Spirituality is also allowing everything to be as it is, to place no demands on reality in any way. It is fallling into bottomless peace and beauty. It is being loved totally, perfectly, as you are.

It is loving others totally, perfectly, as they are. It is total forgivness, for you and everybody else. It is a love that goes beyond likes and dislikes.

It is coming to a complete stop. It is seeng that nothing needs to change. It is being what you are and allowing others to be what they are, even if they deny themselves. Even if they deny you.

It is giving up striving. It is allowing the unavoidable. It is the deepest initmacy with yourself, the world and others. It is complete fearlessness. It is a complete coming out of hiding because every part of you is bathing in the most lovely light. 

​The truth is not hidden but because we love mysteries we say it is. All the beautiful messages of all the religions and sages around the world have changed nothing. It hasn’t made the world a better place. We still kill and hate one another. For thousands of years nothing has changed.
 
That is because thruth is nothing that you can read about and learn in the same way that you learn the ABC:s. Truth is something you find inside, even though there is evidence of it outside.
 
Truth is something that has to be discovered by each and everyone, individually. If they want to. That is why truth can be open in plain sight and still nothing changes. That is why truth can be told and not seen.
 
Truth goes beyond belief. Truth goes beyond what you think you are. Most people are not ready to give up what they believe is true in order to find actual truth.  But that is what is needed. The complete giving up of all beliefs. How else would you be able to make room for truth?
 
“Love is all you need” may be true but as soon as we start asking “how do I get love?” all is lost. Not even to ask “how do I give love?” is quite good enough. Because your idea of love is a belief and it may not tally with someone else’s beliefs and perceived needs. And what will you do if your love is rejected? If nobody is happier because of the love you give?
 
A better question to ask would be, what is love? Or better yet, what is true? What do I know for certain? What do I actually know that can never be denied in any circumstance? And be prepared to go wherever that question takes you.
 
That is the direction in which you will find truth, and love, and freedom. If you look hard enough, if you are willing to give up everythng. And I mean everything. And I mean willing.
 
But how many of us are really willing? How many of us even have that interest? And so the truth will continue to be in plain sight and continued to be denied. And the world will go on as always. This is no problem, really. The interest can not be manufactured. Either it’s there or it’s not. You will know if it’s there for you. The fire  inside is a sign, the continuous looking.
 
The trick is to not look for what you believe about truth, but for truth itself. Truth is not an object. Truth is not an acquisition. 
 
In a sense you are not the one discovering truth but truth is discovering you. You may not even know why you want it. But in the end you will discover that truth makes everything intensely interesting and vividly alive. 

I’ve been trying to know you but I can’t. There is no strength in me, no true will or trust, and no ability. I am helpless. I’ve been trying to be good and do what’s right but I can’t because the will is lacking and the trust is weak - a horrible realization, devastating. I thought I was on the road but I walked beside it. I don’t have what it takes to be on it, I never will. I can’t bring myself closer to you. I’m helpless. You will have to carry me.

So there is nothing left for me to do. Nothing. All that remains is for me to open myself to you completely and let you do all the work for me. It's your work anyway. It never belonged to me. But even that I cannot do. My helplessness is deeper than my memory. I thought my actions served you. It was all illusion. I can’t open myself to you. I am powerless. I have to wait for you.

I know now that I don’t know anything. It’s the only thing I know. I can’t judge anyone or anything because I have no way of knowing all there is to know about a situation or a person. I simply do not know! I give up trying and I offer all I am and have and do. I offer life and death. I offer all. If there is a key you have it. I don’t have to know. I listen and I listen deeply but I don’t have to know.

I am only now. I have no past or future. I am born to you each day. I am an infant in this world; I was created just this instant. In a moment I am gone.

