“Pent and repent as necessary”! It is simple, but not easy, which is why we tend to wait until something horrifying happens. Can I budge that trend?

I was leaving the supermarket when my conscience, or some other helpful voice in my heart, brought up my current food shopping habits. Like the small stack of svele (small thick Norwegian pancakes), a meal of which costs the same as a large bread. There is nothing wrong in buying these as such – they are harmless to the body, and a traditional Norwegian food produced locally, something one might want to encourage. However, along with most of my other food, it is unnecessarily expensive. My food costs are not extremely high, since I never dine out these days, and rarely ever buy even weakly alcoholic drinks (alcohol is taxed extremely in Norway). But I buy small portions of ready-made food, like the afore mentioned pancakes, and desserts, and these are quite expensive.

“You still have debt from when you moved a year ago” pointed out the voice in my heart. “Yes, you are paying it down, but slowly. You think you can live with it, but can you die with it? In the spirit world, almost everyone who has lived – and even most who are alive today – have lived in poverty. How will you feel coming there and leaving a debt on Earth because of your gluttony? Does this bring glory to the Name?”

I think that is a valid point. I have a conscious practice of not living as if each day was my last, because I believe our expectations tend to influence us. But I think I have taken this too far. I could spend half as much money on food and still never be hungry, and would probably be healthier as well.

Gluttony is a bit of a moving target, but when I look at the world today, I get the impression that it might be wise to move pretty far, pretty fast.

If anyone actually read this, they should now have one of two questions: EITHER “Why are you so sanctimonious?” OR “Why didn’t you think of this years ago?”

Here we have to understand that my religion or philosophy is not one of rules.  There are those who live by rules: If they stick to the rules, they go to Heaven, otherwise the opposite. (There is usually some provision for forgiveness in case one fails a little, but generally the rules rule.) This makes things simple, at least once you got the rules memorized. As long as you don’t break the rules, you can do what you want.

I, on the other hand, can’t do what I want. I mean, I do what I want, but I can’t do that and know that I have done my best. I can never rest on my laurels, or have a perfectly good conscience. I am, in the manner of speaking, experimenting with my life. Or exploring it. Or perhaps trying to become myself. If that doesn’t make sense to you, then probably nothing I have said today will make sense. But there are many other days! Thousands, in my archives alone.