and then it happened...

"To be alone is the only real revolution.
To accept that you are alone is the greatest transformation that can happen to you."
-Osho

"Everyday Osho" indeed.

Osho's wisdom on some of the things in the discussion rotation as of late, some with which I agree, and some which pose further questions...

"Stay open to a change in your own learnings, beliefs, and knowledge:"
"Amateurs and Experts:
...It always happens that when you start new work, you are very creative, you are deeply involved, your whole being is in it. Then by and by, as you become acquainted with the territory, rather than being inventive and creative you start being repetitive. This is natural, because the more skilled you become in any work, the more repetitive you become...
So all great discoveries are made by amateurs, because a skilled person has too much at stake. If something new happens, what will happen to the old skill? The person has learned for years and now has become an expert. So experts never discover anything; they never go beyond the limit of their expertise...
Here is the lesson: It is good to attain skill, but it is not good to settle with it forever. Whenever the feeling arises in you that now the thing is looking stale, change it. Invent something, add something new, delete something old. Again be free from the pattern...again become an amateur. It needs courage and guts, to become an amateur again, but that's how life becomes beautiful."

~all i take from this is the importance of anti-stagnation, and the awareness that you never stop learning, and should never assume you've got it all figured out...
On a more literal level, I think it is unfortunately true that experts don't use their expertise to the full extent and to benefit most from it. Luckily, some always remain inventive, creative, and passionate by retaining their appreciation for attainment of knowledge and the everchanging property of information.

"Changing the World
You are your world, so when you change your attitude you change the very world in which you exist. We cannot change the world--that's what politicians have been trying to do down through the ages, and they have utterly failed...
The only way to change the world is to change your vision, and suddenly you will live in a different world."

~this speaks to both the conversations of having control over your misery if you change your perspective and priorities as well as it does the idea that changing the world happens through change in individual minds.

"The Unplanned Life
There is no planning in existence. An unplanned life has tremendous beauty, because there is always some surprise waiting in the future.
The future is not going to be a repetition; something new is always happening, and one can never take it for granted.
Secure people life a bourgeois life. A bourgeois life means getting up at seven-thirty, taking your breakfast at eight, at eight-thirty catching the train to the town, returning home at five-thirty, taking your tea, reading your newspaper, watching TV, having supper, making love to your partner without any love, and going to bed. Again the same thing starts the next day. Everything is settled, and there is no surprise: The future will be nothing but the past repeated again and again. Naturally there is no fear. You have done these things so many times that you have become skillful. You can do them again.
With the new comes fear, because one never knows whether one will be able to do it. One is doing always for the first time, so one is always shaky, uncertain about whether one is going to make it or not. But in that very thrill, in that adventure, is life-- aliveness, let us say, rather than life, because life has also become a dull and dead word-- aliveness, the flow."

"Failure
If you feel frustrated, it is because of the mental goal you have imposed on life. By the time you have reached your goal, life has left it; just a dead shell of the ideals and the goals remain, and you are frustrated again. The frustration is created by you.
Once you understand that life is never going to be confined to a goal, goal oriented, then you flow in all directions with no fear. Because there is no failure, there is no success either -- and then there is no frustration. Then each moment becomes a moment in itself; not that it is leading somewhere, not that it has to be used as a means to some end -- it has intrinsic value..."

~simply the idea that people set up plans and blueprints in their lives, and for what? to simply create unneeded self importance and likely, eventual frustration when these goals are not met. I'm sure someone has said to you "What's your five year plan?" "Where do you see yourself in 10 years?" Me personally? I may have some abstract vision of what it may be like, but stay detached from the outcome, because in all truthfulness, I don't know and don't WANT to know exactly how my life will play out. I'll figure it out when I get there, because I'm too busy enjoying today right now tout de suite!

questions, answers, existence: for discussion

"There is no answer. There are only two ways for the mind to be: full of questions and empty of questions.

