is bookended by the evolution of the universe and Earth before and after. Humanity is just one chapter of Earth’s history. As mentioned earlier, this is context, not part of the gameplay.

I see it as a companion to the Long Journey Home project. That project envisions a particular regenerative civilization several hundred years into the future. This game is more experimental and explorative. It can end up in a similar scenario, but it’s not at all given. It may or may not happen if if the player makes all the “right” regenerative choices.

It’s meant as a kind of simulation as much as a game.

The screenshot is of version 13 of the prototype, after maybe three or four hours of working on it. A lot of the mechanics are there, and the beginnings of a visual interface, but the story needs to be more compelling. It needs to be a page-turner so the player wants to see what happens next.

AUGUST 11, 2026

Sleep hygiene

Here is some of what I do for sleep.

I keep the lights low at night, especially closer to bedtime.

I minimize/avoid topics that could be disturbing.

I don’t eat much in the evening, although if I notice I am hungry I’ll eat something small and light.

I drink a lot of water early in the day, and much less at night. This means I don’t need to get up to pee during the night.

I slow down in general – movements, activities, and so on. This is perhaps the most important.

Because of the CFS, I often go to bed early and listen to a moderately interesting and gentle audio book or podcast for a while before going to sleep. That too helps everything slow down.

It’s fine if I can’t sleep or wake up. It’s normal. Just resting is good anyway. I can take a nap if I need to.

Why did I leave the US? **

Why did I leave the US? There is a concrete reason.

About ten years ago, I realized my health was likely chronically worsened (after severe pneumonia in Oregon in the late 2000s) and I needed to go through the extensive and long diagnosis process in Norway. That meant I needed to be in Norway for several years. Norway didn’t allow dual citizenship which meant I wasn’t able to get it while I lived in the US, even if I had been there for close to twenty years. (As soon as I started my process in Norway, the Norwegian government did allow dual citizenships, and it was too late for me.)

I left just as Trump became president for the first time, and although I know daily life continued as before for most, I feel it was good timing. Especially now, during his second and more unhinged and slightly more competent period, I am grateful I am not there.

I am already on some kind of list so I would likely have been targeted. In the late ’90s/early 2000s, I lived in Madison, Wisconsin, and was involved in (often led) several educational and community organizing projects, including a series of educational events on neo-liberalism in cooperation with a local peace group. The day after 9/11, the police raided the offices of that peace organization and took their computers and archives.

Not long after, I discovered I was on some kind of list. It made traveling to and from Norway a kind of nightmare with being taken aside and long and detailed interrogations where they wanted to know the name and address of everyone I had talked with and more. Until I left Oregon in the late 2000s, they also opened every single letter and package I received, including from my family in Norway. They didn’t even bother closing them up again.

Of course, they want people like me – who question what’s going on – to leave the country. In my case, it kind of worked, although I would have left anyway.

Is one expression of CFS-brain fog an experience of the world/ self as dreamlike?

I saw a post in a CFS/ME group on Facebook asking if others with CFS experience the world or themselves as dreamlike. A large number of commenters said they do. Some attributed it to trauma, although I suspect something more is going on here. I have long suspected a connection because of my own experience.

I wrote more about this and made it into a regular article.

My story: CFS-brain fog, the world/self as dreamlike, and awakening

This is from the article mentioned above,

CFS and the experience of the world as dreamlike 

In my case, there seems to be an intriguing connection between CFS and an experience of the world as dreamlike. 

On New Year’s Day when I was fifteen, I was standing outside of my parents’ house and it felt like a fog came in and the world became distant. The whole world, including this human self, seemed to be far away. It came with an experience of wooliness and fogginess. This was profoundly disturbing to me.

I later understood that this was how the CFS/ME started, a few months after I had mononucleosis. I don’t remember how soon the many other symptoms came (fatigue, other aspects of brain fog, PEM, and so on), but I assume it was the same day or within a few days. 

I still experience the world and this human self as unreal and dreamlike, appearing within and as consciousness just like a dream. It’s stronger when I am in a CFS-crash and have PEM, and it’s also stronger when my general brain fog is stronger – sometimes because of brain-fog inducing food (sugar, wheat, dairy).

If my sense of the world as distant, unreal, and dreamlike was connected with trauma, I would expect it to get stronger during stress and when emotionally triggered. It does not. If anything, I tend to feel sharper and more present then. Instead, it closely follows my CFS symptoms in general. It gets stronger with PEM and when food worsens my brain fog. To me, that suggests it’s related to CFS and not trauma.

I am used to it by now, although when it’s strong, and I am with people, I sometimes become very conscious about it and it still feels slightly disturbing until I remind myself that it’s normal for me.

My story (part two): The world as dreamlike and awakening 

Here is the second part of my story, which I am adding here since it goes beyond the conventional. 

There is an intriguing connection between experiencing the world as dreamlike and awakening.

Later, I saw the shift at age fifteen as a kind of absorption into the witness, or an identification as an abstract witness. “I” became a witness, and this witness witnessed all (other) content of experience and experienced it as far away. Identification went out of this human self and into this mental construct of a witness. 

Almost exactly one year later, between Christmas and New Year when I was sixteen, there was a oneness shift. All without exception was revealed as God AKA the divine AKA consciousness. Or, in other words, my nature as consciousness recognized itself as all there is. There was a shift out of identification as a witness and into finding myself as Big Mind or consciousness. 

I suspect the first shift, into the witness and the world as distant, set the stage for the second shift. 

It may be that the Epstein-Barr infection set the stage for the CFS a few months later. The CFS came with a strong brain fog including the sense of the world and this human self as distant and far away. And that, in turn, set the stage for the oneness shift a year later. That’s not the whole story, obviously, but it may be part of it.

AUGUST 12, 2026

My life is a laboratory

I see my life as a laboratory.

I seem infinitely curious and fascinated by existence.

So how do I explore it? I had envisioned exploring it through my (a0 own immediate experience and ideally through (b) research and science and (c) possibly working with meditation students. The two last ones did not happen due to life circumstances and my chronic illness.

So I am left with my own life and experience, which is still pretty good.

Stream of consciousness? **

I listened to a podcast about an author who had written a long book all in one sentence. The idea is that that’s how we think.

Is it? That’s not how it is for me. I may have a few thoughts, and then it goes quiet. Then a few thoughts again, and then quiet. That’s better reflected in relatively short sentences.

I also know it’s not like that for everyone. I remember Byron Katie mentioning that she has – or had? – more of a continuous torrent of thoughts. I guess that’s possible too.

I also notice that there is a quite murmuring of mental images and thoughts far in the background. I don’t know what they show or say, but they are there, and I sometimes notice the effects. That’s a stream of consciousness, but not one I could write down in words – unless I do more intentional inquiry to see what’s there.

AUGUST 14, 2026

Followed by noise **

I am hyper-sensitive to noise, and sometimes get extremely distressed and overwhelmed by noise.

Very likely, this has to do with childhood trauma which I wrote about in an August 10 entry on this page.

