Osho - Weekly Meditation For The Here And Now
Weekly Meditation - Week 41. The Body
October 7
The Body
Always listen to your body. It whispers, it never shouts.
Only in whispering does the body give you messages. If you are alert, you will be able to understand it. And the body has a wisdom of its own, which is very much deeper than the mind. The mind is just immature.
The body has remained without the mind for millennia. The mind is a late arrival. It does not know much yet. All the basic things the body still keeps in its control. Only useless things have been given to the mind - to think about philosophy and God and hell and politics. So listen to the body, and never compare yourself to anyone else.
Never before has there been a person like you, and never will there be. You are absolutely unique-in the past, present, and future. So you cannot compare notes with anybody, and you cannot imitate anybody.
October 8
Polar Star
The polar star is the most permanent, unmoving star. Everything goes on moving, but this is the only star that doesn't move.
Love is the polar star. Everything moves except love. Everything changes; only love remains permanent. In this changing world only love is the unchanging substance. Everything else is a flux, momentary. Only love is eternal.
So these two things you have to remember. One is love, because that is the only thing that is non illusory. That is the only reality; everything else is a dream. So if one can become loving, one becomes real. If one attains total love, one has become oneself, the truth, because love is the only truth. And the second thing is that when you are walking, remember that something in you never walks. That's your soul, your polar star. You eat, but something in you never eats. You become angry, but something in you never becomes angry. You do a thousand and one things, but something in you remains absolutely beyond doing.
That is your polar star. So walking, remember that which never walks. Moving, remember the immobile. Talking, remember silence. Doing things, remember being. Always remember - that which is absolutely permanent, which never flickers, never wavers, which knows no change. That unchanging one within you is the real. And love is the way to find it.
October 9
Back To The Center
If you feel a sort of wavering left and right and you don't know where your center is, that simply shows that you are no longer in contact with your hara, so you have to create that contact.
In the night when you go to sleep, lie down on the bed and put both your hands two inches below the navel, and press a little. Then start breathing deeply, and you will feel that center coming up and down with the breathing. Feel your whole energy there as if you are shrinking and shrinking and shrinking and just existing there as a small center, as very concentrated energy. Just do this for ten, fifteen minutes, and then fall asleep. If you fall asleep doing this, it will be helpful. Then the whole night that centering persists. Again and again the unconscious goes and centers there. So the whole night without your knowing, you will be coming in many ways in deep contact with the center.
In the morning, the moment that you feel that sleep has gone, don't open your eyes right away. Again put your hands below your navel, push a little, and start breathing; again feel the hara. Do this for ten or fifteen minutes and then get up. Do this every night, every morning, within three months you will start feeling centered.
October 10
Unconditioning
Love is an unconditioning. It simply takes away the old patterns and does not give you new ones.
It almost always happens that lovers become childlike - because love accepts you. It makes no demands on you. Love does not say, "Be this, be that." Love simply says, "Be yourself. You are good as you are. You are beautiful as you are." Love accepts you. Suddenly you start dropping your ideals, "shoulds," personalities. You drop your old skin, and again you become a child. Love makes people young.
The more you love, the younger you will remain. When you don't love you start becoming old, because when you don't love you lose contact with yourself. Love is nothing but coming in contact with yourself via the other, somebody who accepts you, who mirrors you as you are.
Love can be the right situation in which to drop all conditioning. Love is an unconditioning. It simply takes away the old patterns and does not give you new ones. If it gives you a new pattern, it is not love, but politics.
October 11
Wonder
Knowledge destroys the capacity to wonder. Wonder is one of the most valuable things in life, and knowledge destroys it. The more you know, the less you wonder, and the less you wonder, the less life means to you.
You are not exhilarated with life. You are not surprised - you start taking things for granted. The innocent heart is continuously in wonder like a small child collecting seashells or colored stones on the beach or just running hither and thither in a garden after butterflies and being surprised by everything. That's why children ask so many questions.
If you go for a morning walk with a child you start feeling exhausted, because the child goes on asking about this and that, asking questions that cannot be answered: "Why are the trees green?" and "Why is the rose red?" But why is the child asking? He is intrigued. He is interested in everything. The word interest comes from a root that means to be involved in-inter-esse. The child is involved in everything that is happening.
The more you become knowledgeable, the less and less you remain involved in life. You simply pass by - you are not concerned with the cow and the dog and the rose bush and the sun and the bird; you are not concerned. Your mind has become very narrow; you are just going to your office or back to your home. You are just running after money more and more, that's all. Or after power, but you are no longer related to life in its multidimensionality. To be in wonder is to relate with everything, and to be constantly receptive.
October 12
Any Time, Any Place
Meditation has nothing to do with time or place. Rather, it has something to do with you, your inner space. So whenever you are free of the day-to-day routine, relax and allow it to happen. It can happen any place, any time, because it is nontemporal and nonspatial.
The right meditation knows no limitation, and slowly, slowly the flow becomes more and more conscious. Then whatever you are doing remains on the surface; deep down, the river goes on flowing. Even in the marketplace, surrounded by all kinds of turmoil, you are utterly silent. Even when somebody is insulting you, offending you, trying to provoke you, deep down there is a calmness; something remains undisturbed. Even when there are a thousand and one distractions, at the center nothing is distracted. But that meditation cannot be managed by the mind; it can only be allowed by the heart.
This moment is meditation - it is here! You have not done anything for it to happen; it is happening on its own. In this moment there is no time. In this moment you are transported. In this moment you can feel that quiet, that serenity, that transcendence.
October 13
Socializing
Ninety percent if people's activities are utterly useless; and they are not only useless but harmful too. What you call socializing, meeting with people, relating, talking, conversation, is almost all rubbish.
It is good that it drops; when one becomes a little alert, it drops! It is as if you have been suffering from a high fever—105 degrees-and have been shouting and thrashing about in your bed. Then the fever cools down to ninety-eight-normal-and you think that all of life is gone, because you are no longer thrashing, no longer saying that your bed is flying into the sky, that ghosts are standing around. You are no longer in a delirium. Certainly it will feel a little poor, because all those people were surrounding you, and you were flying in the sky and talking to gods, and now all is gone and you are just normal!
That's what happens when socializing drops: The delirium is gone-you are becoming normal.• Rather than talking the whole day, unnecessarily gossiping, you will be talking telegraphically. You may not speak a lot - you may become a person of few words, but those few words will be significant. And now only real relationships will remain, and they are worth something.
One need not have a crowd around oneself. A few deep, intimate relationships are enough; they are really fulfilling. In fact, because people don't have intimate relationships, they have many relationships to substitute. But there is no substitution for real intimacy. You can have one thousand friends - that win not make for one real one. But that's what people are doing: They think that quantity can become a substitute for quality. It never does. It cannot.
