Antlers of self-esteem

By Antraeus

 

Edgware Road, London, 4 September 1993, 3.31pm

“In that state, he [the true mystic] beholds the visible world as it were from within. He perceives the spiritual cause of all these material effects. He understands the essential nature of trees and flowers and mountains and the live creatures of the world. No longer does he see men by those dim lights that penetrate the dense and cloudy world of matter. He sees them as angelic toilers bowed by the burden of their mundane selves. And he knows the insignificance of much that we deem important, the deep value of much that we cont accessory, for having cleansed his vision of all personal impediment he apprehends the true proportion of all the elements that compose the universe.” – Clifford Bax (from the Introduction to The Signature of All Things. With other writings by Jacob Boehme (Everyman’s Library published by J.M. Dent & Sons, London).

My interest is not in the quarantined portion of social-mental experience, not in those who have already been taken aside and labelled ‘insane,’ but in ‘the rest;’ that is, in every single person on this planet (and beyond), all of whom have their own unique character, their own mental experience, their own growth patterns. I am not in favour of the persistent, cowardly persecution of others. People generally prefer to judge and condemn others’ instability than to embark upon their own inner journey from caterpillar to butterfly. Inherent fearfulness prevents such persons from ‘losing it.’ They hang on for dear life to what their culture classes a ‘sane.’ They feel comfortable and safe there. They make use of the old strength in numbers routine.

“And why not?” they might well ask in typical and ‘respectable’ survivalist fashion, be it in capitalist or communist culture.

Why not indeed, the newly-born butterfly might gasp as it struggles to break free of its hell-hole of a cocoon. Weary and broken, it looks down at all the smiling insensitive, fat caterpillars who have been fortunate not to have gotten into the mess they did. But soon the butterfly will notice the sunlight pouring down and illuminating its brilliant colours. “Wow, look at me! Hey, this is a miracle. I’m a magical, flying angel!” CRASH!! It falls smack into the land of egocentricity. And there is no protection. It can no longer say, “Hey guys, I’m one of you!” No amount of intelligent interaction will convince a caterpillar that this is ‘one of the lads.’ “Who are you?” they will sneer, “dolled up in your fancy colours. Look how feeble you are!” they laugh and chide. It’s true, in the superficial reality that is all caterpillars know, you’re an alien, a weirdo, and don’t you dare aspire to the same quality of self-esteem.

“The enchanted apples,” writes Clifford Bax, “are guarded by dragons and are only captured by the strong.” (From the Introduction to The Signature of All Things. With other writings by Jacob Boehme (Everyman’s Library published by J.M. Dent & Sons, London).

The race of caterpillars is really a race of underdeveloped butterflies. Or, rather, they are angels who have yet to manifest in the material form. But try telling them that! Try even mentioning the word ‘spiritual’ to them. If they accept it, then it will probably be camouflaged in some preconceived, second-hand religious dogma that preserves ‘caterprotection,’ or hires its own law-giving ‘God-is-on-our-side’ security guard service of that name (to defend its static-and-safe heritage). Hell, in the end we’re all one. Why do you have to come and spoil everything by analysing and criticising the social order, upsetting the status quo? The reason is that, although all the apples are, in effect, the same, some enjoy the sunlight and others live lives full of darkness, despair and depression at the bottom and never get a turn at basking in the light of social acceptance. In this subtle form of hierarchy - “just where we landed, thank you very much” – of one’s self-esteem is quite dependent on how far up you reside on the social scale. Of course, those on top wish to preserve their superior status and privileged positions. So too would the oppressed apples. However, once the experience of oppression has seeped into an apple’s being, it ought to be less greedy and more considerate when allowed to rise to the top of the pile. In fact, it may no longer accept the invitation, feeling uncomfortable with the responsibility of keeping others in the dark.

