New beginnings

For a long time, I haven't felt inspired to write at all. Yet writing is how I spend my days, trying to finish a report on climate change and conflict for the green think tank Cogito. The topic is important beyond belief, and such a worthy thing to devote oneself to, yet I often feel empty and like I have little to offer. One reason is good old overwhelm - the sorrow I feel looking at our (lack of) future prospects on this planet. Of course all is not lost - yet. But business as usual, which is the track we are currently on, will take us places we have never been as a species or as a global ecosystem, where wellbeing and even survival will be threatened in ways we can hardly imagine.

And with this call to action ringing in my ears, I choose to go back and finish my psychology degree - an undertaking I believed I had left behind for good when I last walked out of the doors of that department, in December 2000. I was surprised when I first made the decision a few months ago. On the surface politics seems a more important undertaking than ever - and in many ways it is. I remain profoundly grateful to all those who devote their energy to turning the tide in the way our political institutions function, and I do believe I will move back into that field again at some point. But right now, it is time to look inwards, to steady my gaze and my understanding of mind. And I am so grateful for this opportunity.

Not that it will be easy, working and studying at the same time, and also caring for the Gothenburg sangha, but I am really looking forward to these few years. When I left psychology eight years ago, my interest in mindfulness meditation was everything but scorned in the department. These days, the clinical relevance of the practice is being recognized in a much wider circle, as are our possibilities for well-being and growth through meditation. I believe I will find a constructive and exiting way to relate to this academic environment now, and again feel profoundly grateful, for all those who have worked to create the growing understanding of the importance of contemplative mind.

I also believe this is the best choice I can make if I want to contribute to social change at this point in time. The climate crisis is political. But it is also moral, existential, psychological. We will not solve it, nor any of the other desperately important global issues, without a new vision of human transformation and wellbeing, grounded in a deep understanding of the way our minds work, how we seek for happiness and security in all the wrong places, while all the time the treasure of our true nature is buried right beneath our own hearths. Transformation and liberation is possible through practice, individually and collectively, even politically.

And thinking about these years ahead, this opportunity to look deeply into mind and learn ways to work for our shared healing, I again feel... yes, profoundly grateful. And I also find an interest in writing again, in that non-contrived, exploring way. This little attempt at starting up the blog again has been a calm and happy moment. Another new beginning - there seems to be such an abundance of them right now.

Thank you.