I understand now that praying for a stronger will was wrong. I shouldn’t ask for my will to be perfected. I should only ask for your will to be done in me, for your will to be done even if I never know or understand. Your will be done. Your will, not mine. Now that nothing has a meaning and a feather is a heavy load, I carry the world on my back and wrap myself in loneliness you tailored just for me. Look how well it suits me, look how pretty the fabric runs over each and everyone of us. 

It can only be through you that I am true. Everything is an illusion. There is only you, veiled in ever-changing shroud and mantle. You came to me in death, when I most needed you. You offered me the sweetest love, then took it all away before I could barely taste it. Everything is an illusion. There is only you.

You tested me and challenged me. For what? For me to realize I can’t trust myself? For me to finally admit I’m no one? Why, my love, why? Because I know you already know all there is to know about me. You don’t have to test me for your own purposes. You can see straight into my heart. You know my deepest wishes, any evil I can’t see myself, and anything I have ever tried to keep a secret. You know me. You see me for what I am. It’s useless to pretend anything in front of you. I never have. You still love me. I never doubted that.

I know you could make me love you perfectly. Yet you don’t. Are you waiting for my cooperation, the one I can’t seem to carry out? Is that what you want from me? To give it all away, to throw away the key (should you decide to give it to me), to enter into the heart and disappear? I can’t do it. I accept it now. I have learned to wait. It’s not for me to either condemn or praise myself. I will have to wait.

Oh, so silent now, so still. The moon is in the lake and the lake is in the moon. So silent now, so still. I have forgotten all the names I used for objects. I have forgotten all the names I used for things that never could exist. Forget me now and make me yours. Forgive me now and make me one with all. Make me smaller than a seed and larger than a forest. Make me brighter than a sun and darker than a universe, harder than a diamond and softer than a snowflake. Eat me now. There is no bitterness in me, only the sweetness you planted in my bones and the lovely smell of home. 

I remember you. I always did.

Even roses eventually become garbage. To last longer they would have to be made of plastic and not as beautiful. Real beauty fades. The desirable is always temporary, the briefness is what makes it beautiful. Why hold on to the fleeting moment? What has a beginning will have an end. Too much attachment to things and people deprives them of their true beauty.

To have a positive mind and happy feelings are great. By allowing joy into your world you attract a chain of positive events.

It sounds simple enough: Everybody wants to be happy and if I change my thoughts to more positive thoughts I will have a great life. Or: If I practice loving kindness and focus on positive feelings, I will become compassionate, the world will be a better place and I will be a happier person.

But what nobody tells you is what to do with the angry, hateful, fearful feelings that life is so good at presenting us with. We are just told to focus on the positive and “letting go” of anger etc. Sure, that’s good. If you can do it.

If you can’t, and most people can’t, the result will be suppression and repression of your difficult feelings. Then nothing is accomplished. Nil. Nada. Zilch. Rien.

You just threw a blanket over the messy stuff. You just swept it under the rug and now admire your pretty room.  But the dirt is still there. Under a shiny layer of goodness the dirt goes on accumulating. You might even forget about it.

You are now living a lie. It’s a pretty lie but it’s still a lie. You and everyone around you are the victims.

This happens very often for people inspired by New Age where the belief is that our low “vibration” (bad feelings) will attract bad stuff. To remedy this New Age offers several techniques to “raise your vibration”. (This is basically what the famous Law of Attraction is all about.)

Those techniques often make people feel really good. For a while. Then it wears off and another technique is required. And another. And another.  Ad infinitum.

And all you’ve been doing is running away from yourself. Some people get addicted to  this cycle.

So, what to do with all those difficult emotions? Fear, anger, rage, anxiety etc. What to do if you are really, REALLY, pissed at someone or something? If you are terrified? Worried? Desperate?

Send out loving thoughts? Immerse yourself in light?

Well, around 99.9% of the population will not be able to do this without suppressing their emotions at the same time. To send out loving thoughts without emotional suppression takes tremendous spiritual maturity. Buddha was sitting under that tree for a really long time until he had it all figured out.

