The Spiritual Life - Topic Fifteen, Throwing off the chains of conditioning to finally become oneself

The Spiritual Life - Topic Fifteen

Throwing off the chains of conditioning to finally become oneself.

From Maturity: The Responsibility For Being Oneself by Osho

Every child has to lose his innocence and regain it. Losing is only half of the process—many have lost it, but very few have regained it. That is unfortunate, very unfortunate. Everybody loses it, but only once in a while does a Buddha, a Zarathustra, a Krishna, a Jesus regain it. Jesus is nobody else but Adam coming back home. Magdalene is nobody else but Eve coming back home. 

They have come out of the sea and they have seen the misery and they have seen the stupidity. They have seen that it is not blissful to be out of the ocean. The moment you become aware that to be a part of any society, any religion, any culture is to remain miserable, is to remain a prisoner—that very day you start dropping your chains. Maturity is coming, you are gaining your innocence again. pp. 4-5

Osho is teaching that we must throw off the chains of the conditioning and socialization of the ego world.

It dawns on us that we have left paradise when we separated ourselves from the oceanic Oneness and been taught that happiness lies in the things of the ego world. It dawns on us that this is a Big Lie. We have left heaven for hell - hell on earth in the ego world.

The best response to this dawning awareness that we have left paradise for hell on earth is to laugh. We become aware of the absurdity of it all. We finally get the cosmic joke that has been played on us by our families, our communities, our employers, our churches, our schools and universities, our nation, our culture.

Often at first we are confused, and then distressed: both mad and sad, and then scared. Some people have a “nervous breakdown” or what the mystics call the “dark night of the soul.” In first world countries we go to the doctors who tell us we are depressed, we have a “chemical imbalance” in our brains and the physicians give us pills, a form of magic, to soothe our grief over losing our hopes and dreams that the things of the ego world will make us happy.

Or we turn to chemicals and mood altering activities of our own whether it be alcohol, drugs, gambling, sex, overeathing, shopping, business, sports, and “new age” activities like yoga, crystals, aroma therapy, psychic readings, etc.

The searching takes us many places and as Osho shares with us, it seems that few people turn into a Buddha, a Jesus, a Krishna, a Mary Magdalene, a Mother Teresa. But some do, and here at UU A Way of Life our mission to help people become aware of their innate holiness, the Unconditional Love that resides within, our natural inheritance.

Today, we can begin to consciously renounce the things of the ego and turn toward the pursuit of the things of the spirit. This pursuit involves two primary things: forgiveness which means giving up making others responsible for your own unhappiness, and following the North Star, the litmus test question, “What would Love have me do?”

Basically, maturity, accepting the responsibility of being oneself, means throwing off the chains of the path of the ego and embarking on the path of the spirit, reclaiming the innocence of our childhood,  and entering the flow which takes us home from whence we have come.