How You Treat Others

Spiritual people often want unconditional support and understanding from their friends, family, and mates, but all too often seem blind to their own short comings when it comes to the amount of unconditional support and understanding that they give to others. I have seen many spiritual people become obsessed with how un spiritual others are and assume an arrogant and superior attitude while completely missing the fact that they themselves are not nearly as spiritually enlightened as they would like to think that they are. Enlightenment can be measured by how compassionately and wisely you interact with others; with all others, not just those who support you in the way that you want. How you interact with those who do not support you shows how enlightened you really are.

As long as you perceive that anyone is holding you back you have not taken full responsibility for your own liberation. Liberation means that you stand free of making demands on others and life to make you happy. When you discover yourself to be nothing but Freedom, you stop setting up conditions and requirements that need to be satisfied in order for you to be happy. It is in the absolute surrender of all conditions and requirements that Liberation is discovered to be who and what you Are. Then the love and wisdom that flows out of you has a liberating effect on others.

The biggest challenge for most spiritual seekers is to surrender their self importance, and see the emptiness of their own personal story. It is your personal story that you need to awaken from in order to be free. To give up being either ignorant or enlightened is the mark of liberation and allows you to treat others as your Self. What I am describing is the birth of true Love.

Adyashanti

Self-enquiry must be done continuously.

Self-enquiry must be done continuously. It doesn't work if your regard it as a part-time activity. ...You must have a lifelong commitment to establish yourself in the Self. Your determination to succeed must be strong and firm, and it should manifest as continuous, not part-time effort.

Annamalai Swamy

Do not leave it to somebody else

To put an end to outward war, you must begin to put an end to war in yourself. Some of you will nod your heads and say, “I agree,” and go outside and do exactly the same as you have been doing for the last ten or twenty years. Your agreement is merely verbal and has no significance, for the world’s miseries and wars are not going to be stopped by your casual assent. They will be stopped only when you realize the danger, when you realize your responsibility, when you do not leave it to somebody else. If you realize the suffering, if you see the urgency of immediate action and do not postpone, then you will transform yourself. Peace will come only when you yourself are peaceful, when you yourself are at peace with your neighbor.

J Krishnamurthy

The best teacher

The best teacher is one who can help the last person hearing him, the lowest in intelligence, to understand. Of course the best ones will understand easily, but you have to keep aware of those
who are not that intelligent.

Osho

Life is not suffering

Life is not suffering; it's just that you will suffer it, rather than enjoy it, until you let go of your mind's attachments and just go for the ride freely, no matter what happens.

From the book "Way of the Peaceful Warrior"

The mind frees itself

You see, when the mind is totally aware of its conditioning, there is only the mind; there is no ‘you’ separate from the mind. But, when the mind is only partially aware of its conditioning, it divides itself, it dislikes its conditioning or says it is a good thing; and, as long as there is condemnation, judgment, or comparison, there is incomplete understanding of conditioning, and therefore the perpetuation of that conditioning. Whereas, if the mind is aware of its conditioning without condemning or judging, but merely watching it, then there is a total perception, and you will find, if you so perceive it, that the mind frees itself from that conditioning.

J Krishnamurthy

Real meditation

Real meditation is the highest form of intelligence. It is not a matter of sitting cross-legged in a corner with your eyes shut or standing on your head or whatever it is you do. To meditate is to be completely aware as you are walking, as you are riding in the bus, as you are working in your office or in your kitchen—completely aware of the words you use, the gestures you make, the manner of your talk, the way you eat, and how you push people around. To be choicelessly aware of everything about you and within yourself, is meditation. If you are thus aware of the political and religious propaganda that goes on ceaselessly, aware of the many influences about you, you will see how quickly you understand and are free of every influence as you come into contact with it.

J Krishnamurthy

We are not basically free at all

It is one of the fallacious concepts that man is free. Of course, man is free to choose, but when he chooses he is already in confusion. When you see something very clearly, then you do not choose. Please look at this fact in yourselves. When you see something very clearly, where is the necessity of choice? There is no choice. It is only a confused mind that chooses, that says, “This is right, this is wrong, I must do this because it is right,” and so on, not a clear precise mind that sees directly. For such a mind there is no choice. You see, we say that we choose and therefore we are free. That is one of the absurdities we have invented, but we are not basically free at all. We are conditioned, and it requires an enormous understanding of this conditioning to be free.