At the moment, in 1933, the entire structure of humanity is being pressurised. Both collective and individual personalities are being challenged. We are being confronted by our selves, by out relation to the natural universal flow of unity – at least, to a higher degree than before. The applecart has been tipped off balance. It may not have keeled over completely but, certainly, there has been a reshuffle of status, physically, emotionally and mentally. At the end of the day, the status is imaginary. What is important is its effect on self-esteem. Sure, it is all very wise to retain self-esteem under whatever oppressive conditions we find ourselves. But, sometimes, in an imperfect world, or, rather, a dynamic, ever-changing one, such as this, one cannot simply sprout antlers of self-esteem while being crushed beneath a few billion other apples! If, however, each apple gets a shot at sitting on top, one can take that experience of sunlight with them to the bottom of the pile. “What doesn’t kill you will make you stronger.” If your self-esteem dies, you should get another crack of the whip. If the horns grow stronger under the challenge or, rather, under the weight of the apples, then it no longer matters what position you find yourself in. If this situation occurred, we might have a race of very ‘special’ human beings who have the confidence to manifest their wondrous potential. I’m sure that the cosmos is already implementing this operation, but a little collective acknowledgement wouldn’t go amiss.

Monster from the Unconscious

The Black Evil Blood LIVE 14 Nov 2015

Out of Control

Can’t shake this feeling like I’m being watched at my desk….

Aloneness

One who is immersed in the Atmic Bliss, says Sathya Sai Baba, who has achieved this supreme Joy and has realised that intentions and desires in relation to sensory object cause petty pleasures and sorrow, laughter and weeping, knows the secret of life, the wisdom of real, permanent Joy. Such a person “will always exult in the Joy of companionship with oneself, the contemplation of One’s Own inner Reality.” (Prasanthi Vahini, Sri Sathya Sai Books and Publications trust, Prasanthi Nilayam, Andre Pradesh, India, 1962, p.67). 

“Loneliness is where you are missing the other. Aloneness is when you are finding yourself. Aloneness is the finding of your true and authentic being.” - Osho (Diamonds, New Dawn, New Delhi, India, 2000, ‘19 December’). 

“You can never be lonely if you experience your aloneness as all-oneness.” – (Inspirational Thoughts: A Compilation of Wonderful Quotations for Your Personal Growth by Tycho Photiou, p.39). 

“Tao says: If you are alone, absolutely alone, and your happiness remains the same, then you have attained – otherwise you have not attained.” - Osho (Tao: The Pathless Path, Renaissance Books, N.Y., U.S., p.45). 

Osho, recounting the parable of Lin Lei in The Book of Lieh Tzu: A Classic of Tao (translated by A.C. Graham, 1990), explains that people feel lonely because they have not yet created a relationship with themselves. They have yet to fall in love with themselves:

“If you are nonambitious you are happy because frustration will have no entry in you. And he has no wife and no son so what is there to be miserable about? Try to understand his meaning. He is absolutely alone – nobody to disturb his aloneness. His solitude is unperturbed. I am alone, free, absolutely my on master. Nobody to drag me here and there, no family, no relations – what is there to be miserable about? Remember, when you are alone, you are not alone; you are lonely, you miss the company of the other. You miss the company of the other because you have not yet learned how to be in your own company. You miss the company of the other because you don’t know how to be with yourself. Loneliness is negative, the absence of the other. Aloneness is positive, the presence of your own being. Loneliness is solitariness, aloneness is solitude. Loneliness is ugly, aloneness is beautiful. Aloneness has a luminosity in it...What is there to regret? I am alone, like a great peak of the Himalayas...alone. Everything is beautiful and silent and blissful.” - Osho (Tao: The Pathless Path, p.78-79).

“I think a person needs to learn from childhood to find himself alone. It means to not be bored when you’re by yourself, because a person who finds himself bored when alone – as it seems to me – is in danger.” - Andrei Tarkovsky, A Poet in the Cinema.

Osho on Anger

Excerpt from Love’s Mysteries, p.19-21

“So the second thing to remember is: learn to transform your poisons into honey. How are they transformed? There is no simple process. In fact, to call it transformation is not right because you don’t do anything; you only need patience. This is one of the greatest secrets I am telling your. Try it: when anger comes, you are not to do anything, just sit silently and watch it. Don’t be against it, don’t be for it. Don’t cooperate with it, don’t repress it. Just watch it, be patient, just see what happens…let it rise.

