Gudjon Bergmann Quotes

I started reading my manuscripts out loud, to hear what they sounded like. If the text flows with little effort, then I am satisfied, but if I keep stumbling and stuttering while I read, then I rewrite.

The masses are not happy enough to want more out of life and not unhappy enough to reject their way of living or want a better life.

Only direct experience of the peaceful internal state will remove doubt and provide enlightenment - not in a spooky, out-of-this-world kind of way, but in a rational, let's-turn-on-the-lights sort of way.

Most people in Iceland are either referred to as the son or daughter of their father. For example, a woman with a father named John is Johnsdaughter, or in Icelandic Jonsdottir. A man with a father named John is Johnsson, or Jonsson in Icelandic.

...rationality can easily unveil the futility of life and lead to depression - as the stereotype of the extremely smart, but world-weary, educated man (often portrayed as a detective, philosopher, or doctor) suggests. As such, the rational worldview has its limits.

The pre-rational view of spirituality is irrational because it is based on pre-rational worldviews, such as the magical, the belief that individual thoughts and actions directly influence the outside world ("If I dance, it will rain"); and the mythical, which is belief in unverified dogma, a worldview that usually includes a belief in an external power that can be asked to change outcomes ("If I pray to Jesus, he will intervene in my life").

In civilized society, we humans are responsible for nurturing and sustaining the force of inter-relational harmony in our lives.

Whether one is remaining alert (mindfulness), focusing on a single thought or phrase (mantra), or mentally exploring ones inner world (visualization), all are one form of concentration or another.

For a number of people, church attendance seems to be primarily a social affair, the act of meeting other people outside of the pressures of work. For others it is pure business/politics. I get it. It's important to have access to a community like the one a church provides.

I confess that during the citizenship application process the founding principles of this country have grown on me. I have come to believe in the ideal that "We the People" can come together "to form a more perfect Union". The United States represent the most awesome social experiment in the world - a melting pot of cultures, united behind the idea of living free in a democratic Republic.

Here is my theory: If smoking is really good, you should be able to smoke and do nothing else at the same time, really focusing all your attention on smoking and how it makes you feel.

For more than twenty years, I have been seeking a way to be both rational and spiritual. I have been looking for a ray of hope in an otherwise-compartmentalized world in which people segregate religious aspirations and rationality in the hope of not having to resolve the glaring gap between the two. It's a gap that seems almost impossible to bridge, but I refuse to accept that disparity.

It can be helpful to think of humanity like a pearl necklace. Each human being is a pearl with distinct characteristics, but underneath there is a string that ties us all together, invisible to the naked eye.

We attend a postmodern meeting, and everyone leaves happy because everyone at the meeting was able to express himself or herself, even if no decisions were made. We give equal awards to our kids so nobody feels left out. Our news media is more concerned with the question, "How did that make you feel?" than any other.

It must be said that "winning" the green card is a misnomer. We had simply won the right to formally apply and have our application processed. We still had to pay for all the processing.

Write until you have nothing left to say and then stop writing. Focus on content and quality rather than word count.

Many people say that time heals all wounds, but that simply is not true. People can become more bitter, arrogant and spiteful with age.

A trans-rational definition of spirituality therefore encompasses these two elements. First, uncovering our peaceful internal center, and then, allowing that peace to guide our actions in the world.

I will not like everyone, not everyone will like me, and that is OK.

Relaxation is… a state between waking and sleeping, where the body is completely still and the mind is allowed to flow freely from one thought to another, or alternately, a state in which the mind becomes inadvertently calm.

Stop wishing that the traffic wasn't so heavy, you live here, this is rush hour, deal with it.

Many people close themselves off from the world when they are under pressure. That is understandable. I have gone through periods when I didn't want to meet people because I didn't feel good about my situation in life and that made my life even more stressful. Remind yourself often about how much of an impact compassion and friendship can have on your life. You need to get out there, be compassionate and share your time and your life with your friends and other people that need your support. It's worth it on every level.