Maturity is coming to a point where you can live without answers; that is what maturity is. And to live without answers is the greatest and most courageous act. Then you are no longer a child. A child goes on asking questions, wanting answers for everything. A child believes that if he can formulate a question, there must be an answer, there must be somebody to supply the answer.
...You think that because you can formulate a question, there is bound to be an answer; maybe you don't know it, but somebody must know the answer, and some day, you will be able to discover it. That's not so. All questions are man-created, manufactured by man.
Existence has no answer. Existence is there, with no answers, completely silent. If you can drop all questions, a communication happens between you and existence. The moment you drop questions, you drop philosophy, you drop theology, you drop logic, and you start living. You become existential. When there are no questions, that state itself is the answer."
-Osho, Everyday Osho

balance

"When feeling balanced, one is free.
In that very balance is freedom, in that very balance is equilibrium, tranquility, silence.

When the head is too much...it does not allow anything that is not profitable to exist. And all joy is profitless, all joy is just playfulness; it has no purpose. Love is play, it has no purpose; so is dance, so is beauty. All that is significant to the heart is meaningless to reason.

So in the beginning one has to put much investment into the heart so the balance is achieved. One has almost to lean too much toward the heart. One has to go to the other extreme to create the balance. By and by one comes into the middle, but first one has to go to the other extreme, because reason has dominated too much."
-Osho, Everyday Osho

choose

Dear (youknowwhoyouare),
I hope you read this, and the entry before this...

"Generally people are not even that fortunate. Their whole life passes and the sun never rises, the morning never comes in their lives...
Life is a vast treasure trove, but we do nothing with it except waste it, lose it, squander it. Even before knowing what life is, we have discarded it. Life is dissipated without experiencing what was hidden in it - what secret, what mystery, what paradise, what bliss, what liberation...
I want to say a few things about the treasures of life. But it is very difficult for those who have already taken them to be pebbles to open their eyes and see that they are diamonds...But no matter how much treasure has been lost, if even a single moment of life remains, something can be salvaged. Something can still be known...it is never so late that one has to feel despair...
The first thing: We have created such viewpoints about life, we have established such ideas about life, we have raised such philosophies about life that we are deprived of seeing the truth of life. We have already concluded what life is...without any realization of our own. We have understood only some predecided, preconceived idea about life...we have been taught only one thing repeatedly...:life is meaningless, life is futile, life is a suffering, life is only worth renouncing...Because of this, life has begun to be a suffering and to seem futile. Because of this, life has lost all joy, all love, all beauty...
If you have accepted that life is ugly, why would you search for beauty in it?...what sense remains in trying to decorate it, in trying to cleanse it and refine it, to beautify it?...
...And the point is not only that we could have beautified where we were staying, that we could have created a loving milieu, that we could have sung a song of joy where we were staying. The point is that the one who sings a song of joy has opened the possibility for more joy in himself. The one who beautifies the house has attained the capacity for finding greater beauty...
We are formed by what we do...What we are doing in life decides the directions our soul will travel, the paths it will move on, the new worlds it will explore...
how you experience life depends on how you look at it. If life seems to be dark and miserable it is because of your wrong way in living it. This very life can become a shower of blissfulness if only you know the right way to live it."
-osho

"We can't cure the world of sorrows but we can choose to live in joy"
-Joseph Campbell

hibernation...

"There is no need to remain warm for twenty-four hours. That would be tiring. One needs a little rest. When you are cold, the energy is moving inward; when you are warm, the energy is moving outward. Of course, other people would like you always to be warm, because then your energy moves toward them. When you are cold, your energy is not moving toward them, so they feel offended. They will tell you that you are cold. But it is for you to decide.
In those cold moments you hibernate, you go within your being. Those are meditative moments. So this is my suggestion -- when you feel cold, close the doors from relationships and moving with people. Feeling that you are cold, go home and meditate. That is the right moment to meditate. With energy itself moving in, you can ride on it and go to the very innermost core of your being. There will be no fight. You can simply move with the current. And when you are feeling warm, move out. Forget all about meditation. Be loving. Use both states, and don't worry about it."

Osho, excerpt from Everyday Osho

...wishing I had seen this right after the holidays, though glad to know i've been true to it lately, before reading it...

more of the same, i know, but...