Remember: don’t do anything in the moment of anger – wait. Just give it a little time and wait…and you will be surprised. And one day you will understand that if you can wait enough, anger itself becomes compassion. It is a wheel; it is moving on its own – You are in a hurry. Just as night becomes day if you can wait a little, in the same way, anger becomes compassion if you can wait a little. The same energy – just patience has to be added to it, nothing else. You try it.

Act when the saint is uppermost – that’s all. Don’t act when the sinner is uppermost, don’t act, otherwise you will repent, you will create a chain of reactions and you will get into karma. That is the whole meaning of getting into karma. Do anything when you are in a negative moment and you will be in a chain, and then there is no end to it. When you are negative you do something, the other becomes negative, the other is ready to do something – negativity creates more negativity. Negativity provokes more negativity, anger brings more anger, hostility brings more hostility, and things go on and on and on…and people have been entangled with each other for Lives together. And they continue!

 

Wait. When you are angry, it is the moment to meditate. Don’t waste this moment anger is creating such great energy in you. It can destroy. But energy is neutral – the same energy that can destroy, can be creative. The same energy that can shatter can shower life – just wait. Waiting, and not doing anything in a hurry, one day you will be surprised, seeing the inner change. You were full of anger, and then anger goes on and on and comes to a climax…and then the wheel turns. You can see the wheel is turning, the anger is relaxing, and energy is being released and, now, you are in a positive mood – the creative mood. Now you can do something. Do it. Always wait for the positive.

What I am saying is not repression. I am not saying to repress the negative, I am saying – watch the negative. Remember the difference is there. I am not saying to sit on top of the negative, forget the negative, do something against it – no. I am not saying when you are angry, smile – no; that smile is false, ugly, phoney. When you are angry, then close the room, keep a mirror in front of you, see your angry face yourself. There is no need to show it to anybody else. It is your business, it is your energy, it is your life, and you have to wait for the right moment. Go on looking in the mirror: see the red face, the red eyes, the murderer there.

Have you ever thought that everybody carries a murderer inside? You also carry a murderer inside. Don’t think that the murderer exists somewhere else – somebody else is a murderer who commits a murder – no, everybody has the possibility to commit a murder. You carry the suicidal instinct in you.

Just look in the mirror: these are your climates – you have to be acquainted with them. This is part of the growth towards self-knowledge. You have heard so much, from Socrates till today: ‘Know thyself?’ – but this is the way to know thyself. ‘Know thyself does not mean sit and silently and repeat: I am Brahma, I am Soul, I am God, I am This’ – all this is nonsense. ‘Know thyself’ means know all your climates, all possibilities – the murderer, the sinner, the criminal, the saint, the holy man inside you, the virtue, the God, the Devil – know all the climates, the whole range of it, and by knowing it you will be discovering secrets, keys.

Quote from Posthumous Fragments by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

You will see that anger cannot be there forever – or can it be? You have not tried it, so try it – it cannot be there forever. If you don’t do anything, what is going to happen? Can anger hang there forever and ever? Happiness comes and goes, unhappiness comes and goes. Can’t you see a simple law? – that everything changes, nothing remains permanent. So why be in a hurry? Anger has come – it will go. You just wait, have a little patience. Just look in the mirror and wait. Let anger be there, let your face go ugly and murderous – but wait, watch.

Don’t repress and don’t act according to the anger, and soon you will see that the face is becoming softer, eyes are becoming calmer, the energy is changing – the male turning into female…and soon you will be full of radiance. The same redness that was anger, now is a certain radiance – a beauty on your face, in your eyes. Now go out; the time has come to act.

Act when you are positive. Don’t force positivity, wait for the positivity to come on its own. This is the secret – when I say, ‘learn to transform your poisons into honey,’ this is what I mean.”