Life is not only measured by what happens to us. It is measured by the way in which we interpret what happens to us.

Motivated authors sacrifice TV time, sleep, hobbies, and even family time.

Co-dependency essentially revolves around the sentence: "I am not enough." A co-dependent person will always need another person to validate their worth, their feelings, their ideas and even their existence. This either shows itself as a need to manipulate and control surroundings; or as a need to bend over backwards to make other people feel good, the reason being that "I can't feel good if you don't feel good.

Harmony begins within. If we are to influence the world around us, even in minor ways, the real work begins inside and emanates outwards.

Be this as it may, an increasing number of us find that something is missing . . . something vague . . . something - dare I say - spiritual. Even those of us who scoff at religious and spiritual institutions have to admit that there is something there - purpose, meaning, internal calm, a like-minded society, and a chance to serve our fellow man - all of which are admirable. We are attracted and repulsed at the same time, primarily because there seems to be a steep price to pay when we enter the so-called spiritual arena.

Prior to postmodernism, it was all but impossible to claim that one was a cultural Christian, Jew, or Muslim. There was no such thing. Now, being culturally religious is a widely accepted stance.

It is almost impossible to get anyone with a postmodern slant to say "I think" and stand by what follows, without making sure that the person listening understands, "Of course, there are other things to consider.

Everyone knows that a quick-fix usually doesn't work, yet we have all been sold on the idea time and time again. Most of us would like to believe in miracle drugs and fast relief. The truth is that most of the quick fixes for stress focus on temporary relief from tension or pain. Temporary, as in, the problem will return with a vengeance. This doesn't mean we should never take drugs to alleviate tension or pain, it just means that taking drugs is not a viable permanent solution; it's just a temporary relief.

Restlessness is the number one enemy of people who have just quit smoking.

By exclaiming that "there are no absolute truths" the postmodern stance is also claiming that the statement it just made is an absolute truth - trying to have it both ways, rejecting absolutism with absolutism.

While I principally agree with the NOW movement I also challenge their thinking to a degree. There are plenty of exceptions to the being-present-rule. I have for example worked with cancer patients who were going through very trying times in their therapy, and they couldn't stand to think about the present moment, they needed to envision a better future or remember an enjoyable time from their past to feel slightly better. The present moment was simply a torment. This can be true in a number of other situations where the present moment is simply too awful and painful to intently focus on.

Why lie, Robert? Why lie? You know that lying is the alcoholics kryptonite, you can't afford it, the reasonable voice in his head screamed.

When people ask us why we moved to Austin we can truthfully answer: We pointed at the map.

If you have ever procrastinated and then found yourself energized to complete a task at the last minute, then you have used the beneficial aspect of the fight or flight response (not the procrastinating part, but the energizing part). You see, with all its negative long term effects, the fight or flight response still gives us energy, and if we know how to use that energy, then stress is potentially good, at least in the short term.

It is not lack of ability, but lack of motivation, lack of focus, and lack of self-confidence that prevents most aspiring authors from finishing what they started.

Folks who only battle the symptoms of stress are losing the battle because the symptoms are sure to return if the causes aren't dealt with.

The moments of peace in between the mental practices are meditation.

Success is not attained when the goal is reached; success is attained from the time when the first step is taken towards that goal.

Are you giving the same advice over and over and over again to clients, patients, pupils, interns or friends? If the answer is yes, you should probably write a book about whatever it is that you keep repeating.

Once we got closer to the origins of these Eastern practices, we found that the monks and swamis were just as dogmatic and paternalistic, just as literal and conservative in their approach to spirituality as the Christian priests and ministers we were trying to get away from.

Western spiritual seekers began picking and choosing from Eastern philosophies based on their preferences. Wanting to get away from myth and dogma, they mixed and matched, shook and stirred, mashed and meshed, blended and juiced . . . and in the process, well, they lost their way. They created a number of philosophical inconsistencies.

