Our original face when born is one of love

Teachings of Osho is a regular feature of UU A Way Of Life which appears on Tuesdays.

 

"When the child is born he is simple love. He has to be so, because he has not known anything else. In the mother's womb he has not come across any enemy. He has lived in deep love for nine months, surrounded by love, nourished by love. He knows nobody who is inimical to him. He knows only the mother and the mother's love. when he is born his whole experience is of love, so how can you expect him to know anything about hatred? This love he brings with himself; this is his original face. Then there will be trouble, then there will be many other experiences. He will start distrusting people. A newborn child is simply born with trust." 

Osho, Compassion: The Ultimate Flowering Of Love , p. 35

Spiritual Reading Discussion - Maturity by Osho, All of life should be a celebration

As your silence grows, your friendliness, your love grows; your life becomes a moment-to-moment dance, a joy, a celebration.

Have you ever thought about why, all over the world, in every culture, in every society, there are a few days in the year for celebration? These few days for celebration are just a compensation—because these societies have taken away all the celebration of your life, and if nothing is given to you in compensation your life can become a danger to the culture.

Every culture has to give some compensation to you so that you don’t feel completely lost in misery, in sadness. But these compensations are false.

Firecrackers and colored lights cannot make you rejoice. They are only for children—for you they are just a nuisance. But in your inner world there can be a continuity of lights, songs, joys.

Always remember that society compensates you when it feels that the repressed may explode into a dangerous situation if it is not compensated. The society finds some way of allowing you to let out the repressed—but this is not true celebration, and it cannot be true.

True celebration should come from your life, in your life.

And true celebration cannot be according to the calendar, that on the first of November you will celebrate. Strange, the whole year you are miserable and on the first of November suddenly you come out of misery, dancing? Either the misery was false or the first of November is false; both cannot be true. And once the first of November is gone you are back in your dark hole, everybody in his misery, everybody in his anxiety.

 Life should be a continuous celebration, a festival of lights the whole year round. Only then can you grow up, can you blossom.

Transform small things into celebration.

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

Comment:

Do UUs say grace before meals? Do they practice mindful eating? I have done this with evangelical Christians but never with UUs. Why is that?

Do UUs say their prayers before they go to bed and when they awake in the morning? I was taught to do this as a child having been raised as a Roman Catholic, but I have never heard of this practice in Unitarian Universalism.

Do UUs pray five times a day directing their prayers towards Mecca as the Muslims do, or follow the practice of praying the hours as Christians do? I have never heard of such a thing in Unitarian Universalism.

There is some effort to be mindful and mindfulness practices have been encouraged by and for UUs, and these mindfulness practices take many forms such as mindful eating, mindful walking, mindful working.

The Buddhists have told us that prayer can be chopping wood and carrying water. It can be driving to work and home and doing our paperwork. Can running errands and taking the kids to their activities be a prayer? If so, Osho tells us, there is no need for holidays, for vacations, for celebrations. All of life is a celebration and every day is a holiday - a holy day.

Slow down and smell the roses and have a holy day today with several holy moments.

Ask Alexa: What happens when I die?

Alexa: When the day comes that my spirit will be pried lose from my body what will happen to it?

You will become one with the all as the law of physics called the "conservation of energy" tells us.

Alexa:Did you hear about the guy who dated a fitness instructor?

Yes and they didn't work out.

Prophetic women and men - Patrisse Khan-Cullors

Prophetic women and men is a regular feature of UU A Way Of Life ministries blog which appears on Sundays.

Patrisse Cullors is a prophetic woman in our contemporary age. She has written "When They Call You A Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir."

In this memoir, Patrisse generously shares the intimacies of her life and loves, and her unyielding devotion to the cause of freedom. 

The stories she tells here with asha bandele help us to understand why her approach to organizing and movement building has captured the imaginations of so many. 

