I have started about five different blog posts the last week but stopped after a few lines. I don’t have much to say anymore. There is so little to talk about.

There is no truth that will set us free. There is no method that will tell us how to live. Spirituality is not separate from daily life. Spirituality is life. Life is spiritual and I have no clue about life. I know absolutely nothing.

I don’t even understand myself so how can I know anything about life? I don’t know what is going on inside my body and I don’t know what my subconscious is up to. I can only observe and ponder.

I try to be as honest with myself as I can. At least I try not to lie to myself. But even that is difficult because I can’t always separate my own inner truth from expectations and wants created from the outside.

I don’t follow any particular disciplines. No particular diet, no particular exercise, no particular time for meditation. The only discipline I follow is to try to make my kids laugh every day. I try to listen to them and see them. They are my best teachers.

I just live and let it all flow, fluctuate and form itself into the life of Charlotte. Life is so short. All we have is our relationships.

The deep spiritual relationships – where you recognize each other as you are, beyond the person – are priceless, divine in nature, beyond time and space. These relationships are always nurturing and loving.

The psychological relationships – where the personal afflictions are at play – show you your wounds and offer ways to go beyond, if you are open to it. These relationships can be both loving and destructive.

I live day by day, breath by breath. Life is freakishly real in one way and the most incredible illusion in another. It’s God and I. I don’t question God. I try not to bargain with God. I try not to judge but I forgive myself if I do. Life is. There is so much IS-ness about life that it’s hard to tell that it’s all you.

So I experienced some divine love. Always so sweet. Like honey in my veins. Simple and relaxed! No big deal. In the beginning it was hard to stay there, in love. Even the smallest provocation could cause the delicious feeling to evaporate.

You know, bad news of some kind, an unpleasant encounter with another human being. Tiredness. Fear. Disappointment.

And love was all gone. Poff!

How do I remain in the center of myself without habitually reacting in the same old patterns? How do I stay in that love even when everything and everyone seems to be against me and my precious peace?

The simple answer is: nothing is against me, never has been, never will be. Nothing is against you either. Life happens. We react to it. The good news is, we can change our reaction.

I probably wouldn’t have agreed to that at all a few years back. Then it was obvious that things were against me and/or that others had treated me badly in one way or another. It’s not like that anymore.

What changed?

Many things changed. Definitely not overnight. I didn’t follow any direction except from the inside. That took some time to establish. So exactly how do you do it? Well, now to the part that might make you stop reading:

There are no simple answers!  Except the simple one above that nothing is wrong. But that doesn’t show you HOW to do it and as such it’s pretty worthless. Worthless until you are firmly established in your heart, centered in yourself. Then it makes sense. Until then it’s just an abstract idea.

No matter what anyone will tell you, there are no quick fixes. There aren’t even any methods. There are no How-to that fits everyone. The only thing anyone can do is to share how they did it and maybe someone out there will feel it speaks to them, too.

Here’s a little bit of how I did it.

First of all I made a decision that I wanted change no matter what. That is a vulnerable but necessary position. From there you allow change to happen.

From there I started walking, one step after another. Here are some brief hints about my path:

My path is LOVE. Growing love, difficult love, painful love, glorious love, exquisite love, comforting love, passionate love, flowing love, all encompassing love, transcendental love. My feeling of love, or lack thereof, is my greatest teacher. 

My path is ACCEPTANCE. Acceptance of mistakes, failures, weaknesses. Acceptance of being unique and deeply loved for who you are. Acceptance of all others.

My path is RESPECT. Respect of all your deepest needs. Respect of others’ deepest needs.

My path is HONESTY. To be honest with yourself, with what you feel and want. Being honest with others is part of being honest with yourself. This takes a lot of courage.

My path is PATIENCE. Patience to continue walking in confusion, stormy weather, when you don’t know where you’re going. You continue walking because you know you can’t return to where you were. This requires the greatest courage. So much courage that all your energy is required.