"A person who is centered in his aloneness, complete in himself...only that person can make friends because now it is no longer a need, it is just sharing...
And when you share, there is no question of clinging. You flow with existence, you flow with life's change, because it doesn't matter with whom you share...it is simply out of your fullness that you want to give...And giving is such a joy...sharing makes you more centered, more integrated, more proud - but not more egotistic...it is not ego; it is a totally different phenomenon, a recognition that existence has allowed you something for which millions of people are trying but at the wrong door. You happen to be at the right door...
You are proud of your blissfulness and all that existence has given you. Fear disappears, darkness disappears, the pain disappears...You can love a person, and if the person loves somebody else there will not be any jealousy, because you loved out of so much joy. It was not a clinging, you were not holding the other person in prison. You were not worried that the other person may slip out of your hands, that somebody else may start having a love affair. When you are sharing your joy, you don't create a prison for anybody. You simply give. You don't even expect gratitude or thankfulness because you are not giving to get anything, not even gratitude. You are giving because you are so full you have to give....

...If you really love the person you will give him or her absolute freedom - that's a gift of love. And when there is freedom, love responds tremendously. When you give freedom to somebody you have given the greatest gift, and love comes rushing towards you...

Love is a basic need, as basic as freedom, so both have to be fulfilled. And a person who is full of love AND free is the most beautiful phenomenon in the world. And when two persons of such beauty meet, their relationship is not a relationship at all. It is a relating. It is a constant, riverlike flow. It is continuously growing towards greater heights.
The ultimate height of love and freedom is the experience of the divine. In it you will find both tremendous love, absolute love, and absolute freedom."

-Osho, Being in Love

is that a challenge??

"Loneliness and aloneness in the dictionaries are synonymous, but existence does not follow your dictionaries. And nobody has yet tried to make an existential dictionary which will not be contradictory to existence"
-Osho, Being in Love

I'm workin' on it, Osho, I'm workin' on it...

3rd of more...

"...the future man, who will respect the woman as equal to himself, who will give opportunity for her growth as he takes opportunity for his own growth. And there will not be any kind of bondage. If two persons can live in love their whole life, nobody is going to disturb them...Love should be an absolute act of freedom..."

2nd of many...

"Even love is secondary to freedom; freedom is the highest value. Love can be sacrificed for freedom, but freedom cannot be sacrificed for love. And that's what we have been doing for centuries, sacrificing freedom for love. Then there is antagonism, conflict, and every opportunity is used to hurt each other.
Love in its purest form is a sharing of joy...Your joy is to give, not to get. Then one can love from thousands of miles away; there is no need even to be physically present...
...If the wife is dependent on the husband...then she will try to make the husband dependent on her for other things. It is a mutual arrangement. They both become crippled...paralyzed; they cannot exist without each other. Even the idea that the husband was happy without the wife hurts her, that he was laughing with the guys in the club hurts her. She is not interested in his happiness; in fact she cannot believe it: "How did he dare to be happy without me? He has to depend on me!"
The husband does not feel good that the wife was laughing with somebody, was enjoying, was cheerful. He wants all her cheerfulness to be totally possessed by him; it is his property..."

flow through you

"Love comes like a fresh, fragrant breeze into your home, fills it with freshness and fragrance, remains as long as existence allows it, and then moves out. You should not try to close all your doors, or the same fresh breeze will become absolutely stale. In life, everything is changing and change is beautiful; it gives you more and more experience, more and more awareness, more and more maturity"


"By the time you are ready to explore the world of love, you are filled with so much rubbish about love that there is not much hope for you to be able to find the authentic and discard the false...For example, every child everywhere has been told in a thousand and one ways that love is eternal: once you love a person you love the person always. If you love a person and later on you feel that you don't love, it only means you never loved the person in the first place. Now this is a very dangerous idea. It is giving you and idea of a permanent love and in life nothing is permanent. The flowers blossom in the morning and by the evening they are gone...
It is possible that if you are enlightened your love has gone beyond the ordinary laws of life. It is neither changing nor permanent; it simply is. It is no more a question of how to love; you have become love itself, so whatever you do is loving...But before enlightenment you love is going to be the same as everything else; it will change...For a lighter life, for a more playful life, you need to be flexible. You have to remember that freedom is the highest value and if love is not giving you freedom then it is not love. Freedom is a criterion: anything that gives you freedom is right, and anything that destroys your freedom is wrong. If you can remember this small criterion your life, slowly, will start settling on the right path about everything: your relationships, your meditations, your creativity, whatever you are."

