Feeling Anxious? Be Alert!

When you feel anxious, anxiety-ridden, what is one to do? What do you ordinarily do when anxiety is there? You try to solve it. You try alternatives, and you get more and more into it. You will create a bigger mess because anxiety cannot be solved through thinking. It cannot be dissolved through thinking because thinking itself is a sort of anxiety.

This technique says don’t do anything with anxiety. Just be alert!

I will tell you one old anecdote about Bokuju, another Zen Master. He lived alone in a cave, but during the day, or even in the night, he would sometimes say loudly, “Bokuju” his own name, and then he would say, “Yes, I am here.” And no one else was there.

Then his disciple used to ask him, “Why are you calling “Bokuju” your own name, and then saying, ‘yes sir, I am here’?”  He said, “Whenever I get into thinking, I have to remember to be alert, and so I call my own name, Bokuju. The moment I call Bokuju and I say, ‘yes sir, I am here, the thinking, the anxiety disappears.”
Then, in his last days, for two or three years, he never called “Bokuju” his name, and never had to reply, “Yes sir, I am here.” The disciple asked, “Master, now you never do this.”

So he said, “But now Bokuju is always there. He is always there, and there is no need. Before I used to miss him. Sometimes the anxiety would take me, cloud me all over, and Bokuju was not there. So I had to remember Bokuju, and the anxiety would disappear…”

Try your own name. When you feel deep anxiety, just call your name – not “Bokuju” or any other name , but your name –and then reply to it, “Yes sir, I am here,” and feel the difference. Anxiety will not be there. At lease for a single moment you will have a glimpse beyond the clouds, and that glimpse can be deepened.

Once you know that if you become alert anxiety is not there, it disappears; you have come to a deep knowing of your own self and the mechanism of inner working. 

Ma Yoga Vivek

Vivek takes sannyas in April 1971, and is osho’s caretaker from 1973 onwards

Osho- I had a girlfriend when I was young. Then she died. But on her deathbed she promised me she would came back. And she has come back. The name of the girlfriend was Shashi. She died in 47. She was the daughter of a certain doctor in my village, Dr. Sharma. He is also dead now. And now Shashi has come as Vivek to take care of me. Vivek cannot remember it. I used to call Shashi Gudiya, and I started calling Vivek Gudiya also, just to give a continuity.

Life is a great drama, a great play-it goes on from one life to onother to another.

Yesterday, someone came to me in the morning, and I told her to take sannyas. She was bewildered. She said to give her time to think and decide, at least two days. I said to her “who knows about two days? So much you require… take it today, this moment.” But she was not decisive, so I gave her two days. The next morning she came and took it. She has not taken two days. Only one day. I asked her, “why? You have been given two days, why have you come so soon?” she said. “At three o’clock at night, suddenly I was awake, and something went deep within me telling me, “Go take sannyas”

It is not a decision that she has made, But a decision that has been made by her very deep-rooted mind. But the moment she came in the room I knew her, I knew that mind which she came to know twenty hours later.

So when I say take sannyas, there are so many reasons with every person to whom I tell it. Either he has been a sannyas in the last life, or somewhere in the long journey he has been a sannyasin.

I had given her another name yesterday, but today I had to change it because I gave her that name in her indecision. Now I am giving her a different name that will be a help to her. When she came this morning, she herself was decided. That other name was not needed at all. And I have given her the name Ma Yoga Vivek, because now the decision has come through her Vivek-her awareness, her consciousness. (16 April 1971)

Ma Yoga Vivek

Here is some information on Vivek’s death Ma Yoga Vivek, English disciple of osho since 1971, legal name Christine Walfe, was cremated at the burning ghats at karegaon park on December 9 1989, two days before her birthday.

Sannyasins in the commune were then told that she was being treated for hormonal unbalance which made her very depressed and she committed suicide while feeling so.

There were unsubstantiated Rumours of heroin overdose. Either suicide or drug overdose, no outopsy was conducted. Though once close to Osho, she had fallen from her grace in Crete in 1986. She had gone to Bombay with a German friend and supposedly was asked to come back. The German friend was not present at the funeral and was not seen later

In 1986 Osho was to say-

Vivek has been for sixteen years with me. When she came she was only twenty years old; now she is thirty six, almost twice the age. And all these sixteen years, day in day out, she has been taking care of me with as much Love as possible, with a deep devotion.

People that come into your life.

Sometimes people come into your life and you know right away that they were meant to be there, to serve some sort of purpose, teach you a lesson, or to help you figure out who you are or who you want to become. You never know who these people may be possibly your roommate, neighbor, co-worker, longest friend, lover, or even a complete stranger but when you lock eyes with them, you know at that very moment that they will affect your life in some profound way. 

Some people come into our lives and quickly go.
Some people move our souls to dance.
They awaken us to new understanding with the passing whisper of their wisdom.
Some people make the sky more beautiful to gaze upon.
They stay in our lives for awhile, leave footprints in our hearts, and we are never, ever the same.

And sometimes things happen to you that may seem horrible, painful, and unfair at first, but in reflection you find that without overcoming those obstacles you would have never realized your potential, strength, willpower, or heart. Everything happens for a reason, nothing happens by chance or by means of luck. Illness, injury, love, lost moments of true greatness, and sheer stupidity all occur to test the limits of your soul. Without these small tests, whatever they may be, life would be like a smoothly paved, straight flat road to nowhere. It would be safe and comfortable, but dull and utterly pointless. The people you meet who affect your life. And the success and downfalls you experience help to create who you become.

