Showing posts with label Maturity by Osho. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Maturity by Osho. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 12, 2019

Spiritual Reading Discussion Group - Maturity by Osho - Awareness becomes oceanic


As you become more sensitive, life becomes bigger. It is not a small pond; it becomes oceanic. It is not confined to you and your wife and your children—it is not confined at all. This whole existence becomes your family, and unless the whole existence is your family you have not known what life is—because no man is an island, we are all connected.

We are a vast continent, joined in millions of ways. 

And if our hearts are not full of love for the whole, in the same proportion our life is cut short. 

Meditation will bring you sensitivity, a great sense of belonging to the world. It is our world—the stars are ours, and we are not foreigners here. We belong intrinsically to existence. We are part of it, we are heart of it.

Osho. Maturity: The Responsibility of Being Oneself (Osho Insights for a New Way of Living) . St. Martin's Press. pp.xiv-xv

Osho is a great master because he recognizes and manifests the nondualistic Oneness. Osho says in this passage that as a person matures they become aware of the Oceanic Oneness of not only that they are a part but of which all of existence is a part.

In A Course In Miracles, one of the metaphors used to describe nondualistic Oneness is the Great Rays of which all things are a manifestation of God's creative being.

In A Course In Miralces, it is made clear that we cannot describe this because God is indescribable. ACIM encourages us to say, "God is ...................." and become silent.

This Universality (nondualistic Oneness) was recognized by the Universalists and as we move forward in maturing our consciousnesses we will become more inclusive in our awareness that we all are One.

Tuesday, November 5, 2019

Spiritual reading - Maturity by Osho - Search to find out Who Am I?




"Life must be a seeking - not a desire but a search; not an ambition to become this, to become that, a president of a country or prime minister of a country, but a search to find out 'Who am I?'"

The fourth principle of the covenant of Unitarian Universalism is the affirmation and promotion of the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. Osho suggests that this search not take us outward but inward.

As a psychotherapist I sometimes ask people "What makes you tick?" People often look startled, then scared, then perplexed. What to say? How to even think about such a question?

Socrates said that an unexamined life is not worth living and the bumper sticker says that an unlived life is not worth examining. People go to church and to therapy as well as to alcohol, drugs, pornography, gambling, video games looking for answers to the question of what to do with themselves and how to block out the pain of the existential anxiety that are consciously or unconsciously feeling.

Unitarian Universalists have a suggestion. UUs suggest that people engage in a free and responsible search for truth and meaning and then go off half cocked searching for snipe in social justice projects thinking that these activities will save the world.

Unitarian Universalism will never survive and grow unless there is a spiritual revival within its churches. Based on my experience in the churches I have visited, I am not optimistic this will occur. The UU churches I have visited are caught up in the ego concerns of the world, often times with remarkable enthusiasm at first until the energy dissipates and lethargy and depression set in and attendance drops and congregations have a hard time even financially supporting their basic operations.

From whence will a spiritual revival come? It starts as Osho suggests with the search to understand our divine origin, our inherent worth and dignity which binds us together and which we all share.

Wednesday, October 23, 2019

Spiritual reading - Maturity by Osho - Born again

Chapter three

Born again


What does it mean for a Unitarian Universalist to be "born again?"

It means that when a Unitarian Universalist becomes mature, they regain their innocence. Osho says in the book, "Maturity" on page xi, "Ignorance moves on the path of desire. Innocence is the state of desirelessness. But because both are without knowledge, we remained confused about their natures. We have taken it for granted they are the same."

And, of course, ignorance and innocence are not the same thing. UUs covenant together to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. That truth and meaning is to be found in a recognition, acknowledgement, and celebration of our innate innocence within based on that from which our egos have emerged.

We have forgotten our true natures and our natural inheritance which is love which the Universalists have recognized and brought our attention to.

To love your innocence is to love God and all our fellow innocent companions. When we become aware of this natural innocence we are indeed "born again."

Tuesday, October 22, 2019

Spiritual Reading - Maturity by Osho - Growing old or growing up?

Chapter one
Growing Old or Growing Up?
Growing old
This is the first article in a series on Osho's book, Maturity: The Responsibility of Being Oneself and comes from the forward.

So first we have to understand what I mean by “life.”

It must not be simply growing old, it must be growing up. And these are two different things. Growing old, any animal is capable of. Growing up is the prerogative of human beings.

Only a few claim the right.

