Aleksander Hansen

True freedom is ineffable.

Love the whole world as if it is yourself.

You are free to choose any direction, but none of them will guarantee an easy life. All directions will have their part of joy, their part of hardship, pain, failure, loss, grief, conflict, doubt, their part of sacrifice. But, if you decided to love the world as your direction, you will not regret it.

Develop skilfulness underway, for unskilful love may harm you or others. These Family Principles could be also called Principles of Skilful Love. It is a good starting point, but mastering love is a lifelong learning; sometimes joyful, other times painful, but gratifying journey.

Life pilgrimage starts and ends at the same point: ultimately, there is nowhere to go, nothing to do, no one to become, nothing to acquire. Life is a pilgrimage to nowhere, like a dance, music, or blooming of the flower. If you find yourself stuck, lost, confused, trapped, devoid of meaning, remember that.

3.1 Joy. You are alive at this moment, that alone is enough for joy. All other aspects of life are of fluctuating nature.

3.2 Kindness. Observe and develop a deep understanding of what makes you or the other happy in a healthy way, and share that, if you have enough of it yourself, and if and when the receiver accepts it.

3.3 Compassion. Observe and develop a deep understanding of and acknowledge your and other’s suffering; help to alleviate it when you can, but not to your or other’s detriment.

3.4 Equanimity. Develop the capacity to stay calm and wholesome in uncertain, diverse, and fluctuating circumstances; remember that everything is uncertain and impermanent, embrace change as the fundamental nature of all things.

4.1 Sleep. Optimal sleep is the foundation for good life, and trying to build optimal life without optimal sleep is not possible.

4.2 Mindfulness. During your daily life, observe what you do.

4.3 Meditation. Practice meditation in silence, aloneness, stillness. The best meditation is meditation without “toys”. All special equipment like bells, cushions, pads, clothes, altars, special locations like meditation centres and monasteries, fancy poses and techniques, rituals, chants, special goals like enlightenment, awakening, special conditions like complete silence or company of other meditators – are “toys”. Good meditation is simple: stop talking, sit or lay down, relax your body, close your eyes but stay awake, observe your breathing, body sensations, feelings, thinking, impulses, memories, visions, external distractions – that’s all.

4.4 Journal. Write down observations of oneself and the world around; this will allow deeper exploration of the matter than trying to ruminate it through; also, this allows storing written observations for the later inquiry by a more experienced you, or practical application; write down observations of physical or social phenomena, flashes of meditative insight, otherwise easily forgotten; write down observations of patterns of own mental, verbal, and physical habitual behaviour, otherwise easily left unnoticed and continuously perpetuated. Some unhealthy habits and attachments are listed in the page “Avoid”.

4.5 Exercise. Practice light physical exercise daily, especially if your daily life is more of a sedentary nature; it will strengthen you both physically and mentally.

4.6 Selective consumption. Consume healthy nutrients, avoid unhealthy ones: edible food; sensory food: smell, hear, taste, feel, touch; electromagnetic: appliances and electronic devices; volition; consciousness: individual, collective, environmental. Some unhealthy consumables are listed in the page “Avoid”.

4.7 Structure. Design clearly, mutually agree on, and maintain family structure of: principles of relationship (how we engage with each other?); main routines (when and what has to be done?); finances (how do we earn, save, invest, spend, protect?); environment (what has to be placed where?); general direction (where is our “family ship” sailing?); responsibilities (who is responsible for what in family?). Treat structure not as a rigid, unmovable form, but as a gravitational center. Remember trees: those having firmness of the core, combined with increasing flexibility towards thinner branches, withstand even the strongest winds. Those that have no strong core: do not grow tall; and those that become too rigid (dead): eventually break under the stronger wind.

4.8 Study. Read good books. Otherwise, you will live in the shadow of naivety and short-sightedness. But read in conjunction with mindfulness, meditation, and journaling, to avoid being poisoned by opinions and shackled by intellectual shackles. Another reason to read in combination with meditation is the quality of reading; a good book, usually, distils decades of experience and study of the writer into couple pages or even a couple of lines of text, therefore, it is worth reading without hurry, reflecting on what one reads; it is of little to no use to read a good book in a haste, just to put a “check mark” that you have read it. No matter what is your main bread-bringing occupation, having in mind that most of us live integrated into humanity, study humanities. Some recommended books are listed in the page “Books Map”.

4.9 Spill-over. Building a good family life, and life in general, requires good integration of various aspects of life. Although all aspects depend on each other, integrating all of them at once is not possible, and wrong prioritizing brings destruction. The natural question rises: what to prioritize when? Do it by a spill-over principle. First take care of your body, then take care of your mind, then take care of your home, then take care of your family, then take care of your friendships, then take care of your education, career, or business, and only then take on the wider community projects, like charity, politics, etc. Positivity accrued in previous elements, will spill-over on next one.

4.10 Compounding. Improve slightly some aspect of your life everyday. If you improve something 1% daily, it will get twice as better every 70 days. Consistent tiny gains beat occasional big efforts. Beware – same principle of compounding works against you if you compound negative things. Because of the power of compounding, is much more important to choose good direction, be mindful and move forward carefully, than to try to move fast.