My path is SURRENDER. Surrender to who you are, to your life, to God. This is beautiful and supremely easy. It’s easy because it’s nothing you can make happen. It will happen for you – when you are ready. But you can make yourself available for it.

Many people don’t want to change old patterns. Perhaps because it’s old and familiar. That is absolutely fine. Everyone gets to choose what they want. If you still are reading this you are most likely not one of them. But you will still meet many of them in your life. It’s best to just peacefully disregard. Let it be.

When you start out you are not going to be able to stay in bliss for extended periods of time. And you are not supposed to! You are supposed to integrate and see who you are. That often takes some time and some suffering. Your old defenses and structures most often wont leave without making themselves heard.

I won’t lie. It can be painful. This is where many people give up. They don’t realize that they are making enormous progress. They just feel the pain. Maybe they had grown in honesty and people around them didn’t like it. If you are honest with who you are it forces others to be honest with who they are. People who are not ready for this are NOT going to like that.

Keep walking. Persevere. Get up when you fall. Keep trying.

Little by little you’ll discover that you can keep standing in the storm. That wherever you are seems to be the eye of the storm. You stop falling down. You become aware of your reactions. You then stop reacting and start responding. You begin to see yourself with enormous clarity. Not only yourself but others as well.

Your heart starts to swell and soften, any obstructions melt away. Your love flows freely to everyone. Regardless if they deserve it or not.

Now love sticks to you like a magnet, you are in it, of it, for it, by it. It’s also spelled F-R-E-E-D-O-M. It’s breathtakingly beautiful and worth every step of the way.

Love always. Listen to your heart. It will tell you everything you need to know. Everything. Don’t doubt it.

Daily life is full of demands. Things we have to do. And then there are the shoulds on top of that. You know, all the things you think you have to do, think, feel, accomplish in order to be a successful human being.

Sometimes people look up from the pile of shoulds and ask themselves why?

Why do I have to be good looking, thin, wealthy, active, successful, social etc?

Sometimes these questions lead to real change and you start making new priorities. That’s great!

But the funny thing is that very often those shoulds don’t go away. They just take on another form. Sometimes it gets even worse than it was before.

Before, you knew you weren’t perfect but now that you have turned your life around you think you must be perfect. After all you made lots of great changes and now you have to show people that you are not the same anymore.

But sometimes the alternative support you may have found isn’t as solid as it looks. The other day I read a spiritual leader that said: “Your life should be blissful and sparkling. It should not just be okay.”

I made me angry. It’s probably meant to encourage people to look within but most people will only hear that they are expected to be blissful.

From there it’s easy to start thinking:  “Am I blissful enough? Is my life really sparkling? Gosh, what if my life is just okay? I should…”

Here we go again.

I don’t have anything against a sparkling, blissful life. It sure sounds wonderful. But I also don’t have any thing against an okay life. What’s wrong with that? The demand that life has to be extraordinary is not helping anyone be happy. Human life will ALWAYS consist of ups and downs. When there are no more ups and downs you have to check –because you might be dead.

Here are a few example of shoulds that spiritual people put on themselves:

I should be blissful. I should only feel happy feelings. I should never be angry. I should shine from within. I should always be forgiving. I should be a good example. I should be a vegetarian. I should not drink alcohol. I should only eat very healthy food. I should do yoga or some other spiritual exercise. I should at least be thin and look like I do yoga. I should meditate every day. I should be enlightened. I should be good at being spiritual. I should be more spiritual than my neighbor.

The saddest part is when people feel they can live up to all of that and they start to pretend! Then everything is lost. It’s better to be an honest failure than a fake success.

But speaking in terms of failure and success is really old world. Don’t bring it with you into the new!

Seriously, people. Just be. Don’t fall for the spiritual shoulds. Be as you ARE! You are absolutely wonderful the way you are, warts and all. Don’t try to be perfect. Just try to be the way you are. Just try.

You are human and you are amazing. 

