Ikea Heaven, – Ikea Hell

For Emanuele. We spoke about a documentary which I saw some time ago about a religious family following countless instructions how to behave in the right way in life. In this movie the daughter was asked how she experiences these guidelines and if they are not too bothering as they put everywhere limitations like a corset. The daughter answered that she must follow these instructions to safe her place in heaven (where she feels free in the end).

This idea is quite fascinating. You read the guidelines, the detailed instructions how to behave in life and in this way you get directly to heaven. On the other hand, when you go against these instructions you land directly in the purgatory or in hell.

In fact the idea that there are instructions for living life is very simple, simplifying life in an unrealistic, unlawful way and indeed this works only for very simple minds. Life is much too complex to manage it with even the most detailed instructions.

A map is an abstract image of a real landscape. And when you set a route to a specific destination then this is nice but does not guarantee that you will reach your aim. And when you only have a vague idea of an aim which could be, should be somewhere over there and you follow instructions how to get to this vague destination where no one really was there to come back and to tell you about the exact details then it is really time to question it, to question the destination and the instructions. And this situation is comparable with the idea to follow instructions to get to heaven. Who has proved the destination “heaven” and the “instructions” to get there? No one!

Indeed instructions are good to accomplish a certain and simple aim where no real options are given.

So everyone has bought already something from Ikea. And when you buy a bed or a desk or whatever at Ikea then you get a package with parts which you have to put together. And so there are instructions, pictures, which show how you have to proceed so that in the end your bedframe or desk is finished. If you violate these instructions, you probably won´t finish your bed or desk because you have violated the logic in the composing process. So instructions make much sense when you have to put together single parts to an end product.

But such instructions do not fit reality. There is no Ikea hell and no Ikea heaven.

Life is all about growing by learning, by making good and bad experiences, by taking risks, by becoming self-responsible, by taking unknown ways and making new discoveries. Life is a matter of discovering the laws of creation and to follow them for your own benefit.

Instructions can never have the value of the eternal laws of creation.

Certainly, religions have a big focus on simplifying things for simple minds, for uneducated people to give them a system, a guidance, to keep them under control and to limit them in their natural unfolding. But today people are well educated and it is time to leave such simple instructions behind. It is time to awake, to become self-conscious and self-responsible, to become free and to study the laws of nature, of creation to follow them instead of following trivial human ideas of “the right path”.