I want to make one thing clear: There is nothing wrong or dangerous about having so called negative feelings.

(Note: I’m not talking about mental disorders or destitution here, just normal human behavior in more or less normal situations).

What is bad, though, is entertaining negative thoughts that you keep repeating over and over again. But on the other hand that is really easy to change. It’s just a matter of changing your thinking habit. Most people who try report dramatic and lasting positive change. Your thoughts don’t own you anymore.

But our emotions are not as straightforward as our thoughts.

In my experience, the only way to deal with difficult emotions is, paradoxically, to accept them and feel them, over and over again. Every little feeling has to be accepted and embraced. Then, eventually, they will disappear on their own. This can take a really long time. Often years.

I know. You don’t want that. Nobody does. You want it NOW. Because we live in a society where waiting just one second for a web page to load is insufferable.

Once you have gotten over that this might take longer than one second, one of the biggest pitfalls is trying to understand and make sense of your emotions. Please don’t try. They simply don’t make sense on the level of the mind. Just feel and accept, feel and accept. If you try to attach stories and explanations to your difficult emotions you might be stuck in their net for real. That’s like having ten pages up that never load.Or sweeping yourself completely under the rug. 

But don’t despair. There is one other way – and it can be instant: Surrender.

This means that you give up trying to control or understand. It means to even invite your difficult emotions when they rear their ugly heads, to welcome them lovingly because that is the way you are feeling right now and everything about you is holy and therefore these feelings are holy too. This takes a lot of courage.

Surrender is, as you see, also a form of acceptance. The deepest acceptance: acceptance through the heart. You don’t even try to understand what is happening to you. You have accepted that these feelings are within you and you don’t even try to change anything.  You have surrendered your desire to be free of them.

For this trust is required, deep trust in yourself, in life or God,

Surrender goes against the grain of our society. We have been taught to never give up, to keep fighting. But sometimes never giving up means that all you do is banging your head against the wall or knocking on doors that never open.

Sometimes it’s good to give up. (Don’t tell anyone I said that!)

You are your own teacher. No one can tell you what will happen or how long it will take for your emotions to be freed. If you are really ripe it can be instant. Or you can surrender gradually over months or even years. Whatever you are ready for it will be a beautiful process, divine in its purity. 

In the end, you will find yourself in the unique, unfathomable youness of you, the deepest love imaginable. You’ll be living in grace and wonder. And time won’t matter. Not even in waiting for a web page to load.

Yes, life gives a mixed bag. The content of this bag is rarely one dimensional, black or white. So how do you sort it all out? How do you live in a world that is so vast and so contradictory as ours? How to live when your understanding just can’t cover it all? 

Even if you have a much smaller perspective life is still quite confusing. Why do I behave the way I do, why do others behave the way they do? Why did this happen? Etc etc.

How to deal with life? The eternal question.

Do you try to determine what is right and wrong from your limited perspective? Do you guess how things are when you don’t really know? Or do you simply make decision how it is? Do you judge, condemn, try to change others to think like you?

You’re in for some big fights.

Or do you live with constant confusion and uncertainty? One day feeling one way and another way the next? Do you live with fear because you can’t control life? Do you feel powerless?

You’re in for a roller coaster ride.

Both ways will leave you exhausted.

What to do then?

Try to give it over! Give it all over and if you take it back give it over again.

How?

This is practical.

It’s easier if you have something you can relate to,something that is bigger than you but still feels personal. Why? Because you can then have a little conversation where you lay out your difficulties. (You can replace the word God below with anything that is a power greater than you and that you can relate to.)

I talk to God every day. I ask God to carry my burdens because they are simply too heavy for me alone and I have no way of knowing how to solve my problems. I ask God to help others solve their problems because I can’t solve it for them.

I tell God: “You know my heart, you know where it’s hardened, you know where it’s soft, you know where it’s murky, you know its joy. I give my heart to you, all of it. Here, take it. I give it over.”