-Osho, 'Being in Love'

Grow, Change, Learn: Self as a work in progress

"Adolescence seems to provoke this difficult inner quest, since growth away from one's parents forces one to come to grips with life on one's own, but the quest for self-knowledge out not to be regarded as a "stage" that one passes through and leaves behind. Finding and maintaining self-identity can be a lifelong process. While it makes sense to expect that we can carry on the process without the pain and desperation often experienced in adolescence, it is a mistake to assume that once the pain has stopped the process is over. Rather than suffer the doubts and uncertainties of growth toward an indeterminate destination, many people fix a destination very early in life and then define themselves in terms of that destination: "I am a good parent"; "I am an engineer"; "I am a dropout." Many people imagine they can settle the account of self-identity once and for all and then live in the security of their certainty. But that premature decision is a subtle form of suicide. It amounts to opting out of life, for to live is to grow and change. "

(Self and World: Readings in Philosophy by James Ogilvy)

If you are alive you HAVE to be inconsistent -- you have grown, the world has changed, the river is flowing into new territory. Yesterday the river was passing through a desert, today it is passing through a forest; it is totally different. Yesterday's experience should not become your definition forever...one should be able to go on moving with time. Once should remain a process, one should never become a thing. That is intelligence." (Osho)

"Once you are in a relationship, you start taking each other for granted-that's what destroys all love affairs. The woman thinks she knows the man, the man thinks he knows the woman. Nobody knows either! It is impossible to know the other, the other remains a mystery...they are processes, they are not things. The woman that you knew yesterday is not there today. Relate again, start again, and don't take for granted." (Osho, "love, freedom, aloneness")

Mr. Barker

"Just the other day I was reading a sentence by Jean-Paul Sartre. He says that life is like a child who is asleep in a train and is awakened by an inspector who wants to check the ticket, but the child has no ticket and no money to pay for one...The child is also not at all aware of where he is going, what his destination is and why he is on the train. And last but not least, the child cannot figure it out, because he never decided to be on the train in the first place. Why is he there? This situation is becoming more and more common to the modern mind, because we are somehow uprooted, and meaning is missing...I know that everybody one day feels like a child in a train. Yet life is not going to be a failure, because in this big train there are millions of people fast asleep, but there is always somebody who is awake. The child can search and find somebody who is not asleep and snoring, someone who has consciously entered the train, someone who knows where the train is going. Being in the vicinity of that person, the child also learns the ways of becoming conscious."
-Osho

How uncannily appropriate that this was the page I opened to in Osho.
It seems as though it has happened again that "when the teacher is ready, the student presents himself." It seems as though I've found a child on the train.
But I also get to be that child, at the same time, learning from another child, the ways to become conscious. When the teacher is ready, the student presents himself it seems. To reacquaint the teacher with the wonder and beauty of learning and curiosity.
Certainly this young man has resparked my interest the culmination of music, art, poetry, and literature, and the magic it brings to leading a richer life. Another young person with the desire to capture that beat generation feeling and weave it into your own unique quilt of what life's beauty will look like for you. He has reinforced in me the desire to always find something educational and mentally productive in nearly everything one does. But most of all, the simplicity of letting things flow and not forcing them upon yourself or anyone else for that matter. And these aren't things I'm interpreting as I want to, these are actual statements and conversations that were had! The overwhelming satisfaction I'm getting out of simply connecting with a young individual with such wisdom to realize the really important things in life at a younger age than even I did. He says to me "If I want to stay here and just take classes after I complete all of my requirements for my major, is that ok?" and when I explained the expectation of the school for a student to graduate, he saw and stated the irony of an institution of higher learning that squelches your enthusiasm and desire for "lifelong learning." Especially ironic when the tagline for the institution is "Learning for Life."
At a time when I'm questioning the necessity and achievement of my own job satisfaction, who is getting more out of this acquaintance?

p.s. And don't even get me started on the Jazz!

