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. 

What are the roots and what are the wings of a Meditator?

Meditation is a way of settling in oneself, at the innermost core of your being. Once you have found the center of your existence, you will have found both the roots and the wings.

The roots are in existence, making you a more integrated human being, an individual. And the wings are in the fragrance that is released by being in contact with existence. The fragrance consists of freedom, love, compassion, authenticity, sincerity, a sense of humor, and a tremendous feeling of blissfulness.

The roots make you an individual, and the wings give you the freedom to love, to be creative, to share unconditionally the joy that you have found. The roots and wings come together. They are two sides of one experience, and that experience is finding the center of your being.

We are continuously moving on the circumference, always somewhere else far away from our own being, always directed towards others. When all this is dropped, when all objects are dropped, when you close your eyes to all that is not you-even your mind, your heartbeats are left far behind-only a silence remains.

In this silence you will settle slowly into the center of your being, and then the roots will grow on their own accord and the wings too. You need not worry about them. You cannot do anything about them. They come on their own.

You simply fulfill one condition: that is, to be at home-and the whole existence become bliss to you, a benediction.

OSHO

Entering Sleep Consciously- OSHO

The moment when you are dropping into sleep is the moment to encounter the unconsciousness. If you can remain out of sleep, then the unconscious will be real, because that is the line. The very line from where you drop into sleep is the line where you can encounter the unconscious.

You have been sleeping everyday, but you have not encountered sleep yet. You have not seen it: what it is, how it comes, how to drop into it, you have not known anything about it. You have been dropping daily, coming out of it, but you have not felt the moment when sleep comes to the mind and what happens.

So try this, and with three months effort, suddenly one day you will enter sleep knowingly: drop on your bed, close your eyes, and then remember, remember that sleep is coming and ‘I am to remain awake when the sleep comes’.

It is very arduous, but it helps. One day it will not happen, another day it will not happen. Persist every day, constantly remembering that sleep is coming, and “I am not allow it without knowing. I must be aware when sleep enters. I must go on feeling how sleep takes over, what it is”.

One day sleep is there, and you are still awake. That very moment you become aware of your unconsciousness. And once you become aware of your unconsciousness you will never be asleep again during the day. Sleep will be there, but you will be awake simultaneously. A center in you will go on knowing; all around will be sleep, and the center will go on knowing. When this center is knowing, dreams become impossible. Then you are asleep in a different sense, and you will be awake in the morning in a different sense. A different quality comes by the encounter.

OSHO

Always go on falling into the watcher-OSHO

Before I know it my watcher turns into my judger. What to do?

Osho- Don’t judge it. If your watcher becomes a judger, okay. Don’t judge the judger- watch it. If again the judger comes, watch it. Always go on falling back on the watcher, don’t be defeated by the judger. 

And don’t be disturbed. It is not a question that you have to not judge. If you force it you will not be happy, you will be suppressed. And whatsoever you will do, the judger will be there, no matter how you force, suppress. No! Release it! If a thought comes, and another thought follows and becomes a judgment, watch the judgment also. Always go on falling into the watcher, that’s the whole thing.

If again the judge comes, let it come. Don’t be afraid. You are always free to become a watcher again. The whole method of watching is not to be deceived and not to be distracted by the judger. Let it be there, there is no condemnation about it. What can you do if the judger comes? What can you do? There is nothing to do.

You can again become a watcher. Let it go on and on. The judger is going to be lost somewhere, and then the watcher will be centered. It is going to be a long process, because you have always been helping the judger to come in. for many lives, for thousands of years, you have always been getting identified with the judger.  So the judger does not know that you have changed your mind. It will still be coming for a few years.

It depends on you. If you go on falling to the watcher, sooner or later, the judger will understand that it is no more needed, an unwelcome guest. It will knock at your door a few times, but the knock will become feebler and feebler and feebler. One day, seeing that you are no more interested in it, the judger disappears.

You cannot suppress it.

OSHO

Awareness & Relaxation

Awareness & Relaxation....The ResolutionAwareness & Relaxation

Step 1: Daily Watching“Start being aware with day-to-day, routine actions, and while you are doing your routine actions, remain relaxed.

“There is no need to be tense. When you are washing your floor, what is the need to be tense? Or when you are cooking the food, what is the need to be tense? There is not a single time in life that requires your tension. It is just your unawareness and your impatience.

“I have not found anything — and I have lived in all kind of ways, with all kinds of people. I have always been puzzled: why are they tense? It seems tension has nothing to do with anything outside you, it has something to do within you. Outside you always find an excuse only because it looks so idiotic to be tense without any reason. Just to rationalize, you find some reason outside yourself to explain why you are tense.

“But tension is not outside you, it is in your wrong style of life.

Step 2: Accept yourself“You are living in competition — that will create tension. You are living in continuous comparison — which will create tension. You are always thinking either of the past or of the future, and missing the present that is the only reality — that will create tension.

“Just find your own talent. Nature never sends any single individual without some unique gift. Just a little search…. Whatever qualities and whatever talents you have, use them to the fullest, and the energy that is involved in tensions will start becoming your grace, your beauty.

Step 3: Be an Artist of Love“Whatever you are doing, do it with such love, with such care that the smallest thing in the world becomes a piece of art. It will bring great joy to you. And it will create a world without competition, without comparison; it will give dignity to all people. It will restore their pride, which religions have destroyed.“Any act done with totality becomes your prayer.”

Osho: The Hidden Splendor