It also seems that I a pursued by noise, almost as if life wants me to get over it.

When I lived in the south hills in Eugene, I had a beautiful house in a wooded and beautiful neighborhood. The neighborhood was very quiet, apart from exactly where we lived. We had a neighbor who blasted out ’50s rock classics from an open garage. I assume he was retired and worked in his garage a lot. This was from early morning to late night every single day without exception. It made it impossible to be outside, sit on the veranda, or even have doors and windows open. It lasted for the decade I was there.

My health collapsed towards the end of the 2000s and I moved back to Norway, to a log cabin in my parents’ garden. It was an idea place, except that there was close to zero sound insulation. In terms of sounds, it was like living in a tent. For the decade I was there, each of the neighbors took turns to do major renovation projects and/or rebuilding the house. There was a near-constant and immense noise which was almost unbearable for me, and there was rarely a break from it. Here too, the rest of the wider neighborhood was quiet. The noise was exactly where I lived.

I would often go for walks in the forest, which was a bit higher than the neighborhood, and from there, the only noise I could hear was often from my immediate neighbors where I lived – maybe 500-700 meters away.

Also, for large parts of the year, people with extremely noisy cars would drive up and down the closest street at night (Nordbyveien) which made it impossible to sleep.

When I went to the ashram in India last winter, there was a village loudspeaker just outside my room blasting out loud music from 5am until late evenings. I measured the volume from my room, and it was 95 decibels (!). This was when I was sick (pneumonia, likely flu) and desperately needed rest. (This is not so surprising since India is noisy.)

This is coming up since where I am now too, which is a (relatively upscale) quiet apartment building in a quiet neighborhood at the edge of the forest in Oslo. They have been doing work exactly outside my room for weeks now, with loud power tools to cut tiles, drill, and so on. It makes it difficult or impossible to rest.

At night, it’s a similar situation here. I often wake up or am kept awake (keep myself awake) by loud bangs from adjacent apartments, very likely from doors that are carelessly closed. It seems that my neighbors are often awake when others sleep. Earplugs don’t help much since the bangs are too loud and sometimes make the whole room shake.

Of course, we live in a noisy world. But it does seem almost ridiculous how noise seems to follow me, including or especially in places that normally would be quiet.

These are just a few examples. Others who have spent some time with me have observed this pattern and pointed it out without me saying anything.

Update

August 20. There has been extremely noisy construction work just outside of my window for weeks now. (Literally 5 meters away.) The first audio is an example. The second is from my room at Amritapuri at 5am when I was there. It seems ironic that a peaceful environment is my first priority, and wherever I go – especially places that normally should be quiet – end up being so noisy. I am also woken up regularly from slamming doors and the whole room shaking, and it’s the same thought the day since most people here – in the adjacent apartments and this one too – are here during the day.

AUGUST 16, 2026

How I use (and don’t use) AI

I use AI and am ambivalent of it. I know it’s many downsides and that we likely don’t yet know about many of the worst downsides.

Still, I use AI as an assistant for projects I otherwise would not be able to do, and for projects I wouldn’t hire a human to do. That tips the balance just enough for me to use it, but I still won’t defend it, and I admire people who don’t use it at all.

I have used it for the Long Journey Home project, the Barichara Plant Database, and to create a prototype for the Civilization game (overshoot, ecological footprint). I have also used it as an assistant to identify articles for the “Selected Articles” page. I also sometimes ask it to create articles on topics I have already written about, as an addendum to my own articles.

Whenever I use it, I make it explicit. I do not use it for regular articles on this site.

Me as little

I was reminded of this photo of me as little (3-4 years old?), likely on vacation in the mountains in Norway. I am spending some time with him, wishing him all the best, and dialoging with him. That helps me heal my relationship with myself.

At that point, I was still quite happy and free. That changed in school, mostly because of the pretty awful culture of bullying and freezing out people in my class.

I still had passion for life, adventure, and exploration, but it got mixed in with different versions of social anxiety and imagining how others would see me and treat me.

I am helping him heal now, without needing to change his circumstances. As Byron Katie says, it’s never too late to have a happy childhood.

A fantasy and longing: that someone will take me seriously and be on my side **

I notice a fantasy in the back of my mind – that someone eventually will take my writing here and do a study of the intersection of awakening, trauma, society, culture, and how it all unfolded in this life.

I know it’s very unlikely that it will happen, although there is a tiny possibility since I have written quite extensively and I try to be transparent and honest in my writings. AI also makes it feasible to sift through all my writings, extract the important articles, and find patterns and how it all unfolds over time.

What I do know is that there is a very good reason for that fantasy: I long to be seen, for my life to be taken seriously, and for someone to be on my side.

I also know that I long for me to do that – to see me, take my life seriously, and more consistently be on my own side. That’s what the longing really is about.

It’s a pointer and invitation for me to do just that.

Made into an actual article.

Am I too focused on this life in these writings?

I write a lot about this life in these articles and briefer notes, and my personality doesn’t like it very much. I didn’t do it for a long time, but then felt it would be better to make it more personal and grounded in a real life.

If my life was more involved in the world, I would write about that. But as it is, with a severe chronic illness that makes me bed-bound a lot of the time, house-bound most days, and where taking in much info is difficult to impossible, this is what my life is.

My life is mostly about noticing what’s happening in my own life, so that’s what I end up writing about.

It also happens to be what I find most interesting to read. I love reading about the life of others, including “ordinary” people. That’s what I write about too, so I guess there is a match there.

Equally or more importantly: all of these writings is likely an attempt to do what I wrote about earlier, to see me, to take my life seriously, and to be on my own side. It comes from that impulse, and it may not be as successful as it could be since I am still continue writing a lot here. It would likely be more successful if I steered the impulse more into just being with myself with that intention.

Some friends in childhood

When I think/feel back to childhood, sometimes it seems that “everyone” were against me, or that everyone turned against me when those with bully-mentality were present.

That’s not completely true. I did actually have friends more consistently on my side – Svein-Erik, Stein, Anders, and so on. (I am meeting with Anders soon, which is why this is coming up.)

It’s good to take it in. To take a more realistic view. It’s sobering and healing.

And it’s complex and nuanced.

They were not actively on my side and didn’t defend me, but they also did not turn against me.

Also, I have a role in it. I didn’t actively stand up for myself or fight for myself. I was likely quite unusual and weird. That doesn’t justify what happened, but it’s part of the dynamics.

CFS/ME, Lyme, Long-Covid **

I obviously have a chronic illness and disability, although somehow I don’t feel very identified with it. I guess it’s because my more true nature – as capacity for the world and this illness – is inherently free from it. Also, at a human level, I am much more than just that one aspect of me.

CFS/ME

That said, at a human level, I have had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS/ME) since New Year’s Day 1986, when I was fifteen. It came some weeks or months after an Epstein-Barr virus infection (mono / mononucleosis). It was quite debilitating the last year of middle-school and during high school. (Somehow, I still managed to get good grades.) After high school, I got better although it was an ongoing job to manage it.

