Keep Quiet

You have two choices: Either you follow most teachers and spend your life trying to remove or clean out the mind. First you will have to find out if the mind exists. No one has seen the mind. Even if you found it, how do you propose to clean it? Everyone is practicing cleaning the mind but there is no one so far who has cleaned it. Where is this mind to be cleaned?

The second choice is to keep quiet and you will know who really you are. This is very simple. It is not going to take you time; in fact time does not appear. There is nothing outside that can help you, you have just to keep quiet - that's all - and you will know then you are eternal. You are Eternal Existence itself.

Keep the faith!

Have you ever had an overwhelming problem or issue? Was there some circumstance in your life that seemed beyond your ability to handle it? Have you ever called out to God, guardian angels, your higher self, whatever name you give to that spirit?

Have you cried out to God for help with some crisis in your life?... Did you get help? .....When we get the help and assistance, we assume all is well in the heavens. We think, “Yahoo! Miracles really do happen!”

However, when we don’t get the answer or the help, we often conclude that there is no God.

We seem to have rolled it all up into a belief that if we visualise what we want or demand that the gods assist us in the manner we choose, then we’ll get whatever we want. What a spoiled bunch we are!.....

Positive visualisation and faith are intertwined..... You really can’t have one without the other. You cannot empower your visualisations without faith. Kind of a ‘duhhh’ statement.... Faith is not sitting around doing nothing while demanding miracles from the gods to come save you.... If you’ve made choices that have put you into a bad place, don’t yell at the gods to bail you out..... Don’t just sit there doing nothing while expecting the heavens to fix it all for you..... It’s not their job..... It’s your job.

Faith is trusting that if you work hard at finding solutions to your problems while following the Golden Rule, then things will turn out for the best. It’s believing that the gods will help you find or cultivate the solutions you need.

The Golden Rule, karma, - what comes around goes around, cause and effect - exists. If you make bad choices, bad things will happen. If you hurt people, people will hurt you. If you’re living a negative lifestyle, then cry out for the gods to come save you from your misery, you’re not likely to get any help. It’s your life, your problems. Learn, grow, heal, move forward.

You can tell your God you’re sorry for your part in creating the problem and that you’re ready to change it. Then prove it, by changing it. Your God will show itself somewhere along the way. Have faith and keep working.

Let’s assume it’s one of those times in life where you were happily going along doing your good deeds, having a positive attitude, and some nightmare blew up in your face anyway. What is your immediate response when that happens?

Do you claim there is no God and that all of your positive thoughts and deeds were of no use Do you lose faith that your God will guide you through the event? Or, do you hold strong to your God and to your positive beliefs? Do you roll up your sleeves and get to work on finding solutions? Do you even find ways to continue seeing the beauty in life while overcoming the adversity?

Negative people who don’t have much faith in themselves, in life, or in God tend to use life’ adversities as proof that they’re correct for being so pessimistic. While people who are upbeat and positive, having faith in them selves, in life, tend to use adversities to collect evidence that everything really does turn out for the best in the long run. Whether we believe in God or not doesn’t affect whether or not there is some form of God.

I can’t even say for sure that believing in God will inspire that entity to like you or help you. All I know is that when we have faith that things will get better, they usually do. When we believe things won’t get better, they don’t.

Do miracles happen? Absolutely! They happen to all kinds of people all the time. They happen regardless of religion, gender or financial position. By definition, they have a magical unexplainable mystery element that’s integral to how it came to be. Whatever that force is that causes such things to happen, it is awe inspiring.

Can you force miracles to happen by demanding them or by blackmailing your God with the underlying belief system that if your miracle isn’t delivered then you’re going to turn your back on your God? Definitely not. You can coax them by recognising them when they happen no matter how little they might be and by being thankful to whatever force you attribute them to. “Thank you for your divine intervention, whoever you are"

Aloneness!

We are greatly inconvenienced because we don't know who we are when we are alone..... With the other, things are clear.... defined. We know the name, we know the form, we know the person....Hindu, Christian, Indian, American....there are some ways to define the other. How to define yourself?

Deep down there is an abyss... undefinable emptiness. You start merging into that. It creates fear. You become frightened.

You want to rush towards the other. The other helps you to remain out. When there is nobody you are simply left with your emptiness.

Nobody wants to be alone. The greatest fear in the world is to be left alone. People do a thousand and one things just not to be left alone. You imitate your neighbours so you are just like them.

You lose your individuality, you lose your uniqueness, you just become imitators, because otherwise, you will be left alone.

To be alone is really the greatest miracle. That means now you don't belong to any church or organisation, you don't belong to any theology or ideology — socialist, communist, Hindu, Christian, Jain, Buddhist — you don't belong, you simply are.