Her story emphasizes the productive intersection of personal experiences and political resistance. The pivotal story of her brother’s repeated encounters with violence-prone police officers, for example, permits us to better understand how state violence thrives at the intersection of race and disability. That Monte—Patrisse’s brother—is shot with rubber bullets and charged with terrorism as a routine police response to a manic episode reveals how readily the charge of terrorism is deployed within white supremacist institutions. 

We learn not only about the quotidian nature of state violence but also about how art and activism can transform such tragic confrontations into catalysts for greater collective consciousness and more effective resistance.

Khan-Cullors, Patrisse. When They Call You a Terrorist (pp. xi-xii). St. Martin's Press. Kindle Edition.

You can learn more by clicking here.

Spiritual reading discussion - Maturity by Osho - Form or content: What's important?

We have not bothered about the outside; we have insisted that only the inner should be paid attention to. The outer is unimportant. Somebody is young, somebody is old, somebody is black, somebody is white, somebody is man, somebody is woman—it does not matter; what matters is that inside there is an ocean of silence. In that oceanic state, the body takes a certain posture.

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

Comment:

What appears on the outside is form. What is important is what's on the inside, the content.

Unitarian Universalists covenant together to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person. What this UU principle points to is the content not the form.

Look for the divine spark in every person, today, and focus on that. It's what's inside that counts not the outside. Same is true for oneself. I'm a fat old man, but inside I'm a beloved child of God.

Ask Alexa - Is revenge sweet?

Alexa: Does revenge bring satisfaction?

On the path of the ego revenge seems sweet even if short lived but in the long run, as Gandhi said, "An eye for an eye makes us both blind."

Alexa: Did you hear about the woman who learned to read with Braille?

Yes, it was easy once she got the feel for it.

Why do people go to church?

Why do people go to church? 

Fewer and fewer people go to church these days especially in mainline religions in the U.S. and Europe. Church Attendance is down.

Tomorrow this Sunday and I have not gone to church the last few weeks and I am considering whether I will go to church tomorrow.

Perhaps, I should do a qualitive research project and ask people why they come to church. What are my hypotheses?

I would guess that most people come to church for the fellowship. Some might say they come for a connection with the transcendent which is what church represents. Some might say that they come for comfort, for inspiration, for validation, for support.

Why do I go? I think I go for the validation of shared values. To be a part of a group with shared vision, mission, beliefs and values.

It is important for a church to have leadership that facilitates the development of organizational structures, values, policies, and practices that meet congregants expectations, and preferences, and maybe helps them grow a little outside their comfort zone.

This kind of leadership requires resources, knowledge, skills, energy, enthusiasm bordering on passion. All the members of the congregation are leaders in some way and yet the professional staff have a special responsibility to be the steward of the vision, the catalyst that brings disparate ideas and efforts together, the orchestra conductor of sorts so that the congregation, the church community, can work together harmoniously in the pursuit of common goals. I don't know how a pastor does this effectively without strong lay leadership as well. Some people are good administrators who oversee the efficient functioning of the status quo, and some people are visionaries with energy and committment to the development and actualization of a vibrant and viable future.

For some reason, I do not see a lot of visionary leadership around in the UU world, but maybe I am looking in the wrong places. Where are the UU prophets, the UU missionaries, should I say the UU martyrs? They are a part of our past, our heritage, but I do not see them in our current landscape except in isolated instances.

Should I keep going to church hoping - hoping that the leadership I can get excited about will emerge. My mother used to tell me when I was a boy, "David, you have no right to criticize unless you can do it better." I have spent most of my 73 years on this planet muttering to myself, "I know I could do it better. I know I could do it better." But alas, there is only so much I can do and so I look to others - where are you?

Having looked to others I realize this is evading my responsibility to become my better self and stop blaming others for whatever ennui I feel. Church is what I want to make it. I think I will go tomorrow and see if there is someone there I can connect with. Jesus said, "Where two or more are gathered in my name, there I will be."

Well, if Jesus is going to be there, I think I will go and see if I can find Him.