lonely vs alone

"You have to come to terms with your loneliness, so much that the loneliness is transformed into aloneness. Only then will you be capable of moving into a deep, enriching relationship...Loneliness is a state of mind where you are constantly missing the other. Aloneness is a state of mind where you are constantly delighted in yourself. Loneliness is miserable. Aloneness is blissful. Loneliness is always worried, missing something, hankering for something, desiring something. Aloneness is a deep fulfillment, not going out, tremendously content, happy, celebrating. In loneliness, you are off center. In aloneness, you are centered and rooted...Loneliness is a dependence, aloneness is sheer independence...
Nobody is here to fulfill anyone else's expectations, everybody is just here to be himself, to be herself...When you move according to your loneliness you will fall into a relationship with somebody who is in the same plight, because nobody who is really living his aloneness will be attracted to you...One who is on the peak of aloneness can only be attracted toward someone who is also alone...
First become authentically happy that if nobody comes it doesn't matter. You are full, overflowing...The person who has lived in his aloneness will always be attracted to another person who is also living his aloneness beautifully...When two masters meet -- masters of their beings, of their aloneness -- happiness is not just added, it is multiplied...tremendous phenomenon of celebrating...they don't exploit, they share...
Whenever two lonely persons meet, they look at each other, because they are constantly in search of ways and means to exploit the other -- how to use the other, how to be happy through the other. But two persons who are deeply contented within themselves are not trying to use each other. Rather, they become fellow travelers...The goal is high...far away. Their common interest joins them together."
Osho, "Joy"

why being alone, apart is essential

"When you have moved into a deep relationship with somebody, a great need arises to be alone. You start feeling spent, exhausted, tired -- joyously tired, happily tired, but each excitement is exhausting. It was tremendously beautiful to relate, but now you would like to move into aloneness, so that you can again gather yourself together, so that you can again become overflowing, so that again you become rooted in your own being.
...Love arises out of aloneness. Aloneness makes you overfull. Love receives your gifts. Love empties you so that you can become full again. Whenever you are emptied by love, aloneness is there to nourish you, to integrate you. And this is a rhythm...
Love is a spontaneous phenomenon. Whenever it happens, it happens, and whenever it doesn't happen it doesn't happen...
When I want to be alone that does not mean that I am rejecting you. In fact, it is because of your love that you have made it possible for me to be alone...so that he can again gather together his being, so that again he has energy to share. And this rhythm is like day and night, summer and winter; it goes on changing..."
Osho, "Intelligence"

mirror...

http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-4w6h9eA8erTSjhX.bWOKOe_BRiw-?cq=1

One can be in deep love and yet be alone. In fact, one can be alone only when one is in deep love. The depth of love creates an ocean around you, a deep ocean, and you become an island, utterly alone. Yes, the ocean goes on throwing its waves on your shore, but the more the ocean crashes with its waves on your shore, the more integrated you are, the more rooted, the more centered you are.

Love has value only because it gives you aloneness. It gives you space enough to be on your own.

But you have an idea of love; that idea is creating trouble - not love itself, but the idea. The idea is that, in love, lovers disappear into each other, dissolve into each other. Yes, there are moments of dissolution - but this is the beauty of life and all that is existential: that when lovers dissolve into each other, the same are the moments when they become very conscious, very alert. That dissolution is not a kind of drunkenness, that dissolution is not unconscious. It brings great consciousness, it releases great awareness. On the one hand they are dissolved - on the other hand for the first time they see their utter beauty in being alone... And they are grateful to each other. It is because of the other that they have been able to see their own selves; the other has become a mirror in which they are reflected. Lovers are mirrors to each other. Love makes you aware of your original face.

Hence, it looks very contradictory, paradoxical, when stated in such a way: "Love brings aloneness." You were thinking all along that love brings togetherness. I am not saying that it does not bring togetherness, but unless you are alone you cannot be together. Who is going to be together? Two persons are needed to be together, two independent persons are needed to be together. A togetherness will be rich, infinitely rich, if both the persons are utterly independent. If they are dependent on each other, it is not a togetherness - it is a slavery, it is a bondage.

If they are dependent on each other, clinging, possessive, if they don't allow each other to be alone, if they don't allow each other space enough to grow, they are enemies, not lovers; they are destructive to each other, they are not helping each other to find their souls, their beings. What kind of love is this? It may be just fear of being alone; hence they are clinging to each other. But real love knows no fear. Real love is capable of being alone, utterly alone, and out of that aloneness grows a togetherness.

