I already use my serious-brain, but should it have its own journal?

I have been reviewing my journal again. Since times immemorial (OK, 1998), I have written about all kinds of things. About what happens in my life, such as it is; my opinions on various things; review of computers and computer games, anime, books. Analysis of the world economy, reflections on various scientific matters, mainly within psychology, sociology, and information technology. And lately more and more religious and spiritual topics. And it’s all just mixed together.

So if someone comes here through Google to read about City of Heroes, the next day there may be an entry about some Orthodox saint from before the Dark Ages. That will send them packing for sure. Conversely, someone may show up to read about Happy Science (evidently I am the first thing you get if you google for “Happy Science” Norway… imagine that) and instead find me writing about the health benefits of extensive walking or the importance of dried plums for colorectal health. -_-;

So I have made a mental image of a possible new way to organize the website. Instead of one blog with all categories, it might have several levels. It would start with the main site but instead of going on to this blog, you would get a choice between Time and Eternity. Eternity would of course contain the entries on religion, spirituality and perennial philosophy.

The “Time” link would then take you to a choice between Science, Entertainment and Slice of Life.  Science would be the good old gray entries: Economy, information technology, psychology, sociology, physiology. I might consider spinning off economy since I have particular expertise on that, but probably not – I have more or less given up on humans in that regard.

“Entertainment” would then be reviews of computer games, anime, occasionally music and fiction books. The drawback here is that this part of my life seems to be shrinking slowly over time and may end up more or less deserted, since this is where the spiritual interests are grabbing their spare time from, mostly.

“Slice of life” would be the most personal stuff. I might even have a separate health blog which people would not be interested in reading until after I die, in which case it might be interesting to know. I don’t really think it should interest many other people as long as I can continue to write. So the slice of life would be the rest, if there is any. And perhaps meta entries like this.

The problem with this is that my life and thinking is not really that fragmented. When I think about science or religion it is often because of something I have noticed in my daily life. Also, psychology and religion overlap to some degree, as do sociology with both of them. And the state of your soul can greatly influence your body, and sometimes the other way around.

To take an example I thought of today: Norwegians have grown a lot heavier after they stopped saying grace. On the other hand, the Japanese mostly still say “Itadakimasu” before they eat, and are not gaining weight as fast. From the obesity “epidemic” in America, I would guess they have stopped saying grace as well? But what is cause and what is effect here:  If I were obese from overindulgence, I would probably have problems communing with the Light at mealtime as well. Kind of like it is hard to pray at bedtime if there are every new people in your bed; but conversely, it is probably hard to get ever new people into your bed if you pray by it regularly. Cause and effect can be really hard to tell apart!

And so it is with the various parts of my life as well, they can be hard to tell apart, and therefore hard to write apart.  I wonder if I should try anyway, just to make the Chaos Node a bit less chaotic.

You probably already knew this, but I just learned from City of Wonder that the Land of Boredom borders directly on Meh.

Why the chaos in the Chaos Node? Why don’t I just pick one thing to write about and stick with it?

I know it is challenging to be a reader here. It is not so bad if you come here from Google and just happen to find an entry that is about just that one thing. But if you come back, the next day I probably write about something entirely different.  Certainly if you stay a week, there is bound to be stuff that doesn’t interest you in the least.

That’s because you are not me. I write all the time about things that interest me. Well, some things interest me more than others, but it must at least have crossed my mind to end up in my journal. Lots of things don’t cross my mind very often, like “what’s on TV” or “what’s wrong with Republicans now” or “good places to go out for dinner”, even though many (possibly most) of my online friends are occupied with such topics on a regular basis.  I am not them.

***

It would be easy to write and write about spiritual and religious matters. When you have a Heavenly spirit that lives with you at all times, even if undeserved, you could teach for a thousand years and more without ever running dry.  But to teach with authority, you still have to actually live these teachings for them to become yours. And that is the bottleneck.

Jesus Christ says: “Any teacher who is educated for the Kingdom of Heaven is like a homeowner  who brings out treasures new and old from his storage rooms.” See, you have to own the stuff to be a real “heavenly intellectual” to coin a phrase. You can’t just borrow it from the holy spirit that for some reason has conceded to keep you company. Bad things come from pretending to own what is not ours. Like a spiritual bank crisis or something.