The word constructive means 'carefully constructed, meant to be helpful'. Constructive thinking is therefore the process of carefully thinking or responding in a helpful and solution oriented manner.

In essence, oversimplification tends to take a partial truth and make it all powerful.

I have vivid memories of going to Pizza Hut and enjoying a thin crust pizza and a jug of Pepsi, and, getting high stacks of buttermilk pancakes with syrup.

I have seen yoga teachers, almost in frenzy, looking for something new; new postures, breathing exercises, styles of yoga, teachers and so on. But what are they really searching for? Escape from boredom.

We were the neoromantic dance freaks of the eighties, proudly displaying our blow-dried mullets. Among us, you also found the stud-bracelet-wearing punk rockers with sky-high Mohawks. Pastel-colored, shoulder-padded fashion met ripped-jeans-and-leather-jacket anti-fashion.

Breaking away from old psychological memes requires a Herculean effort in many cases. In essence, we are outgrowing a worldview while maintaining a relation-ship of sorts. Transcending an ideology can feel like going through a divorce and having to stay friends because of the kids.

This notion of shared experience is important. A hiker, for example, has much more in common with other hikers who have walked paths foreign to him than with sedentary people who have never hiked anywhere but have read books about the hiker's favorite path. If someone has hiked several mountains in Switzerland, for instance, he or she is likely to have more in common with those who have hiked in the Rocky Mountains than with those who have never hiked at all. The terrain may be different, but the act of hiking is similar. The same is true about spirituality. The acts of praying, meditating, fasting, contemplating deeply, and having other direct forms of experience, all influence practitioners differently than mere reading or listening. Moreover, because we all have the same tools to work with - body, mind, and spirit - practitioners from different faiths will have more in common than they realize.

Self-confidence is not a fixed way of being. People are not born with certain levels of self-confidence, it can be acquired, and it can be lost.

There is not a single person I have met in my lifetime who is comfortable talking about death. It's the biggest downside to our youth-centric culture. Death is a bummer, so let's not talk about it. Let's hide it away and hope it never strikes close to home.

One myth that has become established in the self-development arena is that it only takes 21 days to form a new habit. This simply isn't true in all cases. Sometimes it takes a shorter time, sometimes a longer time, and sometimes old habits are so hard to break that new ones never take hold.

There is no such thing as lack of time, only unclear priorities and lack of motivation. It is better to abandon a project than to work on it half-heartedly for a protracted period of time.

Growth seems to evolve from a narrow-minded, constricted worldview (selfish) to an ever-more-encompassing worldview (multiperspective caring). To put it simply, the more self-centered you are, the lower you tend to land on these scales, while the more perspectives you can entertain - the more empathy you can show and the better your ability to see things from a variety of viewpoints - the higher you land on these scales.

A person with less knowledge and more self-confidence (which is primarily a way of thinking and acting) will often run circles around a person with more knowledge and less self-confidence; which means that self-confidence has the upper hand to knowledge when it comes to acting in the world. It has been interesting to see many of my star academic students struggle with teaching in the real world, while others who were less qualified in the academic field but had more self-confidence have gone out and positively affected many more people through their teaching.

the vile political rhetoric that has been ongoing in the USA for the past few years has made me doubt my reasons for becoming a U.S. citizen a few times - but not enough to change my mind. Despite what the world may think of America, the truth is that more people want to get in than want to get out.

No one can save time. It's not like money. You can't deposit the time you save into an account and use it later. Time passes. Time is a constantly depleting resource. Once it's gone, it's gone, and you will NEVER get it back.

Of course, our roles within the family are radically different. Generational stereotypes of moms and dads have disintegrated A-bomb style. We are making it up as we go along, pioneering a new era of equality.

Everyone who is alive can find something to be grateful for if they look for it. If you are among the few that can't find anything, start with the fact that you are ALIVE and continue from there. Counting ones blessings is a barometer of mental health.