J Krishnamurthy

Meditation is not an Experience

All experiences are just tricks of the mind .All experiences are just escapes .Meditation is not an experience , it is a realization .Meditation is not an experience; rather , it is a stopping of all experience .

Osho from the Book of Secrets

How much time and effort is required to realize "the power of now?

The power of now can only be realized now. It requires no time and effort. Effort means you’re trying hard to get somewhere, and so you are not present, welcoming this moment as it is.

Whereas it requires no time to awaken – you can only awaken now – it does take time before you can stay awake in all situations. Often you may find yourself being pulled back into old conditioned reactive patterns, particularly when faced with the challenges of daily living and of relationships. You lose the witnessing presence and become identified again with the "voice in the head," the continuous stream of thoughts, with its labels, judgments and opinions. You no longer know that they are only labels, judgments, and mental positions (opinions) – but completely believe in them. And so you create conflict. And then you suffer. And that suffering wakes you up again. Until presence becomes your predominant state, you may find yourself moving back and forth for a while between the old consciousness and the new, between mind identification and presence. "How long is it going to take?" is not a good question to ask. It makes you lose the now.

Eckhart Tolle

Does it matter whether we succeed or fail in the world?

It will matter to you so long as you haven't realized your inner purpose .After that , the outer purpose is just a game that you many continue to play simply because you enjoy it .It is also possible to fail completely in your outer purpose and at the same time totally succeed in your inner purpose .Or the other way around ,which is actually more common : outer riches and inner poverty , or to " gain the world and lose your soul ," as Jesus puts it .Ultimately , of course every outer purpose is doomed to "fail" sooner or later , simply because it is subject to the law of impermanence of all things .The sooner you realize that your outer purpose cannot give you lasting fulfillment , the better .When you have seen the limitations of your outer purpose , you give up your unrealistic expectation that it should make you happy , and you make it subservient to your inner purpose .

Eckhart Tolle from the Power of Now .

Live Life in all dimensions

In paradise one afternoon, in its most famous cafe, Lao Tzu, Confucius, and Buddha are sitting and chatting. The waiter comes with a tray that holds three glasses of the juice called "Life," and offers them. Buddha immediately closes his eyes and refuses; he says, "Life is misery."

Confucius closes his eyes halfway - he is a middlist, he used to preach the golden mean - and asks the waiter to give him the glass. He would like to have a sip - but just a sip, because without tasting how can one say whether life is misery or not? Confucius had a scientific mind; he was not much of a mystic, he had a very pragmatic, earthbound mind. He was the first behaviorist the world has known, very logical. And it seems perfectly right - he says, "First I will have a sip, and then I will say what I think." He takes a sip and he says, "Buddha is right - life is misery."

Lao Tzu takes all the three glasses and he says, "Unless one drinks totally, how can one say anything?" And Lao Tzu says, " He drinks all the three glasses and starts dancing!

Buddha and Confucius ask him, "Are you not going to say anything?" And Lao Tzu says, "This is what I am saying - my dance and my song are speaking for me." Unless you taste totally, you cannot say. And when you taste totally, you still cannot say because what you know is such that no words are adequate.

Buddha is on one extreme, Confucius is in the middle. Lao Tzu has drunk all the three glasses - the one that was brought for Buddha, the one that was brought for Confucius, and the one that was brought for him. He has drunk them all; he has lived life in its three-dimensionality.

My own approach is that of Lao Tzu. Live life in all possible ways; don't choose one thing against the other, and don't try to be in the middle. Don't try to balance yourself - balance is not something that can be cultivated. Balance is something that comes out of experiencing all the dimensions of life. Balance is something that happens; it is not something that can be brought about through your efforts. If you bring it through your efforts it will be false, forced. And you will remain tense, you will not be relaxed, because how can a person who is trying to remain balanced in the middle be relaxed? You will always be afraid that if you relax you may start moving to the left or to the right. You are bound to remain uptight, and to be uptight is to miss the whole opportunity, the whole gift of life.

