One of my favorite books is the “Meditations” by the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius. It’s fascinating to contemplate that the most powerful man in the World actually was a Philosopher. “Meditations” was written almost two Millenniums ago but is still ever so relevant. Just take this quote as an example:

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment

So easy to read and agree with, so hard to practise ! I guess we forget again and again that we filter the “Truth” ourselves, as brilliantly captured in the movie “Memento” and so powerfully explained in the sort-of scientific teachings of NLP (Neuro-linguistic Programming) and in the more spiritual ones by Seth/Jane Roberts, especially the book “The Nature of Personal Reality”. As described by Leonardo da Vinci we Humans are left with the powers of our Senses. NLP and Seth elaborate that we each create our own subjective, personal interpretation, an inner representation, based on the “data” from our senses. We tend to think that our experiences is the “Reality” or “Truth”. They are subjectively but not objectively, cf. Marcus Aurelius. Do dwell on this for a minute !

The Vision is perhaps the most powerful and persuading of our Senses. If we have seen something, it must have “happened” and it should be possible to establish a common Reality with others witnessing the same events. Right ? Wrong ! We are still filtering, we are still being Subjective. Intriguingly, take this piece of new technology as your aid: a camera that takes completely unfocused images ! See this example  and play around with the picture (click around): https://www.lytro.com/living-pictures/2325

Woo ! Imagine that our Mind could do the same. Refocus.

You were right, Marcus Aurelius !

So a Happy New Year to you !

It is magic, isn’t it, how a simple new digit may change our outlooks towards Life. I guess that is one of the special things about the New Years Evening and the transition into January – that we put aside the disappointments from the Past and really believe that the Future will bring us new stuff. Well, it might.  The interesting issue here is the mechanism itself: we adopt a change in our entire system. By the definition of a New Year we surrender to something that may fall so difficult in so many other circumstances, times and situations in out lives: we reframe our Worlds, we alter our interpretations and we twist our mind-sets on what is possible. Indeed, all these virtues are available each second we breathe. We should use them more often !

So why does it fall so easy on New Years Eve ? Perhaps the answer is: the context. It is “OK” to start again, you could even say that we feel that we are given permission to change,  that it is OK to change direction and to set new goals. Indeed, Context is a great factor in our subconscious mind and I tend to believe that our interpretations of Life and especially our feelings are extremely driven by our abilities to perspectivate, i.e. to choose our Centext instead of feeling doomed or destined by it.

We all want to be HAPPY, don’t we ? Well, I think that Happiness is a point-of-view and as such an interpretation of what actually happens in the outer world. So where do the Context blend in ? Let me give you an example: yesterday, the entire Globe celebrated the New Year, many were probably both drunk, horny and happy and thus most people have a positive feeling connected with “New Years Eve”. For me, this evening is in the light of another Context: this is the Evening on which I in 1973 saw my Father die at age 31, makeing me an Orphan just aged 7, a situation I fully understood on that very evening and how this was to define my entire life. So: same evening, different contexts -> different feelings, thoughts and degrees of Happiness.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not begging for pitty here, I am trying to prove a point, perhaps one of the most important ones I can pass on to you: learn to Perspectivate, learn to understand the importance of your sensation of the Context of any given situation or argument you might be in. Understand your Life in a larger context Timewise, i.e. in the vast span of Eternity and in the modest and perhaps random age of the Civilizations. We are all merely Dust in Time and Space and exactly therefore is Context everything in our short lives. Everything. So be aware of yourself, of your Centexts and of your Choices, first and foremost your mental ones,  they will define your feelings and thus your Experiences. Get it ?

Personally, I jump into 2012 with many and great hopes for the Future. Running-wise I will now interpretate everything I do, eat and train from the perspective that I am a 3.15 Marathon Runner. This is a very different position as compared with just a few months ago. I choose this Context for myself  and thereby I define some of the important aspects in my 2012 must-do’s.

Also, I choose to welcome saying good-bye to a few People that obviously don’t belong in my Life, People whom have abused my Trust and my Love. I know I did the “right” things and should not go down due to the Others misbehaviour.  So, I will choose the positive version knowing that “I can Love”, and leave the victimized version behind. I will choose the Context of not having met the really important people and partners yet. I have changed my interpretations and as such killed the love and the friendships that I thought I had – but never really had. In that Context the loss is now a gift. Thank you, Life, for making me understand.