Early 2008 in Oregon, I got severe pneumonia that my doctor refused to treat (for reasons I still don’t understand). It lasted for many weeks, and was followed by a severe worsening of the CFS/ME that spring and summer. I have still not recovered from that.

After I got into Vortex Healing in 2016, I received several sessions for the Epstein-Barr virus which was still in my system. It would apparently go away, and then return. In February 2020 in London, Ric and two other Vortex Healing teachers did something slightly different for it, and it has not returned since.

That means that I am more stable, although I am far from recovered. The virus did a lot of damage to my system, and it takes time to repair it.

Lyme

I got Lyme disease and co-infections in California in the spring/summer of 2015 and had it until around 2019. After many two two-week visits to a clinic in Poland, and several Vortex Healing sessions, it finally seemed to go away. It was challenging experience, especially because of the mind-changes caused by the co-infections.

Long-covid

In 2022 (?), I got covid while in Barichara (renting a house from friends in El Pino) which severely impacted my memory. During and shortly after the infection, I would repeatedly forget what we were talking about in the middle of a conversation. My memory recovered some but is far from back to where it was. (I used to have close to photographic memory and would get top grades in just about anything I studied.)

It’s interesting that I keep getting these diseases with similar symptoms. I suspect it may be connected to a genetic vulnerability expressed as a bodymind vulnerability to these kinds of diseases.

I thought I would mention it since I am on a mission to fill in small gaps in my biography here on this site.

AUGUST 19, 2026

Inner guidance

Yesterday, I had only one thing on my list and that was to check out the cabin shop in Nydalen and get info about solar panels, batteries, and so on, and possibly a few other things for the cabin. After that, I left it open. I honestly didn’t know what to do after. Walk along the river? Go to Frognerparken? Visit the university area? I walked to the subway station to see if something would be more clear. It wasn’t at first, so I got some food for later and sat down for a few minutes. After a while, I was drawn to taking the subway to the university. On the train, I got off one station sooner than I thought I would, again following my inner guidance. There, I saw the entrance to Sogn hagekoloni and decided to check it out. I spent 2-3 hours there, walking around and reading on a bench. While, I remembered that I had talked with a friend from school, AJ, about meeting up this week so I sent him a message. We decided to meet in that area after he was done at work. It turned out to be a very good meeting, and a good day all around.

This is how my life is in general right now. I know the next step, more or less, but not much more than that. I have to just follow my guidance, and that guidance usually only comes in the situation or shortly before I need to make a decision. That’s OK.

I know that when I follow my guidance, it works out. And when I try to force something, it gets complicated.

That has been a big part of the challenge with the project in the Andes. Two others are involved, and they have a different approach. They tend to want to force something and then fix it after if it doesn’t work out, even if that fixing turns out being extremely costly and complicated. (Often, I have been the one who had to pay for it.) They also tend to make big decisions without having enough information or having through it through.

I should also mention that when I talk about following my guidance, it does NOT mean to not gather information. I tend to gather a lot of information and think scenarios through, sometimes decades into the future. And then I wait for my guidance to show the way.

The inner guidance itself is difficult to put into words. It’s more of an inner knowing. It’s clear and simple. It’s a voice or movement free of drama or pushing and pulling. It’s just there, simple and clear.

I also train myself to follow it, especially in smaller decisions in daily life. I notice what it says, and notice what happens if I follow it, and sometimes when I don’t follow it.

Why I am semi-anonymous here

I have chosen to not explicitly use my name here and on social media in general. Of course, it’s pretty easy to figure it out – I have left enough breadcrumbs so it doesn’t take much work.

So why the middle road? I am not sure, other than that being too public doesn’t feel right, and also working too hard on being completely anonymous doesn’t seem worth it. I like to put in biographical material here to ground what I am writing about, and that will leave those breadcrumbs and that’s fine.

I do write about politics, and probably things that may upset bigots and others. And that’s worth it too.

Women who deny reality

My mother would deny reality. Just before my brother had a breakdown in his 30s, I mentioned my concerns about him. I said he seemed on the verge of some kind of collapse. She strongly rejected it and said he was the most healthy person she had ever met. Predictably, he did collapse shortly after that. There is no lack of similar examples.

My first wife was the same. Before we bought our house, I looked at a crack in the foundation and voiced my concern. I said we need to have it checked out before buying. She vehemently denied there was a crack and that there was any reason for concern. Of course, later, it turned out to be a huge and costly problem, and when we got divorced, she finally admitted she had know there was a crack there from the beginning. I still don’t understand why she so strongly denied it. If I was on my own, I would not have bought a house with a crack in the foundation since I know how problematic it is. If she had been open to talk about it, we similarly would likely not have bought it.

With my second wife, it has been the same. When we considered buying something in the Barichara area, and when we considered buying the land we eventually bought, my main concern was the heat. I don’t function when it’s hot due to my health and chronic illness. She too vehemently denied it and said that she needs to use a sweater there because it’s so cold. When we were there, it was very hot – far too hot for me – so it didn’t make sense to me. She seemed to deny what reality very clearly showed us. Here too, we very likely would not have bought the land if we could have had a conversation about it grounded in reality. And now, it turns out – as I thought – that the place is too hot for me to live there.

Of course, I am the one who deny reality. In these situations, I deny the seriousness of the situation of making major decisions with someone who deny reality. I deny the reality that I need to take charge in these situations and not abandon myself.

TIMELINE NOTES

I am in a phase where I have packed my physical archive and am taking a kind of inventory of my life so far. I guess it’s natural since my parents both died recently and it is a new phase of my life. For that reason, I also asked AI to create a kind of summary based on the articles I have written here. It’s obviously just a draft and has inaccuracies.

A Timeline of P.’s Life: Awakening, Healing, and Regeneration

This is an AI-generated overview of P.’s life, based on his writings, articles, autobiographical notes, and conversations. The focus is on awakening, healing, illness, inner guidance, and regeneration.

The main thread is how the awakening process has unfolded through his life: early memories and longings, the pre-teen sense of being the universe, the shift into the witness at fifteen, the oneness shift at sixteen, years of journal writing, the search for maps and fellow travelers, the no-self clarification in his thirties, the long dark night, chronic illness, trauma surfacing, healing work, Vortex Healing, Amma, and the regeneration project at Finca Milagros.

A central theme is the relationship between awakening and healing. The awakening shifts revealed something essential about what P. is — consciousness, capacity, oneness, the divine taking all forms. The later process has involved inviting more of the human self, with its conditioning, wounds, fears, trauma patterns, and limitations, to reorganize within what was noticed in the awakening.

Another thread is the movement from inner ecology to outer ecology. P.’s interest in systems thinking, deep ecology, sustainability, and partnership with nature eventually took concrete form in Finca Milagros: a land regeneration and food forest project in the tropical dry forest of Colombia. In that sense, the biography is about inner shifts and also about how those shifts find expression in relationship, illness, work, land, culture, and the more-than-human world.