Even the bad experience can be learned from. In fact they are probably the most poignant and important ones.

If someone hurts you, betrays you, or breaks your heart, forgive them, for they have helped you learn about trust and the importance of being cautious when you open your heart. If someone loves you, love them back unconditionally, not only because they love you, but because in a way, they are teaching you to love and how to open your heart and eyes to things.

Make every day count!!! Appreciate every moment and take from those moments everything that you possibly can for you may never be able to experience it again. Talk to people that you have never talked to before, and actually listen. Let yourself fall in love, break free, and set your sights high. Hold your head up because you have every right to. Tell yourself you are a great individual and believe in yourself, for if you don’t believe in yourself; it will be hard for others to believe in you.

You can make of your life anything you wish. Create your own life then go out and live it with absolutely no regrets.

Dancer lost in dancing- OSHO

Can one be absorbed in doing something- for instance, these active techniques-with absolute total intensity, and at the same time remain a witness who is separate, apart? 

OSHO: The same is the problem in many forms. You think that a witness is something apart, separate. It is not. Your intensity, your wholeness, is your witness. So when you are witnessing and doing something you are not two-the doer is the witness. For Example, You are dancing: the dancer and the witness are not two, there is no separation. The separation is only in language. The dancer is the witness. And if the dancer is not the witness then you cannot be total in the dance, because the witness will need some energy and you will have to divide yourself. 

A part will remain a witness and the remaining will move in the dance. It cannot be total, it will be divided. And this is not what is meant, because really this is the state of a schizophrenic patient -divided, split. It is pathological. If you become two you are ill. You must remain one. You must move totally into the dance, and your totality will become the witness. It is not going to be something set apart, your wholeness is aware. This happens. So don’t try to divide yourself. While dancing become the dance, 

Just remain alert; don’t fall asleep, don’t be unconscious. You are not under a drug; you are alert, fully alert. But this alertness is not a part standing aloof; it is your totality, it is your whole being. But this is again the same thing as whether two lovers are two or one. Only on the surface are they two, deep inside they are one. Only in language will you appear two, the dancer and the witness, but deep down you are the one. The whole dancer is alert. Then only peace, equilibrium, silence, will happen to you.

If you are divided there will be tension, and that Tension will not allow you to be totally here and now, to merge into existence. So remember that, don’t try to divide. Become the dancer and still be aware. This happens. This will happen to you also. This may have happened to many already. But remember this: don’t get split. Remain one and yet aware.

And Dancing is not passive, it is very active. In the end you become movement; the body is forgotten, only movement remains. Really, dancing is a most unearthly thing, a most unearthly art, because it is just rhythm in movement. It is absolutely immaterial so you cannot hold on to it. You can hold on to the dancer, but never to the dancing.

It just withers in the cosmos. It is there, and then it is not there; it is not here, and then suddenly it is here - it comes out of nothing and it is here - it comes out of nothing and then, again, goes into nothing. A dancer is sitting here; there is no dancing in him. But if a poet is sitting here, poetry may be in him; poetry can exist in the poet.

A painter is here: in a very subtle way, painting is present. Before he paints, painting is there. But with a dancer nothing is present, and if it is present, then he is simply a technician and not a dancer. The movement is a new phenomenon coming in. The dancer becomes just a vehicle: the movement takes over.

One of the greatest dancers of this century was Nijinsky, and in the end he just went mad. He may have been the greatest dancer in all of history, but the movement became so much for him that dancer was lost in it. In his last years he was unable to control it. He could begin dancing at any moment, anywhere, and when he was dancing, no one could say when it would end. It might even continue the whole night.

When friends asked him, “what has become of you? You begin, and then there is no end,” Nijinsky said, “I am only in the beginning. Then something takes over and ‘I’ am no more - and who dances, I do not know.” He went mad. He was in a madhouse; he died in a madhouse.

Take any activity and go to the limit where there is either madness or meditation. Lukewarm search will not do.

OSHO. 

Osho has used all sort of creative expressions for taking people into meditation, and dancing is one of them and one of most important medium also, as many people loves to dance. According to osho, if one can be total in dancing then it becomes a meditation. In fact in any activity, if we involved our self so totally, that we are no longer present, then it becomes a meditation. Totality is the key in any form of meditation. Similarly when we dance with totality then one moment comes, when dancer is lost and only dance is left and dancing has become a meditation.

During the peak of Michael Jackson’s career when he was performing to sold-out audiences across the globe, he released some statements about his strange/unique experiences.

Here is a quote from Michael Jackson on his dancing:

“The awareness is expressed through creation.

This world we live in is a dance of the creator.
The dancers appear and disappear at a glance
But the dance is still living.

On many occasions when I am dancing,
I am touched by something sacred.
In these moments I feel my spirit is raised 

and become one with all there is
I become the winner and the subjugated,
I become the master and slave,
I become the singer and song,
I become the expert and the known.
Still dancing and then this is the eternal dance of creation.
The creator and creation merge in one of joy.

-Still dancing – and dancing – and dancing,
      -Until there is only the dance”

-Michael Jackson