Growing up means moving every moment deeper into the principle of life; it means going farther away from death—not toward death. The deeper you go into life, the more you understand the immortality within you. You are going away from death; a moment comes when you can see that death is nothing but changing clothes, or changing houses, changing forms—nothing dies, nothing can die. Death is the greatest illusion there is.

Osho. Maturity: The Responsibility of Being Oneself (Osho Insights for a New Way of Living) . St. Martin's Press. p.ix

Comment: Growing old and growing up are two different things. The choice is ours. Many people are in denial and unconscious of fact that they have a choice. Unitarian Universalism requires that people become consciously aware of their choice when it asks them to covenant together with others to affirm and promote the fourth principle to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning.

Unitarian Universalism asks people right up front to take responsibility for becoming oneself by formulating and understanding their own faith, their idea of what Paul Tillich called their "ultimate concern" rather than just going along with what other people expect and require.

Socrates taught that an unexamined life is not worth living. If most people are asked, "What makes you tick?" they become uncomfortable as if they have been put on the spot.

The covenant of Unitarian Universalism asks people to come to awareness of their own state of being. This can be a frightening think initially, but as one searches one finds more peace.
People come to a point in their lives gradually or suddenly that what they have been taught by society is illusional and that there has to be a better way to live their lives.

If we put maturity on a scale of 0 - 10 with 0 being newborn and very immature and 10 being fully self realized, actualized, self-aware, enlightened human beings are mature are you? How mature are the various people that you know well in your life?

My experience of Unitarian Univeralists is that many of them who actually understand and apply the principles in their lives are very mature. How ever I have also met many UUs who are just along for the ride and don't take the faith seriously in terms of working the principles in any kind of meaningful way.

Spiritual reading discussion group - Maturity by Osho

Unitarian Univeralism: A Way of Life is introducing a new feature on its blog: an online spiritual reading book discussion group. This feature will provide a series of articles on the book being studied. Readers are invited to comment on the topics under discussion whether they have read the book or not.

If readers have nominations for future books for study, please leave them in the comments or email your nominations to davidgmarkham@gmail.com.

The first book being discussed is "Maturity: The Responsibility For Being Oneself" by Osho.

Maturity Osho

Editor's note: For a brief video commentary click here.</

Sunday, July 14, 2019

Spiritual reading discussion, Maturity by Osho, Article #3, Meditation as a way of undoing the ego

Maturity Article #3

Meditation as a way of undoing the ego.



To me, the first principle of life is meditation. Everything else comes second. And childhood is the best time. 

As you grow older it means you are coming closer to death, and it becomes more and more difficult to go into meditation. 

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

Osho. Maturity: The Responsibility of Being Oneself (Osho Insights for a New Way of Living) . St. Martin's Press. p. x

Comment:

What does Osho mean by meditation? He means becoming centered and obtaining the state of "no mind," that is, undoing the ego.

In A Course In Miracles, it is taught that "meditation" is a quieting of the mind but the quieting, in and of itself, does very little, without changing one's thought system from focusing on the world of the ego to the world of the Spirit which is the Oneness of God.

A Course In Miracles teaches that the method of changing one's thought system is to rise above resentment, judgment, grievance, blame, guilt, and fear. It is the ego which blocks our awareness of Love's presence which is our natural inheritance.

Osho says that "meditation" means going into your immortality, going into your eternity, going into your godliness. Osho says the child is the most qualified because the child hasn't been burdened by all the nonsense which we think is so important on the ego plane for a happy life.

In the Christian prayer, the "Our Father," it says, "And lead me not into temptation but deliver me from evil" it is referring to not taking the promises of the ego world seriously. In eschewing the temptations of the ego world we rest in the bliss of the Oneness of God.

Osho teaches that the first principle of life is to be brought to innocense again by "meditation," giving up our egoistic ways of resentment, judgement, desire, blame, playing the victim. We have the power to decide to reclaim our innocense by giving up the judgments of the world.

Thursday, July 11, 2019

Spiritual reading discussion, Maturity by Osho, Article #2, The rejuvenation of innocence.



Maturity, Article Two
The rejuvenation of innocence.



What happens with the original face of the child, with the child’s original innocence?

The child was conditioned by society, and stuffed with knowledge. The process is called by many names and my favorite is “socialization.” Children become socialized into the values, beliefs, opinions and practices of the herd, first, their family of origin, and then by neighbors, school, peers, media, etc.