Self-confidence is built from the inside out and has little or nothing to do with outside circumstances.

Instead of using therapy to try and reduce their fear and anger, people now celebrated these destructive emotions, labeling themselves as politically active rather than emotionally dysfunctional.

Positive affirmations are powerful, but they can be overrun by complaining and negativity if you allow your mind to focus in that direction. As soon as you start complaining about how difficult this process is, you have begun using negative affirmations, and that will in turn give power to your prior longing to smoke (as if that needs empowerment).

Stay within the confines of your chosen topic. If you start to stray away from your topic and find an urge to showcase everything that you know, resist that urge. Remember that you are writing a book, not the book.

I used to pursue the need for excitement and creativity excessively by sleeping around, drinking alcohol, smoking tobacco and occasionally using drugs. I was in a rock and roll band and I thought I was a real bad boy. I even have the tattoos to prove it. After I told Yogi Hari my story at his ashram, he joked around when he was introducing me and said: He used to be Bad-John, but now he is Good-John. (It's a pun on the pronunciation of my name Gudjon – and if you ever meet me, I'll probably use it to get you to pronounce my name correctly).

...no matter how liberal a church may seem, Christian dogma still revolves around an ancient, paternalistic image of God the Father, who quite frankly isn't much more believable than the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus.

Firemen, police officers, professional athletes and military service personnel are all trained with this in mind, they are taught to direct their energy, to use stress constructively.

An author who rewrites his own work must essentially be two people. One is the free flowing uncritical writer who creates the bulk of the material - the other is the extremely critical editor whose aim it is to make the book as good as it can become.

Fear and anger, the two emotions that most people came to him to reduce - emotions that he'd worked so hard to overcome in his own life - were fuel for politicians. Maybe candidates and congressmen thought that sowing discord among countrymen, even family members, was an unfortunate type of collateral damage. Maybe they didn't think about it at all.

Your fundamental assumption is wrong. You think you are this vehicle. This naked ape. Homo sapiens. I tell you, you are no more human than a driver is the car he is driving. You would never go to a junkyard to look for the driver would you?

We were the first latchkey-kid generation. Our parents believed in free love, and for many of us, that meant broken homes.

Some events in life are so overwhelming that people will experience stress no matter how good they are at controlling their minds in normal circumstances.

When you first start chanting or repeating your positive affirmations, they don't make much sense. You don't feel great about them because they strongly oppose your current reality. That's the point. The affirmations should oppose your current reality. That's how change happens. Everyone feels strange about using affirmations to begin with. But if you stick to the program, the power of positive affirmations will take effect.

Get to the point. Don't waste the reader's time.

You see, meditation is not a fabricated state. It is natural. It is accessible to all. And in the same way that a person who learns how to run, can run any time they want to, or, a person who knows how to play an instrument can play music at will, once you learn how to meditate, you can create your moments of peace at will.

The first men to set foot on the moon were sent to Iceland for acclimation - that's how unlike to anything else the Icelandic landscape is.

Saying, "I don't agree with you," or going so far as to say, "I think your belief structure is childish," does not amount to persecution. Insensitivity is not the same as harassment or oppression.

During World War II, Iceland was a poor country with a total population of about 120,000 people. In contrast, the occupying U.S. force consisted of roughly 40,000 men - which meant that U.S. soldiers outnumbered adult Icelandic men - at least during the height of the occupation.

We don't need to be perfect to do good deeds in the world, but we need to be sincere in our efforts.

My point is that focusing on the past, present or future can have both positive and negative effects. Excessive worry about the future can be bad, while hopes and dreams can be good. Regret because of the past can be destructive, but learning lessons from previous events and having good memories can be great. Focusing intently on the present is usually stress-relieving and liberating, but sometimes the present moment is too sad or horrible to dwell on.