4.11 Wealth. Learn the principles of accounting and personal, business, and societal asset-management, no matter what is your occupation or income level; it is not an option in the contemporary society; the better you know how to manage the assets, the more stable you will be mentally, which will give positive effects on all areas of life to you and those around you.

4.12 Discretion. Keep personal, family, business matters private. If someone shared private information with you, never ever disclose it to anyone in any way.

4.13 Silence. Think and act wise, but do not talk much. Do not display your wisdom untimed and especially unasked, like a broken wake-up clock which rings at a random time.

4.14 Non-comparison. The perspectives of being “worse than the other”, “better than the other”, and “equal to the other” are all three neurotic. They inevitably bring stress, anxiety, create mental shackling, and consequently manifest grotesque behavior. The healthy and mentally freeing perspective is of non-comparison, of understanding that all people are unique and all people inter-are. In other words: if there is no “this one”, there is no “that one” either. If you do not yet realize it, you must look deeper into the nature of the world.

4.15 Reciprocity. Good relationships are reciplocal, have clarity about what each party gives and gets of it, mindfulness of balance, timely adjustment, respect for sovereignty of each other. Acknowledge and repay good deeds of others with sincere gratitude. Do not expect nor give “free favors,” but seek balance. Be alert of one sided giving or taking. Remember, that “free favor” hides an underlying unstated expectation, which if not fulfilled, breeds resentment in the long run. Be vigilant to not become manipulated into giving your resources without being reciprocated. There is much more trickery than honesty in the world, and you will meet attempts of trickery regularly. Be alert of people who get uncomfortable or even agitated by the expectation of reciprocity, for they have manipulative and exploitative tendencies.

4.16 Justice. Do not do to other what you would not want to be done to you.

4.17 Unskillfulness. When confronted with harmful behavior, maintain boundaries to prevent the harm, but at the same time do not hold resentment in oneself; remember that that person did as best as he could at that moment, and if it went wrong, and he created suffering for others, and always for himself too, it is because of his unskillfulness. We all go through life continuously learning, some have better conditions to learn and develop, others have worse. Maintain this attitude towards oneself also.

4.18 Truthfulness. When situation really requires, calmly and compassionately speak the uncomfortable truth to the other as you see and feel it; do not avoid difficult conversations, even about the smallest things; environments where difficult conversations are avoided or discouraged, develop into vessels of hypocrisy, resentment, passive aggression, and even physical violence.

4.19 Boundaries. Maintain healthy boundaries. They are inevitable, for every person is different, and we cannot mind-read each other. Never put yourself or allow anyone to put you into position where you are good enough to be used, but not good enough to be respected. This is valid both of your own attitude towards self, your attitude towards attitudes of others towards you, and your attitude towards others.

4.20 Groundedness. Periodically check yourself, whether you are grounded, whether you stay firm and genuinely humble. It is very easy to become carried away by own pride in ones’ perceived successes, achievements, qualities, ambitions, or to be carried away on the wave of admiration or motivation by others. If you stay grounded, you will never fall, even if external circumstances would try to pull you down, for it is nowhere to fall lower than the ground.

4.21 Impermanence. Try doing your best, but keep in mind that everything is uncertain and impermanent. Accepting it is crucial for optimal life, and for a clearer vision of reality. Without this acceptance, you will be tormented by perpetually exchanging waves of forced excitement and non-satisfaction, and this tormenting will prevent you from being genuinely free.

4.22 Alternation. All phenomena, both inside you and external, seek to alternate: silence with noise, stillness with action, aloneness with interaction, war with peace, work with rest, happiness with unhappiness, excitement with depression, optimism with pessimism, sureness with doubt, success with unsuccess, order with chaos, integration with disintegration, strenght with weakness, etc. There is this “breathing” nature of the whole world. You will save a lot of energy, and evade a lot of trouble if you learn to not be swayed and stressed, but to ride along those alternations without clinging to them.

4.23 Balance & Timing. The more pure is your heart, the more present and in sync with reality you are – the better will be the balance and timing of your mental, verbal, and physical actions. All skills of navigation mentioned above lead to better balance and timing, which is: joy in action. You can also imagine a swimmer: when every movement of his hands, legs, head, shoulders, and core is well balanced and timed, including adjustment to the water currents and waves and even employing them for his advantage – he swims effectively towards his direction and wastes no more energy than is absolutely needed; but if movements are disbalanced or poorly timed, even if he puts all his effort, all his muscle power into movements – the effectiveness will be severely impaired, he will tire sooner, swim slower, suffer more, will navigate currents and waves poorer, and will be at higher risk of just giving up and drowning.

4.24 Humor. Remember that ultimately, all human knowledge, all concepts created in human mind, including these, are unending drafts that are deemed to be perpetually stepped outside and recreated indefinitely; remember that life itself is finite and ultimate truth is ineffable; humor in this sense is equivalent to humility, or to a “one foot standing outside of knowing”, or to a pure-heartedness, or to a pure bliss of being alive.