Osho International Foundation, 1998

Everyone has “stuff” buried or denied that is arising

By Saul

Channelled through John Smallman, 27 April 2016

The sense of humanity’s Oneness is arising in millions of people all across the planet, and as it does so it is then being sensed by millions more. The collective intent to awaken is stirring humanity and there is no going back! Your awakening is inevitable and imminent. News of worldwide suffering and deprivation, regardless of the cause or reason for these unhappy situations, is inspiring compassion on a scale never before seen on Earth. The Tsunami of Love continues to grow and intensify because so many are intending to be loving in every moment of their lives. The power of your intent is amazing, and soon you will become aware of that power in each of your individual lives as you continue to open your hearts to the divine field of Love that embraces you constantly.

The Light that you Light bearers, Light holders, and Light workers are displaying by your living examples of Love in action through your compassion, forgiveness, acceptance, and lack of judgment grows brighter daily. Yes, most of you fail at times, falling back into fear and egoic behaviors, but your intent to be loving remains and is quickly reestablished as you see what has occurred and forgive yourselves. Self-forgiveness is essential because it clears the negative emotional energies that judgment and self-judgment arouses.

As those in the spiritual realms keep reminding you – Love is all-encompassing, there is no judgment, only unconditional acceptance. The human condition is demanding, God is not! You are all on paths of learning that you planned before you incarnated, and so you are bound to make errors, that is how you learn. The important point here is to admit your errors, where possible correct them and make amends to anyone you know you have intentionally offended, and then move on. Often it seems that people are choosing to hurt and offend one another, when in fact they are frequently unaware that their behavior is offensive. Political correctness is a fear based concept that is often used to hurt or damage someone else when a person refuses to acknowledge their own issues of lack of self-worth, a very intense and painful state.

To be offended is a choice a person has to make. You are all the perfect children of God, so if you feel that someone has offended you you are choosing to see yourself as less than perfect and accepting that other’s judgment of you. Why would you do that? Only you know your motives and intentions, and another’s opinion of you is just that, an opinion, an opinion based on misinformation and a lack of knowledge. Do not take offense, instead recognize that the one who is attempting to offend you is in fact crying out for love and acceptance. Respond gently, without anger, and allow the negative energy of the moment to dissipate.

Because of the intense pain so many experienced in their formative years as humans, it became necessary for them to very quickly deny or bury that pain in order to survive. But “stuff” buried or denied festers and grows like a physical infection, and if not allowed to resurface, be reacknowleged, and then offered comfort will lead to more serious physical or psychological damage.

Everyone has“stuff” buried or denied that is arising, often seemingly uninvited, at this point in humanity’s awakening process to be acknowledged and released. So acknowledge what is asking to arise, make space for it to do so, and let it flow through you, like grief. It cannot be rushed, but attempting to understand or recall its origins stops the flow and traps you in a seemingly endless loop of re-experiencing it.

The pain that arises can be very intense, rather like the pain of a very bad burn, and may cause you to howl, scream, and even writhe in agony. Allowing that flow of emotions is the process of release. So allow. Stopping the flow because it is painful or embarrassing will not work.

It is as though you had within you a container filled with ancient pain and suffering – and that container is your heart! You have to allow it all to drain out through your experiencing of it, and when it has you will indeed feel drained and exhausted. But now there is room for Love to fill and heal that empty space within you. Until it is released, allowed to flow through, you have effectively built and are maintaining a defense system that retains the pain and locks out Love.

When you choose to enter the process of releasing all this gunk – and even if it seems to be arising unbidden, it means that at a deeper level you have chosen to allow this release to occur – it can be extremely helpful to have with you a loving and intimate friend whom you trust implicitly, to hold you close and offer the comfort you did not receive when the pain originally occurred. It will also be cathartic for the friend because this kind of release will also be healing for her and for humanity. Remember, you are never alone, there is no separation, and to share the release you are undergoing is a loving exchange that heals you both, along with humanity.

As you well know, you are on Earth at this time to assist in humanity’s awakening process, and releasing the buried pain and suffering – humanity’s vast lake of trauma – is an essential part of the process. All over the world locked hearts filled with pain are crying out for Love but are unable to accept It. There are few among you who do not know someone who is so closed down in fear, guilt, anger, and pain that they will allow no one to approach them, no one to comfort them, and who present an impenetrable barrier to the world around them.