Early childhood: before-life memory, out-of-body memory, and longing

Some of P.’s earliest memories go beyond ordinary childhood recollection.

Before school age, he had what seemed like flashbacks to before this incarnation. They often came when he was outside alone on sunny days and sunlight filtered through moving leaves, especially the tall birch trees on the west side of the family house. Everything was golden light, infinite love, wisdom, and home. There was a sense of timelessness, with time somehow far away, like a whisper. There was no body, no wanting, and no need for anything. He did not have labels for it then. It was simply how it had been.

Later in childhood, he often woke with a deep longing. He would go to his parents, play with friends, read Carl Barks stories, eat bread with strawberry jam, drink hot chocolate, read favorite books, or try anything else that usually comforted him. Nothing touched it. Looking back, he suspects the longing was for that sense of home, the home he had glimpsed or remembered in those flashbacks.

He also had an apparent out-of-body memory from infancy. Through childhood, he remembered moving into the house he grew up in. He saw his parents and brother walking toward the house, with him in a stroller. He saw it from above, maybe ten or fifteen meters up. He saw a large white rectangle in front of the house, and he floated inside and saw the wallpaper in the living room and the half-torn wallpaper in the bedroom.

He did not mention this to his parents until his late teens. They confirmed the details. The family had moved from one house to another in the same town when he was three or four months old. The white rectangle was the moving van. The wallpaper was as he described, and they had taken it down soon after.

These memories formed part of the background of his life. Long before he had any spiritual language, there was a memory of consciousness, light, love, wisdom, and home.

Related articles:

• My before-life experience
• Flashbacks to before this life & a familiarity with all as consciousness
• Flashbacks to before this life and oneness
• A memory from between lives
• Memory from between lives
• Before life experience, awakening, and finding it here and now
• Dream: Golden light and bliss
• My own story: Before and after initial awakening, and the awakening itself
• A brief personal history / autobiography
• Selected articles

Childhood: nature, curiosity, atheism, and alienation

P. grew up in Ski, a small town in Norway that combined urban and rural life. The closest building to the family house was a large barn with badgers living under it. There were tall birch trees along the gravel road to the house and on the west side of the house. School was a five-minute walk away. There were forests, fields, neighbors, bicycles, books, and friends.

In many ways, it was a typical late 1970s and early 1980s childhood: biking around, visiting friends, playing in the forest, climbing trees, fishing, swimming, skiing, camping, and spending time at his parents’ cabin. His parents’ house was full of books, art, and handmade ceramics.

He read a lot, often beyond his age. He loved Jules Verne, Ray Bradbury, Sherlock Holmes, the Hardy Boys, science fiction, adventure stories, and books about anything unexplained. Although he was a self-described atheist from early on, he was fascinated by ghosts, UFOs, telepathy, out-of-body experiences, reincarnation, near-death experiences, and anything that suggested reality might be stranger than official stories.

His atheism came partly from how Christianity was presented in school. It seemed to him that students were being asked to believe something because others told them to believe it. That did not make sense to him. Why believe something he could not check for himself? At the same time, he had a strong sense that reality was far more mysterious than the worldview around him allowed.

When he was around ten, Carl Sagan’s Cosmos came on TV in Norway. After one episode, he walked into the garden, looked up at the stars, and had a strong shift into being the universe looking at itself. He was the universe bringing itself into consciousness. It did not have the clarity of the later awakening shift, but it was a powerful figure-ground reversal, and it stayed with him as a lived intuition: this human life is a local and temporary expression of the universe.

Socially, he did well one-on-one, but groups were difficult. He felt different, anxious, and often alienated. As he grew older, social anxiety and angst became stronger. This would become part of the background for what happened in his teens.

Related articles:

• Pre-teens: one with the universe
• What helped you find your spark as a child?
• My before-life experience
• Flashbacks to before this life & a familiarity with all as consciousness
• A memory from between lives
• My own story: Before and after initial awakening, and the awakening itself
• A brief personal history / autobiography

Age fifteen: absorbed into the witness, energies, and early openings

When P. was fifteen, something happened that was deeply disturbing at the time and later made more sense in the context of the awakening process.

On New Year’s Eve, he went to his first party and drank a good amount of alcohol. He felt fine when he woke up the next morning. Around noon or early afternoon, while standing outside his parents’ house talking with some friends, the sense of everything being distant gradually came in, like a fog. The world, thoughts, feelings, his body, and everything else seemed far away. It felt as if something had gone profoundly wrong.

This was very disturbing, and the disturbance colored that whole year. He missed school quite a bit because of what had happened. It also seems to have been the beginning of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome / ME, although it took many years before he received that diagnosis. The fog, distance, and disorientation seemed connected with the illness as well.

He went to several doctors, and they did not find anything. Later, he came to understand the shift as a movement into an observer-observed duality. The sense of “I” had moved into the observer, while the rest of experience — the body, thoughts, emotions, and the world — appeared as something observed and far away. The observed world seemed distant and dreamlike.

This was different from the oneness shift that happened a year later. It was more like being absorbed into the witness. There was an observer, and there was everything observed. The observed world seemed distant and dreamlike. Since then, he has generally avoided alcohol, apart from small amounts on special occasions.

That year, things also began opening in other ways. During the summer, while sitting and reading under the birch trees on the west side of the house, he first noticed light around the leaves. At first, he assumed it was an optical effect. Soon he began seeing energy around everything: plants, animals, humans, and objects. The quality and structure seemed different in each case.

Seeing energy around humans later gave him information about what was happening with them. He discovered he could sense at a distance and invite in distance healing. When he was nineteen, he met a woman at tai chi who also saw energies. They compared what they saw in people’s energy systems and found they saw the same things, which helped confirm for a part of him that this was not simply imagination.

Around this time, he began reading what he could find at the library about Western mysticism, Rudolf Steiner, Theosophy, healing, and related topics. Shirley MacLaine’s Out on a Limb also came around this time and was one of the first public accounts he encountered of someone exploring unusual experiences in her own life.

This was before the oneness shift, and before he had any clear map for any of it.

Related articles:

• Seeing energies in my teens
• When the dreamlike nature of reality becomes ordinary
• Flashbacks to before this life & a familiarity with all as consciousness
• Flashbacks to before this life and oneness
• “Supernatural” things that are part of my daily life
• Initial awakening phase: strong energies and lots of noticing
• Divine awareness is in all things?
• A wonderful smell and taste in the awakening process: amrita / nectar
• Psychological and spiritual interpretations of awakening
• Healing from oneness
• Where does psychology fit in the CFS puzzle? “Thinking myself well”? Or relating better to life?
• BioPsychoEcoSocial approach to CFS
• Thank you, Shirley MacLaine

Age sixteen: the oneness shift

Almost exactly a year later, between Christmas and New Year, the main shift happened.

P. walked along the dark gravel road lined with tall birch trees to his parents’ house. The sky was full of stars, and a big wind moved through the whole landscape. From one moment to the next, everything changed.

