Tuesday, August 26, 2014
Saturday, March 1, 2014
When Someone Deeply Listens to You
When Someone Deeply Listens to You
When someone deeply listens to you
it is like holding out a dented cup
you’ve had since childhood
and watching it fill up with
cold, fresh water.
When it balances on top of the brim,
you are understood.
When it overflows and touches your skin,
you are loved.
When someone deeply listens to you,
the room where you stay
starts a new life
and the place where you wrote
your first poem
begins to glow in your mind’s eye.
It is as if gold has been discovered!
When someone deeply listens to you,
your bare feet are on the earth
and a beloved land that seemed distant
is now at home within you.
- John Fox
Principal of the American Embassy School, Delhi
Sunday, March 10, 2013
Love alone cannot live without understanding
[A sannyasin asks about relationships, her marriage, and whether becoming enlightened is more important.]
Osho – Love is crazy, so you cannot make it sane. Love is insane — and that is the whole beauty of it! It is not rational, it is not even reasonable. And this happens to everybody: sometimes you feel like being in it and sometimes you don’t feel like being in it. Sometimes you want to go away from the love object and sometimes you want to dissolve into the love object. Both are right — you are not to choose between these two. They are both together, two aspects of the same phenomenon. You have to understand; it is not a question of choice, just a question of understanding. It is like day and night together. You cannot always be in love — that is difficult. Impossible! Sometimes one needs rest from love too. So both these things will come up and down. Sometimes you are deeply in love and you don’t bother about freedom. Sometimes you need your space and you think about freedom, and you don’t bother about love. But both are true; one has to come to an understanding. So if you are living with [him], create understanding, talk to each other, and understand that sometimes he needs his space. And this is a problem: it may not happen at the same time to both of you. Sometimes you want to be with him and he wants to be alone — nothing can be done about it. Then you have to understand and leave him alone. Sometimes you want to be alone but he wants to come to you — then tell him that you are helpless! So just create more and more understanding. That’s what lovers miss: love they have enough, but understanding none, not at all. That’s why on the rocks of misunderstanding their love dies. Love cannot live alone without understanding. Alone, love is very foolish; with understanding, love can live a long life, a great life — of many joys shared, of many beautiful moments shared, of great poetic experiences. But that happens only through understanding. Love can give you a small honeymoon, but that’s all. Only understanding can give you deep intimacy. And each honeymoon is followed by depression, anger, frustration. Unless you grow in understanding, no honeymoon is going to be of any help; it is just like a drug. So try to create more understanding with [him] too. And even some day if you separate, the understanding will be with you, will be with him, and that will be a gift of your love to each other. Lovers can separate, but the understanding that has been gained through the other, in the company of the other, will always be with you. That will remain as a gift — there can be no other gift. If you love a person, the only valuable gift that you can give to him is some quantity of understanding.http://www.oshoteachings.com/osho-love-cannot-live-alone-without-understanding/http://www.oshoteachings.com/osho-love-cannot-live-alone-without-understanding/
Friday, February 22, 2013
Monday, February 18, 2013
On Excitement, True Love and Joy in Relationship
[A sannyasin, returning to the West, says that the joy and fun has gone out of his relationship with his girlfriend, though the love is still there.]
Osho – There is some misunderstanding in your mind. The joy is not gone, joy has never been there – it was something else. It is excitement that has gone but you were thinking that excitement was joy. Joy will come now; when the excitement subsides only their does joy come. Joy is a very silent phenomenon. It is not excitement at all, it is not feverish at all.
It is tranquil, calm and cool. But in the West that misunderstanding has become very prevalent. People think that excitement is joy It is a kind of intoxication one feels occupied, tremendously occupied. In that occupation one forgets one’s worries, problems, anxieties. So it is like alcohol: you forget your problems, you forget yourself; at least for the moment you are far, far away from yourself. That is the meaning of excitement: you are no more inside; you are outside yourself, you have escaped from yourself.
But because of this being outside yourself, sooner or later you become tired. You miss the nourishment that comes from your innermost core when you are close to it. So no excitement can be permanent; it can only be a moment’s phenomenon, a momentary thing. All honeymoons end, they have to end, otherwise you will be killed. If you remain excited you will go berserk. It has to subside, you have to be nourished there again.
It is just as one cannot remain awake for many nights. For one night, two nights, three nights, it is okay, but if you remain awake for too many nights you will start feeling tired, utterly tired, exhausted. And you will start feeling dull and dead too; you will need rest. After each excitement there is a need for rest. In rest you recapitulate, you recover; then you can move into excitement again.
But excitement is not joy, it is just an escape from misery. Try to understand it very clearly: excitement is just an escape from misery. It gives only a pseudo experience of joy. Because you are no more miserable you think you are joyous – not to be miserable is equivalent to being joyous. Joy is a positive phenomenon. Not to be miserable is just a forgetfulness. The misery is waiting back home for you: whenever you come back it will be there.
When excitement disappears, one starts thinking ’Now what is the point of this love?’ In the West love dies with excitement, and that is a calamity. In fact love had never been born. It was just love of excitement, it was not real love. It was just an effort to move away from oneself It was a search for sensation. You rightly use the word ’fun’; it was fun but it was not intimacy. When excitement disappears and you just start feeling loving, love can grow; now the feverish days are over. This is the true beginning.
To me, the true love begins when the honeymoon is over. But by that time the western mind thinks that all is over, finished: ’Search for another woman, search for another man. Now what is the point in continuing? – there is no more fun!’
If you go on loving now, love will take on a depth, it will become intimacy. A great grace will arise in it. It will have a subtlety now, it will not be superficial. It will not be fun, it will be meditation, it will be prayer. It will help you to know yourself. The other will become a mirror, and through her you will be able to know yourself. Now is the time, the right time for love to grow because all the energy that was being channelled into excitement will not be wasted: it will be poured into the very roots of love and the tree will be able to have great foliage.
If you can go on growing in this intimacy, which is no more excitement, then joy will arise: first excitement, then love, then joy. Joy is the ultimate product, the fulfilment. Excitement is just a beginning, a triggering; it is not the end. And those who finish at excitement will never know what love is, will never know the mystery of love, will never come to know the joy of love. They will know sensations, excitement, passionate fever, but they will never know the grace that is love. They will never know how beautiful it is to be with a person with no excitement but with silence, with no words, with no effort to do anything.
Just being together, sharing one space, one being, sharing each other, not thinking of what to do, what to say, where to go, how to enjoy; all those things are gone. The storm is over and there is silence. And it is not that you will not make love but it will not be a making really; it will be love happening. It will happen out of grace, out of silence, out of rhythm; it will arise from your depths, it will not be bodily really.
There is a sex which is spiritual, which has nothing to do with the body. Although the body partakes in it, participates in it, it is not the source of it. Then sex takes on the colour of Tantra, only then.
So my suggestion is: watch yourself. Now that you are coming closer to the temple don’t escape. Go into it. Forget excitement, it is just childish. And something beautiful is ahead. If you can wait for it, if you have patience and can trust in it, it will come. And to know love is to know God….
Sunday, January 13, 2013
Falling out of Love - Rising in Love
Saturday, November 17, 2012
Never resist pain
NEVER RESIST PAIN.
WHEN PAIN GOES, LOVE ALSO GOES.
NEVER
RESIST
PAIN
WHEN PAIN DIES, LOVE ALSO DIES.
WHEN PAIN GOES, LOVE ALSO GOES.
NEVER
RESIST
PAIN
WHEN PAIN DIES, LOVE ALSO DIES.
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