So hello 2012, bring on Happiness, great races and lot’s of Love. For all of us.

Some experiences makes you transcend your own life and give rise to a rebirth of your spirit and soul in ways you would not imagine possible. For some  this could be doing the laundry, for others like myself it could be visiting great places like New York, that is New York as in New York, New York, United States of America ! Wooo !

So, I did !

Running the New York City Marathon was of course the main purpose of the trip but indeed just being in New York City is a great, blessing and loveable experience. There is so much to see, the skyline, the shops, the parks, the hectic but also friendly atmosphere. For persons like me New York widens one’s perspective and I come home renewed, refueled, reborn ! I come home with a great sense of humility of what the World has to offer and how much we should enjoy every single opportunity in life to experience stuff, to improve, to love, to give and to share.

To you, I give you this: the pictures from the awesome New York City Marathon 2011 (link below), a race which itself gives a lot to charity and outlasting moments of both pain and joy for those who participate, for those lucky and brave to endure the 26.2 miles through the five borroughs of New York. For me, the day started with the ferry trip to Staten Island passing the Statue of Liberty…

… and reaching Staten Island with this poetic view. A beautiful start of a very memorable day.

The race begins with the task of passing the Verrazano Bridge…

… followed by nuking Brooklyn….

… the tough Queensboro Bridge…

… Manhatten and the First Avenue, the latter completly stuffed with spectators and a outrageous crazy atmosphere…

… the Bronx…

… and back on Manhatten the Fifth Avenue, Columbus and the great finish in Central Park.

Surely, Time passes you by in New York (City Marathon) like a flash but believe me, the impressions are imprinted for the remains of your life. It is called: perspective. It is called: wisdom. It is called: love.

I love NY.

All the visuals are here: Spiderman runs New York City Marathon 2011 – pictures

and in English: Spiderman runs New York City Marathon 2011 – pictures (US version).

It is often said that men can’t multitask. That is obviously nonsens ! We can e.g. drive a car and think about sex, be in a business meeting and think about sex, and we can even have sex and think about sex with others So don’t say we can’t multitask !

So what has this to do with running ? Absolutely nothing ! Well, perhaps a little bit. Beceause if we change the word “sex” with “running” we are getting where I would like to be the next two years. We are in The State of Mental Running. That’s what I will call it, anyways. A State where thoughts about running are present in your mind at least subconsciously all the time and where many – not all ! – of your decisions and actions throughout the day are connected to your training and goals as a Runner.

Importantly, your subconscious Running Sensor is questioning everything you choose to eat and drink – with the end that you probably choose to eat a bit differently than “if not”. Basically, your Runnning Sensor will be responsible for keeping you on track with your goals both as a Runner and as a Human. So now you may ask: where do I get this Running Sensor, how do I find into this Running State ? The answer is simple: in your Mind ! You just have to decide !

Well, that’s what I have done. I realized after the writing of the book (ELSK AT LØBE) that things would only change for me if I changed my thoughts and actions. This is merely repeating that if you want different outcomes in your life, you have to undertake different (new) actions – and different actions start in the Mind with different thoughts and mind-sets.

So the next two years I will opt for a revised Running State for myself. I will indeed be multitasking on how to improve my running technique, on how to get more traning into my normal working days, on dropping those extra kilos and so forth. I will be reading and cross-referencing running literature with self-improvement books and again cross-referenced with Music and other means of getting into “states”, into the famous FLOW as coined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. I will be a Runner 24/7/365 and I will  not settle for less 

More will follow on this topic – The State of Mental Running or, for me, Marathon Multitasking. Make no mistake: this is not just a spacy mental excercise or superficial words on a blog. This is the essense, the destilate, of the teachings from the book that will be used in the hard and patient training and strenghtening of my body with the declared goal to run a sub-3 marathon before 2014. This sounds like a ridiculous goal for me to achieve – just making it even more compelling.

I’ll catch you out there.

As indicated before, I do have a very strong intuition at times. I “know” things before they happen or at least fully unfold. This is handy in some situations, troublesome in others. Especially hurtful is when I “see” bad actions, bad intentions, poor friendship behaviours, lousy love-affairs and the like way up front. And I guess I blame myself for not pulling the bullshit-break sooner than I mostly do. I actually give people too many chances… knowing that they will misuse them… and still end up like the fool. Speak about having good intentions with a shitty result !