Osho puts it like this:
In the second birth he is going to gain what was available in the first birth, but the society, the parents, the people surrounding him crushed it, destroyed it. Every child is being stuffed with knowledge. His simplicity has to be somehow removed, because simplicity is not going to help him in this competitive world. His simplicity will look to the world as if he is a simpleton; his innocence will be exploited in every possible way. Afraid of the society, afraid of the world we ourselves have created, we try to make every child be clever, cunning, knowledgeable—to be in the category of the powerful, not in the category of the oppressed and the powerless.
 Osho. Maturity: The Responsibility of Being Oneself (Osho Insights for a New Way of Living) . St. Martin's Press. Kindle Edition.

 Comment: The corruption on the path of the ego can be almost complete. And yet, deep down within, there is a Divine Spark that is with us always.

 Things often have to get worse before they get better in terms of the consequences of our socialization. When we hit bottom, it dawns on us that there must be a better way. With this dawning begins the search which is captured in our Unitarian Univeralist fourth principle which is the affirmation and promotion of the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. It is this search which takes us to the regaining of our lost innocence. Jesus has told us that unless we become like little children we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. It is this recapturing of our innocence through the shedding of our socialization and conditioning that creates our salvation.

In A Course In Miracles this shedding of our socialization, our conditioning, in a conscious way, is what the Course calls “forgiveness.” We are forgiving our mistakes and the mistakes of others in thinking that our socialization is real.

The Course tells us this socialization is all an illusion. Maturity is the recognition that our socialization is small stuff and not to be taken seriously.

At a deeper level, where we recognize our inherent worth and dignity, our true Self is to be found. We are precious diamonds encrusted with the dirt and slag of sociali

Sunday, July 7, 2019

Spritiual reading discussion, Maturity by Osho, Article #1, Growing Old or Growing Up?

The UU A Way Of Life spiritual reading discussion has taken much longer than I anticipated. It may take several months so there is plenty of time to get your copy of the book and read along. From here on out posts regarding the spiritual book under discussion will be made on Sundays and Thursdays so that people reading along can plan on them with regularity. They will be numbered and tagged by the title of the book so people can  find previous articles easily if they wish to follow the thread of the discussion.

We are reading Osho's book, Maturity: The Responsibility of Being Oneself.



Maturity article #1

Growing Old or Growing Up?

Growing old
This is the first article in a series on Osho's book, Maturity: The Responsibility of Being Oneself and comes from the forward.

So first we have to understand what I mean by “life.”

It must not be simply growing old, it must be growing up. And these are two different things. Growing old, any animal is capable of. Growing up is the prerogative of human beings.

Only a few claim the right.

Growing up means moving every moment deeper into the principle of life; it means going farther away from death—not toward death. The deeper you go into life, the more you understand the immortality within you. You are going away from death; a moment comes when you can see that death is nothing but changing clothes, or changing houses, changing forms—nothing dies, nothing can die. Death is the greatest illusion there is.
Osho. Maturity: The Responsibility of Being O
neself (Osho Insights for a New Way of Living) . St. Martin's Press. Kindle Edition.

Comment: Growing old and growing up are two different things. The choice is ours. Many people are in denial and unconscious of fact that they have a choice. Unitarian Universalism requires that people become consciously aware of their choice when it asks them to covenant together with others to affirm and promote the fourth principle to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning.

Unitarian Universalism asks people right up front to take responsibility for becoming oneself by formulating and understanding their own faith, their idea of what Paul Tillich called their "ultimate concern" rather than just going along with what other people expect and require.

Socrates taught that an unexamined life is not worth living. If most people are asked, "What makes you tick?" they become uncomfortable as if they have been put on the spot.

The covenant of Unitarian Universalism asks people to come to an awareness of their own state of being. This can be a frightening thing initially, but as one searches one finds more peace.

People come to a point in their lives gradually or suddenly when it dawns on them that what they have been taught by society is illusional and that there has to be a better way to live their lives.

If we put maturity on a scale of 0 - 10 with 0 being newborn and very immature and 10 being fully self realized, actualized, self-aware, and enlightened how mature are you? How mature are the various people that you know well in your life?

My experience of Unitarian Univeralists is that many of them who actually understand and apply the principles in their lives are very mature. However I have also met many UUs who are just along for the ride and don't take the faith seriously in terms of working the principles in any kind of meaningful way.

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