Don't be uptight. Don't live life according to principles. Live life in its totality, drink life in its totality! Yes, sometimes it tastes bitter - so what? That taste of bitterness will make you capable of tasting its sweetness. You will be able to appreciate the sweetness only if you have tasted its bitterness. One who knows not how to cry will not know how to laugh, either. One who cannot enjoy a deep laughter, a belly laugh, that person's tears will be crocodile tears. They cannot be true, they cannot be authentic.

I don't teach the middle way, I teach the total way. Then a balance comes of its own accord, and then that balance has tremendous beauty and grace. You have not forced it, it has simply come. By moving gracefully to the left, to the right, in the middle, slowly a balance comes to you because you remain so unidentified. When sadness comes, you know it will pass, and when happiness comes you know that will pass, too. Nothing remains; everything passes by. The only thing that always abides is your witnessing. That witnessing brings balance. That witnessing is balance. "

Excerpt from "The Book of Understanding" by OSHO.

Your mind is your predicament

If you don't get what you want , you suffer; if you get what you don't want , you suffer ; even when you get exactly what you want , you still suffer because you can't hold on to it for ever .Your mind is your predicament .It wants to be free of charge , free of pain , free of the obligations of life and death .But change is a law , and no amount of pretending will alter that reality .

From the book "The Way of the Peaceful Warrior" by Dan Millman .

Humility in human relations

Humility is not something you wear like a garment.It has nothing to do with bowed heads and averted eyes ! It comes from the re absorption of individuality in being , in stillness .It comes from the ending of all agitation .In attention , alertness ,there is humility .It is receptivity , openness , to all that life brings .Where there is no psychological memory , no accumulation of knowledge , there is innocence .Innocence is humility .

Jean Klein

Balancing Material and spiritual life

Although it is extremely helpful for most beginners to cultivate a quieter life, meeting fewer people and keeping less busy, retiring into the temporary solitude each day of a study-meditation period, the aspirant need not reject society altogether or totally retire from everything worldly. Some do, of course, and join ashrams or monasteries. But such a drastic move is difficult for most persons in modern life. Nor is it recommended by philosophy. The opposition encountered in that life, its materialistic unpleasantness, may be treated as a challenge. The exercise of keeping the emotional self peaceful, or making the mind calm, despite provocation, is of the utmost value in such circumstances.

Paul Brunton

Do small things with Enthusiasm

. Life consists of small things, but if you can bring the quality of cheerfulness to small things, the total is tremendous. So don't wait for anything great to happen. Great things happen -- it is not that they don't -- but don't wait for the something great to happen. It happens only when you start living small, ordinary, day-to-day things, with a new mind, with new freshness, with new vitality, with new enthusiasm. Then by and by you accumulate, and that accumulation one day explodes into sheer joy. But one never knows when it will happen. One has just to go on collecting pebbles on the shore. The totality becomes the great happening. When you collect one pebble, it is a pebble. When all the pebbles are together, suddenly they are diamonds. That's the miracle of life. So you need not think about these great things. There are many people in the world who miss because they are always waiting for something great. It can't happen. It happens only through small things: eating, taking your breakfast, walking, taking your bath, talking to a friend, just sitting alone looking at the sky or lying on your bed doing nothing. These small things are what like is made of. This is the very stuff of life. So do everything cheerfully and then everything becomes a prayer. Do it with enthusiasm. The word 'enthusiasm' is very beautiful. The basic root means 'god-given'. When you do something with deep enthusiasm, God is within you. The very word 'enthusiasm' means 'a man who is full of God'. So just bring more enthusiasm into life, and fear and other things will disappear on their own. Never be bothered by negatives. You burn the candle and the darkness goes on its own. Don't try to fight with the darkness. There is no way because the darkness does not exist. How can you fight with it? Just light a candle and the darkness is gone. So forget about the darkness, forget about the fear. Forget about all those negative things that ordinarily haunt the human mind. Just burn a small candle of enthusiasm.

Osho

Back from my Yoga Vacation

Dear Friends

I am back from my Yoga Vacation at the Sivananda Ashram Yoga Camp in ValMorin , Quebec ,Canada .It was a wonderful 4 weeks of physical , emotional and spiritual rejuvenation .I had opportunities to interact with many people there involved in Alternative Healing and got to learn many new things about Yoga , Alternative Healing etc .In short a very productive visit .Since I am back , I will restart my blog and start posting new messages again regularly without fail .