Everything, without exception, was revealed as God. The stars, the wind, the landscape, this human self, thoughts, emotions, and any sense of being “me” were all the divine. It was God expressing, exploring, and experiencing itself as all of this.

Even the sense of fundamentally being this human self, which had been there earlier, was revealed as the divine locally and temporarily taking that form.

At the level of his nature, it was a deep coming home. It was profoundly familiar. It was a returning home to a home that had never, in reality, been left.

At the human level, it was overwhelming, surprising, and disorienting. He had been an atheist. He lived in a small town in Norway in the mid-1980s. He grew up in a secular family and culture. Nothing at a human level had prepared him for this, and he did not know anyone who could help him understand it. He did not even find books that described it clearly.

The oneness shift did not go away. For years afterward, huge energies moved through this human self. It was like high voltage running through ordinary house wiring. There was an immense influx of insights and inspiration for art and music. He filled pages and pages of journals. Much of what he later wrote on his website is an echo of what came through then.

In a later article, he wondered whether the shift functioned as a pressure valve. It had become almost unbearable to be this human self, and Big Mind came to the foreground as a relief. The human self was still anxious and marked by preverbal struggle, but the context was completely different. What had been foreground — this human self — became part of the seamless field of existence. What had been background — awake space forming itself into all experience — came into the foreground and recognized itself.

Within the shift, he also saw that the earlier before-life flashbacks had pointed to this. All as consciousness. All as the divine. Infinite love and wisdom. Home beyond words.

Related articles:

• Awakening as a pressure valve
• My before-life experience
• My own story: Before and after initial awakening, and the awakening itself
• Initial awakening phase: strong energies and lots of noticing
• Flashbacks to before this life & a familiarity with all as consciousness
• Flashbacks to before this life and oneness
• Before life experience, awakening, and finding it here and now
• General awakening vs parts awakening
• When an awakening happens “out of the blue” versus when it happens after seeking and practice
• When our nature notices itself, it’s more real than real
• Healing from oneness

Late teens: high voltage, solitude, and searching for maps

The years after the oneness shift were intense. There were energies, insights, synchronicities, dreams, and inspiration. There was also loneliness.

P. had no clear context for what had happened. There was no internet. He lived in a small town south of Oslo. Most spiritual books he found were filtered through traditions and language that did not quite match the directness of the shift.

Around the age of fifteen and sixteen, he went deeply into books and frameworks that could help him make sense of what had opened. Fritjof Capra’s The Turning Point was especially important because it connected science, systems thinking, ecology, Eastern philosophy, and Taoism. It helped him see that what had opened in him was not separate from how we understand nature, society, and the world. It also connected with a lifelong interest in ecology, sustainability, and the shift from domination to partnership with nature and life.

His interest in Taoism came partly through Capra and deepened during high school and after. He read everything he could find from and about Taoism, including Taoist philosophy, Taoist inner yoga, and Taoist practices. He also practiced Taoist inner yoga based on Mantak Chia’s books, which became one of the early ways the awakening process connected with energy, body, and practice.

A little later, he went more deeply into Jung and Jungian psychology, along with Ken Wilber, Arne Næss, Jes Bertelsen, and other frameworks and traditions. He read what he could find and followed the threads from one author and tradition to another.

He also learned that not everyone wanted to hear about what he had experienced. Some people reacted with anger or dismissal. He learned to mostly stay quiet. That was painful, and it also had an upside: for many years, he explored this mostly from the inside, with relatively little influence from others or from spiritual culture.

Related articles:

• Initial awakening phase: strong energies and lots of noticing
• Seeing energies in my teens
• “Supernatural” things that are part of my daily life
• Thank you, Shirley MacLaine
• Threads of awakening
• Themes in an awakening process
• Psychological and spiritual interpretations of awakening
• Divine awareness is in all things?

Early adulthood in Oslo: art, psychology, practice, and journals

After high school, P. moved to Oslo when he was nineteen. He went to art school, had a loft space in central Oslo, and was accepted into Høstutstillingen with a charcoal self-portrait.

This was a rich and magical period. There were long conversations, international movies, art, long walks, friendships, his first real girlfriend, and continued explorations of philosophy, psychology, spirituality, and systems views. He drew, painted, read, studied, practiced, and explored because he was drawn to it.

This was also the period when P. went deeply into spiritual practice. From the time he moved to Oslo until he left for Salt Lake City in the fall of 1994, he often spent two to three hours each day in these explorations, sometimes more. They included meditation, prayer, the Heart Prayer, Christ meditation, Tibetan ngöndro practice, tai chi and qigong, tonglen, Taoist inner yoga, and other forms of spiritual and body-centered exploration.

Like drawing, painting, reading, and studying, these practices came from interest, love, and a strong pull to explore. They were part of the same larger movement of inquiry and creativity.

He studied art history and psychology. He continued to read Jung, Taoism, Ken Wilber, and others. He was interested in Jes Bertelsen and Vækstsenteret. He was drawn to practices that involved the body, energy, attention, heart, devotion, and consciousness.

He also wrote extensively. Starting around age fifteen or sixteen, and continuing through his teens and twenties, he filled thousands of pages of paper journals. These journals were part of the same stream as the art, study, and practice: a way to explore what was alive, clarify what he was noticing, and give form to the themes that had opened in him.

This period helped him slowly find language, practices, and frameworks for what had happened in his teens. The oneness shift had come out of the blue. In Oslo, he began building a broader intellectual, artistic, and practical context around it.

Related articles:

• What helped you find your spark as a child?
• The path is everywhere
• Inquiries as a structured reflection of how a clear and awake mind naturally functions
• Threads of awakening
• Themes in an awakening process
• Hooked on a feeling: a byproduct of awakening

Mid-twenties: Salt Lake City, Zen, Nepal, India, and early ecopsychology

In the fall of 1994, P. moved to Salt Lake City to continue psychology studies. He was interested in environmental psychology, health psychology, and systems views on psychology.

Unexpectedly, he felt profoundly at home in Utah, especially in the desert and in southern Utah. Sleeping outside in the desert under the stars felt deeply familiar and nourishing.

In January 1995, he moved into Kanzeon Zen Center. The practice, the place, and the community felt deeply right. This marked another deepening of practice, now within a structured Zen community. Sitting practice, community life, retreats, and the daily rhythm of the center became central.

This was one of the times in life when the outer situation clearly matched the inner direction. Practice, community, place, and meaning came together.

In 1995–96, he traveled in Nepal and India. He spent time in Bodhanath, Pokhara, Pullahari Monastery, and Bodhgaya. In Bodhgaya, he prayed for full awakening, including full embodiment and living from and as it. He was asking for a deep transformation. What he learned, among other things, was to be more assertive, which may have been exactly what was needed.

In 1997, he wrote an essay on ecopsychology, ecospirituality, deep ecology, and health. It explored the health of the individual, society, and Earth as parts of one seamless system. That essay shows that the bridge between psychology, spirituality, ecology, and systems thinking was already explicit in his life long before Finca Milagros.

