Part 1 of 3 of an essay by Shanti: How long is that road from the man we are to the man we can be, from our present state to our potential as a human being and as mankind?
How long is that road …
from the man who is living according to ‘Ten Commandments’, so-called holy scriptures, traditional old-time religions, handed-over ideologies, media, likes on the Internet and respect in other people’s eyes …
to the man who is living her own experience, her own awareness, her own reverence for life and her own intuition?
from knowledge found by birth in a tradition or by chance on the marketplace …
to wisdom based on enquiring on our own and on our own experience?
from hanging on to the answers of a pseudo-religion – a religion based on greed for heaven and fear of hell …
to dropping that nonsense and going on a quest to discover one’s own being?
from following someone else’s light or belief system …
to becoming a light unto one’s self, enquiring on our own, aware that Existence never copies itself?
from living a morality handed over to us by the culture we happen to be born into …
to living a morality which arises out of our own love, out of our own reverence for life, which is our own, has our own signature?
from living with masks, prejudices, clingings or double standards …
to living like an innocent child?
from repressing or projecting our sexuality …
to living and enjoying our natural instincts to the fullest?
from living a life determined by our past and our upbringing …
to letting go of that past and of our greed for the fiction of a well-planned future as well?
from coquetting with our so-called esoteric knowledge …
to having a good sleep and eating our breakfast?
from projecting heaven outside of us and far away into the future …
to knowing that the door to our innate ‘imprisoned splendour’ is always open, that ‘the kingdom of heaven within’ is available always and everywhere, that our ‘original face’ has never left us and that there is no need to postpone living it right now?
from circling around the Kaaba, the Bodhi Tree or any other so-called holy place …
to happily and respectfully taking seven rounds around ourselves?
from being on a so-called spiritual search …
to understanding the illusory nature of it by realizing how we have always taken one thing for granted: that something is missing … and nothing is missing?
from disrespecting other people …
to being aware that divinity is divinity, that the divine resides in everyone, whether it is reflected in a very beautiful or in a very ordinary mirror?
from holding on to thinking and philosophies and logic and words …
to realizing the limits of them, to understanding that all greatness comes from beyond the mind?
from not meditating at all or just for twenty minutes a day …
to bringing awareness to each act – like taking a shower, just taking the shower – watching, witnessing, aware to whom everything is happening and remaining centred there?
from identifying ourselves with the roles we may play or with our ego as the very centre of the universe …
to being like a hollow bamboo, unidentified with any name or form, melting down like ice into the ocean of this great divineness all around, joined to existence, knowing the beauty of vastness, understanding there is nobody who is born and there is nobody who is dying?
from our love being limited to someone in particular, or only aimed at any of these groups – like religions and nations – priests and politicians have divided mankind into, in service of their power over us …
to our love being unaddressed, just a loving heart, overflowing, understanding that the whole humanity is one brotherhood?
from grumbling about and having demands both to existence and to ourselves …
to saying wholeheartedly: “Why not just be? What is wrong in that which I am? This is how I have happened into this vast universe. This vast universe wanted me to be like this. This is the only reality there is, this is the only possibility there is?”
from praying to fictitious gods for sun or for rain …
to understanding that all prayers are childish, because they are nothing but hidden demands?
to be continued …
Shanti is a regular contributor
All articles by this author on Osho News
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