On a larger scale I think as a parent that is important to evaluate what we pass on to our children, both actively and passively.  Children copy our behaviour and they make decisions that can last a lifetime. So it is far from trivial which values we carry.

Those of you who know me quite well know that I carry Integrity and Perseverance as very high values. I do NOT take the easy solutions. I am unbribable. For the same reasons I will tend to lower deceit and mistrust and it is for sure a fact that if you position yourself outside my circle of trust, you’re out for life. I may probably forgive you (or myself) along the time but you will still never re-enter the circle. Luckily, only a handful of persons thoughout my lifetime has taken this “trip”… underscoring the severity when I say “out”.

I truly believe that Life means “include”, but I do also have standards and they are not for sale. Not for sale for superficial friendhips, not for sale for flattery, not for sale for public attention, not for sale for manipulation, not for sale for “convenience”,  NOT FOR SALE ! So yes, my kids will be fed the values of Integrity and Perseverance, alongside with Honesty, Physical Activity and the love for the Nature. Core values of the old world, perhaps.

My Children will also be encouraged to exploit stuff themselves. They are well at it already, and outpowering their old man. Isn’t that nice ! That is the way Life should be: the next generation superseeding the old. But “we” old ones can still evolve, we can still transform. To this end, I am about to. But unsure in what way. But it will be a huge Transformation. As it has happened a few times before in my Life, strong voices call from “the other side”, like prerecognitions of a Personal tsunami completely overflowing my Reality. I try to dismiss these voices (mostly appearing in Dreams) – but all efforts are in vain.

So I have to find out: what is the next Transformation ? What is to happen ?

The Phoenix will fly !

Yesterday, the World witnessed the sad and brutal attack in Norway including a bombing of Oslo and a mad man’s shoot-down of a large number of youngsters on a nearby island. The immediate reaction is disgust, sorrow and anger and wishes for hard punishment if not torture or worse.

Thinking a bit further, however, brings me to other thoughts. Firstly, WHY  do incidents like the one in Norway happen ? HOW should they be avoided ? And how should we really react ? I think the “immediate” answers are given above but that the true correct ones are to be found elsewhere. They are to be found at persons like Jesus, Gandhi and Dalai Lama. The only universal answer is: love – and forgiveness.

Which sounds absurd, I know. But isn’t it so that we react with self-protection when we are hurt ? And that “hurt” most often means “loss of love” to some extend. And that this self-protection then evolves into isolation, fear, hatred … all kinds of malfunctious stuff in our psyche ?  That seems to be the common experience, I believe. The only way to break it is… by loving. Loving as an out-going and active feeling from yourself and in deep accordance and harmony with the universal values of Mankind, love as from the state of Grace, as from your personal Pieta with the Globe.

Let me be a bit blunt: most of you are complete ignorants – and be happy for that, I tell you ! Most of you do not know the true sorrow of loosing nor the real impact of Death. You only know your fears about it (if even). But let me tell you this: at the time a person losses everything and says goodbye to Life, only one feeling is present: Love. Love to Life, Love to the near-ones, Love to situations and shared experiences. Love.

So yes, we have to try to embrace everything with Love, even when it seems impossible. Let’s all use the events in Norway to raise the level, not lower it. Let’s go for the greater universal values and truths. Let’s go for Love.

Just watching a good “old” movie from my youth, A Few Good Men, staring Jack Nicholson, Tom Cruise and Demi Moore amongst others. Great stuff ! One of the touching points in the movie is the concept of a “code” that the Marines adhere to and the strong bonds and rules that connect the Soldiers for good and for worse.

Actually, I grew up in a kind of similar way, namely on a boarding school. There, we also had different kinds of “punishments” and we had a “code”. We were a unit. It took me many years to put these years of my childhood behind me and I missed the unique feeling of a “unit”.  In recent years Im beginning to pick up on these old mates e.g. via Facebook… and I strongly feel that we somehow still have a unit, that we would help each other if needed. It happens, actually.

Running marathons have created another type of “unit” for me, also unique and also with an unspoken “code” involved… or well, maybe that is something I imagine myself. Some of the other guys believe stuff too, I guess, getting tattoos of “Marathon Klub 100″ and shit… pretty strong statements if you ask me ! (still thinking what *I* should get.. and *where*). I like to belong to such groups driven by a common passion, namely the love for Running… which obviously streatches outside any country’s borders… proven by the fact that I have Facebook Running mates on nearly every Continent of the Globe.