This period had the flavor of a honeymoon phase: practice, community, meaning, place, and direction were aligned.

Related articles:

• Ecopsychology, Ecospirituality, Deep Ecology, and Health (1997)
• Økopsykologi, Økospiritualitet, Dypøkologi og Helse (1997)
• Inquiries as a structured reflection of how a clear and awake mind naturally functions
• The path is everywhere
• Selected articles: Awakening

Late twenties: going against inner guidance

In P.’s late twenties, a more conventional dark night began.

He got married while living at the Zen center. It later became clear that his wife wanted to pursue graduate education somewhere else. He had to choose between staying at Kanzeon, which felt deeply right, and supporting her. His inner guidance was clear. He went against it.

They moved to Madison, Wisconsin. For months, he would wake in panic in the morning. From that time on, his life felt profoundly off track.

On the surface, much of life was good. He became the first paid coordinator for Sustain Dane. He worked with meaningful sustainability projects, Practices to Reconnect, EcoTeams, natural building, North-West Earth Institute discussion groups, and good people. He learned a lot from Brian Joiner about organizations and systems. There were friends, organic food, nature, and meaningful work.

Underneath, something felt deeply wrong.

This revealed a pattern that would become important: not staying with or going into what feels deeply right, and staying with what does not feel right. P. suspects this pattern is rooted in trauma and fear. It has led to regrets, missed opportunities, and a sense of being off track. It also became part of the healing curriculum of his life.

Related articles:

• A brief personal history / autobiography
• Why did the dark night happen?
• Reasons for the dark night
• Selected articles: Healing & awakening
• Awakening doesn’t change our life?
• Being a guru to the parts of us living within separation consciousness

Early thirties: Oregon, architecture, Breema, and renewed practice

After Wisconsin, P. moved to Oregon. He studied architecture with an interest in designing with the elements, local building materials, traditional materials, and natural building.

Being in Oregon allowed him to return more fully to meditation and awakening-related explorations. He got into inquiry, Breema, Headless Way experiments, The Work of Byron Katie, Big Mind, and other practices.

Breema became especially important. He became an instructor and, for some years, gave Breema bodywork sessions almost daily and attended or led classes regularly. It was nourishing, embodied, and community-based.

This was a return to the awakening focus after some years where the pain of being off track had made it difficult to turn inward. In Wisconsin, any inward movement had brought up the inner guidance he had gone against. In Oregon, the path opened again.

The online writing also belongs here. P. began blogging in 2002, with the first post on the current site dated December 27, 2002. The blog was a continuation of the paper journals he had kept since his teens. The medium changed, while many of the themes remained much the same.

Related articles:

• Initial Entry
• Inquiries as a structured reflection of how a clear and awake mind naturally functions
• The logic of what we are
• A secular view on awakening

Mid-thirties: no-self clarification

In 2005, in his mid-thirties, there was a further clarification. A Headless Way experiment, supported by meditation and inquiry, seems to have helped shift the no-self aspect of his nature strongly into the foreground.

This lasted for about six months. P. has written about this both in posts from 2005 and in a later summary article, Reflections on when the no-self aspect of my nature came strongly to the foreground (2005). The later article describes it as the no-self aspect of his nature becoming strongly foregrounded, almost as if that aspect of the earlier oneness shift had been turned up in volume.

This can be understood as a further clarification of the oneness shift from age sixteen. The oneness shift had revealed all as God, all as consciousness, all as the divine locally taking all forms. The no-self phase clarified the absence of any separate or fixed “I” within that.

The relationship between awareness and experience became especially vivid. Experience was happening within and as the field of awareness or consciousness he is. His nature was also clarified as independent of particular states and experiences. States come and go. Experiences come and go. His nature is not dependent on any of them.

The 2005 articles also show a kind of fluidity rather than one fixed view. The writing moves among the human self, the Witness, the Absolute, Big Mind, Big Heart, no-self, and no-I. The process was not about landing permanently in one conceptual position. It was more about recognizing different perspectives as valid in their own ways while seeing through exclusive identification with any of them.

Related articles:

• Reflections on when the no-self aspect of my nature came strongly to the foreground (2005)
• When no-self comes into the foreground
• Transition to No Self
• Headless Way
• No Self
• No Self?
• No Self & Habitual Patterns
• Gradations of Big Mind
• Identification
• Mind Without Beliefs
• Witness As A Voice
• Practicing Death
• Stomach Pain & No I
• Meditation sickness
• Is the self an illusion?
• The logic of what we are

Late thirties: pneumonia, CFS relapse, and a deeper dark night

Some time after the six-month no-self phase, P. developed a long-lasting pneumonia, likely around 2008. This was followed by a dramatic relapse of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome / ME.

He had been much better in his twenties and much of his thirties. He could bike, swim, hike, and do many ordinary things. After the pneumonia, the CFS returned strongly. For a while, he spent much of his time in a dark room, unable to function normally.

This became a major deepening of the dark night. Health, life direction, relationships, work, home, and inner stability were all affected. It was a period where much seemed to fall apart, both inwardly and outwardly.

The sequence is important: the clear no-self phase lasted about six months; the pneumonia and health collapse came later; and the stronger dark night unfolded through and after that collapse. Later articles describe this as a time when the no-self clarification was followed by illness, a strong return of CFS, hopelessness, and a deeper dark night.

The illness also became a teacher in practical ways. It forced a reevaluation of identity, self-worth, rest, pacing, asking for help, finding an authentic yes and no, making friends with the body, and finding meaning and small joys within limitation. In that way, CFS/ME became part of the same curriculum: the human self learning, slowly and imperfectly, to reorganize within what had been revealed.

Related articles:

• Lessons from a life with CFS/ME for the rest of society
• Chronic fatigue and spirituality
• Meditation sickness
• Where does psychology fit in the CFS puzzle? “Thinking myself well”? Or relating better to life?
• BioPsychoEcoSocial approach to CFS
• Unable to read and finding blessings in it
• Brief notes on healing and awakening and occasional personal things – vol. 44
• The dark night trainwreck
• Awakening doesn’t change our life?
• General awakening vs parts awakening
• A guided tour of hell

Early forties: dangerous prayer, primal fear, and the dark night trainwreck

In his early forties, P. asked the divine to show him what was left.

Within days, deep survival fear surfaced. It was overwhelming. He could barely function. He went for long walks in the forest in Ski while listening to Adyashanti and Byron Katie. Sleep was difficult. Nature helped. Five Element acupuncture helped for a short time. A mentor helped him welcome and be with what was surfacing.

This became one of the most intense phases of the dark night. It brought up primal fear, old trauma, family patterns, intergenerational material, cultural material, identities, and old wounds. For about nine months, the fear and dread were especially strong, and then gradually lessened over the following years.