And you have learnt how to love your indefinable, ineffable reality. You have come to know how to be with yourself.

A man who loves his aloneness is capable of love, and a man who feels loneliness is incapable of love. A man who is happy with himself is full of love, flowing.

He does not need anybody's love, hence he can give. When you are in need how can you give? You are a beggar. And when you can give, much love comes towards you.

It is a natural response. The first lesson of love is to learn how to be alone. Try it, to have the feel. Just
sit alone sometimes. That's what meditation is all about — just sitting alone, doing nothing.

If you start feeling lonely then there is something missing in your being, then you have not been able yet to understand who you are.

Then go deeper into this loneliness until you come to a layer when suddenly loneliness transforms itself into aloneness. Loneliness is the negative aspect of aloneness.

If you go deeper into it one moment is bound to come when suddenly you will start feeling the positive aspect of it. Because both aspects are always together.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Excerpted from The Discipline of Transcendence, courtesy Osho International
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Let Go...

We tend to cling to every object in our lives. We hold on to our profession, relationship or possession as if our entire world depends on them. We are so busy clinging to our own lives, that we have forgotten to live with the flow. We are afraid to move ahead, afraid to let go.

Life in essence is like an unobstructed, unrestrained, uncontrolled flow of a river. Life flows at its own pace and the ultimate source of all our pain and sufferings is our tendency to cling to and obstruct the flow. Life stagnates, relationships are broken, possessions are lost; all because we refused to let go when we were actually required to let things take their own course.

Why do we cling? We cling because change scares us; we cling because we are afraid to face the unknown, to face challenges; we cling because we feel secure if the stalemateness is maintained; we cling because we refuse to believe that life can never be static; because we refuse to accept the transience of everything; we believe that everything is in our hands. We do not have enough faith in life and that higher force which is omnipotent and omnipresent. In the chaos of existence, we have lost touch with our higher self. Most of us lead a life which is similar to that of a child who is lost in a crowd, separated from his guardians. He has nobody to place his faith on. He is afraid, insecure, suspicious about everyone and everything.

We live under the false illusion of having everything under our control. The spirit of getting things done becomes a problem when we continue to cling on even after we have exhorted all our efforts. We are overwhelmed by a sense of despair and disillusion when things move beyond our control. It is at this stage we need to learn to let go. Several times relationships are broken just because we tried too hard to make them work. We didn't give the breathing space they required to grow. We didn't let go and let them take their own course.

Once all the efforts are made towards achieving a goal, we must learn to let go and let life take the best course. It might or might not be of one's choice, but if we have faith, we will realise that it inevitably is the best course. We need to believe that forces above us are far better equipped to make judgments for us. We must learn to have faith in their judgment. Letting go, however, does not mean turning into a fatalist. One cannot sit idle in life and expect life to take care of itself. Karma, the fulfilment of one's duties is the ultimate objective of all human existence and if we fail to fulfill our duties towards life, life inevitably fails us.

Human Humility

A common argument against religion is that it doesn't work. By that we mean that religion does not guarantee happiness, or even comfort, in times of distress. Strange as it may seem, those who have firm faith often tell us that religion is not meant to bring happiness.

Hinduism sometimes seems to suggest that unhappiness is inevitable. The Gita says the world is "the abode of sorrow" and describes the world as "a wild and terrible forest" and a "prison". However, there is so much beauty for which we should give thanks for.

I feel part of something infinitely large. This is a comforting experience because it puts my ego in place, silences my self-importance, yet does not tell me i am of no importance. There is so much which is closer to home that we should give thanks for — family, friends, and of course food, the achievements of science and technology, too. There is the gift of life itself, without which we could not enjoy all that has been given to us.

But life is not always enjoyable and God does not necessarily comfort us in bad times. There are times when we suffer apparently through no fault of our own and we can't understand how a God who should be comforting us is inflicting such suffering on us. There are also times when we are convinced that God can't possibly want to have anything to do with us, the times when we are thoroughly ashamed of ourselves.

Perhaps the answer to the riddle of unhappiness lies in the unfashionable virtue of humility, but a balanced humility, which represses self-esteem without falling into the miserable state of self hatred that is responsible for so much depression these days. Humility teaches that we can never fully understand the ways of God, that he never gives us certainty.

We can never have the comfort of certainty about the ways of God, nor precise answers to the question "Why is this happening?" But we can have deep within us faith to see us through times when there doesn't seem anything to be grateful for. If we have the faith to believe all things shall be well even when at the time they are far from well we will find that religion does work, that God does not desert us.