The Spiritual Live, Topic two, Remembering we already have all that we ever wanted

Topic two

Remembering we already have all that we ever wanted.

From Osho’s book, “Maturity: The Responsibility For Being Oneself”

“Meditation means going into your immortality, going into eternity, going into your godliness, And the child is the most qualified because he is still unburdened by knowledge, unburdened by religion, unburdened by education, unburdened by all kinds of rubbish. He is innocent.” p. x

“Ignorance is poor, it is a beggar - it wants this, it wants that, it wants to be knowledgeable, it wants to be respectable, it wants to be wealthy, it wants to be powerful. Ignorance moves on the path of desire. Innocence is a state of desirelessness. But because both are without knowledge, we remain confused about their natures. We have taken it for granted that they are the same.” p. xi

“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. P.xi

Religion is about belief. Spirituality is about experience. As we progress in our spiritual development we move from our heads to our hearts, from belief to experience. This is why Osho recommends meditation. Meditation is the eschewing of beliefs and thoughts and clearing one’s mind of what the Buddhists call “monkey mind” that part of our experience which is the constant chatter of talking to ourselves in our heads.

Clearing the mind of all the talk allows for the experience of a rebirth, the “spiritual rebirth” which Osho describes. Meditation takes us inward to our innermost core where Unconditional Love resides which is our natural inheritance.

In our fast paced world focused on acquiring pleasure and external things we think will make us happy puts us on a frantic wild goose chase. We are like the hamsters running in our wheels which spin nowhere. In our ignorance we pursue the idols of the ego world having been taught by society that these things will make us happy. As we become more spiritually aware, we come to realize that these expectations, hopes, dreams, and aspirations have been misguided and it dawns on us, often with great anguish and suffering, that we have been on the wrong path. We say to ourselves in exasperation and dysphoria, “there must be a better way.” And it is in this thought born from frustration, depression, anxiety and fear that the first step on a spiritual path begins as we begin to search for what that better way might be.

Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. This free and responsible search is the rebirth that Osho describes which takes us from ignorance to innocence,  from a state of stressful desires to the peace and joy of desirelessness. We come to remember that on the path of the Spirit we already have all that we ever wanted, the Unconditional Love of creation.