Likewise Paul the apostle says: “I subjugate my body and keep it in slavery, so that I who preach for others shall not myself be found unworthy.” I don’t do much of that, at least by saintly standards (your standards will vary if you are a liberal, for sure) and so I am unworthy to teach many things that I could otherwise say. Because, as I said, I don’t really need to have a plan to teach about various topics of the spiritual life, since the fellow Presence in my life knows a lot about these things and shares freely.

***

It is substantially safer to write about City of Heroes or City of Wonder, even though the marvels there are rather two-dimensional in comparison. And writing about my experiences with cheap, safe exercise is probably a useful contribution to the world, without putting any souls in particular danger, not even my own.

Then again, I wrote about economy for years and years, and people kept making the mistakes I warned them against. Even now they still do. So I guess it could be the same with this. “Oh, this was kind of interesting. I always wondered how this ‘exercise’ thing worked. I had no idea it was THIS easy.” And then you turn on the TV and fall asleep in the couch with your hand in a bag of chips. ^_^

And even though it all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
with nothing on my tongue
but Hallelujah.
-Leonard Cohen.

These flowers are not only white as snow, they also smell wonderful: Sweet as honey but fresher, like a perfume best suited for an innocent young woman in the last spring of her virginity. Unfortunately, my words are not nearly as sweet as that!

If I skip updating a day or two or ten, it is not because I have nothing to write. I have more to write than I could write in a lifetime, is how I feel. In fact, I often write one or two entries on such a day, but I don’t publish them. That’s usually not because I write about some deep, dark secret. Rather these days I tend to write about high, bright secrets.

Regular readers will know that I have what I call a “Voice in my heart”. It is not even a literal voice, but more a guidance or inspiration. Exactly how concrete or voice-like it is varies, actually, but it does not go further than specific thoughts formed into words, and often not even that far.  Anyway! If it were up to that Presence, I could write about spiritual things every day for the rest of my natural life, and never run out of inspiration. Actually, I don’t think the Presence ever said that, but that is my impression. And that is how it works in other people who have acknowledged their Presence, by whatever name. If they stop writing, it is not because everything is said, but perhaps because not everything can be said.

So I could make this into a full-time spiritual blog, and have a pretty exciting time writing it too, since the Presence is really good at explaining things to me. But I am not worthy. That would give a completely wrong picture of me. I am not a spiritual person really. Yes, I have more interest in these things than the average person, and a more relaxed attitude to riches and status in this world. But that does not take much these days, I’m sorry to say. And I am no saint. I play computer games pretty much every day. I have never heard of saints playing City of Heroes or The Sims 2 ! There are various other things I do as well. It is not an extraordinary life. Unusual, for sure, but not impressive.

And that is only part of it. There is also the problem that I am not transparent enough to be absolutely sure I don’t distort the Truth. If I was more pure of heart, in the widest possible sense, I could still be sure that what I wrote would benefit others, even if it had not yet benefited myself. But I may still be mistaken in various things. I may be quietly substituting my own thoughts and not notice it. I cannot risk writing about everything I have not tried or at least seen, and perhaps mislead another soul. The danger is too great.

Finally, there is the risk of capsizing. When a ship has too much sails and not enough ballast, it may capsize, keel over.  This can also happens to humans who don’t have enough ballast.  To be safe, we should (as Ryuho Okawa says, but it is still true) be like an iceberg, with at least 80-90% under the surface. We should in other words only share a fraction of what we truly know, so that if need be, we could expose far more, and so that we can speak with a certainty that come from a wide and deep knowledge, far beyond the few words we share.  Needless to say, this is not always (or even usually) the case for me either.

Even this I have written several times before, in various forms, but I am not sure if I have uploaded it. Probably not for a while at least. But this time I will. So there you have it. The temptation of brightness.

I did not get finished the entry I wrote on yesterday. I had hoped to finish it on the train, and brought with me my smallest and lightest netbook and a USB cable to hook it up with the mobile phone. Unfortunately, this particular cable did not connect properly with the netbook, although it worked well with the big heavy Vista laptop last winter. Oh well. So I am finishing it after the trip, and backdating it. And the same with this entry that explains it.

Generally I don’t backdate more than a few hours, but sometimes if I have skipped a day and have two entries the next, I will push one back a day instead of pushing the other forward.