Obviously, not everyone in Texas attends church for purely social or nostalgic reasons. There are still plenty of people here who feel the need to advertise their allegiance to God by telling me that they are good Christians, by continuously posting prayer pictures of Jesus on Facebook, or by telling me that no matter how ethically I live, I will surely go to Hell if I don't accept Jesus Christ into my heart.

If you decide to focus on one thing at a time, instead of trying to solve everything at once, and just do that one thing, then you will feel a sudden decrease in stress.

No one can quit smoking for you, or make you want to change your life. No one can make you do anything that you don't want to do.

The term trans-rational is emblematic of a worldview within which rationality is included and transcended, not repressed or dismissed.

On the surface, we are all different. We ascribe to a variety of belief systems, attain our identity from various stories, get our customs from diverse cultures, and so on. And, rightly or wrongly, we generally define ourselves by these differences - there is no denying that. However, when we look beneath the surface, we discover certain universal elements.

Not wanting to change, constantly fighting change, and being afraid of change; these are all extremely stressful mental dispositions, because let's face it – change happens! Learn to embrace change, flow with change and even proactively make changes. Indian traveling yogis never stay in one spot for very long to remind themselves of the transient nature of the world. The modern yogi need not necessarily do the same, but just be aware of this natural tendency of change and flow with it - and that will make life a lot less stressful.

Would you ever buy chocolate with DDT? How about Cheerios with arsenic? Not very likely!

Stop hoping for the weather to change, this is where you chose to live, either accept it or move.

Letting go of the past does not mean that we should try to forget everything that has happened to us and not learn anything from our previous thinking patterns and actions. Letting go simply means that we do not allow the past to control our current thoughts and actions.

Gandhi is an example of a man who grew from being self-centered as he was learning to become a lawyer in England, to becoming more family- and social oriented in South-Africa, where he led a reformation of Indian rights, to becoming determined in helping his nation recover from British rule at which he succeeded in the end with the help of a great many people. At the end of his life Gandhi was increasingly focused on a larger picture, encasing the whole world in his vision of a peaceful future.

In our youth, we may have ridiculed the cost-of-living-index family, with their house, two cars, and two kids, but today we are pro-family. We have seen the damage done by the previous generation and have doubled our efforts when it comes to caring for our families. Our children come first.

I realized that moderate amounts of stress, when directed or funneled in specific directions, could be both beneficial and practical.

Traffic will not yield to our will, neither will global finances, the environment, political rhetoric, nor people in general. There is no way to solve the problem of stress through blaming environmental factors.

What then are the benefits of being mentally flexible? Imagine a storm brewing. Intense winds are blowing hard. Stiff trees are breaking under the pressure while softer more flexible trees are bending and will rise again when the strong winds subside. Now turn this image onto human beings. People who are narrow minded, opinionated, stubborn and bullheaded are more likely to crack under pressure than people who take up a more flexible attitude towards life. It is the difference between bending and breaking under pressure.

If you are able to show goodness to yourself, your family, friends, and maybe to some in your community, you are doing better than most. In fact, it can be harder to show goodness to those who stand close to you than to those who are in faraway places. If more people tended to their own gardens, all of society would flourish as a result.

The trans-rational spiritual approach is a simple concept with wide-ranging practical implications. There are three major components involved: (1) not denying rationality, (2) pursuing the experience of a peaceful internal state, and (3) allowing that inner peace to guide behavior.

Yoga teachers must be willing to step down from this imagined pedestal and utter the words "I don't know" on a regular basis.

Write a book, not the book.

For years I tried to help people with simple things, such as tension relief through breathing and relaxation, but all they wanted were the drugs. They wanted to numb themselves. They did not want to face their fears or feel better through their own efforts - and they certainly did not want to be illuminated.

Philosophy has become the shadow of itself over the years. Nine parts history and one part reflection on history. It has been ages since anything original came forth in the field. All the good thinking has already been done. Nowadays, philosophers are mostly institutionalized academics - like me - focused more on the politics of tenure than on philosophizing.