P. has written about this as a “dangerous prayer.” He has also described the larger dark night as a trainwreck: messy, confusing, disorganized, overwhelming, and affecting both his inner life and outer circumstances. It involved illness, loss, fear, trauma surfacing, and the collapse or unraveling of many structures he had relied on.

Later, he described some of what helped with this kind of dark night: finding someone who has gone through something similar, meeting experience with kindness, tonglen, ho’oponopono, giving it all to the divine, asking life for help, being in nature, using the body, expressing in words or art, investigating painful thoughts, good trauma support, noticing his nature, and noticing what comes up as his nature.

A discomfort in the heart area stayed for years. Later, during the Core Veil class in Vortex Healing, it dropped away. Something relaxed and stabilized.

This period clarified something important: awakening is about noticing what we are, and also about the human self reorganizing within that noticing. The parts of us still formed by separation consciousness need to be seen, felt, loved, and invited to join the awakening.

Related articles:

• A “dangerous prayer”
• Giving it over, guidance, asking
• Meditation sickness
• The dark night trainwreck
• Why did the dark night happen?
• Reasons for the dark night
• Types of dark nights, in my own experience
• Dread & Terror – befriending & inviting to heal
• A guided tour of hell
• A tough one III: the dark nights of the soul and senses
• Being a guru to the parts of us living within separation consciousness
• General awakening vs parts awakening
• Awakening makes the separation consciousness left in us more painful
• Brief notes on healing and awakening and occasional personal things – vol. 50
• Selected articles: Healing & awakening

Mid-forties: California, Kiloby Center, TRE, and Vortex Healing

In his mid-forties, the dark night had eased somewhat, although it was still present. P. went to California to volunteer at the Kiloby Center as an inquiry facilitator and was hired. For a while, it was a dream job: working with clients, leading TRE groups, and supporting people in healing and inquiry. It was also challenging in other ways.

One of his co-workers introduced him to Vortex Healing. He was initially not interested. His system tends to respond strongly to healing, and he had not been drawn to energy healing in that form. The co-worker explained that Vortex Healing is guided by an intelligence, and P. agreed to a short session.

That session changed his life. It focused on his digestive system, and he noticed an immediate response. The next morning, he felt like a more present and authentic version of himself had returned. His digestion was much improved. Something had shifted.

He signed up for the first Vortex Healing class. Two days before leaving for the class, birds landed in a bush outside his room at night and sang through the whole night. It felt like a sign that he was on the right track. The following day, most of the facilitators at the center were laid off, including him. Then he went to the class.

In the following years, he took as many Vortex Healing classes as possible. Vortex Healing became a major part of his healing and awakening process. It helped with physical issues, old patterns, stability, energization, and the heart process mentioned above.

Related articles:

• Healing from oneness
• Selected articles: Vortex Healing
• Selected articles: TRE
• Inquiries as a structured reflection of how a clear and awake mind naturally functions

Late forties and early fifties: A., Barichara, and Finca Milagros

P. met A. through Vortex Healing, during the Angelic Heart class. He had asked for a profound transformation of his whole life, and life answered.

Through A., Colombia entered his life. He saw Barichara in a book she gave his parents and immediately knew it was the place. Later, when he first saw the land that became Finca Milagros, there was a strong inner guidance and deep connection with that land.

Finca Milagros came into their life through a kind of miracle. It also brought many challenges: access, water, infrastructure, building issues, the roof collapse, legal processes, and the ordinary difficulties of stewarding land.

At the same time, it has been deeply rewarding. Protecting and helping regenerate the land, supporting a tropical dry forest ecosystem, creating a food forest around the houses, supporting wildlife, and learning from the land has become one of the main expressions of this life.

The food forest is medicine in several senses. It offers medicinal plants, local organic food, soil building, shade, wildlife habitat, ecological repair, and a living daily relationship with the land. It also mirrors the inner work: diversity, patience, nourishment, composting what has broken down, and supporting life in reorganizing itself.

Finca Milagros is a relationship. The land is helping regenerate P. as much as, and likely more than, he is helping regenerate it. It brings the inner and outer work together: healing, diversity, patience, partnership, humility, ecology, and daily practice.

Related articles:

• Our food forest is medicine
• How we are creating a food forest on Milagros
• Plants for the Milagros food forest: How we select and a provisional plant list
• A day on Milagros
• A day at Finca Milagros
• All the beings on Milagros
• How we deal with grass in the Milagros regeneration, and how it’s medicine
• Why we plant densely in the Milagros food forest
• The ancient roots and vital future of food forests
• Finca Milagros info & learnings
• Finca Milagros articles
• Food forest articles

Almost dying: sepsis and Big Mind

At one point in his fifties, while visiting family in Norway, A. got Covid, P. broke a tooth, developed a strong inflammation in his face, and got sepsis. The infection spread from the tooth root into his face, and after a dentist appointment his system went into septic shock. There was about an hour he could not remember. He woke sweating, shaking, and unable to think clearly. He was taken by ambulance to the hospital and received critical care. It is almost a miracle that he survived.

During this, there was a shift into Big Mind. There was awareness that this human self could die, and there was curiosity about what the next phase would be if death came. It was simple, open, and curious.

He also experienced the hospital situation as love: the nurses, doctors, IV, monitors, tubes, cables, and the work of countless people that made the care possible. At one level, this human self was getting help and doing what was needed. At another level, the whole situation was appearing within and as Big Mind.

This too became part of the process. Illness, mortality, medical care, and the body’s vulnerability were expressions of life, of the divine, of what he is appearing in yet another form.

Related articles:

• My recent health crisis
• Practicing Death
• The logic of what we are
• A secular view on awakening

Amma: grace, bhakti, and the divine feminine

In November 2023, during a difficult situation related to a hotel project next door, P. was brought to his knees. A Vortex Healing teacher had said that Amma can change karma, and he sincerely asked Amma for help.

This initiated a process that lasted several hours. Afterward, Amma was with him all the time. Everything had the flavor of Amma: the physical universe, the energetic side of everything, all as consciousness, all coming out of and made of emptiness or capacity.

Amma healing also began. It seemed to come from emptiness, with her presence strongly in the healing.

This was outside P.’s familiar identity. He had not been especially drawn to Indian spirituality or gurus. He had read Advaita and neo-Advaita, but mostly stripped of Indian religious context. He had not imagined that Amma would become central in his life. This path has often shown that conscious orientation is not always what decides what happens.

The first Amma experience happened on November 20, 2023. By synchronicity, he saw her physically for the first time on November 20, 2025, two years later. After seeing Amma in London, he had a knowing that he would go to Amritapuri, her ashram in Kerala. A vivid dream of already having arrived helped tip the balance, and he went.

At Amritapuri, the Amma process deepened. Dreams from that time showed belonging, invitation, and being woven into the life of the ashram. Other dreams suggested that confused or wounded parts of him were being invited by his nature to discover their own nature. Amma became not only an external teacher or presence, but also inner Amma: the divine feminine, the maternal and receptive intelligence within his own nature.

