Topic one, Entering into a spiritual life.
Today is Easter. Jesus rose again into a new life. Today, after a season of lent, we recognize, acknowledge, and validate this understanding.
Jesus has left the world of the ego behind. An illusory world which didn’t want to learn what He was trying to teach, and to silence Him they arrested Him, tortured Him, and killed His body, but His Spirit rose alive and well to become One with the All and with Us who understand what He was teaching.
One of our contemporary teachers, a spiritual master, is Osho, and during this Easter season we will be reflecting on Osho’s teachings along with Jesus’ as well as other mystical traditions and describing how they can be applied in a Unitarian Univeralist Way Of Life.
Buckle your seat belts and prepare yourself for a wild ride.
People enter into a spiritual search when the path of the ego isn't working for them any more. It dawns on them one day that the idols of the ego world have not made them happy and in their angst and depression and anxiety they start to search.
Many people come to Unitarian Univeralism because it is one religion that affirms and promotes the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. Osho teaches that rebellion is the first step on the path of an authentic spiritual life.
In Osho’s book, “Maturity: The Responsibility For Being Oneself” on page xi he says,
“Maturity is a rebirth, a spiritual birth. You are born anew, you are a child again. With fresh eyes you start looking at existence. With love in the heart you approach life. With silence and innocence you penetrate your own innermost core. “
The seeker starts to renounce and shed the shackles of prior socialization and conditioning and starts to look at the world fresh again from the path of the spirit instead of the path of the ego. Jesus says in Matthew 18:3 “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven”
And so the Evangelical Christians have it right when they say that people have to become “born again” if they are to enter the kingdom of heaven, but this involves more than just accepting Jesus as your Lord and Savior whatever that means.
What being “twice born” means in the perennial psychology is that a person has to give up their social conditioning on the path of the ego and embark on the path of the Spirit which is Unconditional Love.
Embarking on this other path of the Spirit is what Jesus’ life was all about which is pointedly exemplified with Easter resurrection of the spirit as Jesus invited us to enter into a spiritual life and Osho encourages us and suggests ways we might do it through developing a meditative mindset and celebrating life.
Join us on this journey of reflections through the Easter season as we explore becoming "twice born" and regain the innocence and wonder of a child.
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