This barrier is what you are all helping to dissolve as you make your daily intent to be loving in every situation. Only you can do it. The Love that each one of you has burning within you, and that you have chosen to share so generously, is powerful way beyond your ability to conceive of. If you connect with someone who appears offensive, angry, or unapproachable, intend immediately to send them Love and know that healing has started for them in that moment.

You are indeed divine beings of unassailable Love and Compassion who have willingly chosen an Earth life at this time to assist in the awakening process, and that amazingly altruistic choice you made, knowing how difficult and painful your path would be, is most highly honored here in the spiritual realms, as you will discover when you return Home to hero’s welcomes.

With so very much love, Saul.

www.johnsmallman.wordpress.com/2016/04/27/everyone-has-stuff-buried-or-denied-that-is-arising

The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963)

Osho on Sadness

“Sadness gives depth. Happiness gives height. Sadness gives roots. Happiness gives branches. Happiness is like a tree going into the sky, and sadness is like the roots going down into the womb of the earth. Both are needed, and the higher a tree goes, the deeper it goes, simultaneously. The bigger the tree, the bigger will be its roots. In fact, it is always in proportion. That’s its balance.” – Osho. 

 

“Hypocrisy means you pretend to be something which you are not. You know it, it hurts, hence it creates sadness. The whole world is full of sadness because the whole world has been directed to create character, morality. My effort here is just the opposite. I am not interested in character at all, in morality at all. I am not telling people to be immoral, I am telling people to be conscious, to create consciousness.”

“Change only one thing, change from misery to bliss. From sadness to celebration. And it can be done very easily because misery is an unnatural thing.” 

“My sannyasins are not to be sad people. Enough of sadness! Throughout the whole past of humanity we have created sad saints and sages. It has been a nightmare. Now we need cheerful sages, saints who are capable of love and laughter. God is fed up with your old saints. He is continuously informing me not to send any more of the old type of saints. He needs a few dancers in heaven, the singers, lovers - the old saints have made heaven look like hell. So I am preparing my people.”

“Now this indivisible atom of consciousness can exist in two ways: it can exist in sadness - then it is in the world - it can exist in bliss; then it is in god. These are just two styles possible, and the same energy is needed for both. The same energy not allowed to move becomes stagnant, stale, creates sadness. The same energy allowed, expressed, flowering, overflowing, becomes bliss.” 

“You are sad. Go into your sadness rather than escaping into some activity, into some occupation, rather than going to see a friend or to a movie or turning on the radio or the tv. Rather than escaping from it, turning your back towards it, drop all activity. Close your eyes, go into it, see what it is, why it is - and see without condemning it, because if you condemn you will not be able to see the totality of it. See without judging. If you judge, you will not be able to see the whole of it. Without judgement, without condemnation, without evaluation, just watch it, what it is. Look as if it is a flower, sad; a cloud, dark; but look at it with no judgement so that you can see all the facets of it.” 

“That’s how it should be. If you can like your sadness also, then the sadness is no longer sad. The sadness is sad because you dislike it. The sadness is sad because you would not like to be in it. The sadness is sad because you reject it. Even sadness becomes a flowering of tremendous beauty, of silence, of depth, if you like it. Nothing is wrong; that’s what I want you to be: to like everything that happens, even sadness. Even death has to be loved; only then will you transcend death. If you can accept death, love and welcome it, now death cannot kill you; you have transcended it.” 

“When sadness comes, accept it. Listen to its song. It has something to give to you. It has a gift which no happiness can give to you, only sadness can give it.” 

“Remain capable of moving with all the polarities. When sadness comes, be REALLY sad. Don’t try to escape from it - allow it, cooperate with it. Let it dissolve in you and you be dissolved in it. Become one with it. Be really sad: no resistance, no conflict, no struggle. When happiness comes, be happy: dance, be ecstatic. When happiness comes, don’t try to cling to it. Don’t say that it should remain always and always; that is the way to miss it. When sadness comes, don’t say, ’Don’t come to me,’ or, ’If you have come, please go soon.’ That is the way to miss it.” 

www.oshoquotes.net/category/osho-quotes-on-sadness