Related articles:

• An Amma experience: no words
• An update on the Amma experience
• Amma London 2025
• A journey to Amritapuri / Amma’s ashram in Kerala
• Dream: At Amritapuri, Amma’s ashram
• Dream: At Amma’s ashram
• Dream: Invited to a private meeting with a guru
• Dream: Flourishing seedlings
• Amma articles
• Healing from oneness
• The logic of what we are
• Psychological and spiritual interpretations of awakening

Current phase: ordinary noticing, healing, and no finishing line

These days, noticing his nature is often ordinary and familiar. It is more like old comfortable shoes. What he is is what his experience happens within and as. There is capacity for the world as it appears here. There is this field of consciousness and experience. There is this human self within that field.

At the same time, the process is ongoing. There are still wounds and trauma. There are still identities and shoulds. There are still parts living in separation consciousness. There is still illness, limitation, confusion, reactivity, and life being life.

The invitation seems to be to trust the awakening, prioritize it, and live from it more fully. To recognize and feel all as the divine, including what the personality does not like. To notice contractions as space. To let identities be useful but not ultimately solid. To allow shoulds and values to soften so care can become more natural and less burdened.

In recent writing, P. distinguishes between working with issues, healing his relationship to situations, and inviting healing for the issues themselves. Sometimes he simply works around what is here. Sometimes he meets his experience with kindness, tonglen, or ho’oponopono. Sometimes he invites deeper healing of the issue itself, through inquiry, Vortex Healing, or noticing the issue as made of his nature.

Maturing seems to bring lightness.

There is no finishing line. Awakening is not a thing that happened once in the past. It is a process of noticing, clarifying, healing, embodying, losing the thread, finding it again, and allowing more of this human life to reorganize within it.

Related articles:

• Threads of awakening
• General awakening vs parts awakening
• The logic of what we are
• A secular view on awakening
• Psychological and spiritual interpretations of awakening
• Awakening doesn’t change our life?
• When the dreamlike nature of reality becomes ordinary
• When our nature notices itself, it’s more real than real
• Working with vs healing my relationship with vs healing my issues themselves
• Relating to physical discomfort
• Lessons from a life with CFS/ME for the rest of society

Some patterns in the whole process

Looking across P.’s life and writings, a few patterns stand out.

One is that his conscious orientation does not always seem to matter as much as one might think. He was an atheist when the oneness shift happened. He was not drawn to Indian spirituality or gurus when Amma entered his life. His nature seems to reveal different aspects of itself to itself at different times, whether or not the personality has planned it.

Another is that the process has unfolded through both clarity and difficulty. The oneness shift brought homecoming, insights, inspiration, and a profound shift in identity. It also brought loneliness, disorientation, and intensity. The no-self clarification brought vividness and simplicity, and was followed by illness and collapse. The dark night brought pain and loss, and also deepened the healing process.

A third pattern is that awakening and healing are distinct, although intimately related. There can be a general awakening, where what we are notices itself. And there can be many parts of the human self still living as if separation is the final truth. Those parts need time, love, and healing. They need to be met, not bypassed.

A fourth pattern is that the outer and inner work mirror each other. Healing the psyche and regenerating land are different, and they also feel like expressions of the same movement. Both ask for patience, humility, diversity, listening, and partnership. Both involve supporting life in reorganizing itself.

A fifth pattern is that the universe story, ecology, and awakening have been intertwined from early on. The pre-teen Cosmos shift, the teenage awakening, the 1997 ecopsychology essay, the sustainability work in Wisconsin, and Finca Milagros all belong to one long movement. The human self is a local expression of the universe, and the land, body, psyche, culture, and the divine are not separate.

And finally, the path is everywhere. It is in meditation and inquiry, and also in illness, relationships, mistakes, land stewardship, aging, confusion, and ordinary daily life. Nothing is outside of it.

Related articles:

• General awakening vs parts awakening
• The loops of consciousness creating a sense of separation, spiritual experiences, and more
• The logic of what we are
• A secular view on awakening
• Psychological and spiritual interpretations of awakening
• Threads of awakening
• Themes in an awakening process
• Ecopsychology, Ecospirituality, Deep Ecology, and Health (1997)
• The path is everywhere

References and related article collections

Autobiographical and awakening process

• My own story: Before and after initial awakening, and the awakening itself
• A brief personal history / autobiography
• My before-life experience
• Pre-teens: one with the universe
• Seeing energies in my teens
• Awakening as a pressure valve
• Initial Entry
• Threads of awakening
• Themes in an awakening process
• General awakening vs parts awakening
• Awakening doesn’t change our life?
• Selected articles

Before-life, dreams, and early openings

• Flashbacks to before this life & a familiarity with all as consciousness
• Flashbacks to before this life and oneness
• A memory from between lives
• Memory from between lives
• Before life experience, awakening, and finding it here and now
• Dream: Golden light and bliss
• A selection of my dreams from 2002 to now

No-self, Big Mind, and capacity

• Reflections on when the no-self aspect of my nature came strongly to the foreground (2005)
• When no-self comes into the foreground
• Transition to No Self
• Gradations of Big Mind
• No Self & Habitual Patterns
• Identification
• Practicing Death
• My recent health crisis
• The logic of what we are
• A secular view on awakening
• Psychological and spiritual interpretations of awakening
• When the dreamlike nature of reality becomes ordinary
• When our nature notices itself, it’s more real than real

Healing, parts, illness, and dark night

• A “dangerous prayer”
• Why did the dark night happen?
• Reasons for the dark night
• The dark night trainwreck
• Types of dark nights, in my own experience
• Dread & Terror – befriending & inviting to heal
• Being a guru to the parts of us living within separation consciousness
• A guided tour of hell
• A tough one III: the dark nights of the soul and senses
• Healing from oneness
• Lessons from a life with CFS/ME for the rest of society
• Working with vs healing my relationship with vs healing my issues themselves
• Relating to physical discomfort
• Selected articles: Healing & awakening

Amma, Vortex Healing, and devotion

• An Amma experience: no words
• An update on the Amma experience
• Amma London 2025
• A journey to Amritapuri / Amma’s ashram in Kerala
• Dream: At Amritapuri, Amma’s ashram
• Dream: At Amma’s ashram
• Dream: Invited to a private meeting with a guru
• Dream: Flourishing seedlings
• Amma articles
• Selected articles: Vortex Healing

Ecology, systems, and regeneration

• Ecopsychology, Ecospirituality, Deep Ecology, and Health (1997)
• Økopsykologi, Økospiritualitet, Dypøkologi og Helse (1997)
• Our food forest is medicine
• How we are creating a food forest on Milagros
• Plants for the Milagros food forest: How we select and a provisional plant list
• A day on Milagros
• A day at Finca Milagros
• All the beings on Milagros
• How we deal with grass in the Milagros regeneration, and how it’s medicine
• Why we plant densely in the Milagros food forest
• Finca Milagros info & learnings
• Finca Milagros articles
• Food forest articles