I tell God I’m clueless. I tell God what my dreams are.

I give everything over to God. Even love and joy. My heart is not my property! I just happen to carry it. I just happen to fill it, with useless things sometimes.

It’s hard to give things over because we are often attached to our problems, for various reasons. One reason being that it gives us great satisfaction if we can solve our problems ourselves. And that IS a great satisfaction.

But sometimes. It’s just good to give it over. To admit our confusion and our inability to fix things.

It’s hard to really give things over because the problem often comes jumping right back at you. Let’s say you worry about something that you can’t control. You talk to God and you tell God that you can’t solve this. You ask God to help you give it over, to manage it for you. If you succeeded in giving it over, you feel instant relief. But the worry often starts seeping in again.

Then give it over again. Over and over again. Until there is relief.

This doesn’t mean that you then sit back and do nothing about your or the world’s problems. No. This means more focus, more clarity and inspiration for action. It usually means that you have opened yourself up to see things differently and that you have opened yourself up to be led – by a power greater than yourself. 

And sometimes, quite often actually, it means that at least your personal problems are instantly solved. Don't ask me how. I've just noticed that it happens. 

God never forsakes one who has surrendered – Ramana Maharshi

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.

Surrender is a beautiful process.
It’s emotional and spiritual.
It’s not intellectual.
You can’t understand it with your mind. 
It's a master and a servant. 
You can feel it.
You can't explain it.

Three different paths all lead to surrender. 

When you surrender to life you accept all that happens and all that is.
When you surrender to the Self you merge with your own sense of being, the life force which permeates the whole universe.
When you surrender to God you put all your cares in his hands and happily accept everything he lays before you.

It all comes to the same.The depth of it is incomprehensible.

Whichever path you choose surrender means to give up control. It’s not easy to do. Most people hate it. Why? Because we are so sure of what we want and need – and what we think others should want and need.

We like to think that we are in full command of our lives. When things don’t happen they way we wanted there is disappointment or depression.

To surrender means to accept, even appreciate, whatever comes your way. Even if I don’t understand why things happen the way they do. Even if I don’t like it.

I relax into what is.
I give up my most cherished fights.
I quarrel with nothing.
I stop commanding.
I stop forcing.
I start receiving and accepting.
I want nothing.
I want everything.

In surrender you are happy in every situation. It means being naturally relieved of disappointment and depression. Not because bad things don’t happen but because you don’t judge good and bad the way you used to. 

Few people achieve complete surrender immediately but partial surrender is always possible. A first step to surrender is letting go. Another early step is to stop resisting what is, to stop fighting the world.

A more advanced step is to admit that you are indeed helpless. And to sit with that helplessness and to fully, fully embrace it. Don’t be afraid of the temporary emptiness that comes when you first lay down your weapons. It will soon be filled with your authentic self, with bliss.

Surrender doesn’t mean that you force yourself to endure what you don’t want. Surrender means that you don’t resist what is while knowing what you want without attachment to it – and no aversion toward what you don't want.

That's a tough one. 

Sometimes life forces you to surrender by being a total bitch. That's the master aspect of surrender. Sometimes you melt into surrender by a softened heart. That's the servant aspect of surrender.

Surrender means being completely honest with yourself. It also means grace because you are given the possibility to surrender through your desire to do it.

It’s your gift. See if it has arrived. 

To fully and completely accept and love yourself is part of surrender. You can’t surrender and still have complaints about yourself, or anyone else.

Surrender is unconditional love. Unconditional love is surrender.

In giving up all you gain all. But you haven’t surrendered until you loose all expectation of gaining anything from it. That’s the tricky part.

We always want something in return. 

Sure, you'll get it. But you can’t demand or even expect it.

I’m so grateful that I was given this gift.
I’m so grateful that I had the desire to accept it.
It’s not done by me.
I can only entertain the desire.
Everything is as it should.
Thy will be done… 

Nothing needs to be changed.Just add awareness.