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 very 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 storing them 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; consequently, those around you will also benefit from your mental stability;

4.6 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 Garden. The mind is like a garden, and “individual minds” of people inter-are; what you water in the mind, that grows; what you do not water, subsides; what grows in the mind, eventually manifests in physical reality, so the quality of life is directly dependent on the quality of your mind-garden; but do not make a common mistake by avoiding mud, for it would be not only unreal to avoid it, but also very counterproductive, for without mud there would be no material for beautiful flowers to manifest from; therefore, learn to be skillful gardener who, with compassion and wisdom, can transform any mud into beautiful flowers;

4.8 Gratitude. In the world there is an equal amount of happiness and unhappiness, just like any wavy ocean has an equal amount of parts of waves that go up and those that go down; because of the primal strive for survival, human mind has a natural tendency to be more attentive to negative happenings, and consequently, spiral down into negative perspective override, which is a destructive disbalance; therefore, it is practical to balance it out with conscious practice of directing attention towards things one is grateful for;

4.9 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;

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

4.11 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”;

4.12 Skillfulness. Firstly, learn contemporary practical skills that make you able to live independently alone; then learn skills that make you able to sustain a relatively independent family living; and only afterwards learn skills that help you and your family live more dependent on extended social circle and society as a whole. This way, you will feel safer to adequately respond to inevitably changing circumstances of relationships;

4.13 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. Taking care of the body will spill-over positive effect on the mind, taking care of the mind and home will spill-over positive effects on the family relations, taking care of the family relations will spill-over positive effects on friendships. Positivity accrued in body, mind, home, family, and friendships, will spill-over on education, career, business, finances. And only after you have good integration in body, mind, home, family, friendships, career, business, finances, you can share the profits of your good life with wider community, participate in political aspects of it, etc.;

4.14 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;

4.15 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;

4.16 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. When one realizes this, forgiveness becomes irrelevant, for there is nothing to forgive to anyone. Maintain this attitude towards oneself also. This is an antidote to destructive judging, blame, guilt, and rejection of oneself and other;

4.17 Silence. Peoples personalities are collections of opinions, psychological imprints, synaptic pathways. Every time someone exposes some angle of truth which another person is instinctively protecting, hiding, he inflicts pain to that person. That truth may be expressed in worse case by direct judgement, criticism, disagreement, unsolicited advice, or indirectly, for example by displaying one’s knowledge or wisdom, even with kind intention of giving sound and practical advice in practical situation, or even completely innocently like expressing honest opinion about something which happens to not match the other person’s view at that time. Often, the instinctive reaction is not consideration of own mental blind spots, but protection of oneself from perceived “threat”, by many means possible, including avoiding, discrediting, sabotaging, or attacking the person who can see and expose those nlind spots. Therefore, if you want other people to not sabotage you instinctively – be careful in your speech, avoid talking when there is no necessity. Think and act wise, but do not talk too wise, unless you are deliberately leading or teaching others and are in an already assigned position to lead or teach, or if situation is critical and demands your command. Do not display your wisdom untimed and especially unasked, like a broken wake-up clock which rings at a random time.

4.18 Truthfulness. With the support of mindfulness, meditation, and journaling, in conjunction with life experience and intellectual study, courageously observe the truth, do not lie to yourself, do not run from reality into distractions. 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. But also be careful and gentle with oneself and others – do not force oneself to face the hard truth before being ready, or the other to listen when he is not yet ready;

4.19 Boundaries. Maintain healthy boundaries: recognize the inevitability of boundaries, for every person is different, and we cannot mind-read each other; recognize that boundary maintenance is not a one-time, but an ongoing process, for every person and circumstances are of changing nature; recognize that boundary maintenance is not a rejection of the other, but an invitation to a healthier connection, if and when the other is ready; recognize and do not “step out” of your “control zone”, which is: your thoughts, your words, and your actions; recognize the “signposts” of your boundaries, which are: feelings of anger, resentment, overwhelm, weakening; balance your perspective in aloneness, silence, stillness, so you avoid making regrettable mistakes; set, communicate and enforce boundaries; let go and grieve if needed. Some unhealthy behavior is listed in the page “Avoid”; Never ever, by no means, put yourself 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. Pride is very sneaky phenomena. The moment pride sneaks into a person, he becomes inadequately ungrateful, deluded, phony, internally hollow, weakening, looses the joy of living and beauty of personality, and in some cases becomes plainly grotesque and repulsive. It is just a matter of time and circumstances when others start rejecting a proud person, and then the painful fall is just around the corner. Cultivate mindfulness to shield you from own pride. 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. Everything is uncertain, everything is 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 peaceful.

4.22 Alternation. This is a subtle principle, which merges the rational thinking with subtle sensing. Only after mindfulness becomes your default way of being, as you become very well aware of yourself and environment, very sensitive to it, you will observe how 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, etc. Your inner compass will become more and more sensitive to miniscule internal and external alternations, to the “breathing” nature of the whole world. Trust that compass. It is an invaluable tool if you employ it and maintain it. 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;