To be authentic is perhaps the most important thing for a happy life. To be who you are and feel what you feel. To follow your heart.

At first it’s hard to even know what it means to be authentic. Our inner core has been covered up for many years. We have been taught to be what we are not. We have been taught what to like and dislike. We have been taught to measure ourselves against narrow standards, to compare and judge.

No wonder it's hard to know who you really are.

To be authentic means that you don’t act or react by any set standards. It means that you are fully present in each situation, making conscious, spontaneous decisions. 

It means that you are true to yourself in each moment.

Ramana Maharshi often used the expression “be as you are”.  I think this is good to practice. 

Be as you are when you are confused or disappointed. 
Be as you are when you are happy or serene. 
Be as you are when you are tired.

But do it with awareness.
Don’t shove anything under the rug. 
Be as you are. 

Ponder all the underlying emotions and their true causes. I mean ponder. You don’t need to come up with definitive answers. In fact, it’s best if you don’t. Allow yourself to not know the answer to anything about yourself. 

There are no definitive answers and nowhere to reach. Just be. 
Authenticity doesn’t have anything to do with perfection. Authenticity is living with truth, your truth, from moment to moment. Nothing needs to be known in advance.

If you keep being aware of your own feelings and reactions you will soon discover a lot about who you are in a way that doesn’t require any explanations or set standards. I can’t tell you what you will discover, each discovery is unique, but I can promise you that it will be of utmost importance to you and that it will transform your life.

It can be humbling in the beginning. You may find parts of yourself that you have tried to avoid. Towards the end you will reach parts of yourself you didn’t know existed.

This discovery is endless.

Sometimes authenticity means to go this way while everyone else is going that way. People around you may become upset, angry or disappointed because they wanted to decide who you are. (That’s a great opportunity for them to find out more about who they are. It’s got nothing to do with you.) Sometimes it means losing friends and gaining new ones.

It can also mean that nothing changes. You can have the most beautiful inner transformation and no one will ever notice. It doesn’t matter. You won’t care. The only thing that matters is that you are who you are.

There are a couple of ways you can practice becoming more genuinely you. One is to pay attention to everything that happens and to your reaction to what happens. For this you don’t have to set aside any time at all! You just do it while living your daily life. So easy and fruitful!

The other is meditation, which is really just a more formalized way of paying attention. This requires a little time, not much. A combination of both is best.

What you gain is priceless.
You gain you.
The real, true, untouched youness of you. 
Watch this hilarious rap by Premanator about the eternal question...

If there is one thing that is important on a spiritual journey, or any life journey for that matter, it’s honesty.

Honesty starts and ends with you. It’s not as easy as it sounds because our notion of honesty is often tainted with how things “should” be. We have faithfully learned the lesson of what we are supposed to want and feel and think by people in our proximity.

We have faithfully accepted it and are even opposed to others who don’t want and feel and think the same. Since we in our camp are right, those in other camps must clearly be wrong.

This goes on and on and on. There can’t be an end to it. But you can choose to not engage in that ancient eternal battle.

So let’s leave right and wrong out and take the first trembling steps towards honesty.

What is it that I want? What feels good to me? Why do I want it and why does it feel good?

Sometimes our motives are not so noble. That’s okay. We’re humans. In admitting our less noble traits we’re closer to honesty and therefore closer to ourselves, what we truly are. It’s not always easy to do because we desperately want to be and seem so good, useful, smart, lovable, interesting etc, etc. Bless our hearts!

When we are what we truly and honestly are we can be of enormous benefit to other people, just by being.

Each one of us has our own unique life path, valuable and important. You can’t compare one with another. Each is part of a most intricate weave of grace and purpose. We don’t have to understand exactly how it works.

If you keep looking at yourself, you’ll keep discovering, keep becoming, keep evolving. Read more on how to do it in my previous blog post Entertain your addictions.

There’s no finishing line, there’s only freedom, love and all you ever came here wanting.