The most famous qoute from the movie ? We all know it, don’t we ? We should perhaps apply it a bit more in our lives. Yes, we should separate REALITY from ridiculous life-lies and self-invented images. We should avoid the sad waste of Time and Life in dropping REAL experiences in Life instead of pursuing fictionary “ideals” that no Humans can live up to anyway. So if you are not known in the entire World by 25, you are *not* a genious. If your salary is less than say 200.000 $ a year, you are *not* rich. Yes, people cheat in their marriages. No, if you do not live on a Castle, you are *not* a Princess. And so on. Make the most of your *reality* instead of crying over the losses of your *vanity*. Period.

The Truth ? YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH !

Live with it !

Dear Pupil.

I often think of you when life bids against my wishes. What are any wishes worth compared to your destiny, killed by your own father at age 19, young, happy, ready for life. A young promising light was so crimefully dimmed  – you – but not forgotten.

Thinking of you in a dark moment of my own gives hope, gives promise. Because I will promise you that I will return even stronger than weakened just now. The best answer to everything is just to live on, to install happiness and good fortune in the mindset and to focus on own abilities. Who the f*ck cares about the “others” ? As Sartre pointed out, the others are hell.

Personally, there is no way that I can be put down, not by anyone, not by anything.  And I am totally “beyond bullshit”. I do not feed on lies or hostile reactions and I do not maintain relations with people without integrity or that keep double agandas or fill me with crap. People need to earn my respect and it does not bottle because of a fancy Title or a big car. In case you didn’t realize: these things span in Time like moisture in the desert. Very shortly ! I don’t need the junk of pretendence. No, show me something real. Feed me with wit, humour, intelligence, playfullness, curiosity, action, some of the stuff that creates memories for Life. Then I will be yours for keeps !

Well yes, I’m bleeding just now but not for long. Why ? Because none of the common nonsense in ordinary life compares meaningfully with your fate, dead Pupil.

For you, I lift my eyes, once again.

“The eternal feminine draws us ever onward and upward.”  Goethe

So these days I’m reading up for my 70-536 certification on the .NET Framework. It is quite frustrating to experience that stuff you thought you knew a bit about is just magnitudes of order larger and more complex than imagined. On the other hand, that’s what makes it fun and challenging. The important thing is to get avoid being intimidated and just read on. Just read the fricking book, absorb the concepts, the specific words, the key examples.

Actually, that’s the way one pick up all kinds of Frameworks/Universes. I have been in a few during the times, my favorites ones being Organic Chemistry, Inorganic Chemistry, Carbohydrate Chemistry, Biochemistry etc. and in IT basically the .NET and other OO-stuff. It’s all just a matter of reading and understanding. However, the key is not to absorb, the key is to produce yourself. Producing is the difficult part: as a researcher to figure out new stuff, as a programmer to be efficient and creative, as an author to be imaginative, as a sportsman to be stronger and more visionary and so on. Producing equals success and success equals happiness. Isn’t that what we are all indoctrinated to believe in ?

On a larger and perhaps more important scale we all choose Frameworks for our Personal, Spiritual and Religeous Beliefs. That’s how I see it, anyways. One could argue that the different Religions are “just” Frameworks, each with a certain set of characteristics and expected behaviours. Same goes for the different Cultures around the World. Same goes for the different Civilizations throughout the span of Time. Same goes for the different Trades you can be in, the paths you can choose for your career: do you plug in to be a Programmer, a Medical Doctor, a Lawyer, a Craftsman etc. It’s all just a Framework thing ! And Frameworks can be shifted.

So ?

The important thing is to choose, really. Most importantly: in your private life. Choose the things that work for you, interests, partners, beliefs, places, feelings. We all plug in every day, into our Personal Framework, so it should be rather obvious that it is of some importance that we understand what is going on. Thus, Know Thyself ! Know the Framework !

What immense power of imagination and vanity to think that anything will be remembered.

What incredible force to put meaning and purpose into the small doings we have.

What blindness to forget the span of Time and the forces of Nature, the powers of tens that outnumber all Human creation and leaves but historic relics to witness the moments of yesterday. Our attempts to manifest are desperate, yet pleasing, are in vain, yet our destiny.

The Flux of Life is brutal and seperate from our Thoughts about it. Life is short, yet each moment eternal and accessible.