Video commentary - Growing old and growing up.

The Spiritual Life - Topic Sixteen, Growing old and growing up

The Spiritual Life - Topic Sixteen

Growing old and growing up.

There is a great difference between maturity and aging, a vast difference, and people always remain confused about it. People think that to age is to become mature—but aging belongs to the body. Everybody is aging, everybody will become old, but not necessarily mature. Maturity is an inner growth. P.4

There are two ways to live: one, to live in a deep sleep—then you age, every moment you become old, every moment you go on dying, that’s all. Your whole life consists of a long, slow death. 

But if you bring awareness to your experiences—whatsoever you do, whatsoever happens to you, you are alert, watchful, mindful, you are savoring the experience from all the corners, you are trying to understand the meaning of it, you are trying to penetrate the very depth of it, what has happened to you, you are trying to live it intensely and totally—then it is not just a surface phenomenon. Deep down within you something is changing with it. You are becoming more alert. If this is a mistake, this experience, you will never commit it again. A mature person never commits the same mistake again. But a person who is just old goes on committing the same mistakes again and again. He lives in a circle; he never learns anything. P.6

Osho teaches that there is a difference between growing old and growing up. All things grow old, but in growing up, in becoming more mature, in actualizing our innate potential, we have a choice.

Maturity is actualizing one’s potential and becoming the person that Life has created you to become. Actualizing one’s potential though is a choice. Some people do, some don’t. Some actualize their potential fast and some do it slow and some never do it. Some are awake and alert as they live their lives and some are asleep and oblivious. How we live our lives is up to us once we become aware that we have a choice.

Socrates said that an unexamined life is not worth living, and the bumper sticker says that the unlived life is not worth examining. Some people continue to live on the path of the ego based on their socialization and conditioning. Their lives become increasingly meaningless and desperate as they age. It is a sad thing to watch even if they appear to be “happy” in the ego world. Other people, though, embark on an intentional search for truth and meaning and they begin to blossom and their lives exude a fragrance which is lovely, comforting, and inspiring.

The difference between winners and losers is not that winners are successful and losers have failed. Winners and losers both make the same mistakes and experience the same misfortune, challenges, barriers and obstacles to satisfaction and fulfillment. The difference between winners and losers is that winners learn from their mistakes and losers never learn a thing. Losers don’t grow from difficulties but go in circles. They stay in the same old rut. Winners and losers will both physically grow old, but winners grow up and mature beautifully actualizing their spiritual potential while losers stay stuck at infantile levels of development.

Do you examine your life on a regular basis? Hopefully you examine your functioning as things happen on a regular basis but at least intentionally once a day? Of all spiritual practices, this one is the most important. Having been raised Roman Catholic I was taught to “examine your conscience.” In Alcoholic Anonymous, it is called “taking your inventory.” In New Age spirituality it is called being “mindful.” In Unitarian Universalism it is called the “free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” I prefer to think about it and talk about it as being in the “witness.” Being in the “witness” is simply to observe our own functioning in a nonjudgmental way physically, cognitively, emotionally, socially, psychologically, and spiritually. The simple question which cuts through this more complex model is “What makes you tick.?” The more coherent an answer you have to this question, the more mature you are.

This ability to observe and manage one’s own functioning in a purposeful and deliberate way is the epitome of maturity.

Video commentary on Throwing off the chains of conditioning to finally beome oneself.

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.

Video commentary on Deliver Us From Evil

The Spiritual Life, Topic Fourteen, Deliver us from evil

The Spiritual Life, Topic Fourteen

Deliver us from evil.

From  Maturity: The Responsibility For Being Oneself by Osho

Once Jesus was standing in a marketplace and somebody asked, “Who is worthy of entering into your kingdom of God?” He looked around. There was a rabbi, and the rabbi must have moved forward a little, thinking that he would be chosen—but he was not chosen. There was the most virtuous man of the town—the moralist, the puritan. He moved forward a little, hoping that he would be chosen, but he was not chosen. Jesus looked around—he saw a small child, who was not expecting to be chosen, who had not moved, not even an inch. There was no idea, there was no question that he would be chosen. He was just enjoying the whole scene—the crowd and Jesus and people talking, and he was listening. Jesus called the child, he took the child up in his arms, and he said to the crowd, “Those who are like this small child, they are the only ones worthy of entering into the kingdom of God.” Maturity means gaining your lost innocence again, reclaiming your paradise, becoming a child again. Of course it has a difference—the ordinary child is bound to be corrupted, but when you reclaim your childhood, you become incorruptible. P. 3

But remember, he said, “Those who are like this small child … .” He didn’t say, “Those who are small children.” There is a great difference between the two. He did not say, “This child will enter into the kingdom of God,” because every child is bound to be corrupted, he has to go astray. Every Adam and every Eve is bound to be expelled from the garden of Eden, they have to go astray. That is the only way to regain real childhood: first you have to lose it. It is very strange, but that’s how life is. It is very paradoxical, but life is a paradox. To know the real beauty of your childhood, first you have to lose it; otherwise you will never know it. p.4

The folk song Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell includes the verse, “You don’t know what you got til it’s gone.” Osho teaches the same thing about childhood as did Jesus before him. You have to lose the innocence of your childhood to regain it.

After years of socialization and conditioning, we come to realize that the works of the ego won’t make us happy. The works of the ego don’t bring real satisfaction and fulfillment. And so it dawns on us that there must be a better way to live our lives and this dawning triggers a search for what that better way might be. This search takes us onto the path of the spirit and we begin to reclaim the innocence of our childhood which we have lost.

This reclamation in once sense is very easy because all that is involved is removing the barriers and obstacles to our awareness of Love’s presence which has been within us all the time. Love’s presence is our natural inheritance which we have forgotten because we have become enticed and distracted by the things of the ego world.

We begin a process of renunciation and purification not so much of the physical things of the ego world but of the mental baggage which has been ingrained in our minds and hearts.

Today, we have to decide and choose which we want: the things of the world of the ego or the innocence, peace and joy of the things of the Spirit. The choice is simple while the implementation of our decision is hard because we are constantly tempted to turn away from Love and pursue and attain the things of the ego.

The great Christian Prayer,  the “Our Father,” says in part at the end of the prayer, “...and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.” Indeed. May it be so.

Book review, Mohawk by Richard Russo