About this ebook
If you've ever wondered if there is something more to life, this book is for you. If you've found yourself in a situation where you don't know what to do or what you even believe anymore, this book is for you. If you've ever woken up one day and realised that you've been living somebody else's life, this book is for you.
The author has wrestled with questions such as What is my purpose in life? or, Is there something more to life than the everyday grind? These very real existential questions have lead him to look for answers in the most unlikely places for a Christian-raised atheist. He turned to the Hindu Advaita philosophy, Buddhism, Zen, philosophy and even became a disciple of gurus.
This ardent search revealed to him the essential teachings that were common amongst the world's greatest spiritual traditions. But it also highlighted a lot of the clutter, noise and misconceptions present in each of them. This book came as a result of his wish to distil the wisdom that enlightens one in the fewest and simplest words possible. It is truly a handbook for the eager.
Natan Morar
Natan Morar was born in Romania. He received his PhD in Human-Computer Systems and his Bachelor degree in Engineering from the University of Birmingham, UK. Since he first learned how to write, he saw it as a very mystical and magical power. He began writing poetry while still in primary school. This love for poetry materialised later in his fondness for rap music. In high-school he discovered philosophy and, while reading for his PhD, spirituality and self-help books have made a lasting impact in his life. He loves spending his time contemplating the nature of life, purpose, divinity and sharing his findings with others. Today he juggles between his part-time work as a software developer, writing the next book, writing and recording rap songs, preparing his next podcast and walking his hyper dog, Fig.
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The Shift - Natan Morar
The Shift
An Introduction to Freedom
Natan Morar
Copyright © 2021 Natan Morar
All rights reserved.
natanmorar.com
@natanmorar
Cover: @andreiasgrid
Ludic Publishing
FOREWORD
HI THERE.
This book that you hold in your hands is the result of more than a year of wrestling with myself. During the time I was studying for my PhD, I was struck by some ruthlessly unforgiving questions:
What’s the point of it all?
What is the purpose of my being here?
What is the meaning of my life?
Does my life have a purpose?
Who or what am I, really?
So I started on this journey of finding out for myself what the meaning of life is. What the meaning and purpose of my life was. I watched and followed a number of spiritual leaders or gurus, I read tons of spiritual books. And believe me, I was never an avid reader. On top of that, I was pretty much a convinced atheist back then. So this was a pretty weird behaviour for a convinced atheist, you might think… And you’re entitled to think that, but if you’re really sincere with yourself, no matter how much science you ingest or produce, there still is that gaping dark hole inside you that resounds the existential questions that we’ve meticulously learned to ignore: Who am I? Why am I here?
This book represents the recorded answers I have (been) given to these questions. The book is formed of two parts. The first one is entitled Destroying Belief
. I think that belief is best thought of as answers to these existential question given to us by our parents, our educators, our church, our community, our society. When any one of these questions pops up in us, we silence it with a learned answer. We are convinced these answers are what we truly think about the world and ourselves. They have been implanted in us by the people we trusted the most in the time of our greatest vulnerability.
I’m not suggesting that these people who took care of you and kept you alive were ill-intentioned. But the thing is, they didn’t know any better themselves. They were also guided by their parents, educators and institutions, in their own time. Few managed to escape the shackles of perceived certainty, to live a free and unbound life. But that doesn’t mean you can’t. Take this book as an opportunity to dive into your deepest, least examined beliefs that run your life. Identify them, destroy them, and allow yourself to think for yourself.
In this first part, I will outline some of the many unquestioned beliefs that you hold so dearly, so closely that you don’t even remember that they’ve been implanted by somebody else. You’ll get to analyse them and decide for yourself whether you’d like to keep any.
The second part is called Shifting towards Trust
and you might think, what the hell does that have to do with freedom? Isn’t that implying the exact opposite? Well, you have to learn to trust yourself, the world and others. You cannot live a free life if you believe that if you don’t keep a close eye on yourself, if you don’t continuously micro-manage yourself and others, you or somebody else will do something stupid and irreparable. You will always stifle any true initiative before it even manages to energise your little finger. While I do advise presence, I don’t think that treating yourself like an unconscious, brainless slab of meat is conducive to any good. And once you learn to stop treating yourself as such, maybe you’ll also start giving others a bit more credit too.
I have been born in a Christian family. Christian Baptists, that is. And we all know that this comes with a huge luggage of its own crap. We’ve been taught that God is the only one we can trust (and that’s because we’re afraid to say or even think otherwise). But who is that God and why the hell is he even interested in us? We’ve been told tons of stories — many of which we internalised — that managed to just leave us feeling more anxious and unworthy than we would’ve been otherwise. And even if you managed to escape from the grips of your community or religion, that doesn’t mean that you’ve freed yourself from all the indoctrination that took place from a very young age.
In Part II we’ll look at some Bible passages that you’re probably familiar with and we’ll shed a new light upon them. We will look at them with new eyes, eyes that have shed their foreign filters. Because we have gone through Part I, we are now free to make up our own mind about what these texts mean, and how they are relevant to us today. I hope you won’t be put off by the religious language in the second part. Whether you have been raised religious or not, I still think that you will benefit from reading it.
With that said, I hope you will enjoy reading this book at least as much as I did writing it. May it serve you and show you the path to your freedom!
The experience of truth is not the accumulation of the right set of beliefs and views about the world, it does not sit in acquiring the right information. Truth can only be experienced afresh, with no preconceived notions of how it should look, with no stencils to put up against it.
PART I - DESTROYING BELIEF
CHAPTER ONE
What to expect
BEFORE ANYTHING…
There is no great secret. There is no piece of knowledge which, when attained, reveals the complete workings of the universe and unravels the meaning or purpose of life. The fact of reality is constantly in our face, but we are so preoccupied with the ‘this and that’ of everyday life that we miss the obviousness of it. It’s easy to see the reality of what you are and you don’t need any kind of training for that. As a matter of fact, you always see it but you (choose to) ignore it. Perhaps it is because you were taught to do so, being constantly and systematically distracted away from the presence of it, being forced to place your attention on the ‘otherness’ of the outer world. The reasons don’t matter much. Knowledge of the likely causes may satisfy a psychologist or researcher but it doesn’t necessarily help you discover the truth.
The truth about life is. It is not a piece of information and though one may try to describe it, one will invariably fail. It is not a state of omniscience in which all is revealed, although that may be the feeling that you get from people who seem to have ‘attained’ it. Nobody can impart it, nobody can help you get it, hard work will not achieve it. There is nothing to get or to achieve. The truth about life is. Reality is. It is so now and it is you.
The only way to truly know is to stop trying to understand it intellectually. Intellectual understanding relies on new concepts being added onto other, older concepts. Any knowledge gained in this way will be purely conceptual and on a stale base.
We need to start anew. Concepts, words, thoughts have nothing to do with Reality, except from allowing messages such as this to spread.
The truth about ‘what is’, is. It need not be described. In fact, any kind of description, no matter how wonderful, no