Kahlil Gibran says: Two lovers are like two pillars of a temple - they support the same roof, but they stand separate; together as far as supporting the same roof is concerned, but utterly separate as far as their own being is concerned. Be pillars of a temple, supporting the same temple of love, the same roof of love, yet rooted in your own being, not distracted from there. And then you will know both the beauty, the purity, the cleanliness, the health, the wholeness of aloneness, and you will also know the joy, the dance, the music of being together.

There is a beauty when somebody is playing a solo instrument - a solo flute player - there is tremendous beauty in that. And there is also beauty in an orchestra. And love knows both together: it knows how to be a solo flute player and it also knows how to be in rhythm, harmony with the other...

cliches vs authenticity in action

from: http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-4w6h9eA8erTSjhX.bWOKOe_BRiw-?cq=1&p=2290

"Gurdjieff used to say that man is a machine. It is true. Unless you become a Buddha, you are a machine. What does the word 'Buddha' mean? 'Buddha' means one who is awakened, aware.
Become aware. The man of awareness has no character. You will be surprised: I say the man of awareness is characterless - not in the sense that you give to the word 'characterless', but in a totally different sense he is characterless. Because he has no past to dominate him, no structure, no pattern. He is pure freedom. He is innocent. He responds to the moment, with no ready-made responses, because if a response is ready-made it is not a response at all: it is a reaction. He mirrors the moment as it is, and in that mirroring, he acts.

The unconscious person reacts; the conscious person acts.

And if you can act consciously, TOTALLY in the moment, you don't create any karma, you don't create any structures. You always remain free; you always go on moving beyond the past. You go on slipping out of the past like a snake slips out of the old skin.

Then life has tremendous beauty - because then there is power. And it is not YOUR power, so there is no question of any ego trip. Ego comes from the past; it is part of the law of necessity. Ego is your character, good or bad, but ego is the prison that keeps you in bondage. Ego arises out of your whole past.

Just think for a moment: if you have no past, who are you? Suddenly the whole edifice of the ego collapses. The man of power is not really powerful in his own right: he is just a vehicle for the power of God. He has no claims. He simply functions as a representative of the whole. He is utter freedom, utter joy. He knows no boundaries, he is infinite. Space and time are no more relevant to him. He is beyond space, beyond time.

That is the meaning of being enlightened. Disappearing as a character, disappearing as a person, disappearing as an ego... and becoming one with the whole"

words, or the lack thereof

"When there is so much to say, it is always difficult to say it. Only small things can be said, only trivia can be said, only the mundane can be said. Whenever you feel something overwhelming, it is impossible to say it, because words are too narrow to contain anything essential.
Words are utilitarian. They are good for day to day, mundane activities. They start falling short as you move beyond ordinary life. In love, they are not useful...All that is great goes beyond language, and when you find that nothing can be expressed, then you have arrived.
Then life is full of great beauty, great love, great joy, great celebration."
-Osho

Updated entry

Osho read Celestine...haha I'm sure Redfield read Osho? Amazing, either way...

http://ceefar83.blogspot.com/2007/09/testing-how-this-will-work-pretty.html

Freedom

"If tomorrow is fixed, then there can be security, but you have no freedom. Then you are just like a robot. You have to fulfill certain things that are already predestined. But tomorrow is beautiful because tomorrow is total freedom. Nobody knows what is going to happen. Whether you will be breathing, whether you will be alive at all, nobody knows. Hence there is beauty, because everything is in a chaos, everything is a challenge, and everything exists as a possibility.

Don't ask for consolations. If you go on asking, you will remain insecure. Accept insecurity, and insecurity will disappear. This is not a paradox, it is a simple truth -- paradoxical, but absolutely true. Up to now you have existed, so why be worried about tomorrow? If you could exist today, if you could exist yesterday, tomorrow will take care of itself too.

Don't think of the morrow, and move freely. A chaos at ease -- that's how a person should be. When you carry a revolution within you, every moment brings a new world, a new life...every moment becomes a new birth."

-Osho